A Coöperista (UConn's bookstore is a co-operative) dubbed the grad school me Sybil because he never knew what kind of mood I'd be in from one shift to the next. I don't mind the amplitude of my moods but their frequency--is that the distance between any two peaks or troughs? that's what I mean--can scare me. And their unpredictability. I was in a black mood yesterday, self-flagellating and dooming myself to one thing and another. If it hadn't been the week before the Big Top I'd've set Babe up and had a Talk to the Pig day; also except for that I brought Babe home and I now have only a palm-sized Snowy, finger-puppet Beaker, and a knock-off Beanie Baby named Dan'l Bloone at work. The excellent thing was that I knew exactly the source of the mood: it had a cause, and while if I had a solution I wouldn't have the problem any more, at least my mood was explicable.
I had my hair cut after work and told Janelle about Trey's second dog and Haitch's third fitting. My hair touches my collar bones when I pull it straight down; she took about an inch off. It's much tidier.
And then I sealed grout until Kal came over. We had Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream, a faux Oreo without high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated fat (absence of the latter means the goo lends itself admirably to quintuple-stuff constructions), blueberries, strawberries, "A Room with a View," and "Sense and Sensibility." I haven't seen "Room" for years, and probably even my first, cinematic viewing was not as clear as this DVD. We lusted after Lucy's hair and Freddy and Freddy some more and admired Emma Thompson and wondered how Kate Winslet could be so good here and so bad in "Titanic" and I lent her The Making of Pride and Prejudice and The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries and I am making a friend! She even has a parrot in the family so I don't have to break her in Blake-wise. And she lives within six blocks, so while she of course walked over, when we were done, after 11, I drove her home.
So I'm happy again. And happy because my happiness again has an attributable cause.
P.S. A perk is that yesterday a Dot Orgerista of whom I'm quite fond said that I look different lately, thinner or fitter. I hugged her gratefully.