My stress levels have returned their previous outlandish heights.
This is what I get for being sick on Friday.
I need to go to Rabbit Hash. I might need to write a few letters first if I can't find anyone to go with me. (I vent and vent and vent and then toss them in the river. Or else I vent and vent and vent to a person and then stare at the river) Regardless, four hours in the car and some time spent shivering by the river is bound to do me some good.
I feel compelled to explain something to the world, in case y'all haven't gotten it. I try not to make plans more than three hours in advance. This is because there is little that bothers me more than a cancelled plan, and the odds of things getting cancelled go up a lot when you're trying to figure out what's going to happen days from now (and, also, I forget and then I am the one responsible for the really annoying cancelled plans thing).
I got an e mail this morning asking me to do something tonight. I wrote back and said maybe depending on when I finish with work and how I feel. I called at seven, as I was preparing to leave work. I asked what he was getting into tonight. He told me. It was precisely what he had invited me to do. He asked what my plans were. I told him that's why I called, cause I sorta thought he wanted to hang out.
He then tried to make plans with me for Thursday. He didn't invite me to join him. I don't know if I was supposed to have been more forward than I was, if I was supposed to say "Do you mind if I come over?" but I have been out on this limb, trying to make plans with him almost daily for two weeks now.
How much more direct rejection can I reasonably expose myself to? Just the bit that came with "I thought maybe you wanted to hang out tonight" being answered with "What're you doing this week?" "I don't know. I don't make plans" "I can commit to Thursday." was enough to make me cry at my desk. If I had gone any farther into "I am inviting myself over" territory and gotten a more direct rejection, I might have died from the embaressment.
For the record, Stalker Guy has been nagging me to come and visit him. In Chicago. Which happens to be in another TIME ZONE. I tell him, "Call me seven hours before you would actually want me to show up and I'll let you know if I can go" That's the degree to which I am someone who doesn't want to make a plan, get excited about a plan and have the plan change (or make a plan and promptly forget the plan and be the asshole who cancelled).
Okay, so my plans got cancelled or never were or whatever and I cry at my desk because I had a really hard day featuring a flat tire on top of two days' worth of work at my entirely too stressful job. Then I get home to my empty house and I look at the mail and there's an invite to a couple's shower on Valentine's Day for my cousin.
Now, obviously, given what you know about me and plans, you know that I don't have a clue what I'm doing on February 14. Obviously, at this moment, I am available. Also, we all know I am very single. Now, JV is a wonderful friend who does make a great substitute significant other, and on any other day, he might be willing to attend a family sponsered couples shower in Greater Cincinnati with me. He's that good of a friend.
I don't want to ask him to do so on Valentine's Day and I would probably have to beat him a little bit about the head if he said he would go.
I am going to have to confer with my mother before I can send in an RSVP declining. I think the distance and the date are enough to make my decline seem reasonable. I don't think it would be rude for me to say no based purely on those two things, even without the awkward "Who on Earth would I possibly subject to that?" going alone part. Naturally, I won't put any of that in my decline. I do know how to just send regrets and leave it at that.
You know, if my mommy says I can.
All of this (anniversary of a relationship which couldn't work out yesterday, work, flat tire, work, dead grandmother's birthday today, work, cancelled plans, work, work, invitation to a couples shower to start me in the single-on-Valentine's Day frame of mind, work) has come together to leave me in a state where I think I need to go find Rabbit Hash. (First though, I have to find the cat. He's making very strange noises in the closet like he's falling off of something repeatedly)
