Wednesday morning things

* I was feeling OK after last night, but this morning, an anxiety kicked back in:

"Wait, the person you think of as your best friend among your colleagues has said we need to have a meal Thursday and the department has planned one. What if he's going to announce he's leaving at this meal?"

And I thought: yeah, that would be on-brand for 2019, I lose yet another chunk of my admittedly-too-tiny support system.

But going back and re-reading the e-mail, it sounds more like "he wants to have a lunch because he wants to eat together and we haven't had a lunch in a long time" so I'm hoping it's just that. Also, I talked to him on Monday and no mention was made of anything, and as we've co-taught and are probably as-close friends as anyone in the department, I'd hope he'd tell me.

(ETA: Just got an e-mail indicating he's our new FB page curator, so that's another data point in favor of "sometimes a lunch is just a lunch" and that he's sticking around)

One thing the grief counselor did note yesterday, and she's right, this is something I do: Don't try to read people's minds because people may have different thought-patterns or motives than you do. And I know, I tend very much to try to suss out things like that, so I won't be blindsided. (And yeah, once again I'm reminded of how very Guess Culture I am, and how many other people are Ask Culture - so when someone asks me for something or to do something, and I am low-level offended at "why do they think it's OK to ask that, it's a huge imposition?" really they are just asking because they expect I'll probably say "no," but "it never hurts to ask." And I suspect a lot of times people who are more Guess Culture kind of walk around feeling low-level offended about how very much is "expected" of them, because they are used to only asking someone to do something when it's very important, and when they are pretty sure the person can do it. Another thing the counselor mentioned: "some people are 'if you don't mean it, don't say it' types, and other people are just.."'*BLEAH*' I need to get it out there" and as someone who is very much in the first camp....now I realize times when someone else's anger scared me because I was afraid they'd move to violence, it was that they were just dumping and venting in a situation where I'd very tightly say "I'm angry right now and I need ten minutes" and I would just walk away and vent inside my head until I felt better)

And yes, I very much try to figure out the underlying motives for things (despite my complaining I am very literal-minded and often don't get that people are joking about stuff, for example) because I have been hit unexpectedly by bad news enough times that I want to try to anticipate the bad news in advance and be ready. (Though several of the big-bads I've dealt with since July were pretty much unexpected bad news. Life is like that, I guess: when you're worrying about your roof caving in your basement floods)

But it was more worded as "we need to eat together some time" and not so much as "we need to have a meal NOW [because there is something important I have to pass along]"

I mean, it's still entirely possible, but it seems less likely. (Also, he told a story a while back about how a year ago he was headhunted for a pretty good post....and he turned it down, so he might be here for the long haul like I am)

Though it's also possible that this went down AFTER I had talked to him about how totally overwhelmed I was and how sad and tired and maybe it was even a cheer-me-up thing, because that is kind of on-brand for him.

* I knitted a fair amount last night - I switched over to the rainbowy pair of socks I had started back in like March, and will probably finish and include in my mom's Christmas present. It does feel good to knit again and maybe for the nonce I need to be stricter about coming home at a reasonable hour, finishing my piano practice early, and then sitting and knitting? I feel more myself and less unhappy and anxious when I do.

The problem is there's also just a lot of work AT WORK to get done, and I never know what the optics of going home for the day are. I come in at 7, is going home at 4 okay? Or 3? Is that pushing it too much? And it also makes me mad I feel like this now. But that's life: you gotta feed the beast of work and make it at least seem like you're productive.

And yeah, that was something else we talked about in the session: the counsellor came down very much on the side of "you need to trust yourself, when you feel overwhelmed that's a sign you need to take a break" but I also feel like....oh, I don't know. I feel like maybe my best isn't *quite* good enough and I should be able to do everything I am trying to do but because of some lack in me I can't, that if I could just push myself a little harder I could get it all done. I don't know.

(I also don't know but maybe after these sessions end with her I look into just....doing this as a monthly thing, even though it will cost me money. Not for grief, or at least, not specifically for the grief of my dad's death, but for just the generalized grief of being a person in this modern world and also not having enough people to talk to. It irks me that maybe I need to pay someone to listen to me, because that's mostly what she does, but....that's my life. Like she pointed out, I've lost a chunk of my support system recently (I was talking about the GFCI outlet failing and how in the past I could have called my father for advice and reassurance, and I couldn't do that any more)

It's actually kind of insidious: I need to expand my circle so I have more support, but work is such that it's hard to get out and do anything, so that circle doesn't expand, and then stress at work makes it so I need more support, but there isn't any....

