Good to be Home

[copied from dland]

MWAH! I love you all, and it feels so good to be back home with you where I belong.

Perhaps I should explain.

I had a bad day on the W8 Watching message boards. How fucked up is that? I posted a question early this afternoon -- things were slow in the library -- and within a half hour, I had about a dozen replies, all telling me how terrible I was and not following the plan and why was I even there if I wasn't going to follow the plan and how I should do everything just the way they all do it and ... okay, you got the picture.

Feeling like an idiot, I posted a reply to clarify things a little bit. And they came back with more, more about how just awful I was for not wanting to do things the right way. I should have stopped there, but I tried to clear things up again -- I was home by this time -- and it went on.

By this time, I was very upset, which is also stupid of me, but I couldn't believe that what I was writing just wasn't making sense to these people. It was as if I was writing in another language, one unheard of on this planet. I mean, I realize that I was using semi-colons and other linguistic type stuff previously unknown on the WW message boards, but honestly. And the whole time, I'm thinking: Who are these people? My buddies all understand me when I write!

By this time, K was home and advised me to put it behind me and let it go. I told her what I originally wrote and she said I should never try to be funny or light-hearted on message boards. Oh. What the hell do I know? I generally only write for you guys.

Anyway, it's a freakin' jungle over there. My final response (after K told me to let it go) was yet a third apology, and also a request for no further replies, which no one who reads me here has ever failed to respect. I didn't go read the replies when I got back from the audiologist, but I checked, and there were about five more after mine.

Animals.

Enough of that shit. I'm just glad to be back here where I belong, among humans who know how to write, and read, which apparently they don't seem to be able to do.

Anyway, I got a couple of things done after school (in amongst the angst) and then I had the audiologist at 6:30. He was delighted that I went in with a page-long bulleted list of all my hearing aid concerns; he said he wished everyone were that OCD organized. So he made a bunch of adjustments and they do seem better right away, although I still have to live with them for the next week and work with the volume controls to see how good they are. But my own voice has a much more normal quality, and I'm having a lot less trouble hearing K's continuous occasional comments about America's Next Top Model. At the moment, in fact, the aids are not bothering me at all in any way.

Oh, I just got another lovely comment (this one from the locked boxx) about my picture yesterday, and again, you are all The Finest Kind. I wasn't fishing for compliments, though, mostly I was just sharing with you all how cool it is to have self-esteem for a change. Boxx commented, btw, that I look Italian, and I have been told this for most of my life, although I am Italian in last name only, as the Hubs is Italian/Irish. (Which no one believes because he appears in most ways to be 100% Italian.) The funny thing is that my first name, which you know I rarely share because it's a) uncommon and b) I hate it, is actually not an uncommon Italian name. When I married the Hubs, my mother said "Oh, that must be why I gave you that name, because I knew that one day you'd have a last name to match it." And I pointed out to her that when I was born (1953) the typical Jewish mother's reaction to a daughter marrying a nice Italian boy would have been to put her head in the oven. Which was true for 1953, and not so far off the mark when my cousin married a not-Jewish guy in 1966, but not any kind of deal, big or small, for my parents and family by the time 1977 rolled around for me. (And not for the Hubs' family either, fortunately.)

Once again, I have been very good with my eating today and even took a nice long walk around the school corridors at one point this morning, so it's time to have a bit of a snack since I have more than enough points left to eat. And my two-week headache, which is mostly dull and just there, is rising some, so I think I need to eat something. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Love,
p. chai


WATCHING TOP MODEL :: ENTRY #1401