Date #12

During one of our lunches together, Schmoozer and I figured out the algorithm for online dating. Date #1 is always coffee/drinks at a coffee house/wine bar/dessert place. Notice how no meal is involved in case of early exit.

Date #2 is a light dinner out at a restaurant followed by an activity.

"But how much is the entree?" asked Schmoozer.

I thought back to my previous second-date experience. The Hungarian took me out to a nice Tex-Mex restaurant. Memphis and I checked out a gourmet pizza place. Valdostsa and I had Cuban.

"Mmm, $10 – 15 entrees," I said.

"Damn, I paid too much," said Swayze when we later announced our algorithm.

"Now Date #3, that's the money date," I told Schmoozer. "That's the date where the goal is for the guy to get the girl to his apartment." He raised his eyebrows, surprised that I was onto the game. "The ruse is usually one or two things: he'll offer to cook dinner, or he'll send an invite to watch a movie at his place."

He laughed. "We're that transparent?"

"Yes."

***

The cycle starts yet again. I met Date #12 at the same café that offers spiked coffees and desserts that I met The Hungarian and Date #4. I breeze in, relaxed.

Date #12 is 26 years old and a second-time college student. He went back to school when he figured out that he wanted to manage hotel restaurants, not just work in them.

He's bald. Shaved-head, shiny-skinned bald. It's out of necessity. He offsets the look with thick plastic-frame glasses. Think preppy Moby. What cinched it for me was his attire. There are two super-secret outfits that make me swoon and he wore the second one. I like to call it The McDreamy Look. A thin, dark sweater layered over an Oxford shirt with the collar and sleeves showing.

Due to the slow waitstaff, we hit every topic that could possibly be covered on a first date.

"Coke or Pepsi?" he asked.

"Are you kidding me? Coke."

"Sweet tea or unsweetened?"

"Unsweetened."

He raised an eyebrow. "My parents were Yankees, so I grew up with unsweetened and it stuck," I explained.

He was nice, maybe a little too nice. He asked me at least three times to not play games with him and just be honest and shoot him an e-mail if I change my mind about dating him. The fact he repeated it several times smacks of insecurity.

I agreed to go out with him again, but I find myself battling with his full-time student status. He's a college student and because he's not working, he's college poor. College poor is below poverty-level poor. He told me he had to find a specific parking space at the café because his 20-year old truck no longer goes in reverse. I asked him if he was current on his bills and his answer was "This month." That kind of poor.

I remember college poor. It was awful. It was also almost 10 years ago. I'm not really looking to go back to that lifestyle. I also worked my way through college so I wouldn't be college poor. Moreover, I've also spent 3 of the last 4 years financially supporting other poor boyfriends and I'm not hip on going through that situation again either. I was hoping to date someone who could meet me where I am.

What would you do?

A heartbeat away from being

It's been a month since my breakup with Valdosta and I'm surprised with how much it has actually hurt.

I think it was Banky in Chasing Amy who said that love is best when it dies young, a la Romeo and Juliet. You fall in love, and one person dies at the apex of the relationship. The love never dies. Harsh exchanges were never made. Ultimatums were never given. Feelings were never hurt. You're left with only good memories and because of that, the one who left is idolized. Or maybe idealized. Most likely both.

I feel there are a lot of similarities with Valdosta's and my relationship. It was easy. It was only good times. And then it stopped.

He left before the bad and the ugly could have transpired. Before the faults could be discovered. I'm left alone with only the good. I have nothing to work with as to why I shouldn't like him. As to why the relationship couldn't have lasted (other than the glaring one of that he left).

When I stood up the from the table and walked home, I was cocky in my absolute certainty that Valdosta would regret his decision and come back one day. I give it six weeks, I thought to myself. Let him date others and think of me. A girlfriend told me I would be the one that got away in his life. I agreed! My mother said that this wouldn't be the last that I hear from him. My own past dictates that he will return. They all do. They all say that they didn't realize what a good girlfriend I was and how they missed me and, by the way, they are sorry they treated me badly. Unfortunately for them, this never happens until I'm good and pissed off and don't care anymore.

But because Valdosta was such a great guy, I'm beginning to think he won't come back. He said he gave me and him and us a lot of thought because he didn't want to make the wrong decision in leaving me. And because he was a good guy of respectable character—unlike my sleaze-bag ex-boyfriends—he won't come back. He made the right decision.

