I drove like a maniac to my hair appointment with Masako, running 5 minutes late as always. I eschewed the color for lack of time and just got my hair cut, which was required to save my sanity. The Emo haircut had grown out into a top heavy mess. It drove me crazy for weeks while I waited for Masako to return from vacation. I resorted to plastic barrettes, not exactly a professional look.

Masako took four inches off the top and thinned it ferociously; quite a lot for a short haircut, but my hair grows like a weed and eight weeks is too long for these interim cuts while I grow it out from the strange choppy layers. I didn't have much to say, so she talked about taking her son to start his freshman year at Rutgers. Somehow this segued into her belief that one can lose weight by walking twenty minutes before eating. She might be right. She's a tiny woman in every way but style. She was wearing a leopard print plastic apron over black bell bottoms embroidered with bright yellow long stemmed sunflowers up to her knees.

I went to the Stanford mall afterwards since John said he didn't need the car after all (I had originally planned to rush right home). I darted in and out of Illuminations and Pottery Barn, picking up some candles, some velvet pillow slipcovers in a rich paprika color, and a 1930's style clock for the mantelpiece. That was fine, I enjoy shopping for items for my house. I should have gone home right then and it would have still felt like a fairly relaxed day. But no, I had to work out, and then I had to pick up my prescription at Long's, and then of course since I was at the shopping center I went grocery shopping. I needed to do all that, really. But it made me cranky as hell. It was too much running around. I could have used another Labor Day weekend, just loafing around.

That's what I'll be doing tomorrow. In fact, I guarantee I'll do nothing more complex because it's four freaking thirty in the morning and I won't be getting up at a reasonable hour. I tried to do something other than sit like a meatloaf in front of the computer all evening, but in my crankiness that's all I wanted to do. I watched the first 20 minutes of "The X-Men," and John and I listened to the Stanford women's volleyball game broadcast from Texas A&M. (Stanford won handily.) I did laundry. I also lay on the sofa reading my Sims manual and petting Natasha.

And then I played the Sims for eight hours, negating any social gains or moral superiority.

I like the way my house looks now with the wintery black and gold pillows covered in an autumnal reddish orange velvet, the bronze Art Deco clock ticking away on the mantlepiece while the candles flicker and glow in their paper wrapped containers. I'm glad to have so much laundry done, and to have my prescriptions and groceries. But tomorrow I'm staying home, resting. I feel fragile still, my mental resources too easily depleted. One Friday night dinner and one Saturday errand-running frenzy was too much too soon. I told John coming home from the restaurant that I would not agree to a social Friday evening again for a long time. I love to have dinner with my husband, and of course I enjoy my friends' company, but it's all too much at the end of the week. I just don't enjoy going out after a long week of talking to a lot of people. I want to go home and be quiet.

I think it's going to take a long time to fully recharge those inner batteries.

Past Life The Index Next Incarnation