Twenty two on the books

Twenty two on the books this week. Dale keeps calling it a healthy caseload, which is a phrase invented by somebody who does not carry one. I did the arithmetic in the car tonight, which is apparently where I do arithmetic now. Twenty two hours in the room is not twenty two hours of work. There is the writing up, there is the forty minutes before the hard one where I am already in it, and there is whatever happens in my body for the rest of the evening after the four o'clock. Got home at seven and sat in the driveway for eleven minutes. Not upset. I was not crying or anything dramatic. I just was not ready to be a person who talks yet, and the inside of the car is the only place all day where nobody needs a response from me. Danny had made the thing with the peppers. He is very good about the car thing. He has never once asked me why I do it or stood at the window, and I have never told him I appreciate that, because saying it out loud would make it a thing we do rather than a thing he quietly allows. Biscuit has learned the sound of the handbrake and starts up before I am out of the car, so there is a dog losing his mind at the window for the entire eleven minutes, which somewhat undercuts the solemnity of the whole arrangement.

I would say I was fine, obviously. And then I would be annoyed that he accepted it, which is not a reasonable position to hold. I think the honest answer is that I need the eleven minutes and I do not want to have to defend them. If it became a conversation it would become a thing he worries about, and then I would be managing his worry about my eleven minutes on top of everything else I already carried home. So the current arrangement is better. It is just also a bit lonely, and I am aware that I built it.