Better

Thank you all for your support (and prayers!) during this past week's meltdown.

As I said - time. Time is what I need to get over stuff like this. I tend to be a very strong reactor - I'm the person who tends to break down wailing at the news of the death of someone I care about, I'm the person who tends to have their anger flare suddenly and violently when I see some injustice, I'm the person who can be totally set back by some kind of personal reversal and walk around for days thinking, "things will never be right again! I will never be happy again!"

But in the end, I am. I'm pretty resilient. (Sometimes I think that perhaps my tendency to react strongly to things at first is part of my resilience - it's kind of like getting a fever with a virus - you feel like hell when the fever's going on, but once it breaks, you're on the way to getting better). I've survived worse than this, and I'm sure I'll have worse to survive in the future.

I know I'm feeling better because I was singing as I got ready for work this morning. (I'm trying to remember what it was - probably something stupid. No, not "Something Stupid" - I think it was some old Mamas and Papas song or something.)

Anyway, whatever. Some other big thing will happen in town and that will be the source of gossip, rather than the youth group. It's not like people are always going to be looking at me and thinking "poor dear..."

(Actually, it's the potential for gossip that unsettles me most. There are a couple people who - I don't know if it's inadvertent or not - but everything is magnified by about 20 times when you hear it from them. So someone who's in the hospital for, say, a routine gall bladder surgery is ON DEATH'S DOOR and HAS HAD TO HAVE ALL THEIR INTESTINES PULLED OUT. That kind of thing. I've kind of learned to discount it... but it's different when you think people are saying that kind of stuff about you.)

But anyway. Whatever. It's Friday. I have a butternut squash in the fridge that I'm going to pull out and chop up and bake for dinner, and I think I'm going to make some biscuits to eat with it. It's cooler here and I actually SLEPT last night without waking up every two hours, sweating and with a pounding heart because of my asthma. (I had said to myself - if I didn't stop doing that in a few days, I was going to the doctor over it. Even if they put me on Prednisone again. Because it really sucks to feel like you can't breathe.)

I've planned my route for tomorrow. I don't feel too much like exploring totally new places (which sometimes disappoint) but there is an area about 1/2 hour from me that has copious antique shops (which I've not had time to browse in a long, long time). And there's a Hobby Lobby and a Jo-Ann Fabrics, which, if nothing else, are good for picking up the newest issues of craft magazines. The other bonus is there's a good grocery store in the general vicinity, so I can stock up on some things and get the supplies for Tuesday Lunch (which we've decided to revive in my department - once or twice a month we do a potluck lunch. This is partly so we can avoid frequent faculty meetings [it's easier to discuss minor issues quickly over a lunch than to have to discuss them at 4 pm on a Friday. There's a set number of meetings we're "supposed" to have but more often than not we can fulfill that obligation by having lunch and calling it a meeting] but also partly because there just aren't that many restaurants around, and often we don't get a chance to just sit down and socialize. It's a pretty collegial department [political differences notwithstanding] so it's nice to be able to just sit and shoot the bull with people. It certainly beats hunching over my little carton of yogurt at my desk like I usually do).

I just have to finish a bit of grading and I'm out of here. I've even decided to not worry about the "1 hour of research work per day" rule I have set for myself for today - I plan to come in on Monday (day off) and I can get more than 1 hour done then. And I can get Saturday's hour done then (wait, that's three hours...oh well. I can come in early and get it done.)