Susan Senator

Yesterday was a day full of pleasant surprises. It’s as if the Day-Fairy just did not want me to have a bad day, though at first I was determined. Most of it had to do with my boys. Ever wonder if good days are like good dreams, where they are just good because of some hormonal bath rather than the actual happenings? This Penn Professor does. (My Penn friends and I know Seligman a bit differently — he was the house master in our dorm, in fact he threw the party where Ned and I first met — but his theories do merit some real attention.)

Anyway these days I take more than one hormonal bath a day! So I started out kind of harried because of all that I had to get done. I had to do a million little stupids, like CVS, dry-cleaning, meat-buying, talk to the cleaning women about not letting the toilets run (because that stresses out our old waste pipe, which we have to coddle until we decide to bulldoze the MF), I also had to workout, etc., and I couldn’t find the nano (which replaced the shuffle, which died on my last run).

First I got an email from a good friend that really pissed me off. So I had to deal with that. Then I realized I had gotten a slow burn from a teacher at Ben’s school, with whom he had gotten in trouble. She seemed a bit harsh, wanted to do an incident report, all that. I had worked out an apology essay as the consequence, but she didn’t seem to want to let it go. So I knew I had to deal with that, and before my head built up to big a cloud of steam. Then another friend pissed me off, again on email. Syeestyer called and it was her day off but I knew I had absolutely no time to talk to her the way I wanted to, and when I did have a moment my phone was going “bee-woop” every few seconds; the battery was in the red. No cell-phone talkies for me, which is the only way I really like to talk on the phone: on my cell, while driving. Yes, I am one of those.

So I had a big nudgy burning in my belly for quite some time. I felt my day shredding apart. It was sure to be a lonely, hassle-filled day. I found myself wondering if I was going to have to flush Friend number one and Friend number two. I drove over to Great Eastern Trading Company after doing all of the above and hung out for a bit with Marlena, a bellydancer, who owns the store. I bought a white petal skirt and two pairs of really tarty earrings, totally gorgeous. Then, when I got home, there was a long email from Friend One. Very, very satisfying. And then, a brief but good email from Friend Two. So my equilibrium came back. I know it should not be so Other-dependent but that is me.

I went to the school to get Beast and have a heavy with that teacher. I noticed that my Tab column was up on the office door! That felt good. Upstairs I went, my heart pumping, my fingers ready to rip her head off.

She smiled really happily when she saw me, and totally disarmed me. I regrouped and told her that I wanted to make sure we were “on the same page about Ben.” We really were. I really liked her! The whole incident was, at last, over. I took my Beautiful Beast and went downstairs. We ran into his little friend, C, whom he loves. C wanted a playdate!

Then two or three friends who hadn’t responded to my party invite told me they were coming after all! The count is going up to 35+ which will be tight, even with a big livingroom. I decided, at last, on what my cake would be, and that was a relief, too.

Met and interviewed a young woman who will be working with Nat on weekends. A lovely person, with experience from working in Nat’s school! I felt very good about hiring her, and she seems to enjoy Nat quite a bit. He greeted her nicely. Huge load off my mind. Now we can get back to expanding his leisure and community skills at home (see, this is one of those things that I pay for out-of-pocket that Nat really needs in order to learn all that he has to learn about being in this world. My school system will not pay for this, at least not for enough hours).

I wrote and wrote some more Dirt. Really, really almost finished now. There was more that I had to say about Eric, it turns out, (thanks Melinda and Ned!). Up to 290 pages. Fell into bed after a long, fruitful day but found I could not stretch out my legs, no matter what I did. What the…?

The bed had been shortsheeted! I guess I should have been clued in my the Simpson’s joke book lying open to “pranks” that was sitting right on my dresser! Little B!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1