Down in the dumps . . . (UPDATE)

I can't recall the last time I've had a day such as this. It's not that today has been a complete fucking disaster, but I've been in a pretty shitty mood since about the time I crawled out of bed this morning. I will admit that my wife has been rather accomodating: among other things, she cooked breakfast for me and has begrudgingly went to a birthday party that she assumed I was attending, but didn't. But despite her eventual attendance at said party, there has been more than a hint of bitterness emanating from her person. At this point in the day, I don't really give a shit. I think I've tried picking a fight with her at least twice today (which is really unusual for me), but she's managed to avoid it. Before she left for the party, though, there was a good deal of sniffling and slamming doors, providing me with a pleasant amount of self-righteous indignation.

I took the family unit to Half-Price Books today, but was in such a foul mood that I didn't buy anything. I kinda felt guilty buying more shit considering the fact that I already have in my possession hundreds of books which I have yet to begin. So since I was in a bad mood, I figured that going there and leaving empty-handed would further my self-inflicted sense of unhappiness. It worked. Or maybe it is simply because reading is not something I feel like doing right now, especially since I have more than enough on my plate at the moment. What I really want to do is go hang out at my buddy's place, where a varied collection of fraternity brothers are sure to be gorging themselves on alcoholic beverages.

Since I've gotten back home, I've had several attempts at starting the Hemingway paper, all of which have failed rather miserably. I read a couple more of his short stories hoping to find some other evidence of repressed femininity, but the first story I read this afternoon, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," tells about a woman threatened by her husband's new-found confidence. She kills him. Good times. I'm not real sure how that can work into this idea of "repressed femininity" because she was such a controlling bitch to begin with.

Rather surprisingly, the end of the semester has come. In certain ways, I am glad--it means I'm that much closer to finishing and moving on. In other ways, it seems like my life is bound to return to a level of boredom that tends to sap the life out of me. Sitting around the house for a month, reading random books, watching movies, drinking alone. Wow. That even sounds depressing. I may head to my mom's during the break, just to get away from home and my responsibilities here--maybe do some fishing and work on my sunburn.

So I guess I'll see T and E on Tuesday, and A-train and Goose on Monday and Thursday. Then it's back to . . . whatever it was I was doing before I started grad school. Perhaps now would be a good time to reassociate with all of my friends whom I've been disregarding over the last year. It's really weird that, despite my rather large circle of old friends, somehow my grad student homies have somehow managed to displace many of my older friends. But that's probably just because I spend such large quantities of time with these people. And I generally like them. That's not to say that I understand them (at all). Or perhaps what I'll really be missing is the litlang community as a whole, and these people are just a small representation of that. (As I'm writing this, I'm thinking that this sounds like a really bad ending to a really bad novel--a bit too sentimental, a bit too . . . well, I don't know. Gay?) Anyway, let me put the violins away and stop the sad piano music . . .

I think I'll fix another rum and oj and see how fucked up I can get before my wife gets home with the party favors.
********UPDATE 6:38 PM***********

My buddy called me back and there are countless people at the party, drinking and cavorting and other such frivolity. I'm faced with a dilemma:
My buddy wants me to come over and drink.
I want to go over there and drink.
My wife always tells me that she doesn't like me using her as (or her being) my excuse not to go do things with others that are fun.

So . . . the dilemma? Well, my wife doesn't really mean it. At least not in my opinion. Because time I spend with others is time that I should be spending with her--at least I think that's how it works. Plus, I've already pissed her off today. Plus, I told her I needed to stay home and write (which I haven't really been doing). So naturally, I've been writing frantically for the last 30 minutes or so, just to come up with something that says "See, I've been working really hard." For those of you that don't have to deal with spousal restrictions, I say to you "enjoy it while it lasts."

There's probably a 50 percent chance I'll be going somewhere to drink tonight. If that happens it'll be a very unhappy day here tomorrow. So then again, it always comes back to the age-old question of "What do you do?" I would like to just go and make myself happy and have fun, but there's certainly a risk-reward factor. Especially since I'll probably wind up crashing over there. Being that my wife doesn't go and do similar things, she has a tendency to balk whenever I want to go hang out. As a matter of fact, in the interest of fairness, I told her she should go out with a friend of hers and I would stay at home with the kids. She hasn't/isn't/won't. Despite the fact that I love my wife, things such as this have a tendency to beat me down.