How do I deal with the giddy? Where is the balance between giddy and sullen?
Yesterday I was feeling at the top of my game. I had my hair cut Wednesday and it looks faboo, I have to say. That evening RDC wanted to go to Mezcal and I said fine, for two reasons: you want to go and I want to show off my great hair. Thursday I wore the Boob Shirt and the Perfect Skirt to work, along with the new hair, and, giddily, I greeted CoolBoss by saying "Please to admire my gorgeous haircut" (obligingly, she replied, "It's fabulous"). At my performance evaluation last week, I repeated my fear that NCSL is not getting its money's worth out of me, and Coolboss said that if that were true, I would have known it by now, that I know her well enough not to doubt she'd've previously addressed it. We also discussed my lack of proofreading such that projects have too much back and forth, plus a new project that I might get responsibility for if I can get proper training. So yesterday I tracked in Schedule+ the various tasks that occupied my time, and glory be, I didn't slack all day, with my booklist or a Project Gutenberg novel or the Suspects.
When I submitted a presentation for her review, I had made a second copy for Ernie. Only in the course of reviewing it for some issues he still needed to resolve for its completion did I notice a few proofreading errors. I printed it again and replaced the old version in her inbox, without eye contact or conversation because she was talking with two people in her office (in an open-door way). Still looking at Ernie's numbers, I noticed an oversight on my part more significant than crossing a t. I corrected it, printed again, swapped it again. This time I caught her eye and we grinned at each other in complete understanding of what was happening. Giddy.
CoolBoss and I always get an error message when we eject and remove her USB memory stick, whose proper name I don't know, even though we don't just pull it from its port but choose "eject" from its software. Ernie was trying to save a presentation to the stick on his machine yesterday and couldn't, getting an error message about installing hardware, that made no sense. When I returned to my cube with the stick to copy it from my system, Big Bird was there trying to duplicate my IE errors.
I had previously left voicemail for him, the one guy in IT I like--Big Bird because he is tall and because I regularly call Ernie by his name and vice versa, despite utter lack of physical or personal resemblance, despite Ernie being in my department and Big Bird not, only because their names are similar--because Explorer is doing two odd things: View Source is not opening Notepad to display the html, and returning to any database-driven page always needs the page refreshed, even if you submitted something through the page and are immediately returning. Big Bird thought the latter might be a security thing that IT has recently installed to prevent user errors, except that I told him it happens at Amazon.com too, even though I would never use Amazon at work. Giddy.
While I had him there, I asked about the memory stick. Big Bird told me that our security is set very high because ya ya ya and systems have to be individually set and permissions allowed for them to work. So Dot Org would rather we use floppies, which no one uses anymore, or CDs, which are a waste of resources, instead of a reusable, more portable, more universal, overall more sensible medium? He alleged that not this but security is the reason, but since this is a "side" effect of the interdict, the interdict should be reviewed. One does not counter IT at Dot Org, but there I was. Giddy.
He didn't know what was causing either of the two IE problems and told me I always have interesting questions. I do like that I have real questions and not "what is the keyboard combination to save" or irritating things like lisa-chip issues, where something misbehaves until a witness arrives and, under lisa-chip mandates, then behaves correctly. But I was sitting on my desk, legs crossed and hands clasped over a knee, in my own mind not behaving flirtatiously and to any mind not speaking flirtatiously or on flirtatious topics, but I don't know whether I was a) fun coworker having silly conversation about whatever is causing these issues or b) mutton dressed as lamb behaving unprofessionally. Giddily, I didn't care.
Big Bird devised another way to webbify PowerPoint presentations, saying it was superior to PowerPoint's default way. In some ways it might be, but his way omits notes. During his tutorial Wednesday when I observed this omission, he said that it was an advantage because you don't want your audience to see your notes. I acknowledged that sometimes that's true ("Say something witty here. Be sure not to take Mr. X's sure-to-be-stupid questions") but that sometimes notes are useful because they give more information than a slide, e.g. data that support a chart, and what would be his solution if we wanted notes? That was a good point, he said, and so the flash device and IE thing the next day continued my pattern of asking interesting questions he cannot answer.
