And I don't know what I'm to say

[austin_dern]

The thing about Monday is I was suffering from stresses on many, many fronts at once, and had no emotional reserve. Looking back on it while there's a lot that's funny about the day there's also a lot that I'm embarrassed by, and while I want to share all that with you I need to put it in a context that makes me not seem quite so bad.

The first thing is that it would be my last day seeing my parents at their home. They'd expected, fourteen years ago, for this to be their last house, the one they lived in till they died, and everyone had got used to that idea, and it was stunning that they were moving at all. Plus, it was my house, first just so I had a North American mailing address while I was in Singapore, and then for me to live while getting my life together, for years. Parents leaving the home you're used to them being in will always be stressful, and that my parents are heading into first several months of couch-surfing and then to a move to South Carolina that nobody except my mother expects to be anything but catastrophic does not help in the least.

The second thing is that while bunny_hugger was going home, I was not. My boss wanted me out east for a week of getting everybody on the same page (I don't work with anybody else) and getting projects racing ahead (my work's carrying on at its steady, regular pace) and whatnot. This meant that at least my overpriced airfare would be covered by him (we couldn't in good conscience bill him for bunny_hugger's flight; and I only submitted expenses for my flight because the best we could do with Frontier Airlines was reschedule my return journey at a cost that turned out to be about what we paid for the original flight. Had he told us even two days earlier that he wanted me out east, we could have booked better-fitting times to start with and saved him some money), but it also meant that I would go from a week and a half away from home to two and a half weeks away, and I was already homesick.

The third thing is that we had plenty to be anxious about from news back home. There'd been multiple snowstorms while we weren't anywhere near to shovel, and we were getting new neighbors who would be who-knows-what after having a neighbor we really liked, and there were the fish wintering over in the pond to worry about, and there's the roof to worry about, and all these anxieties about how the house is when there's not one of us to tend it to worry about. bunny_hugger's father tried to at least soothe some of this by hiring a landscaping company to shovel our walk and driveway of the foot of snow, which is great in that bunny_hugger didn't have to shovel a foot of snow after driving (or taking the bus) home after a flight but there's still something embarrassing about them swooping in like this.

And finally, I've been in the midst of a vicious fight with many friends, some of them my oldest, in which I feel I've been treated extraordinarily shabbily, without the trust or empathy that I feel decades of friendship demand. I'm deeply afraid that some of these friendships have been ended over this and if any do survive they're going to different in horrible ways. This had been unfolding over weeks and has been wearing me down since late December.

This is the setting, then, and please keep in mind all that battering me before we properly started Airport '14.

Trivia: According to Ovid, in some years as late as 14 February the pontifices had not decided whether there would be an intercalated month to bring the calendar in line with the seasons before March began. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery, Frank Spencer.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Not even just a foot of snow, but at least 15" of snow in the end.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I wasn't sure how much did hit Lansing directly, but, well, you saw it while it was freshest. Fifteen it is.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

*wing hugs...*

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

I would rather disagree on the point of only your increased fare being covered - it's exceptionally poor form of the guy to stress your schedule to begin with, let alone apply unexpected financial pressures. He's well aware of the consequences of his actions, and apparently is relying on only being due for half thereof. He should carry it all, or at the very least, feel quite markedly (and not in the merely symbolic sense) indebted. This is the kind of occasion where friends would apologise profusely, after all.

However, there's no doubting he's essentially a very good sort. In this instance, though, in need of a mild correction, I'd say.

Still - there are worse concerns to have.

I obviously can't speak of the friendship trials, but can only hope there's some reconciliation possible. Sometimes, however, even the most prized relationships wind up becoming powder upon the winds.

I do seem to have a talent for ending replies on remarkably doom-laden notes, don't I? ^_^;

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

It didn't affect my own fare at all, though it did result in having to separate our reservations, which was some weird surgery they had to do that caused Austin to have to be on the phone for an hour. I was really very unhappy with the whole thing; I think it's not cool to make someone change travel plans on a week's notice around the holidays. Austin's brother disagreed and thought I should just be grateful that Austin's boss lets him work in Michigan and therefore should just be cheerful about whatever else he pulls.

The rest of my school term break was spent alone as a result and I had to fly back alone, very unwelcome for an aviophobe.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

The description of the airfare thing has got a little confused, probably because it's confusing to start with. But here's the essentials:

1. bunny_hugger and I bought flights meant to fly back on the 6th, which were expensive because they were too close to the holidays.

2. The boss wanted me to be out east the first week of the year. So I rebooked my flight back from the 6th to the 13th and yes, that was way too complicated and tedious.

3. The cost of rebooking came to just about what I originally spent on the tickets because, even though flying back the 13th was much cheaper than flying back the 6th, even with the change fee attached, airlines don't like giving money back. So they covered the cost of some checked bags and the like.

4. I gave the boss the bill for my flight, which was originally the offensively expensive trip bought for my personal recreation, on the grounds that he should pay for what it cost to change a personal trip to cover a work trip. The change-of-flight cost and the upgrades that Frontier put on so as not to owe me money came to pretty much the cost of the trip, so, that covered my flight entire.

5. The woman who actually runs the company day-to-day apparently agreed.

6. But I only submitted expenses for the week of car rental when I expected to be in the office.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm hoping to salvage at least a couple of these friendships. All this has forced me to look seriously at one hangout and see it for what it is rather than what I want it to be; I suppose that's well lost.