I didn't expect it to hurt this much. It was only two months. I had been happy before I met him. I still don't feel back to normal. I don't feel as shiny as I used to. I'm worried that instead of me being Valdosta's one-that-got-away girl, he's going to be my one-that-got-away guy. And that utterly terrifies me.

Dolla Dolla Bill Y'all

We were at our happy-hour bar Friday night. It's a seedy bar with beer-stained wooden plank flooring that's only good for three things:

• Zac Brown Band got their start there, playing there for years before anybody heard of them.
• They give a free shot to the entire bar every Friday at 6 o'clock.
• Anytime you mention the joint, someone has a really good story that happened there. The trouble with really good stories is that they often don't come from positive experiences. I know a guy who was stabbed in the parking lot with a drunk guy's car key. He thought his side hurt after the belligerent guy attacked him, so he covered his side with his hand, and his finger slipped into the stab hole. Ack. Another guy I know told me he used to go there when he first moved to the city and didn't know any better and he was approached by a pimp and the ugliest prostitutes he's even seen in his life.

But we love our shady happy-hour bar, despite the stabbings and the terrible, terrible girl band that replaced the Zac Brown Band. We only go there on Fridays for the 6 o'clock shot. The waitress knows us and our food orders by memory. I got my bangs trimmed last week and she noticed and said they looked good.

By this time, happy hour had lasted at least five hours. Harvey and her husband were playing pool with Katie and Schmoozer. I was seated at the table with Swayze, Vince and Vince's girlfriend. Vince is the newest member of the group, meeting Harvey through work channels. The girl band was over and an 80's hair cover band began to play. The singer of the band stopped at our table and serenaded us with a few verses of the song before he continued walking through the bar with his wireless mic.

After he left, I continued my story:

"I went out with this guy once. He paid for everything in hundred-dollar bills. We went out for burgers and tator tots—not an expensive meal—and he paid with a hundred-dollar bill. The waitress had to bring back over 70 bucks in change.

"Then we leave the restaurant and stroll through the neighborhood. He points out an ice cream place and we walk inside and pick out a couple of cones. I open my wallet to pay, but he tells me that he's got this too. I thank him. And you know what he did? He gave the ice-cream place another hundred-dollar bill! He didn't use the obscene amount of change he got only minutes earlier! Who does that?!"

Swayze took a sip of his beer. "You know who has hundred-dollar bills?" he offered. "Guys without bank accounts."

I pointed at him. "You know, I never even thought of that."

Vince turned and faced me. "You should start a dating blog," he said.

I tipped my head back and laughed from the bottom of my stomach. If my friends only knew.

Thelma & Louise & Louise

As you are reading this, I am in a Suburban with BFF's Mel and Jenna. Mel's driving. Jenna's sleeping in the back seat. I'm drinking a Red Bull and am waiting for the perfect opportunity to put in my Ke$ha CD. We're heading down the coast to West Palm Beach for the week.

I'm hoping this road trip and time away will cure me from my funk. I packed several books, my painting materials, some knitting that's been commissioned, my bathing suit and my running shoes. I have everything I need. I've scheduled some posts over the week, so you'll have everything you need as well.

Sex and the City Box Set Winner

Congratulations, Nicole of Our Little Idland World, you won the entire Sex and the City TV series on DVD! Hopefully this will provide you some enjoyment as you raise your little ones. Visit her blog to read the amazing story of the birth of her little daughter.

(Send me an e-mail and I'll get your shipping info!)

Date #11

I revamped my profile on e-Harmony. I reworded my essays, focusing more on Fun! than seriousness. Fun! is closer to my personality than droning on about the importance of honesty and blah, blah, barf. I uploaded a picture of me when I went ziplining. I was sporting the chest and butt halters and a red helmet. I wasn't wearing any makeup, but I was sticking my tongue out at the camera. Look at me displaying my Fun! I had a coworker read the new profile to detect any missed instances of Fun!'s evil step-sister Crazy and got her approval.

The revamp seemed to get things moving again.

Of the six or seven people I'm currently communicating with, Date #11 seemed to have the most promise. He was 28, a web developer and had a hobby of photography. When we set up our date, he said we had to do it earlier in the day since he was going to the city-wide pillow fight later in the afternoon. What? A city-wide flash-mob pillow fight? That sounds like something my friends and I would enjoy. The guy sounded alright, so I threw out a time and a place earlier in the day.

