Next Birthday, a Centerfold (9/09/08 Tuesday)

I just barely survived Julie’s birthday with my mind, stomach, and dignity intact. Sleep the night preceding could hardly have been called that if not for the dreaming of sitting naked beside a path in a park that seemed to become more urban as I sat there, tour buses passing behind me so close I could hear a lady complaining (at me? I wondered) about an appalling sight. I woke with head and neck aches, likely from endless thrashing and general restiveness. By the time Julie came in that afternoon I’d overcome the aches and the concomitant sour mood to be the first to wish her a happy birthday, to which she responded with cheery gratitude. That was where my day peaked. The Roxy Music quote on her card apparently fell flat–or she didn’t actually read it–and so I was just someone who didn’t sign her card.

I tried looking ahead on the schedule, but Tammy apparently decided that this would be the first week ever in which she doled out the schedules a day at a time. The only sure thing about tomorrow is that Julie and I will work opposite shifts again, making it unlikely–wait, impossible–that we’ll have a mutual desk hour. I just remembered that she’ll be leaving for Gayton at two and stay till four, after which she’s not likely to come back for an hour’s work. I get in at twelve-thirty, she goes to lunch at one, and I don’t see her the rest of the day.

Hinckley asked me if my "resolve was still strong." I didn’t hesitate to answer in the affirmative, though my less-than-emphatic delivery could not have been but so convincing.