Looking for the line

2006-02-03 - 6:52 p.m.

It's hard to describe how I'm feeling right now. I mean, about Lolo. I guess I'm feeling unsatisfied and a bit lonely. I know it's not really his fault. He's been training on MS3 all week so he's been stressed and tired and pretty much has not had time for me. I understand this. But it doesn't make me feel much better about it. The worst part, really, is that I don't know the best way to respond to this. Should I just step back and let him have his space? Since he doesn't have time for me perhaps me trying to get his attention is just annoying him. I don't want to be clingy. But if I step back, will he think I don't care and that I'm not being supportive? I don't know where the balance is. I don't know where the line is between meddlesome and supportive. I can't tell which side of it I was on this week. But I know it wasn't making me happy. And I don't know how it was making him feel.

We do have plans together for tomorrow, though, thank goodness. In the morning we're planning on going hiking, but I'm not sure the weather is going to be good enough for it. It's supposed to be rainy with wind gusts over 70mph. Doesn't sound ideal, does it? We're supposed to go with Buzz and the same guy that went with us up Mt. Si last time. If the weather's too bad, I'm sure we'll call it off. And then in the evening it's just the two of us. I can't wait.

Apparently Buzz has been trying to get Lolo to ask me out for some time now. During lunch today Buzz asked Lolo if Lolo'd asked me out yet so Lolo went ahead and told him the truth about us. We've pretty much decided that we aren't going to make any announcements about the two of us at this point, but we aren't going to lie about us either. So now Buzz knows. The funny thing is that I worked with Buzz all day today and he never mentioned it. Anyway, now we're up to a total of 3 people at work that we've told.

Blanche has been training Lolo on MS3 for the past couple of days. I'm going to be training him next week, so after work today I asked Blanche if there was anything she thought I should focus on while training him, if he had any weak spots. She said, "Oh, he's excellent!" then she pulled me aside and whispered, "He's really shy though, so you might have to work pretty hard to get him to talk." I had such a hard time not cracking up about that. But I think it's fantastic that she described him as "excellent." When I first started working here Blanche told me that I was "doing much better than the other recent new hire pharmacist and all the other pharmacists are happy about that." The other recent new hire pharmacist was Lolo. That plus the way she talks to him and treats him have led me to conclude that she really doesn't like or respect him very much. She's the only person I've ever noticed this attitude from, but now that she's worked with him and deemed him "excellent" hopefully her attitude will change. I'm so happy about this.

I had Wednesday off so I went for a hike up the Boulder River by myself. It was raining, but it's been raining forever and I felt like I really needed to get away. I wore rain gear and waterproof socks and managed to stay relatively dry. I was damp and chilly but never wet and cold, so it was ok. There was so much water in the river and in the falls that it was absolutely gorgeous. I'm not sure the hike would've been worthwhile in drier conditions. But at one point the trail had turned into a large pond so I was attempting to go around it. I tried to go up a small but muddy slope but ended up slipping and landing flat on my front on this hill. It wouldn't have hurt at all, except on the way down I hit a very thorny branch with my nose. It felt like I had probably scraped a big gash in my nose, but there was no blood or anything so I just carried on. When I got home I looked in the mirror and saw a whole bunch of thorns sticking out of my nose! I removed a total of twelve thorns from my nose and now my nose is covered in red dots. Lovely.

The only other thing of note that's been going on really is that I'm getting back into the swing of things running-wise. I've run every day this week except Wednesday when I went hiking instead. And I've felt good doing it, too. Last time I tried to start running again I was feeling awful about it. Also, the sun is up late enough nowadays that if I get off work at 3:30 and don't dawdle, I can make it around the lake twice before it gets too dark to run. It makes it feel so much more worthwhile to run 6 miles than to run 3.