I picked a restaurant in Buckhead that's tucked away in a small neighborhood. It's a local hideaway. Even though it was a Sunday at 1, the boys were dressed in pressed Oxford shirts rolled up to the elbows. The ladies wore over-sized sunglasses and dresses. The day was sunny and everyone crowded on the wooden patio hidden beneath the trees.

Date #11 had never heard of the place. I was kind of surprised that he's lived in the city for 10 years and he never knew about it.

We stood outside waiting for a table. Date #11 was skinnier than I expected; he appeared smaller in real life. I wondered about his profile picture and his photography skills. But the conversation flowed easily enough.

"I don't think that the purpose of high school is to get a book education," he stated.

I lifted an eyebrow.

"I think it's to learn how to behave socially."

I thought about it. I guess that's true. A big part of high school is social interaction, but I don't think it's a lesson that requires conscious thought. It happens naturally.

"As soon as I learned that high school was about socialization, I had to make an effort. I was a bit behind everyone else," he continued.

I felt my jaw tighten. His statement did not sit well with me. What exactly does being behind everyone else in social interaction mean?

We were seated. The conversation continued.

"So what did you do last night?" I asked.

"I had a party," he answered.

"Oh that's cool. My friend Harvey had a party last night too. What did y'all do?"

"Well my friends were pretty out of it. They were passed out on my couch and I stayed up until 5 a.m. playing [some video game]."

Two drunk guys on a couch while he played X-Box solo was a far contrast from Harvey's party. Her husband grilled out and we took turns playing beer pong and Rockband.

It turns out that we are both members of the same beer club in town. That's not really much of a coincidence; most people are. But Date #11 kept his list of beers on him. He pulled out his wallet to show me.

His wallet was made entirely out of duct tape.

It wasn't even one of those professional ones you can buy off the Internet. This was a homemade job. I don't think I've seen a duct tape wallet since I was 14. My coworker's 9-year-old son has a duct tape wallet. I was turned off.

Then a few minutes later, he rolled up his sleeve and showed me a rash in the crook of his elbow. "I'm allergic to the sun," he tells me.

He explained the rash to me in far more detail than what was appropriate. Which would have been never. It is never okay to display a rash on a first date. I guess I should be glad that he didn't unzip his pants to show me the rash.

He scratches his rash. "It really itches," he says.

Sometimes I have thoughts and sometimes I don't filter them. "What, does the sun interfere with your rickets?"

He looked at me, puzzled. I assume he doesn't know what rickets is. This is probably a good thing.

After about five minutes of talking about his rash, he realizes his faux pas.

"Do you have any weird medical problems?" he asked me.

I shrugged my shoulders, "Nope."

Guess that high school socialization didn't work.

Emotional Me

Flashback once again to that phone conversation with Harvey the night I got dumped.

"I wish I was more like Katie," I sniffed. "Guys seem to be more attracted to her energy."

"What do you like about her?" she asked.

"She's so even keeled. She never lets on that she's annoyed or angry. The minute I become unsatisfied, I announce it. It causes problems."

"There's nothing wrong with admiring a trait in other people and trying to replicate it in your own life," she said. Her voice became softer, "Maybe if you became more logical like Katie, you wouldn't get hurt so much."

Her words were meant to soothe me. Harvey, a person also ruled by logic, was trying to help me find a logical solution in her logical way. But instead it incited an emotional reaction within me.

I don't feel that my goal in life is to hurt less. I would rather take the hurt and the pain and the rejection if it meant I could also have the good things: the love and the joy and the acceptance. I believe that because I am a person who is so in touch with her feelings, I am able to love more freely than the logical person. And I would never ever wish that away.

And Katie is not without her own problems. It isn't my story to tell, but the best I can share is that she has the exact opposite problem that I have. Whereas I feel like I am too much of a personality, she feels like she isn't enough of one. She can feel anxious in social situations, hence the drinking her face off and passing out in the bar bathroom when Schmoozer initially showed interest in her.

Not to mention that I already tried the experiment of emulating the friends. I spent a week trying to be like Harvey and it blew up in my face.

