is it just me?

the guy across the hall is a real jerk. I mean, deep down I actually think he is a nice person, but on the surface he is a jerk. And has terrible social skills. However, I feel kind of bad for him for a variety of reasons, including the fact that his wife has cancer again. She had it years ago, it really REALLY almost killed her, and now it is back. One would think that this would be his singular focus, but it really isn't. He's here all the time, traveling tons for work. Not what I would do, but that is his business. However, I just overheard (and you do NOT have to be snoopy to overhear things around here, not at ALL) him calling to ask her what time her surgery was on a particular day. Because someone asked him to give a talk, and he wanted to know if he could fit it in. You can tell she is offering for him to not be there, or perhaps to reschedule, and to his credit he said that no, he would be there, but he did pause. I mean, it is a stupid talk and certainly not worth missing any surgery. And their relationship is clearly bizarre enough that 1) he would try to squeeze in a presentation on the day of her potentially life saving surgery and 2) that they would have an awkward conversation about it. And so, when I say I probably shouldn't work here too much longer before all of my social graces and ability to interact with society have completely disappeared, now you know what I mean.

As an example, my in-laws (well, one set of them - perhaps the worst part of divorce is that down the road your children will marry and inflict their spouse with not one but TWO sets of in-laws) came to visit. Mr. Lizard's father is self-employed an interacts mostly with children. His stepmother is also self employed and works as a social worker/counselor/whatever you call it, and interacts mostly with people who sound pretty unbalanced. They live together, kind of, though they live quite separate lives. Very separate, in fact. Anyway, after their visit we were discussing why they are so...unusual, and we decided that it is because they do not get enough social feedback. So they just sit there becoming weirder and weirder, with no real checks on the system. Which makes them think it is okay to come to your house, which has a lovely guestroom and well equipped kitchen, toting a fan, a spare comforter, a sleeping bag, several random bags of groceries, some lasagna that is supposed to be for dinner but is frozen solid, 98 tea bags, three suitcases and lots of dog hair. And they don't like to do normal things. Grandma wanted to take Baby Liz "on a field trip to the grocery store". Not the library, or the museum, or some other kid place. The grocery store. And Grandpa kind of just wanted to take a nap. They eat like wolves and pay little to no attention to what is going on around them. And we thought - let this be a lesson to us to never get too far removed from the world of manners and social consciousness. Because that really is the beginning of the end.