Dear Kay,
Good GOD I am so tired. Not sleepy, though, just completely knackered. Two days straight of academic hearings are really taking it out of me, and another day to go. Cry.
Still, I only collapse when I get home, at the time I'm quite awake and perky and listening brightly paying attention. It's really quite interesting, even though also extremely depressing, to hear these people's stories. This was actually why I wanted to get into the job that I'm in, and I think I'm naturally a bit ok at it, the people part at least. There was a guy today who would have been in his late 50s, and who had been going ok except for the last year when it all fell over. We asked him what had happened and he suddenly told us his mum had died. Oh dear, we all thought. I thought he was about to cry. I asked him if he'd picked out a major yet and he said he hadn't really thought about it, and I told him to go sort it out with a course adviser because it's really hard to study if you don't have a direction. I was actually pretty proud of that advice. I think he listened, too. He seemed pretty down and out, and I don't think we heard the whole story, but it seemed like he was coming out of the shit storm. Slowly.
Other students have been good, others not so good. Some are so blase and you sort of wonder what's going on in their heads. Others are barely listening/comprehending. Some of them have such terrible English that they can't really understand what you're asking, or saying, and you can really tell. But short of acting it out with sock puppets and amusing props what are you supposed to do?
Squidge has gone AWOL for the evening, which is sad because I was looking forward to seeing him. I called him about an hour ago and there was no answer, so maybe he's writing or he's gone to the movies or something. On Monday morning I was stressing out about the hearings, and he stayed over that night (after some coersion) and when I woke up at quarter to bloody 6 freaking out about all the things I had to do that day, he was right there, and he let me molest him while I talked about how we should flee to Tuscany and have grape vines and red wine. He could write on an old timey type writer and I could teach English to the local village primary school kids, and we could siesta and eat cheese, and he could walk around without his shirt on. The more I was talking about it, the more I wanted it to actually happen. That would be fucking awesome.
Anyway. As he was leaving he gave me a loving look and rubbed my neck and that gave me the warm and fuzzies for the rest of the morning. As he left I told him I'd him in Tuscany, and he laughed.
It's so nice, I feel like we're reaching new levels of coupleyness. It takes him a while to warm up because he's a bit shy whenever I first see him, but we usually get there in the end and it's lovely. It could be me and him in a room with lots of pillows for ever and ever and I wouldn't really mind.
And I miss you.
--K.
