Yesterday and this morning

I spent most of yesterday on the beach with a good friend, doing a lot of walking, a bit of eating (my appetite seems to have mostly recovered), and a bit of hat-buying (since I stupidly forgot to bring one and even 30 sunblock isn't going to keep my glow-in-the-dark skin from burning after a while). Then I bought a couple of books on cat maintenance and had dinner out with more friends, followed by drinks at a friend's house. More food, wine, and exercise than I'm used to are making me feel a bit groggy and stomach-achey this morning. But I think I had fewer nightmares, and I definitely slept longer.

Not ready for needy students today, though. My eagerness to help them through every possible existential crisis brought on by this assignment is starting to wane: some of these kids have come to see me five times in the past week.

UPDATE: I should add that one of the things which helped me cheer up a bit yesterday was, weirdly enough, the sight of a troupe of mimes doing a flag-waving routine to Lee Greenwood's "Proud to Be an American" at the beach. This was true not only because tacky, kitschy bizarreness has a tendency to make me deeply happy in ways I can't explain, but also because I walked away feeling as though my life at least wasn't nearly that absurd.