* I also watched the season premier of NCIS. I said over the summer I was giving up on the show (too many personnel changes, it's kind of lost its way in the past few seasons) but I watched it again because


(Spoiler after this for the non US folks or those who haven't seen the episode)




Ziva David is still alive. At least for now. The episode was one of those cutesy "non linear timeline" ones that kind of jump back and forth a little and I admit those sometimes annoy me because they're not always all that well-done.

And yeah, she's got someone who wants to kill her Because of Reasons, and apparently this person also seeks to get to her by getting to Gibbs....and so, mayhem ensues.

And dangit, it was a "to be continued" episode and I also kind of dislike those. I doubt the character will be back full-time and I will not be at all surprised if they kill her off for good....though then again, maybe they let her have success and she gets to go back to Paris and her kid and Tony, which would probably be the "happiest" ending...

But honestly, I find I don't expect happily-ever-afters any more in stuff. I mean, life doesn't give 'em - the best life gives you is "happy for this short point in time" - and apparently the writers-of-fiction have picked up on that and have decided that no happy endings, and misery for characters along the way, is the more "sophisticated" take, and I admit, I tend to say "I say it's spinach and to Hell with it" about that, because even if I've hit the hard reality in life that happiness is at best fleeting and every good thing can be taken from you, we should at LEAST get some entertainment that is nice and works out happily for the characters in the end. Because if we can't have it in life, at least we can have it in our imaginations.

After that I switched to watching re-runs (still back on season 2) of Parks and Recreation as a happier and calmer thing before bed. (Apparently Cartoon Network no longer re-runs Bob's Burgers at 8 pm, substituting Family Guy, which I strongly dislike, instead).

But yeah. I admit, I think of the comment Sweetie Belle made in that "fan pandering" MLP episode, about "problems being resolved in about 22 minutes" and honestly, that's why I like some of the lighthearted half-hour shows or cartoons (and some cartoons, it's even less: problems resolved in 11 minutes, if it's a two-episodes-per-half-hour deal).

And yeah, I wish in life more problems had simple and quick resolutions, and where you and your team had a hearty laugh about it after it was all over. (Sometimes the Sitcom AU is the nicer AU).

* I did get the IRS problem sorted. (I hope). The CPA called me Monday and I went out there before grief counselling Tuesday. One of the big issues: the W-2 I had was wrong, and now I think of it: that was the year my university changed to an in-house system of preparing them and the first set we got was wrong. But anyway, he got it fixed. Yes, I still owed a goodly chunk of money to the IRS. But he only charged $150 for the time it took him to sort it out, which I happily paid. (I was expecting it to more be on the order of $600). I'm definitely going back to him for my regular taxes next year (I assume he will charge more for taxes than for this fix-up, but he also indicated that it would be LESS than Jackson-Hewett. They let on as if they are the cheaper option and that might be incorrect. He did note he couldn't do the "immediate refund" (which is really a loan against your refund) or things like that, but I don't care about that: I care about my taxes being done right.

And I am getting the cost of the preparation of the 2017 taxes back from Jackson-Hewett, and I might - after I send in the scans of the information from this guy - get back the money I sent the IRS. If I don't, whatever, but at least J-H know of my displeasure, and that I suspect they unleash poorly-trained agents here because we're an economically depressed area and most people have very simple returns. (Which tells me: another reason to go to a real CPA, because he knows what he's doing with those. The couple people I know who have small businesses use a CPA, maybe with my investments I should have been, too)

* I probably need to work Saturday but also I feel very much like I need a day off. (I didn't get one last Saturday: grading). I want to just go to the JoAnn Fabrics and look at craft projects and maybe buy some small thing, and I want to go to the Ulta and look at fancy soap and maybe buy myself a new lipstick and I want to go to the natural-foods store and to the bookstore and maybe to the Target and just be out of this town for a while, because this town is very small some times.

* And yeah, I don't know why, but in the last year "buy a new lipstick" has become a comfort thing for me. I don't know why: I tend to stick to the same small color palette (it has to be a red with bluish undertones: too pale a pink makes me look sickly and is probably "too young" for me any more, and anything with an orange undertone clashes with my complexion). Also "new nail polish" even though I have over a dozen different ones and I can only wear one color at a time.

But I am looking for comfort things right now, and I suppose the $15 or so for a new lipstick isn't a horrible indulgence...