I was silent on the other end of the phone with Harvey. I never responded to her "Maybe... you wouldn't get hurt so much." But I knew the answer and it surprised the hell out of me: I would rather love messily than not at all. I'd rather have my problems than somebody else's. I've never felt that way before.

So give me the heartbreak and all the pain that comes with it. Give me the tears and the running mascara and the splotchy face. Because you don't get that way if you haven't invested yourself and loved.

Star-crossed

When I was a little girl and my mom took me to my first concert, I remember wanting to be a singer. I think that's what all little kids do, see something and want to emulate it. But the strange thing is, I didn't stare at the man in the center of the stage; I stared at the backup singers on stage left. Even when I was small, I always knew I'd never be a star. That was a dream too grandiose for me.

When I was a little older, I worked at a movie theatre with the film geeks. I remember wanting to be in pictures. I would sit in the aisles of the darkened theatre and watch the frumpier female sidekick. Maybe I could be her.

Last night I hooked up the Femme Fatale to her leash and took her for her nightly walk. As we descended the stairwell, I spied a discarded dozen of roses and two sprigs of baby's breath: someone's unwanted valentine. I walked the Femme Fatale around the block and thought curiously about the flowers. I tried to imagine why someone would abandon them in the bottom of a stairwell. Was it a co-ed who laughed at her geeky suitor? Did a guy change his mind?

When I returned from the walk, I again faced the roses laying on the ground. The plastic wrap and rubber band used to hold them together were missing. The petals, knowing their fate, had already begun to wilt. I bent down and picked up a single rose, peeled off the broken petal and carried it back to my apartment. I filled a small vase usually reserved for my dark chocolate peanut m&m's and plucked the rose into the water.

I always knew I'd never be a star.

Happy Valentine's Day Giveaway

Saturday afternoon I had finally roused myself from the couch and headed down to the leasing office to pick up an Amazon package that had been waiting for me. I'm a little ashamed of the number of orders I've placed on Amazon this month alone.

Braless and still wearing my jammies I walked into the leasing office. "I have a package? Apartment 555?"

The office girl smiled broadly at me. "Of course you do!" Why would she remember my box of Amazon crap?

"It's Kara, right?"

"Huh?"

"Your name is Kara?"

"Um, no." I followed her hands and saw she was reaching for a box of flowers. "Oh! No! That's not me!" I shouted out of embarrassment. Shouted.

"Oh you said the apartment number and I thought it was you. It must be your neighbor. I just called her to tell her she had a package."

Oh, fuck you, lady.

****

Are you poor? Do you like Sex and the City? Then enter my first ever giveaway. Because my box of Amazon crap contained this: the new Sex and the City box set.

That's not the one I'm giving away.

The one I'm giving away is the complete series I bought off eBay years ago. It's from Taiwan and the last season is a bootleg copy. That's why I asked if you were poor. Because if you want the series and have the money, this probably isn't the set you want. Or you could win the set and buy Season 7 separately. Actually I'd recommend that either way.

But, hey! Do you want all of the episodes of Sex and the City on DVD? Because I'm giving it away! Or else it's going back on eBay! You decide!

Just leave a comment and I'll use a random number generator and pick the winner.

Conquered

I have reached the end of the Internet.

Despite being a 5.5-million person city, the only matches I'm receiving from eHarmony are either people I know in real life or 25 year olds who are "flex" matches, which means they aren't really compatible with you, but what the hell.

I opened a match last week and studied the picture for a minute. I know this guy. I dated him in 2006 when I met him off Match. I didn't write about our date, but I did refer to him as Tuna on the blog.

"Argh," I groaned as my head fell to the desk. "I've already dated you! And why are you still online dating 5 years later?!" The statement had no longer left my mouth before I realized that the same accusation also applied to me.

A couple of days later I was clicking through the profiles again. I happened upon another one that looked familiar. I slowly examined the pictures. In one, the guy was posing with a celebrity. Heh, I thought to myself. My brother's best friend is related to that celebrity. Clicked on the next picture. Now it's a picture of the guy with my brother's best friend. I checked out the name again. It turned out to be my brother's best friend's little brother who I also grew up with. I attended his Eagle Scout ceremony 15 years ago.

I have 600 open matches on eHarmony. That's the number of guys who haven't rejected me and I haven't rejected them. I can't believe that out of 600 bachelors, I can't find one where we mutually like each other. That kind of number just makes me want to give up. If I can't find someone to date out of 600 people, then maybe it's time I wave the white flag.

