Rocking my Socks

Today was a wonderful shiny day. Class was fun, lunch was fajitas! I even got to talk about MST3k! Then at the end of class, we gave speeches. As my heart raced faster and faster, I tried to prepare a succinct speech about Wisconsin. But at one point, I walked to the side of the room by the window and sat on the counter while a classmate gave his speech. I wondered shy my heart was racing - after all, I was in debate, I can talk in public. Then it dawned on me - I had a brain injury, maybe that factored in somehow. Then I thought, "wait a minute, why don't I just talk about that?" So I scrapped the Wisconsin speech, and told them all that they could look everything up online, and proceeded to tell them about my amazing experience in 2004. And they looked literally blown away. I had my presence, a unique opening, a commanding voice, but my pulse was still around 170.

Then, I called my PM and headed over to another building for a meeting. I felt so grown up, so competent, so responsible, and really really awesome. I had my meeting and navigated to Emeryville. I parked and went out to a pier to read the Hitchens book before the happy hour. Then I put my purse away, ran into G, and went to the bar. I got some drinks, ordered food, conversed, laughed, etc... At the very end of the night, I talked about my outburst on Tuesday. I expressed my regret for all of it, but people told me that they were just shocked and they could see my legitimate anger. But I did get to apologize to one of the presenters of that presentation, so I feel much better about the whole situation.

I drove home in pretty light traffic - maybe not as light as Milwaukee rush hour, but pretty light. I think I stayed up for a while, and then I saw that picture of Milwaukee rush hour (albeit during a snow storm) and practically fell out of my chair laughing. I don't care if it is 5pm or not, if traffic isn't bumper to bumper, it isn't rush hour.