Early Morning Madness

I am exhausted this morning. I'm ready for this semester with it's early rising to be over. I've had my fill. I'm done now. But I still have something like five weeks to go.

This weekend was pretty interesting. On Friday, Bezoukhoff and I met at Penn Station and headed out to Long Island to meet my mom. I had a splitting headache as I had forgotten to have my caffeine fix for the day. (Always addicted to something! Yuck.) Anyway, we made a pit stop at Starbucks before hitting the road and I ordered a latte with five extra shots of espresso (I think that makes seven shots total or something). Some guy sitting at a nearby table looked alarmed.

"What?!? Are you walking to New Jersey or something?" he exclaimed.

Anyway, from there, we headed down to Maryland. The drive was relatively easy (my mom did most of the driving) and although it was a little bit surreal to be in a car with the odd couple of my mom and Bezoukhoff for four hours, the conversation flowed.

We got to Baltimore just after 9:00 or so, checked into the hotel and headed into the dining room for a bite to eat. The hotel was really close to the Baltimore airport, so there were a lot of sole business travelers. For some reason, watching them around the restaurant made me really sad. My mom and Bezoukhoff ordered crab cakes to keep in the spirit of things, I guess.

After that, my mom was falling asleep, but I kept her up a little while longer while I practiced reading my paper to her and Bezoukhoff. This is a paper that I wrote in the Spring of 2004-- right before my two years of "bottoming out" really took off. It was a semester-long research project and came out to about seventy pages. I had to massively cut it to read it at this conference-- I got it down to 17-- so I was worried about whether or not it maintained its integrity as a piece of scholarship. Anyway, the subject of the paper is "Victorian constructions of the Renaissance" and (as the subtitle states) "the shift from Gothic to Renaissance revivalism and Victorian Aesthetics."

By the time I was done with the reading, my mom was bleary eyed, it was after midnight, and so we bid Bezoukhoff good night and all headed to bed.

The next morning Bezoukhoff knocked on our door bright and early and the three of us headed down for breakfast. I saw my professor, ProfBrit in the dining room with two other guys. It was kind of strange and I said an awkward hello. After he finished eating, he came over to our table and I introduced him to my mom. My mom is very chatty and sociable and started trying to talk to him a bit, but he is an awkward academic and the conversation just didn't go too smoothly. I, of course, had butterflies in my stomach, as I was worried about reading the paper, so all in all, it made for a rather "awkward" moment.

Anyway, ProfBrit asked if we could fit another student in our car on our way to the university. She was a nice girl-- from Boston University, I think. She was an English PhD candidate.

From there, the conference began. I was set to speak in the third session. The morning session was a little boring, the second more interesting. I ate a big sandwich at the lunch break and felt sleepy while some guy was giving the Plenary address about the Xhosa and missionaries in Southern Africa.

Finally, it was my turn... My paper followed some woman who has already received her PhD (from Harvard) and has published work. It was a little intimidating. But I did what I had to do-- I read my paper (with my stomach flipping a little) and I didn't look up from the page once. But I did speak "artfully," even if I didn't make eye contact. Afterwards, the commentator had a chance to respond to our papers and raised a few challenges to mine (well, to both papers, to be precise). But while it panicked me for a moment, I didn't show it and instead argued in my defense. I'm sure I did well because she took notes on what I was saying.

I have a strange habit, though, of not getting really nervous about something until after it's over. And as soon as the session had ended, I began to feel shaky with anxiety. I was dying for a glass of red wine. DYING! And, as luck would have it, there was a reception with wine being served. I told my mom that we had to avoid the wine and get out of there ASAP.

On our way to the elevators we bumped into ProfBrit who had come in to hear my paper. He said that I did a great job and that if I tweaked the paper a bit, he still thought I could get it published. I'm putting it on back burner for now, but I certainly don't want to forget about it...

In any case, Bezoukhoff, my mom and I hit the road. We decided to come back a night early to avoid driving in the impending storm. I was happily back in my apartment by 10:00 that night.

On Sunday I didn't do much, as I really just needed a morning to myself. At around 4:00 PM I headed down to the village to visit Hammer. We painted watercolors together and drank bubble tea and listened to the mix-CD of German music that I made for her back in 2004. If I have a chance, I'll take a picture of my painting and post it later... I hadn't seen Hammer in SO long that it was nice to be able to catch up. I brought shortbread cookies with me (as I have a habit of eating them when it rains) and it was the perfect day to be indoors and artistic...

From there I went to my AA meeting. Even though I was feeling lazy about going, I'm really glad that I went. Civyl was there and she had relapsed. She was red faced and bleary eyed and asked me for a hug and if she could sit with me and she grabbed onto my hand during the meeting. I was reminded why it's important for me not to miss meetings... Then, at the end of the meeting, I bumped into another new friend-- Pixie. She also burst into tears! She said that she had been home visiting her parents for the weekend and that she had a really hard time there. She went on about it a bit and everything she said echoed the feelings that I have about doing family events. Again-- I was really glad to be there for her to talk it through.

So, I felt good as I climbed into bed that night... even though I hadn't been as "productive" with the day as I would have hoped, I felt surrounded by friendship and art and purpose.

I'm trying to think of what else is going on... A bunch of people from my home-group went to a convention this weekend. I talked to StarGazer who was there and she said she had a miserable time. She was freaked out and said she hated the fellowship and that she was tempted to leave AA. I asked her what had happened and she was really vague about it, only saying that there were malicious cruel-hearted shallow gossips in the group. That made me a little anxious, only because I'm as self-centered as the rest of us and wondered if they had been talking about me. I wondered if that's why she wasn't more specific. In any event, it's best to leave it alone. StarGazer is still pretty upset, but I saw her at the meeting last night and she seems to be doing a little better.

Last night was a rough night for me, though, I have to say... I had a "drunk dream" and it was the most awful, anxiety-provoking experience... so much worse than I ever could have imagined. After the "drunk" in my dream, which was not fun, but was dizzying and terrifying, I wanted to lie to my sponsor about it (in the dream). It was right before my one year anniversary in the dream (as in life, I suppose) and I was insane about the idea of having to start day-counting again. I was lying to everyone in the dream, and feeling so incredibly sick about it. This nightmare seemed to last the whole night through. I don't know why this is coming up right now. I know I have a lot of anxiety about the year-marker approaching, but I didn't realize how bad it was. Perhaps it is made worse by the fact that Meema's anniversary is this Saturday, so we've been talking about it all week... And even though I'm pretty much "over him," I'm sad about the fact that I won't be celebrating my anniversary with Brick...

In any case, I guess that's it for now. I have a "date" with TT tonight. As I said to Hammer on the phone last night, I feel like TT and I have been on a bad first date for a year and a half. It's not really a date tonight, I guess... we're just going to say hi to IrishBird because she works at a pub just four blocks from where I go to school... I don't want to walk into a bar alone and I think TT just wants an excuse to hang out with me... Whatever...

Oh-- also, my friend NiS is in town from Paris. I had lunch with him yesterday and we strolled parts of our old haunting grounds on the Upper West Side. They knocked down a building at the corner of 72nd and Broadway and that freaked me out a bit. Also strange-- we bumped into B at La Caridad! On Thursday GoldenFinch is going to be in the city, and I told her NiS is here, so we may all have a little reunion...

Okay... that's it for now.

lots of love,
h