You win, Internets.

Lonely Like the Wolf

I've been lonely lately. The loneliness is an amalgamation of several factors:

• Valdosta
• The asexual group I once complained about is no longer asexual. Schmoozer and Katie are now dating, so is Government Mule and Jenna. I'm very happy for all parties involved, but now the entire group is coupled up with each other, save for me, Swayze, and Mel. The singles are outnumbered 6 to 3. Feels lonely, let me tell you.

I'm not sure how to handle my friendships with Government Mule and Schmoozer. I feel like it is no longer appropriate for me to be friends with them. After all, I don't e-mail Harvey's husband and ask how his day is going, so I probably shouldn't e-mail or lunch with those two anymore. The girls expressly said that I was friends with the boys before the relationships developed, but I still feel like it is a precarious tightrope to tread across.

I saw Schmoozer and Katie at an event Saturday night. Unsure of what to do, I avoided Schmoozer altogether until he approached me and said hello. Before I could respond, Katie—who was the drunkest I've seen her since that epic happy hour months ago—grabbed Schmoozer by the hand and pulled him to his seat.

I also did my best to avoid Government Mule, but he wouldn't let me. He cornered me and asked if I was okay due to other recent drama (see bullet point number three) and then took Jenna and me out for chocolate-chip pancakes after the event. As he paid the bill, he told me to call him and we'll go out to lunch, just the two of us.

• Girl dramz! It's a very long and complicated story that would require a Venn diagram, but Harvey and I lost a friend this week. I'm not too much bothered by the individual loss because it doesn't affect my day-to-day life, but Harvey's feelings are hurt. Moreover lines have been drawn and sides have been chosen. Harvey and I have each other and our central group of friends, but I have lost 2 other circles of friends, including my knitting group. I had a great un-friending on Facebook and had to delete 10 girls.

Valdosta, Government Mule, Schmoozer and those 10 ladies, that's a lot of loss for one month. My phone does not ring anymore. I don't even bother taking the phone off silent mode and I no longer carry it on me.

I come home from work, prepare a small dinner, go running and knit until bedtime. That's been my life the past couple of weeks.

I guess the silver lining in all of this is that I'm reminded of what a great central group of friends I do have. Swayze e-mailed me to check up on me. Harvey defended my honor to the now ex-friend. Katie scheduled a girl's night. Mel is the only one who does call, and she makes sure I get to the gym. And Jenna is coming over tonight to make ice cream sundaes. They know I'm upset and they all have rallied around me.

I just wish it was enough to snap me out of my funk. Abraham Lincoln funk, not George Clinton funk.

Catfish

Super Bowl starts in a half hour and I'm not making any pretense that I'm going to watch it. Instead I found a Red Box this morning and inserted my credit card and rented enough movies to last me through the day.

If you have a blog, or even just a Facebook profile, go out immediately and rent Catfish. It's a documentary about a New York photographer named Nev who is befriended by an 8-year-old Michigan painter named Abby. Abby is so inspired by Nev's photographs that she begins to paint them, and with the help of her mother, sends them to Nev. Through Facebook Nev eventually befriends Abby's entire family, including her half-sister Megan, with whom he falls in love. It's a twisted and completely true story.

The reason I think it's a fascinating film is because it addresses the nature of online identities. Both blogs and Facebook profiles are subjective self-portraits: the author controls what information is released. Most people aren't going to post pictures of what they look like when they wake up in the morning, and most stories written aren't going to catalogue that time they sat on the couch and ate Lays while watching The Biggest Loser. It's a unconscious best foot forward. It's who you want to be. Some people are just more open than others.

And if you've seen the movie, I'm a total catfish.

Body and Soul

Last week, I was still funky. Not George Clinton funky, but rather Abraham Lincoln funky. I don't know why that out of all the famous, depressed people in the world, Abraham Lincoln is my go-to representative, but there you have it: Abraham Lincoln funky.

I had dodgeball last week. I still showed up where I was expected, but I'd been absent from all the fun to be had. I passed on both the pre-game conversation and the pre-game beers. I became something I hate: a bystander.

