January 7, 2011
Everyone is allowed to be cranky.
Crabby.
Generally out-of-sorts.
Me included.
I have no problem with crabbiness.
Just keep it to yourself.
Hence my belief that it is okay to be crabby, but you best to be on your own if you are.
Easier said than done.
Crabbiness descended upon me yesterday.
Like a cloud of hungry locusts.
I'd like to say I have no idea how come I was the target for seething internal rage, waiting to lash out at the first person who got to close.
I'd like to say that.
But I can't.
I did, however, work hard at staying on my own.
That sort of worked.
When I was forced to interact with others, I did my best to conceal my crankiness and appear normal.
By the evening, however, my energies were dissipating, and my protective shields were dissolving.
Leaving anyone around me wide open for attack.
There was one minor skirmish.
For several days I've been experiencing difficulties maintaining my wireless connections from the kitchen.
The place where I do the most of my work.
Sunny.
Nice big window for those pensive moments.
Alas, I had to make the decision last evening that for whatever reason, I had to move upstairs to our home office, Stephen's man-cave, to work.
Because I could connect to the modem directly with an internet cord.
So I did.
But I wasn't happy about it.
In fact, I am sitting in here right now.
No window.
But where the window should be is Goblet, resting on her pillow which sits on the top of a trunk Stephen brought back from his summer visit to Montreal.
I have a window on my left.
I mean, it's not as if I'm in prison or anything.
Frankie laying on my right, throwing himself on the floor with reckless abandon, and wondering how come we've moved from the kitchen.
"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. . . ."
The skirmish. . .
Right.
Let's just say it was ugly, but short lived.
No one was physically injured.
And I retired to my room, under my covers, where I was left alone.
For a few minutes.
Luckily my shields recharged and I was again able to maintain a facade of calm.
My malaise is perhaps rooted in the knowledge that Monday I return to work.
As does Stephen.
Keith and Em return to classes.
All of which is fine.
Oh, except for that part about Stephen and Em being creatures of the night and absolutely abhorring the idea, let alone the act, of getting out of bed in the morning.
And that 4 out of 5 mornings for the next few months are going to resemble daily doses of Dante's Inferno.
In addition to this, I also have a nagging feeling that I've forgotten something.
Even when I was in younger, in middle school and highschool, the end of any extended break left me wondering if there was something I was supposed to do, but forgot about.
Leaving me open to the wrath of my teachers-who-were-cranky-because-they-too-had-to-return-to-work.
My anxieties were always unfounded.
As they are now.
But that doesn't mean they go away.
It isn't that I don't want to see my students.
Return to teaching.
But at the same time, I've become immersed, happily I might add, into my crime and film data.
And pulling myself out of data coding may make my children happy, as it would seem I've spent a rather significant amount of time working on it.
They tolerated it, perhaps, because I was in the kitchen, a hairs breadth away from them.
And not upstairs.
Where I am now two hairs breadth away from them.
I love data coding. . .both open and focused.
At this moment, I can hear the collective groans and/or gasps of astonishment from my advanced qualitative students, who have now been forced to accept what I've been telling them for as long as I can remember:
I. Am. A. Geek.
For some reason they just don't want to believe me.
Reading what my students think of Double Indemnity and Bonnie and Clyde, how much they loved Hard Candy, and how they construct gender and crime. . .
Yes.
I find it very, very interesting.
Its one of the first times I've wished for a sabbatical.
Perhaps its time to think about applying for one.
January 6 is always Ukranian Christmas Eve.
We were supposed to be in Montreal, visiting with Stephen's family.
Eating Ukranian food.
Veranekah or as they are known by their other name, perogies.
Kutia, pearled wheat, poppy seeds, and honey.
Lots and lots of honey.
Borsht, lovely beet soup chock full of veggies.
Compote, the most delicious brandy infused colon blow you will EVER have.
As many different kinds of fish as you can imagine.
All homemade.
By Stephen's mum and aunt.
None of which I was able to partake of.
No going to St. Sophie's and visiting with friends of Stephen's parents who make the pilgrimage to New Brunswick three and a half years ago for our wedding.
And visiting those friends who couldn't make it.
Going to Montreal is not just about the shopping, the great restaurants, the fabulous art galleries. . . .
I genuinely love visiting with Stephen's family and friends.
And even the road tripping.
Barrelling down the Jean Lesage highway at Quebec speeds. . .because in Quebec is the closest thing we have to Audubon in Canada.
Listening to the Eagles Greatest Hits, singing my heart out.
Or the CBC, where in I don't sing because the Met Opera house turned me down after hearing me screech through Carmen.
I love ALL of it.
And perhaps not being able to go on a desperately needed few days away is a source of my bad humour.
Or, the most rational explanation for my general state of annoyance is the most obvious one.
Cabin fever.
Maybe sequestering myself in the house analyzing data for hours at a time isn't the best way to spend my day.
But it is what I want to do.
However, I think that my body is arguing with my brain for something other than what I've been doing.
I am volunteering at the Community Kitchen this evening.
This will pull me out of the I'm-feeling-sorry-for-myself-blues I've been singing lately.
One where data analysis has to wait in line for me, like everything else does, to complete the things I'm supposed to do.
And there are always the perpetual money issues.
Particularly the we-never-have-enough-money-issues.
People think, wrongly so, that because we are profs we have lots of money.
We have no money.
Not when you have kids and husbands in university, rent help to provide, utilities, the never ending grocery bill. . . .
I try not to let money bother me.
Really, I just want enough to pay the bills.
And buy groceries.
I don't live an expensive life.
No credit cards.
But still, every once in a while, I find myself wishing for a lottery win.
Not one of those 56 million dollar ones. . .just a couple million.
Is that a lot to ask?
Of course, there is one final explanation for my acerbic cantankerousness.
But you can figure out that one for yourself.
Title Lyric: Malaise En Malaise by Manhattan Transfer
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