I’m off for my trip.  Be back in a week!

Things to do before leaving for Newfoundland ie tomorrow:

1. Have sweet, sweet love with Husband. Oh yeah. You know what I’m talking about. He has this new slender vegan body that I just want to throw down and disrobe. Actually we already did this but who’s to say it couldn’t happen again? I love that man! (This is going to be one of those posts Husband disapproves of the way he disapproves about blogging about poo.)

2. Clean house. Is there anything more disheartening than coming home to a mess? It’s pretty tidy around here these days but we need to give the bathrooms a proper cleaning, fiinish the scraps of laundry, and do those things you do when you’re going to be gone a week: hand wash the final breakfast dishes, do a load of mixed laundry since there’s not enough to sort into proper classifications, take out the trash last thing, and so on.

3. Pack. It’s St John’s in summer which appears to mean “cold and raining” if you trust CBC. I used to trust them but then they sold the hockey night in canada song to some network and WHAT THE FUCK. That is our freaking SONG! Well actually it only was our song. So who knows if the weather report is correct? CBC hates us, and therefore should not be trusted not to lie about weather.

4. Visit. Seeing a school chum for lunch and my Dad for dinner.

5. Direct Husband in the washing and vacuuming of all the floors.

6. To be vigilant against clutter spread during packing activities. Vigilant!

7. Try to time shift into Newfie time, a whole four hours ahead, and yeah… this is always, always an ugly process. Especially now that I am back in No Sleep mode.

8. Take some time to be happy for the upcoming bride and groom, who are taking the grand adventure! All I can say about that is I love being married. My husband is an amazing, wonderful person who means the world to me. He brings out good things in me! Knowing I get to keep him forever is a privilege and a comfort. For me, getting married definitely changed how we related, but in good ways. We are more patient. The threat of break up is gone - for us to split, something truly dire would have to happen. But I don’t think that will be a worry for us, because we just keep growing closer and happier as the years pass. I hope Esan and Cappycoo go through a similar process: the growth of love and joy that provides the strength to work through the more difficult times.

I know it’s still premature but while we’re on the topic of the upcoming wedding, congratulations you two!

So… Remember how I told you all I got some new plants? But I couldn’t show you a picture because I don’t have a camera? Well. Guess who bought a camera today?

Well.  No word yet from Workaholic Landlord and that can only mean one thing, because it simply isn’t possible that he hasn’t seen my email yet: he has planned to say NO to cat but can’t be bothered because he’s too busy adjusting his monocle and chortling over the credit crash in the States (WL surely prefers to buy low?).

Or, he wants to say YES to cat but really, really wants it to be super special for me and he’s planning a surprise party in which there will be dozens of cats for me to lounge with and select my favourite from.  There will be punch and cookies and music and a representative of every cat breed and colour!

Denial.  It makes the world go round.

Here’s some more: If we’re allowed to get a cat, it looks like what we’ll do is head down to the SPCA and select from among the adult cats, you know, the ones that are doomed for the big Dirt Nap because everyone wants a fluffy kitten.  Of course I can’t totally rule out being brain-commandeered by a fluffy kitten if I see one but my intentions are noble.  Also, since Husband is, at best, indifferent to cats, I figure an adult would be the best introduction to them.  No zany kitten antics.

Sigh.  Back to reality.

First no dog, and now no cat?  Should I downgrade my request?  Maybe next I could ask for a hamster.  If he still says no then I could ask for a lizard, then a bird, then a goldfish, then finally perhaps an aphid on a blade of grass in a tupperware jar.

Last year my landlord crushed me like a bug when he refused to let us get a dog.  Now I am hoping he doesn’t crush me a second time, because I have asked if we can get a cat.

Since he is a hard working professional who checks his email constantly, I imagine we’ll have an answer rather soon.  So, internet, you don’t have much time to focus all your energy on persuading him via the ether to say YES to cat.  Focus!

I will keep you posted on outcomes.

I have a friend who is dealing with a major crisis in her life.  And it is turning her into a jerk.  A jerk whose calls I am no longer taking.  I do not know how to navigate this problem.

The last few times we’ve talked the conversation has turned into a Blogosaurus-bashing event.  She said some things that really aren’t acceptable (bashing me and bashing Husband).  She also said some things that really weren’t fair either (using private and painful things I’d told her in confidence as ammo in the bashing).  And I was totally surprised and taken aback.  She’s gone way over the line of Things You Are Allowed to Say to Your Friends.

But I didn’t say anything to her about this because really, she has huge shit going on right now.  Her shit makes my shit look like no shit at all.  I can’t justify adding to her pile of shit by complaining to her about my shit.  Clearly she it at maximum overload, totally stressed out, totally afraid, and totally unable to maintain normal and healthy interpersonal relationships.  Crisis is not bringing out the best in her.  I feel guilty for being upset when she has things to much worse.

But the truth is, I can’t let it go.  I would like to be the sort of person who is so understanding and resilient that her bad behaviour just rolls off me, and I forbear with saint-like understanding and caring.  I would like to really not be bothered, to really be a good support to her.  But I am discovering something somewhat unpleasant about myself, which is that I am not nearly that good at being a friend to someone in crisis.  I think I had this fantasy of myself as her supportive rock, the one she could count on no matter what.  Well ha ha, turns out she can only count on me until she starts pissing me off, at which point I start screening her calls.  Can you smell the guilt.

