A Wonderful Week-end Bookended with Me Getting Pissy

For the past three years, members of our department have spent two nights at the Oregon Coast for a departmental retreat. We spend a few hours in a meeting on Saturday, but other than that, we hang out, eat, drink in the evenings, visit, play, and walk on the beach. It's been fun and something I look forward to. I do think we get a chance to bond and then have informal conversations about some of our departmental policies. Not that we always agree, but we're usually too busy to take the time to do that when we're at school.

We divide up the meals and my colleagues are great cooks. We had homemade veggie lasagna on Friday night, pancakes/sausage/bacon/eggs/fruit salad for Sat breakfast, chicken curry/spinach paneer/rice pilaf for Sat lunch, fettucini with a homemade tomato sauce/caesar salad for Sat dinner, and scrambled eggs with all sorts of veggies/mushrooms/hashbrowns for Sun breakfast. I love this part because I don't cook and it's nice to eat lots of really good homecooked meals for a change. (Half of my evenings, I am by myself because my son is with his dad; when my son is with me, he does have a limited diet and I don't, so it makes it harder to cook; I've gotten out of the habit of having anything other than snacks at my house.) I did break veggies for a tossed salad for Sat lunch and also some really good locally made breads. One of our colleagues was the "happy hour guy" and he did mix a good drink.

I stay in the "kid house" because I do have Eddie with me and two of my colleagues and their families were in that house, too, since they have kids ranging in age from 1 to 4 years of age. Eddie was the good older kid - fairly patient with the younger ones and they liked following him around (just one accident involving a shut hand in a door).

But, unfortunately, I ended up getting upset at Scott on Friday night when we talked on the phone (he was still in Portland) - I misunderstood when he was going to be home after hanging out with some friends of his. So, I got upset, but we talked it out. Then, this afternoon, after I got home, I got upset again when Scott was here in town visiting me. It had to do with me feeling pulled in two directions (between doing something with my son and talking with Scott) and not feeling like Scott understood why. It was too bad because he was only here for a few hours. Both also had something to do with old insecurities that I'm trying to work through and was part of the reason why Scott and I broke up; I'm trying to change the way I react to things like this. So, I'm disappointed with myself. Fortunately, Scott didn't get mad. He understood.

Still trying to work through it all I guess - I need to forgive myself and just move on. Easy to say and hard to do. Trying to change old patterns is hard. I've improved a lot these past several months. Just tells me that I still need to work on them.

To end on a more positive note, I want to give a big thank you to my colleagues for the wonderful food: David and Joan, Bryan and Jenna, Sunil and Suman, Missy and Andy, and Nancy and Clint. And, thanks to Loren for the wonderful drinks! And, finally, a big thanks to Scott for coming down to visit me for a few hours - I appreciate it!