slowly going crazy!

10-8-99

12:30 pm

Spent the morning filing. If I'm not going to be here much longer, I at least want to be semi-caught up when I leave. Wouldn't want Tara to die from the shock of having to do work.

Filing is so mindless. When I'm filing my brain goes away and I think about other stuff. Sometimes that lack of focus results in disasters like yesterday, when I filed several hundred invoices in the wrong place. You'd think, over the course of 90 minutes, that I'd have noticed what I was doing. It took me an hour to undo it this morning, and another hour to do it right.

I don't tend to solve any of the world's problems when my mind is floating above my cubicle. Mostly I dwell on things. (I live to dwell on things.) My standard dwelling topic (you can guess this one) is "what would I be doing if I was in Michigan right now?" What class was I in exactly one year ago at this minute? Where is Eric? Where is Melissa? Where is Daryl? What would they think if they saw me here, brandishing a staple puller?

Where the hell is Tony? Tony and I were good friends. Tony and I connected. Tony came dangerously close to "more than friends" with me, and even when we backed off we were still friends.

We whispered in Wind Symphony. Made trouble in tuba/euph ensemble. Met for beers and commiserated over long distance relationships. Tony was one of the only people who could touch me—physically or emotionally—and get away with it.

Tony did not invite me to his wedding. I knew when it was—they'd planned it for a year, it was on my birthday. He said I could come to his bachelor party. Early summer when I was still in Lansing I dragged my feet about moving, because of students, my lease, and Tony's wedding. I put off deciding on a moving date, just in case the invitation might show up. Hell, if Tony had called me the day of the move, I'd have stuck around town long enough for the wedding. Instead I left, and got married the day before he did. So ha ha, Tony.

Did he forget? Did he not invite any of his friends from Lansing? Did his fiancee handle the invitations? In that case, did she forget? On purpose? Did she force him to "forget?" Let's face it, our "not quite just friends" status wasn't much of a secret.

Self-important babbling is all this is. Chances are it was one of two things: 1. He forgot. This is most likely. 2. He quietly decided to "forget," knowing it would be easier on his fiancee and less tense in general. Not that anything between us was tense. I didn't think anything was tense. Was he tense?

I'm tense now, dammit. No matter what happened, he must have thought (or not thought?) it wouldn't matter to me. That my feelings would not be hurt by my exclusion, whether it was unintentional or justified.

But, hell, he said...bachelor party...hell.... Hell. Fuck. Fuck you Tony, you fucker.

11:30 pm

Well then. Ever wonder what I think about when I'm at work? Tell us how you really feel, Bets.

I maxed out my Pooh journal today and started on the new one. It's a fancy little spiral book with black pages, so I have to be sure I have a milky gel pen with me all the time. I am so high maintenance now.

On the last page of the Pooh journal I found a quote that I'd scribbled back when I first opened the journal, from a short story by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, called "The Old Farmhouse and the Dog-Wife." It seems to fit in well with my frame of mind today.

Sometimes, when you lose
something, you're relieved,"
she said. "Other times, you
say to yourself, 'I've lost a
little piece of my soul.'
And you tell yourself, 'It's
just a little piece.' But
one little piece and then
another and then another
and one day there's nothing left."

Maybe I'm just losing my mind. While stuffing envelopes today I sort of let my mind wander (what else is new....) I came across a confirmation for a company, familiar-looking.... I was sure I'd already stuffed and mailed a page for that same company. This means one of two things:

1. I accidentally sent 2 pages of the same order in two separate envelopes. Doh.

2. I'm in the corporate Twilight Zone. This pile will never get smaller; I will stuff stuff stuff envelopes for the rest of my life.

How depressing.

Other than all this crap, I played tennis and hung around with John and Julia all night. Today's Totally Rad Thing About Georgia: My cat smells different here. She's sort of sweet and musky, very clean smelling. She smelled clean before, but more sandy and...and...like, lakewater. Now she smells like sweet wood and sunlight.