I feel like the father in The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, and why don't I possess that book so I can check that quote? Something like, "...and I have to talk to them too?" demanded querolously by a father who'd rather believe his disappointing children don't exist. Shrink says I have a hard time naming my emotions, maybe also talking about them. Whatever.
I mentioned here some time ago someone's observation that the smallest thing can send me tumbling or soaring. I think I'm more susceptible to a tiny stimulus having a disproportionate effect when I'm low, and I have been since Wednesday. I've been listening to "Mary Jane" when I usually skip from "Head Over Feet" straight to "Ironic," and putting Aimee Mann's "Wise Up" on repeat. It's not good.
If I hadn't brought Babe home I would have had a Talk to the Pig day. Instead I had a Talk to the Dog day, with Snowy on my...I don't know what to call it, a file drawer and a half on wheels with a cushioned top, combining a visitor chair and storage space in Cube Land...thing rolled into my doorway. I wasn't all that dire: Intern came over to chat and that was fine, and I had projects I could immerse myself in so I didn't have to contemplate the inner contours of my own skull. But it still pissed me off when Tex came over, sat on the hassock, and starting talking about one of these projects, and I noticed he had either, bad enough, not noticed Snowy, or worse, flicked him to the floor. "Don't knock Snowy around!" Except that my doorway was partially blocked, I didn't expect anyone to understand that I was having a Talk to the Dog day, but don't fuck with my animals.
I worked straight through, sometimes with two earbuds instead of one or none, how shocking, and left a little early. Home, I started putting away clothes. The first thing that made me grin was a button on the floor.
Wednesday I got it into my head to wear a suit, but the slate jacket had lost a button. I looked through my closet, wore another suit, and took advantage of having the car to scamper to a fabric store over lunch, where I bought less funky replacement buttons. And now here it is just at the foot of the bed.
The second thing was a slender envelope from Ofoto. My girls recently posted photographs from the family trip to Ireland that launched the eldest around the world (subject line from an email I received 27 December: "I'm fine" from Laos, not Thailand), and one was of the three of them, not just this two or another two, not with their parents (whom I love, of course, but who were not my victims). The last I have is at least five years old and taken in their backyard; now I have one of them that is recent and all done growed up and in front of a waterfall in Ireland.
Now I'm fine.
It makes me nervous that I am so malleable. There. I named an emotion.