I've actually gone a couple of nights without crying myself to sleep. I don't know why. Maybe it's talking on this board. I don't know.

Maybe it's the harder exercise. A guy from the building was down there with me and my husband. (Usually no one else comes in when we are there.) But he's a nice guy, so we stayed. He said, "You're benching that? I wondered who was." And then he said directly to me (cuz my husband and me were benching the same weight) when I was doing shoulder presses and other stuff, "You're strong!" I said thank you. It felt good. (I am not a jock and have always been mocked for my appearance. This is the first time I got a nice comment instead of some insult or leer on the street.) I was pushing pretty hard in the gym that day. Muscle burns fat and causes endorphins. That's an AD I can go for.

And maybe it's partly because my prof who got me crying a couple weeks ago, yesterday AGAIN asked how I am doing now. Usually after I cry no one follows up. This prof seems different from most people. Although I wish I could just be professional and not cry, I can't always hold back the truth. See, the profs are about my age. I'm just an undergrad. Sometimes the comparison reminds me of hurts, because they went and found something worth doing 30 years ago, and made a life from it. Darn, now I'm crying a lot again. It's a great sense of lost opportunity. And I'm trying to do something meaningful now. This prof studies the kind of thing that I have been most curious about, and it's complicated stuff I am just starting to get into.

And while writing this I got a phone call: My husband got an NSERC research assistantship. This is an honour and an indication of high quality abilities . I was hoping to get one one day. I used to be more accomplished than my husband, but lately he's surpassed me despite being younger than me, and that means the relative failure comparison hits me at home sometimes too. Right now I'm deleriously happy about the NSERC, but days later I may feel sometime not so great for a while.