I suspect I'm entering into one of my periodic phases of not being able to stand people. Or at least "people" in the general sense of larger humanity, not so much "people" in the specific of the relatively small subset of humanity that I actually really care about.

I had a couple more upsetting interpersonal-dealings after the first one I posted. I don't know if it's a full moon, or if Mercury is in everyone's house, or if everyone has once again been invaded by some kind of gender-nonspecific PMS rays from Mars.

But it seems like everyone is prickly and difficult right now, and I include myself in the "everyone."

Just a few highlights of my evening:

Heated up some leftover pad thai (not REALLY what I wanted but the only food in the house that didn't require extensive cooking or was not solely vegetable-based) in the oven. Pulled it out, burning my hand on the glass bowl in the process, and found that the noodles at the center were still cold. "That is WRONG." I said, running cold water over my hand. "I should NOT be able to burn my hand on the bowl and STILL have the noodles be cold. Wrongity wrong wrong." (but not said with the same humor that Adam Savage would say "wrongity wrong wrong"). I zapped the noodles in the microwave; they got warm but also gummy.

Then, watching The Weather Channel, one of the weather-fembots chirps out "So, how are you dealing with the heat?" as her intro/bump. "Not well, sister, not well" I muttered back through clenched teeth.

I know it's bad when I start talking back to inanimate objects - that I'm really borderline P.O.'d and it won't take much to push me over the edge.

Then, I seriously considered the idea of calling the cable company tomorrow and cancelling my service - I pay, like, $60 a month, I was thinking, and there's NOTHING ON on the very night when I need to be diverted. Everything was either annoying people doing mindless things (sitcoms), amazingly debased behavior on a "children's" channel (the evening "soaps" - because that's what they really are, soap operas for teens - on the Noggin channel), or further examples of human depravity (Law and Order, the news channels). Even my normally-beloved Cartoon Network let me down; they were showing some execrable Scooby-Doo "movie" that was made, like, last year, and all the characters voices were wrong - you could tell that they had to hire new actors to do them, because the orignal ones got too old. And I hate Scooby-Doo anyway.

I wasn't even that cheery this afternoon - I kind of lit into (not exactly) a colleague who came by my office, bearing a certificate from a national honor society (one I'd like to belong to but don't, mainly because no one in my undergraduate department's office gave enough of a damn about the students to consider inviting them for such a thing). I don't THINK he was doing it to show off - he's one of those weird conversational-gambit impaired people like I am - but I was on my last nerve, and I just looked at him and said "Oh...well, I'm not smart enough to belong to that society." Kind of shut him up, and I felt sort of bad afterwards, but I do get irritated with myself when I see people with awards and honors and it makes me feel like I'm not doing boo. So I behaved badly there but I think he'll forget it.

I think part of it is, I am simply tired - it is the end of a semester, I'm trying to prepare final exams alongside of the daily round of grading and class prep and research stuff. And it seems that the fecal material hits the fan right about this time every semester, and I wind up with a lot of lifeplanning detail junk that I'm not good at hitting me when I'm already overwhelmed.

And I think on some level I'm regretting making the plans to go visit my folks; there's a lot I need to get done and not a lot of time before classes start once I get back here. And I think I'm sad and jumpy and on edge from News Overload. And I think Mr. O's death (the man whose funeral I baked the cake for) affected me more than I think - it's not a case so much of "why?" or of anger - he had had a serious stroke and was unlikely to recover. But it's just sad and sort of - numinous is not quite the right word but close - to have had someone laughing and joking in your Sunday School class and then less than two weeks later have him be gone.

I don't have a lot of "immediate" experience with death; most of the people over the past years who have died, died far away from me, or they were people who I didn't really know that well or hadn't seen in years. Or they were people who had been sick for a long, long time (like my grandmother, more than 15 years ago now). I didn't really have the experience recently (or even, much, in my past) of having talked and joked and shared food with someone and then have them be suddenly gone. It's something that takes some getting used to. It makes you quiet and kind of unsettled inside, and it makes me see people (even more than I usually do) as sort of walking eggshells, so fragile that they could crack or shatter in an instant.

And then again, when I think of Mr. O's death, I don't feel nearly so bad about taking the time to go see my parents...

I wish, actually, I could get rid of the sad part of this. I can actually be kind of entertaining when I'm *just* grumpy and not sad, too. But I'm sad, too. I think it's the weather, partly. And just the idea that if you turned people loose to do what they wanted, a large percentage of the world would respond by blowing other people up.