retail therapy

at the end of my first year as a professor, i have of late been experiencing some degree of rage centered on my being treated by some of my senior colleagues as though i am a troublesome child to be managed. (look, it's one thing to think that in private, and it's even one thing to accidentally act like that once, but when it happens more than once and by people who are known to be of like mind, it begins to take on the cast of a phenomenon, i.e., that's another thing altogether.)

so on a saturday after classes end, on a beautiful day, it would make sense that me and my pal B, nursing her own sores, would make for the Faraway Mall. me, loaded with MAC makeup returns and empties to cash in with their recycling program, B on the hunt for shoes and a dress. me, with the MAC makeup lady taking what i thought would be empties--6 of which get you a free lipstick--as full-on exchanges, and therefore worth a lot more, geeking out on the pink, the red, the lavender, the frost the powder and the cream. i felt like i had been to an orgy, only, as B said, "without the potential health repurcussions." B finding ideal shoes, very B, on sale plus with more discounted off because of a tiny nearly unnoticable flaw. great success!

i don't want to speak for B, but as a 3-year veteran of actual therapy, i can say that this trip did some real work. i even tested and tried to feel some of the rage i had been experiencing, and it had died down! oh, callow, shallow me.