Though here’s something else: just because she has it bad doesn’t give her permission to make my life miserable, especially when I have been trying to help.

So I have no idea what to do next.  I know she’s in bad enough shape that there’s nothing to be gained by confronting her on this issue.  She’s not open to feedback right now.  But I’m not open to being shat on by her any more either.  Another niggling problem is that, as I learn more about her through this process, I am seeing a lot of things I really don’t like in her.  I’m no longer sure how committed I am to maintaining this friendship at all.

What a mess.

Months of reasonably successful sleeping tricked me into thinking I might be transforming into one of those normal people who just sleep when they’re tired.  But ha ha, it was just a trick.  Woke up this morning at four to pee and haven’t been back to sleep yet.  I finally gave up, got up, and cleaned the living room.  I feel like four pounds of shit in a three pound bag.  But startlingly awake and alert!  I can actually feel my eyes opening as wide as possible.  It’s enraging, basically.

When you are an insomniac, being tired has nothing whatsoever to do with sleeping.

Here is the major problem with doing psychology for a job: everyone thinks they know it all already.  Everyone is a person, everyone has relationships, therefore everyone figures they have inter- and intra-personal dynamics figured out.  This is totally logical and in fact true to a point - we are all amateur psychologists, and we need to be to get through life.  Okay.  But people’s amateur psychological skillz are usually not much more than this: heavily biased heuristics, general guesses, and hypotheses that may (or may not) be right, some or all of the time.  Generally speaking these theories are good enough for folks to get by, with greater or lesser degrees of adaptation, and therefore act as reinforcers.   You have some idea of why people do things, and it’s good enough to let you function in life, so that means you must be right.  Right?  Only sort of.

In some ways it’s really frustrating to be learning a lot about psychology because, by its very nature, people figure they already know it.  It’s not uncommon at all to hear people pull out their pet psychological theories and, while I am by no means an expert, I know a lot more than your average layman.  Some of the stuff people come up with is pretty bad (by which I mean wrong, or misguided, or incomplete, or shamelessly self serving, etc.).  I don’t even bother to say anything most times because as I have learned the hard way, people are attached to their theories and aren’t really interested in what the research says.  That’s fine, I don’t want to go through life teaching people all the time (okay maybe a little), and I am, as I say, not yet an expert.  But sometimes it is hard to swallow when someone goes off with great authority about their theory that is dead wrong and I want to bang my head against a wall that people think they know this field simply because they are in possession of some folk psychological know-how.

It’s hard becoming an expert in a field where most people don’t even realize there can be experts.  I doubt nuclear physicists have this problem.

I’m in class right now and feeling quite sassy.  Imagine: blogging in class!  I am so bad!

I live right near Science World here in Vancouver.  For those who don’t know anything about this city, my neighbourhood should conjure up images of water, parks, and nice yuppie families strolling with babies through one on the edge of the other.  Well, the west side of my block is like this.  The east side is full of junkies and panhandlers, but we’ll let that go for today.  Anyway, Vancouverites will know this.  What they might not know is the Horrible Truth about the park across the street from me: it’s where the dragon boaters go.

I don’t know what a dragon boat is.  It looks like a big canoe with too many rowers to me but what do I know?  Also, it appears to be powered entirely by fear and shouting, because each dragon boat has some loud mouthed shouter in it, screaming at the line of rowers, and they all furiously row, I assume to prevent the shouter from peeling their skins off like a banana and rubbing salt on what’s left over.  It’s the only thing that explains the violence and energy that goes into the rowing.

Did I mention the shouter?  Did I mention I can hear those fuckers in my bedroom at the crack of fucking dawn?  Did I mention I don’t like being shouted at at the crack of fucking dawn?

Especially when I am in the midst of a nerve attack, my first in several months.  It came on last night while out with friends (Lara, welcome to the strange world of BV where you find out more about me from the blog than from real life).  A group of us ladies hit a bar and swapped stitches stories while drinking - and by around ten I could tell my crazy nerves were getting agitated (for those new here: I have some kind of thus far undiagnosed problem with neuropathic pain).  I hung on for an hour or so but realized I needed to get home pretty soon so I could get the horrible, irritating clothes off my body and lie around in extreme discomfort for the rest of the night.  And on until it abated.

Plus I have a paper to finish today that is due tomorrow.  Which seemed like the better reason for leaving to put forward, since I didn’t know everyone there and didn’t want to be all, “Hey new people I just met, I really feel like ripping my clothes off, so I have to go home now.”  Anyway, I said goodnight and came home, to do exactly as planned: try not to move and just be miserable most of the night.  Finally around three I fell asleep, and this is great because there is no pain in sleep, or at least there wasn’t, until some mother fucking piece of shit dragon boat shouter started up and woke me.  May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their nether regions.

Now I’m up, preparing to dig into the paper, and feeling seriously crabby about how shitty I feel (and wouldn’t be, if I was still sleeping).  Let’s hope it improves enough for me to go to Mission tonight for a game I’m playing out there.