“I’ll tell you why there’s fill!”

Today was a really odd jumble of stuff.

I spent a nauseated hour and a half squished between Luke and Ethan on the way up to Waupun, bummed a Crunch bar from E, petted Emma (and later got a wet doggy kiss on the lips from her), then spent another hour or so quietly staking by myself.  There had been a mistake in stake writing (double 26s), so I had to backtrack and my whole rhythm went out of whack (it has to do with where Jon puts the bundles of stakes and where I ended up when I was out of stakes). 

Since I was working alone, I had nothing to do but think (if you can’t tell, staking is nearly completely mindless work) and my brain just whirled and churned into overdrive.  I thought about how it might be soothing to get a knife and mess up my arm a bit.  I thought about writing goodbye letters to the important people in my life, just in case.  I fretted and freaked out over Scott and how I feel like I am missing out on such a wonderful possibility because he doesn’t want to get involved with anyone since he’s leaving for BMT at the end of August (I can understand this, but he’s wanted to date me for a long time and now that he has the chance, he’s saying no…and crushing my poor little battered heart in the process).  He is all I can think about these days and it’s slowly driving me insane – I know what I want, and I want it so badly, and I can’t have it. 

When I finished staking, I went back to the van for a water break and to pick up a thinning knife for counting.  Jon was there, checking maps, and he told me how he’d been on the phone for a few hours last night with an ex-girlfriend of his who was going through a rough divorce.  It eventually led to me asking him what our schedule is going to be like in the near future and it looks as though, starting next week, I’ll be able to pull off the once a week therapy thing – God knows I need it.  Jon and I worked on some plots by ourselves, then Luke and Ethan joined us.  By that time, the rest of the crew was almost done, and after a few passes of 4 row plots, we were done.  It took us a lot less time than we’d expected because the counts were so low – most didn’t get above 60!  It was crazy. 

Then it was time to hit the Beaver for our annual adventure at Pizza Slut.  The goal this year was 100 pounds – yeah, right.  🙂  I went through a few plates at the buffet, though, and wounded up thoroughly stuffed.  Jon went nuts over the ravioli (although it took him 5 minutes to get up to get some!) and I had the pleasure of witnessing a truly disgusting sight – Ethan cleaning his teeth with his EARRING.  ::giggles::  You had to be there.  Donald cracked me up when he asked why someone was drinking the pitcher of Diet Pepsi through a straw.  And Luke just kept coming back to the table with plates of weird combinations of food.  After a failed attempt at convincing Jon and Glenn to take us to CFD for shakes, we loaded into the van and had a pretty lively drive back.  Ethan kept tickling me and Luke asked a hilarious question:

Luke: Jen, when you get into bed with a guy, do you, you know…

me: Are you asking if I’m a bed hog?

Luke: Yes, yes I am.

I was trying to sleep in the van and was taking up an obscene amount of room, thus triggering the question.  I ended up just using Luke as a leg rest.  He was pretty comfortable.  The rest of the trip consisted of Donald pulling out my hair and tickling Luke’s ear with it, discovering that there is no such place in Wisconsin as Franksville, and enjoying the Atkins Dessert truck.  We spent another two hours at the station doing dumping, and I got to wear cool purple surgical gloves and a dust mask.  It made the work a lot easier and hella funny.  Donald told us a VERY funny story and we discovered new ways to make boxes no longer useful.  I rounded out the day by stealing a ton of Smarties from Donald’s drawer and then taking a smoke-filled car ride home with Luke.

It was a good day and a bad day, a huge mix of emotions and laughter and gut-wrenching stomach pain.  I don’t know how to ride these waves of depression anymore – I fell off of my surfboard long ago.