Pride goeth before a fall.
In the next minutes, RDC called me, nauseated and panicky, about Blake. I noticed two things: one, the abrupt change in my mood, including stress sweat, quicker respiration and pulse, lips between my teeth; two, that despite this utterly reasonable catalyst, I continued functioning, working and being productive, and how much that was in contrast to my all-systems shutdowns in response to similarly stressful stimuli up to about a year ago.
Tangentially, RDC asked a couple of times how could he live with himself had he done that thing I can't type. Welcome to my world, I didn't unkindly say. I didn't cause Percy's death as obviously as this would have been, but I was responsible, and I didn't notice his illness until it was too late. So his world would have been much worse. But it is not, because Blake is probably just fine. We are Observing him for 48 hours, but last night he played in his box and wanted to help brush beaks and devoured pasta and otherwise had a healthy appetite, so I am going with Fine.
So last night my mood was even: fine, content, not giddy, not overly anxious about Blake. Ernie assigned me a couple of tasks to do "by Friday morning" and it occurred to me after I left that I had my usual shrinkydink on Friday morning. So I emailed another assistant asking her to follow up, but after RDC and Blake got home and I calmed the rest of the way down, I realized I already had done at least 75% of the work so I emailed her again taking her off the hook.
This morning, giddy again. By the alarm clock I woke from an unusual (for me), and very hot (not unusual) dream. In my bathrobe, on the couch, with the throw wrapped around my feet, I wrote it out, gradually falling back asleep until RDC's alarm rang at 7 and again at 7:10, when I finally got up. I made tea (which I mention because it's a rarity and therefore might have influenced my mood) and was on time for Shrink. I talked her ear off. I finished the sentence I had begun writing in the waiting room, then with the prop of my journal was compelled to tell her about the dream (even though the bit that interested me didn't have the anxiety element that is usual), and everything above. (I had the tea in my water bottle bracket and didn't begin drinking it until I got to the clinic, so I really can't blame the giddiness on the tea.)
I talked, giddily, about my difficulty striking a balance between giddy and sullen. There is a range between utterly self-absorbed and so determined not to be self-absorbed that I paralyze myself into silence.* Both are means self-absorption. Sometimes I am happy or comfortable enough in my own skin that I am not conscious of this range but merely am. Sometimes. What I want to do is be confident enough that my periods of awareness ("I'm aware...of my own tongue!" **) are shorter and rarer, and deservedly not self-aware. Deserving not to be because I actually am not rude or self-absorbed or utterly boring.
* This is another instance of my beloved Evolution of Jane:
"'You're so literal-minded and fanciful at the same time.'
"I was, wasn't I? A black hole, sucking up the world around me to metaphorize it out of all recognizability."
At either end of the range, I suck up the world around me to metaphorize it into lisaisms and lisaness.
** Linus, to Lucy. Moments later, Lucy gets all mad because now she, too, is aware of her tongue.
I told Shrink a story from grad school. At an end-of-fall-semester party, someone commented, "You drink so much water! That must be great for your skin." I do drink a lot of water, both a large volume of fluid and in contrast to more common beverages, and also conspicuous at a party where most people are drinking alcohol. I did not infer an insult, and I do not think the person implied one, but I was so self-absorbed in my own misery, in small part comprising my relatively-for-me bad skin that year, that I focused on only the skin bit. I said something like, "and god knows my skin needs it." Daniella's face clearly showed that she thought I was responding to a perceived insult and that she had not intended one and that I was a loon for reacting so. I saw all this in her face but whether I could have redeemed myself or tried to, I don't remember.
