failing at social skills

It’s snow/raining here. It was sunny and actually pretty nice this past week. I was talking to my parents the other day and they asked ‘how’s the weather?’ instead of quoting them the temperature I gave a description of the way the sky looked and how you needed a jacket but only when the wind blew. but even then your hands were cold all the time no matter what. It only struck me as an odd way to respond a few hours later.

That happens to me sometimes, I’ll answer someone’s question and a couple of hours later I wonder if I actually answered the question they asked me.

The apartment is fixed. I mean, pretty completely. It was getting a little ridiculous for a while there. The landlord and workers would come over every week and do one thing or another. On the one hand I’m grateful that everything was taken care of so quickly and without me having to pester the landlord. On the other hand every time she was due to come over I felt like she was the ultimate mother-in-law coming to judge me and how clean I kept the apartment. I would always be in a fluster to clean everywhere and take all the trash out before she came over, I was never sure what part of the apartment she would want to look at next.

But in reality she never said anything about how clean or dirty things were or anything negative at all. It’s just one of those social anxiety things I guess. They are unpredictable in me and one week a situation will freak me out and the next I’m as cool as a cucumber (or visa versa).

So now the apartment is quiet during the day. Justin has been working extra hard, so he doesn’t come home quiet as easily as before. It’s fine, but it means I have to relay on myself to set and keep some kind of a schedule. At least when I was home in Texas I had to get up to feed my cat but now the only person I take care of is myself, and sadly that is the person I’m most likely to neglect.

It’s not that I actively neglect myself, but I do forget to eat lunch often. And I’m more likely to clean the kitchen than take a shower. then of course I realize Justin is due home soon and I haven’t changed out of my PJs yet and I have a rush to shower, change and make it look like I’ve done something productive that day, but few things feel productive to me when I look at them at the end of the day.

I should call the few people I know more often, I hate to think that my friends here (all two of them) think I only call them when I need something, but too often that’s how things turn out. That and whenever I make plans with one girl in particular, Kirsten, I keep accidentally being a total flake. Like, stood her up for lunch one day flake. I NEVER do that. I felt really bad about that one. Now I just don’t call her at all because I keep being flaky and I’d rather not set myself up to be that girl.

Other than failing at social skills I’m doing well. I’ve actually gotten a fair amount of writing done. It’s mostly mass that needs to be edited, but at least I have something to edit.

My new distraction (from the distraction of shopping) is walking to the mail room. It’s hella far from our house, and it gives me a small quest that gets me outside and walking around. Hmm, I actually sound pretty lame, lol, I think most people secretly are but nobody wants to admit it.

Oh! Justin and I have been cooking at home more and actually we do a pretty good job. We only had some trouble with small steaks, but we’d never cooked red meat before. It started one night because I wanted Italian food and we went out. The food was editable, but it didn’t taste anything like Italian. We actually run into that problem a lot, food doesn’t taste like what it says it is. They really just don’t have a grasp on the different seasonings. Anyway, so Justin said, we can do better than this. And we cooked some damn good Italian food.