Speaking of the finger. It is definitely feeling better. However, I cannot bring myself to remove the splint and look at that nail. The very thought of it falling off, which it almost certainly will, is freaking the everloving shit out of me. Yuck! I couldn�t get in to see my doc this week because I waited to long to make the call, forgetting too that he doesn�t see patients on Friday afternoons. I see him on Monday. I do hope everything was situated in there okay and that I�m not going to have a wild crooked pinky. I have seen so many fucked up fingers this last week. All with the same message: wear that splint for as long as the mds say so! Roger that. I�ve encountered 3 people that didn�t bother with splints at all. One didn�t even see a doctor! Jesus.

So we went to a thing last night. It was a lot of fun and I�m glad we scored an invite. I don�t know if we�ll ever mingle socially with that group again but we liked them a lot. O and I always feel so uncertain of our social skills, especially around new people. I�ve recently discovered that I�m incredibly insensitive and most people are very sensitive so I almost always manage to say something inappropriate. I think I was pretty good last night and then around the end of the evening I uttered something about an Obama/Rice matchup and/or ticket. In retrospect, this was probably unwise. But we�d just had a lengthy discussion about race and gender. I was tired. I have a broken finger for crissake!

Well O didn�t fair much better. He said some silly stuff when he thought that the president of the college, yes my college, and yes I�ll come back to that, was in the actual film, the rocky horror picture show. He was not. Rather, he was filmed so the showing on campus last night could include a film clip of him in their production. In O�s defense, that could get confusing and he only pieced it together when we got home. I told him that when he mentioned it to me, O that is, I didn�t get the sense that he meant the actual movie. But O said he may have gushed a little about seeing it dozens of times (still okay) and that the president looked familiar (kiss of death). Heh. Oh well.

Right so I�m not sure what to make of this whole social experience. AT is a colleague of mine in a different department. But our research areas are reasonably close, at least in terms of other people at the college. I traveled to St. Paul with her in July to attend a workshop and she�s seriously great and we have some interesting similarities in our backgrounds. She also happens to have a 3 year old, and I didn�t even realize this until July. She has an 11 year old too and that girl is going to be our #1 babysitter soon. She can and does drink beer at a fitting pace. A match made in heaven, right? Well as is always the problem for the newcomers, she�s been in the area for a decade and has a rich and elaborate social network. I find this intimidating, especially with our newly minted lack of social self-confidence.

Nonetheless, I bravely emailed her just before the semester started and invited her and her kids, the young one in particular, to come over. My version of a playdate: let�s drink beer in the backyard while the kids play. And I gave her suitable out ammo but she didn�t use it and thought it was a great idea and came over a few days later! She brought both kids, and then got her husband to join us. And then we were ordering pizza. We made a whole night of it and it was a lot of fun.

She recently asked me to if I wanted to be on a list for this dinner group that meets once a month to cook shit up and eat and be social. O and I said yes (hell yes!!) and we have that next weekend. It looks really fun and there�s a lot of different college folks involved. We�ll probably get a babysitter for that.

Then we had a lice incident. None here, thankfully, but they had some of there and so AT�s husband called, ET (heh ET) to tell us to have an eye and all that. Boy that�s got to suck making those calls, huh? Then a few days later he calls again and it was kind of a confusing call for me. We kept talking and the same time and he was hard to hear. But it sounded like he was inviting us to their kid�s birthday party except it was �at a pool� and it was someone else�s birthday too. I saw AT a few days later it was somewhat clearer. It was a get together at a friend�s house. It was his birthday too and they were going to bring a few presents and cake for WM (their 3 year old, he turned 3 yesterday). They were inviting us because their wasn�t going to be any other kids there and thought of us. Notte that O and I have discussed that this could be an in. Heh.

Now I had heard from folks in my department, notably my chair, that AT was well connected and in fact quite friendly with the president�s girlfriend. I had made several jokes to O about the president showing up. I was still very shocked when he walked in the door. His girlfriend is amazing too. Wow. It�s so funny to find these fabulous and interesting people in such a small town in the middle of Maine. I guess colleges can do that. Unfortunately, and sadly, I think O and I probably fall more into the �locals� category. I�m not sure I�m ready or qualified to be traveling in the same social circles as the freaking president.

In any case, I have more to dwell on and clarify. But it�s time to head over to gymnastics! I�ve been trying to coach LC a little all week to pay attention to her teachers and to familiarize her with the activities that she seemed uncertain about. It was such a busy week for me I didn�t do as much as I�d like to. We did meet a guy that runs a dance studio last night, go figure. O talked to him but O and I haven�t talked about it yet so I don�t know if they have kids classes. He was trying to get everyone into some ballroom and, I shit you not, I may just be into that.

More soon!