I’m really not this weird. Oh, wait. Yes, I am.

In my department at work, we’ve recently had an influx of new hires.

It’s not that we created any new positions, per se. It’s just that a bunch of people left for various reasons and we have a whole new crew of new people. I’ve gotten to know a few of the new people fairly well, but some of them I just haven’t had much interaction with since we don’t work on the same products and our offices are kind of far away from each other.

One new girl, we’ll call her A., seems like a really great person. She works hard, does job work, and is friendly and always has a smile on her face. We don’t work on the same products and she’s a graphic designer, so our interaction has been fairly limited since she joined our department. I think she’s fairly awesome. . .

but everytime we actually have interaction, I’m doing something really weird.

The first extended interaction we had came at a department meeting when we had to do a group activity. And I had taken a Zyrtec the night before and I was WAY out of it. Zyrtec, for some reason, really throws me for a loop. I was spacey and tired and could not concentrate. I confessed this at the table, begged them not to make me the table spokesperson when we had to talk, and had some good laughs with A. about it. At one point, she even thought I had fallen asleep. (I had not, but I had gotten inordinately and inexplicably interested in the individual strands of my hair. I can’t explain it. My brain was WEIRD that day.)

Anyway, since then, I’ve felt a little bad that our first extended interaction involved me having a Zyrtec hangover.

Then, yesterday, I ran into her in the bathroom and once again, I was doing something weird. A few minutes before I went into the bathroom, a coworker walked into my office, looked at me, and said, “Have you been using a red marker?” I had and said so and she informed me that I had red ink on my nose. (Don’t even ask how THAT happened.)

So I went into the bathroom and started trying to get the red ink off my nose. That’s when A. walked out of the stalls and over to the sinks where I was. Not wanting to just leave the weird situation for her to interpret, I mumbled something about having red ink on my nose. Then I had to explain why and how and I felt really silly.

Basically, every time I have an interaction with A. I’m doing something weird. Which makes me wonder how weird she thinks I am. . .

and I’m pretty sure that whatever degree of weirdness she has assigned to me, she’s right.