starzki | My plan went horribly awry! (Reply)

I had an abysmally terrible day yesterday. Stress and lack of sleep and more stress and not everything going as smoothly as I wanted it to resulted in me crying into my pillow before I fell asleep last night (despite some really nice things said to me for which I'm grateful in any case).

So this morning, I decided to screw going into school and just take care of things around here. The cable guy came and now my computer is lightening fast (15 megs/sec, up from .25 megs/sec) and I can even send email! Too much running lately has also caused some weird injury, but I knew I had to get outside and work up a little sweat to help myself chill out, so I hatched what I thought was a brilliant plan.

My reasoning: Hmm. I can't run 'cause it hurts my hips which makes me grumpy. I know! I'll rollerblade! It's low impact and I can get more distance. Oh, I'll even be more clever and turn South along the lake rather than North so I can swing by downtown and admire the skyline. Yeah!

The plan was working spectacularly well. It's warm out, but a little windy and overcast, so not many people were out and about and I had long stretches of the path to myself. I was having fun, getting out of my head a little, trying to de-stress and stop being so self-obsessed with all of my little problems. I got to a point overlooking the lake and the sky and a beach that had benches and I thought I was being supremely clever in deciding to just sit and relax and contemplate the horizon. It worked for a whole 5 minutes before I started watching the other roller bladers and kids playing in the sand and the joggers. As two of the joggers were getting close, I had the thought, Hey, he looks an awful lot like the guy I dated... Ooooohhhhh... fuuuuuck.

Over two million people live in my city! How is it I randomly run into the one that I seriously dated? We waved to each other as he trotted by. I thought, asshole, but I was glad because I had no idea what I'd say to him. But then they turned around and he came back for a little conversation.

Him: What's up?
Me: Oh, the usual.
Him: Oh yeah?
Me: Yep. I'm in the middle of prelims. Two more questions.
Him: Well, that's good!
Me: Thanks. How about you? What's up?
Him: Same. That's my brother. *points to man he was running with*
Him's brother: I know I've known you for 15 seconds, but... *proceeds to talk for 10 straight minutes, ending with a lecture about how I should be less liberal in my views*
Me: ? *but liking him anyway*
Him: Whatever. You want to go to a ball game sometime?
Me: *feeling that I need to start burning my bridges behind me so these situations don't come up* Yes.
Him: I'll email you.
Me: *thinking* I'll hold my breath.

So now I'm even more in my head and self-obsessed and completely distracted by my stupid life than I was before I went to "chill out." I guess I don't deal well with the unexpected. And really! It was 1:30 PM on a Tuesday afternoon. Who's out at that time? How did that happen? Seriously, if we're looking at this statistically, the odds of that happening were insane. I'm flummoxed.