At the beginning of that school year, after an organized fête, I had gone out for a drink with Daniella and another Medieval Studies student. We didn't know each other well, but we were 20something women in grad school together, so intimacies came thrice as fast as they might have otherwise. I remember the third saying that although she was in her 20s, she had never had a relationship, and I was surprised (but not shocked) that she disclosed "but I'm not, you know, a virgin: I've done the barfly bit...." So following this lead I said I had recently ended a major relationship and my ex was in the grad program and yoikes, how awkward and stressful. I know I told Daniella and Third that; I am sure I also reeled through my woe-is-I shtick and griped about how quickly he'd hooked up again.
Some time later I was asking a friend of the ex, Tor, why the ex and I couldn't get along. Tor had been my friend as well, but only through the ex, and, I gradually realized, now made nice with me only for tactical gossip reasons. I had asked outright, so Tor said (among other things) that it hadn't gone over well with Ex that I told "everyone" about the situation: for example, when Ex himself befriended Daniella, connecting him with me she exclaimed, "Oh, you're the one." (I was indiscreet that year, I know that now; I knew it pretty soon afterward, on the upswing from my nadir.)
But this is about Daniella, generalizing (metaphorizing, thank you Cathleen Schine) from my relationship with her to my relationship with the world at large. Later yet than this, an actual friend and I were talking about how the department perceived me, given my lunacy and misery and indiscretion. He said that he could think of only one person who disliked me besides than the obvious, and that was Daniella. Besides that I believed him without difficulty, later later yet than that, when RDC and Daniella chatted and he mentioned he was dating me, though she was verbally polite about it, it was evident to RDC she doubted his taste. I earned her dislike fair and square.
If it wasn't HEB then I don't remember who told me--I obviously must have been an undergrad--that people generally liked me because I met them expecting to be liked, or at the least not worrying whether I would be liked. At the time, that was true, though I had never articulated it. My self-absorption meant I met people openly, unworried about their approval or acceptance and without agenda. It also meant that I treated them without tact or sympathy, but, as I've mentioned before, in college I interacted with a large enough pool of potential that I could find and befriend people for whom I worked.
Now it's after lunch. I interrupted myself three paragraphs back to have yogurt and fruit with Kal, and since then I have written just the three paragraphs, finishing the thread I began before. I was reluctant to interrupt myself, and I'm not sure if it's good that chatting with Kal grounded me or bad that I cannot recreate, reclaim, the morning's giddiness and loquacity. Instead of giddy, I'm just happy. Besides, I've probably said all this before.
Instead I'll repeat what I told her. Wednesday as RDC and I walked to Mezcal, we passed a woman with a dog. I hope this woman lives in my neighborhood because I totally want to be her new best friend. (Now, see, should I have said that to Kal? Are we already good enough friends that that wouldn't hurt her feelings, that she knows I mean that both lightly and sincerely?) The dog was Lab-esque, but smaller, with white speckles and one white sock. Of course I had to meet it, and she was happy enough for that to happen. I asked the dog's name, and she said Milo.
"Really?" I asked, delighted. "After The Phantom Tollbooth?"
"No," she said, "Milo was the name of my invisible friend when I was little. And I looked it up, and it means security."
It's a great name! with a great reason behind it! and the fact that she would tell a perfect stranger about her invisible friend means that either she is a loon or really cool, either of which works for me.
Earlier we met a Welsh Corgi named Bat. "Bat?" I asked--had I heard right? "Does he have such big ears?" They didn't look so very prominent to me.
"When he has fur is clipped, his ears stand out much more," the man explained.
I told him there is another Corgi in the neighborhood, named Opie. That dog was his too, so I must have met his wife, he put together. Like I asked her name (<--that explains everything about me, right there).
Hm, I didn't remember about the Corgis with Kal. Her family name their pets for Andy Griffith characters, so I should. Also I should find some Andy Griffith on Nickolodeon sometime, because its theme song is one of the most common things cockatiels whistle.
And ha, I began with Mezcal and ended with Mezcal, so I did kind of wrap up. Mleah.