Shawn went to some kind of nerd convention in Seattle and at home the world went bananas. J and I ate greasy pizza for dinner and wiped our hands on the furniture instead of on napkins, and watched insipid television programs that made us dumber while simultaneously wracking up the credit cards. We went to bed ridiculously late and I nearly choked on dog hair in my sleep with four dogs wound round my body.
In the morning the coffee did not make itself and neither did the security alarm remember to turn itself off. While I explained to the security guy who phoned me that I just forgot to turn off the alarm before coming downstairs, the dogs tried to eat each other because there was no sensible human around to feed them.
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And tomorrow is the last day of summer vacation. I opted for the summer pro-d which gives me days off in November and May. (Crazy Sue did not, which was a relief, as the prospect of spending a day brainstorming departmental goals with her was utterly intolerable.) There isn't a Final Day of Vacation plan to look forward to. Maybe a nap on the couch. Maybe some Triscuits.
Summer pro-d, as always, consisted of aggravating team-building exercises. I caught a ball, and wove a rope through a spider web made of wire, and balanced with a boatload of off-balance colleagues, and smiled and laughed and hugged people. Checked in. Made jokes, laughed at jokes. That kind of thing.
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S writes to me. Instead of counselling her in person I now counsel her via the ether. She is armed with a new doctor, an SSRI prescription, and some Valium. And university starts for her the same day that school starts for me. We will both be apprehensive, but she has a sedative and I do not. (Summer vacation allows me to nurse a social anxiety problem in a way that is mostly very satisfying until it ends.) There were a lot of people who, in my high school yearbook, instructed me to "stay cool". Every last one of them is disappointed in me.
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5 comments:
My social anxiety is fixed by going nowhere unless there is a really, really important reason - like, potential starvation (though a supermarket man generally brings the food to me). It is also helped by never mixing with anybody, staying in my house for weeks on end, and pretending I didn't hear the phone, or couldn't find the phone, or have a fault with the phone, or had the phone on silent, or the dog ate the phone.
Can you counsel me online too? Or perhaps you already do.
I know I'm not supposed to say that I envy that life but part of me does envy it. People are so difficult and exhausting. Online counselling is the perfect career for someone like me, and maybe it's the perfect way to receive counselling for someone like you.
Or, on second thought, vice versa.
I'm okay for around 36 hours when Itchy goes away and then things start to get weird. It's good you had company ;o)
What was the outcome with Crazy Sue? did the department do anything constructive? Is she still there? No way!!!
Yeah, we should be able to last longer before things get haywire, but J is a bad influence on me. On m own I might to too lazy to rebel so instantly.
Oh, the Crazy Sue saga got really interesting. I'm on my way to work now but I'll write about it later.
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