Saturday night things

Here I am, Saturday night, having cooked up a big pot of pasta sauce, and halfway through a really quite good bottle of merlot that the wine store woman talked me into even though it costs really way too much for some bottle of wine that I'm just drinking by myself...I've also made brownies to welcome the new people who have just moved into the downstairs apartment. They are a sweet young couple from my Home Province - in fact, they moved from Home City - and I thought they deserved some welcome brownies. But now I'm too tipsy to wander downstairs with the brownies, because then I'd look like their weird drunk neighbour. So I'm blogging, instead.

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I think I'm going to give up on this therapist I found. I had vowed to go to counselling after the winter break to sort out what seemed to me to be depression. And to figure out some stuff around R and I. So I've been going to this one for a few weeks. She seemed fine enough at first. But really, at this point I think I get the same thing from my friends - and they're free. Seriously, my weekly marathon conversations with M., or my slightly less frequent conversations with A., are just as illuminating as this is turning out to be. Really, I just feel like I'm paying all this money to vent and be affirmed. That's not what I need - I have plenty of venting and affirmation already in my life. And I, you know, am able to figure some stuff out on my own. I can go in there and lay out what the problems are - and imagine my way to some of the solutions. Some.

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One solution is getting some freaking work done. I have this book project, see - and I had initially thought I would get the first chapter written this winter. I have a few conference papers to begin from, and was putting intense pressure on myself to come up with the chapter. I realized I wasn't ready, though - I needed to do some more reading in a few areas. And then I spent several weeks just sitting there, thinking to myself, "Oh, it's so hard...what will I read...oh no, I'll never do it, I am an impostor, this will never happen, I'll never write a book...oh it's so hard, what will I read?" So then on Thursday I put a goddamned stop to that. I just need to read, dammit. So I did some searching, and came up with a dozen or so articles and books that would set me on the right track. Duh? How is it that I become so bloody DUMB? You just look up some sources, dummy. And you feel better.

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Kasper continues to haunt me. I am haunted by the day and circumstances of his passing, even though it was the right thing to do. I am stopped in my tracks many times a day, thinking of him, feeling as if something wasn't quite right about the way that all happened. I still need to sort out my feelings of him being lonely - I can't let go of that vision. My poor man.

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The cat helps. My borrowed-for-a-year cat, Diamond. She's a dear. She basically lives on my lap. And now, after a couple of weeks with me, sleeps with me for most of the night. Curled in next to me. Thank goodness for her.