After all my work complaints over all these years, I almost went in voluntarily today, on a day I'm not supposed to. I got up with the alarm, ate breakfast - but then contemplating my closet I got glum and went back to bed. The itchy and scratchy that clothes currently give me - any fabric, any cut - just wasn't worth it in the end. I think my impetus was the sheer terror, or at least icy chill, I felt when I realized that as of next week I have No Particular Place to Go on a daily basis. With Christmas largely taken care of, the house in pretty good shape and a town that doesn't have a m&%$#'ing theater where I could catch a matinee - this leaves a large odd gaping hole in my life. I am afraid to be sucked into this hole. If it was a hole that contained a deep deep continuously hot bathtub with a neck pillow and a supply of paperback YA novels that I was allowed to get wet - that would be one thing. A bath is my fondest waking dream. We have two baths but both are shallowish and there is a drought so I make do with daily showers which are truly the best time of my day. I make AH perch in the steamy bathroom with me and just talk and talk and enjoy the hot water. Yes, showers are now entertainment. Please save me.

In other ongoing documentation of how my brain is screwed up, I offer this latest nugget of rationale and cheapness and self-denial that I seem to embody. For graduation, AH's parents gave me a gift card for Borders books, which was very nice. I tend to hang on to gift cards until something "very special" comes up eg forever. But I decided 6 months was enough, it was time to spend the thing. Pleasurable right? Shopping for books for yourself, guilt free? Ha. I had forgotten how much the card was for and the ink had gotten blurred at the bottom of my purse for so long but I finally determined it was $20. Slow rounds of the store followed- an illustrated Hans Christian Anderson? Maybe. I lingered over "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison, a cookbook I have long, long coveted but never found a reason to spend $40 on. I tried to rationalize to myself that the giftcard would make it half-price and I would use it often. But no, I put it away. I picked up the new Ann Patchett "Run" which seemed perfect, perfect - I love her, I want it, it would be good to read over Christmas. But it is hardback, argues my mind, and 5 dollars more than your card. You could wait for paperback. I put it back. And ended up at the 2 for 1 table, which just seemed so sensible, I guess. I got "My Life in France" by Julia Childs because I did love that book and "The Happy Hooker" crochet book because my knitting projects often ask for crochet to finish off the pattern and I suppose I ought to learn. Plus! Half price! So with my $20 accounted for, AH and I head to the cash register with a book he is purchasing for his Aunt. We hand over the gift card and a debit card to pay the remaining balance. Only there is no remaining balance. The gift card was for $50 and I just spent it on compromise books of practicality and a gift for his elderly aunt- instead of the cookbook I'd been coveting for so long or the luxurious longed for hardback by Ann Patchett. So in the car in the parking lot, under the spell of all sorts of hormonal weirdness, I cried and cried as AH looked on, bewildered and offering to go back and get the cookbook if it was so important, we could afford it. But that wasn't the point, I sniffled, the point was that I will thrift and cheapen and compromise even when it is a gift and I sometimes wonder why I can't treat myself a little better, every once in a while go for what I really want. And I wonder how much that tendency spills over from matters like gift cards to life choices.