"Y'all, I'm going to hit up the bathroom." I stood up from the corner booth and headed to the bar bathroom. I washed my hands and inspected myself in the mirror. Despite heading to a dodgeball game, I still wore makeup. My bangs were pinned back with a little bit volume. I bent over and pulled up my knee-high red soccer socks. My body looked as pulled together as it could for someone in a t-shirt and gym shorts; it was my spirit that was unshowered and collapsed on the couch in a puddle of infomercials and Kleenex.

I left the bathroom and headed back to the booth. I passed a table of three guys and stopped dead.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," they said. They tipped their long-neck beer bottles toward me.

It was another dodgeball team. If I were telling the whole story, it was the dodgeball team that I openly refer to as The Douchebags, and one of them may have thrown a ball at my head and I may have whipped around and charged, starting a fight with them. It may have been an ugly scene.

But that was weeks ago. Since then the dodgeball league had its Christmas party at the bar, and I befriended the team via smack talk during a flip cup tournament. I think if I had super powers, they would be reading people and smack talk.

At the flip cup tournament, I was standing across from Hot Douchebag. I had already pointed out to him the welt on my thigh he gave me at said dodgeball game two weeks earlier. But as Harvey says, what we lack in dodgeball, we make up for in drinking. I had whooped him at flip cup.

"You sip like a girl," I jeered. "You need some yogurt for that yeast infection?"

He did a double take and his mouth hung open. "OOOOHHH!" screamed the rest of The Douchebags at my zing.

"Uh, I don't know. Can, can I have some of yours?" he eventually stammered back.

With that, I had befriended the team. I had actually befriended the team to the point that they gave Mel and me pointers on how to play dodgeball better.

I stood in front of the table. "Are we playing y'all tonight?"

"Nah," said Hot Douchebag. "We're playing the green team. We play you again in a couple of weeks."

"Oh," I said disappointed. "I thought we were playing The Douchebags." I winked.

"Uh, just for the record?" the third Douchebag in the back of the table raised his hand. "I wasn't there that night, at the game where y'all got beat up."

Hot douchebag pointed at my head, "Which side did I get you on?"

"No, you got me right in the thigh."

"But which side of the head did you get hit on?"

I pointed, "My left side."

"I'll be sure to get you on the other side next time to even you out," he laughed.

"That's cool," I smiled. "I'll just aim for your junk."

I waved goodbye. The smack talk made me feel better. On the way back to my booth, I play punched a member of the green team that waved at me earlier. I stopped at the round-top table containing the team we were to play that night and leaned across it. I made eye contact with a guy I had spoken to previously. With a stern face I pointed at my eyes and then at his eyes and then back at mine. "We're on our way to go practice. You better get ready!" He laughed.

***

At the basketball gym, each team warms up by throwing the dodgeballs to each other. Our team loves to roughhouse and peg each other with the ball when one of us isn't looking. "Emulating real-world conditions," I once justified.

The Third Douchebag from the bar accidentally hit Mel with the ball. He wasn't aiming at her; she had stepped into it as a freak accident. He profusely apologized, trying to overcompensate for his team nickname. She laughed as she brushed herself off. As he kept apologizing, I ran up behind him and threw the dodgeball in my hands at his back.

"Hey!" he said as he swung around.

He saw me standing there laughing at him and he began to laugh too.

I turned around and walked back to the corner of the gym where my team was collected. And because I wasn't looking, I got nailed by a dodgeball thrown by a member of my own team. It caught me off guard and I tumbled over.

I lay on the gym floor in a fit of giggles. It was official. My spirit was back.

Bits and Pieces

Phone conversation with Harvey approximately 10 minutes after breakup:

"You know what my worst problem is?" I sniffed. "I just spent $7.99 on a box of magnum condoms. What the fuck am I going to do with a box of magnum condoms? It's not like I can save those for the next guy."

Harvey laughed. Deep belly-aching laughed. "If that's your worst problem, then you are going to be just fine. BTW, I love you for saying that."

Phone conversation with Mike, a married confidant and co-worker of mine from two completely separate companies, regarding the breakup:

He sighed, "Fine, Sarah. I'll date you. I will get a permission slip from my wife and date you. If polygamy ever becomes legal, I am taking you on as my first second wife, so you better get ready."

It seems easy for the committed guys to see that I'm a healthy, dateable girl. How is this getting lost in translation to single guys?

On the first day last week where I felt normal again:

I handed my boss a report I'd been working on. She studied me. "Are you okay?" she asked. "Because you look awful."

Gah.