I was all prepared to write up a standard 'woe is me' kind of a daylog, but then I let the world sink back in, and now I think I'll be OK with something a little bit less selfish.
Never mind, I was lying. This is mostly a woe-is-me after all. Oh well.
The afternoon was a disaster. A complete and total disaster. I was supposed to finish my physics degree today. All I had to do was "observe the superconducting transition temperature of tin and obtain its superconducting-normal phase diagram in the presence of an external magnetic field". Sounds simple enough, right? (eep) And we were doing just fine indeed until I remembered that this task required me to touch experimental equipment and that I was therefore doomed from the goddam start.
If I were an actual physicist I would SO be a theorist, goddammit.
Nothing worked. Nothing nothing nothing nothing. It was 90 degrees in the lab with no ventilation (and about 1.5K inside of the cryostat ... lucky stupid cryostat ) and tons of sun pouring into the painted-shut windows while I tried to find little 0.1% fluctuations in the circuit frequency. Here I am going back and forth and back and forth painstakingly on my voltage with sweat pouring everywhere and nowhere to sit and great big hot sweaty yucky leather boots on because it was raining this morning AND MY FEET HURT. My 0.1% transitions were oddly enough masked by the 500% random fluctuations brought down by God to smite my heathen ass and keep me from getting this stupid degree over and done with. The lab techies abandoned me to get back to their air conditioned offices, and when I had to run upstairs to get one I actually started crying in front of him. The stupid little girl who thinks she can be a physicist is crying. How cute.
You can't have patience when it's ninety degrees. You just can't.
We jiggled the cables, we changed the frequency meter. There were bubbles in the mercury manometer. It got better. Then I got a 50% critical field change over less than a tenth of a kelvin. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
My professor told me we'd try to run again a week from Tuesday. That was my ONLY week off for the entire summer. Classes start up again less than a week after that. I need time off. I do. I really really really really do. This was supposed to be my triumph week. I finished teaching my class, I think I got everybody through, I think I did a really good job. I SURVIVED. I was supposed to earn myself a fucking degree today. It was supposed to be easy.
All my friends left town, so I went to work and started crying, and the woman who sits next to me who is old enough to be my mother gave me a hug. I felt a little better then until I could get to my car and cry for real. And it was so fucking hot.
I'm lonely. I realized there wasn't anybody in the world I could call. I either don't have their phone numbers or don't know where they are, or they're coming into town tomorrow or ... or .. or I don't really want to bother them with all my bullshit anyway. I hate being this whiny complaining bitch. But I was so upset I was shaking and feeling so sorry for myself.
I haven't had a real boyfriend in a year.
I went home and had some supper and half a pint of Ben and Jerry's (Chubby Hubby, mmmm, my favorite). I took off my clothes, took a shower, took a nap. I woke up and couldn't get up. Talked to somebody I know who's still in town and felt a little bit better, but mostly I just listened to her bitch about her car that caught on fire.
(Last night the apartment building across the street caught on fire and burned to the ground, and the people who lived there were left with nothing. I could have been them. I'm glad I'm not. I was passed out on the floor at four in the afternoon when it happened, I was so tired, and so I scarcely heard the sirens.)
My friend on the phone told me about the Perseids, and I remembered this time of year last summer. I remembered S. and me in the ocean out in Vieques watching glowing stars in the water and falling stars in the skies and being naked and brushing with seaweed and him hating me and hating me and hating me, and the horrible thing that I did, and how much I hated myself after when I realized what I'd done. I remember believing him because I loved him.
It's been quite a year, I say.
I don't know. The chat was good for me. I went out shopping and blew all my birthday money on clothes I don't need and dishtowels. I bought a dress to wear to an old friend's wedding next month. I can't believe we're starting to get married already, and I can't even get some. I can't believe I don't want any even though I'm so godammed horny I could scream. I don't want any. Any any. Anyone. I bought a Frappuccino because Starbucks was the only thing still open and I wanted a coffee. It was good. Really really really really good. I'm taking a shower once this is done to wash off the Starbucks filth. I'm licking my lips as I say that, though, it was so damn good.
My apartment-mate is moving in tomorrow and I still haven't found the floor. It is going to take a miracle to get this place respectably clean in less than 24 hours. The fellow who's moving in emailed me earlier today to let me know he was coming, and that he wouldn't be in email touch for the rest of the night. He emailed a few people. I realized as I was looking at the list that the only people on it, though, were me, his parents and his girlfriend.
Sometimes you forget how high you still rank on your best friend's list until you see it.
Somehow I feel OK again.