look out! it's the waaaaaaaambulance!

It's funny to me how many things get piled up in my mind about which to write, but the motivation eludes me: the intensity of my job, office place politics and dynamics, lonely but productive schedule, crappy eating, weeks away from official motherhood, family dynamics, and dark thoughts. The dark thoughts were taking up the most space the other day, after a particularly interesting, uncomfortable, intense and kind of scary night at work. But today my brain is more preoccupied with interpersonal dynamics and my role in conflict. Finding the balance between being a rigid, self righteous, irritable (maybe irritating), overbearing asshole and being a doormat is a challenge, to say the least. Fact is, some people get right under my skin. It's not that I hate them, or even that I don't like them. For each of the people I'm thinking about right now, I can think of various positive attributes for them. It's just that I have a hard time being around them, and I think we can be fairly certain they have a hard time being around me too. It's the people who, for whatever reason, seem to suck the air right out of the room that get to me. The people who seem to smother, and fret and hover over everything. The people who won't seem to just let you be in time and space--the people who are obsessed with what YOU SHOULD be doing, without necessarily looking at their own behavior. It's the people who breathe your air and step all over your toes and invade or dismiss your emotional space, then get mad at YOU for reacting to the invasion, self-righteously boasting their good intentions and shaming your defenses. The people who can't separate their reality from yours and either insist or adamantly suggest that YOUR reality is wrong. People who can't contain their own anxiety and needs, so they dust everyone around them with it.

Or maybe these are the characteristics I fear and loathe most in myself.

I could write more, but I won't. Too personal. So, instead, I'll finish off the day sitting on the couch with a movie playing, wishing my dog would stop farting when I pet him. I'll lounge here watching my Critter roll around in my belly, right alongside all the homemade cinnamon rolls and shitty pizza and cheesy bread. If I weren't pregnant, tonight would be a night for a glass of scotch too.