This is my 700th post.

1. The Panicked Paradox of Day-to-Day

I just realized today that out of the 128 hours in each week not spent at work, I spend an average of 120 hours alone, unless I'm talking on the phone to people who all live at least 500 miles away.

How did this happen? Two years ago I had a large social group, and I did so much with other people that the weekend mornings I spent by myself came as a light-hearted sigh of relief.

It was a gradual process from general satisfaction to complete isolation. When I was forced from my job at the Center, I was also forced to realize that a number of people I had thought of as friends were, in fact, not friends at all, which diminished some of my social time. Moving to Michigan was the other significant matador of my life spent in the company of others. My church here is populated predominantly by senior citizens, and in the year that I've lived in the small town where I work, I have made a large circle of people who smile at me, but none with whom I can hang out.

Rrrrrrgh. Okay. In three weeks I will have a new home and (hopefully) internet access, where I can start looking for social groups, activist groups, whatever -- something to get me out of my own skin and into others' lives. This is ridiculous.

From there? I have no idea. But something's gotta give, and fast. This hermitage is stupid and I'm sick of it.

2. What's up with Sunday?

I like to do my grocery shopping on Sunday, cook myself up a big traditional Sunday dinner, clean house while it simmers/bakes/slow cooks, listen to fun music.

The problem with being out and about on Sunday is the fact that on this one day of the week, everyone abandons all reason, intelligence, courtesy, decency and human kindness and goes about his or her business in stupid jerkhood.

I have never in my life witnessed anything like it. In the grocery store today, people pushed their carts like maniacs, cutting across others' paths and almost running down other shoppers; others left their carts standing in the middle of the crowded aisle to linger next to something that caught their eye, forcing traffic around them like water parting around a rock; still others ambled along so slowly you expected to see drool dampening their clothing when you finally got an opportunity to pass them. I saw far more glares than smiles; the only other expression was a blank focused zombie-ism that tuned out everything but that person's rush and self-importance.

That's just in the store. On the road you have people refusing to let others in, deliberately cutting others off, driving 15 mph below any given speed limit, roaring up and riding bumpers, coming to sudden and complete stops before turning right without a signal, or coming to a sudden and complete stop, starting to turn right, then changing their minds and shambling back into traffic almost causing accidents.

I had decided to walk from my house to the office to get some exercise and work out my agitation before I settled down to put some words out into the ether so as not to feel as desolately trapped in a hideous little house with only a cat for company and only my mom to talk to, but I got only a hundred yards down the road that leads the two miles into town before I realized it was far too dangerous and had to turn back -- the shoulder was narrow, and absolutely NONE of the oncoming traffic, driving 50-60 mph, eased over even a little bit toward the center so as to avoid hitting me. One van whizzing past threw a rock at me that fortunately only hit my arm, which still bears the welt. I'm just glad it wasn't, say, my face.

And none of this covers the rudeness and stinginess I have often witnessed from customers in restaurants.

The great thing about all this? It starts at around noon, with the after-church crowd.

I've made it my mission on Sundays to be pleasant to everyone I run into, and polite where others are rude (I don't always succeed at this, and unfortunately spending so much time by myself has gotten me into the habit of talking out loud, so sometimes people hear what I'm actually thinking, which is never good), so as to remind people, Hello, LORD'S DAY, where's the brotherly love here? I try to drive patiently, and not use my horn unless someone's Sunday Idiocy leads him or her to do something dangerous. When I see a shopper coming in a rush along a collision course with me, I slow down, smile, and let him or her go.

I've managed to make a few people crack smiles back, and I can see the sudden realization in their faces that they aren't alone. It's like we walk out the church doors and people aren't really people until we get home. What gives? When we zip around blindly we deny others' humanity, we're horrible representatives of Christ, and we piss people off.

Yup, the Sunday Mission. To be pleasant and thoughtful and considerate. It's hard.