hostility
One of these days, I'll learn. Maybe.
It only takes one person to diffuse a hostile exchange. It takes two to keep it going. It's so easy to forget that when you're pissed at someone else for being needlessly hostile. Like when I was sitting on the couch last night, Shobhit at the counter in the kitchen, and I accidentally hit the TiVo remote. It changed the channel, which I did not mean to do at all. And yet Shobhit immediately shouted at me: "Don't change it!" I looked up and his face was completely contorted in anger. Why? Because I had changed the channel. He looked like I had committed the most grievous wrong imaginable against him, which is, frankly, fundamentally pathetic.
But then, to be fair, so was my response. I wasn't even all that hostile initially. I simply told him I hadn't meant to do that, and asked what channel it had been on. He told me and I turned it back. The hostility emanating from him did not immediately dissipate, however, which really annoyed me. So I thought, fuck this, I'm not sitting out here in the living room with this shit. I grabbed my glass of wine (I actually drink some wines now, not even just dessert wines, I don't know what happened there), stood up and said in a fairly raised voice, "It was an accident, fuck you very much! Jesus Christ!" And then I marched out of the room as if I had won. Good plan, right? I'm not really sure what I won. In retrospect, it probably would have been better just to let Shobhit's own idiotic behavior speak for itself rather than attempting to fight fire with fire with me own idiocy.
But, whatever. I didn't stay angry for long. I just got onto my computer and opened Netflix to check out the latest comedy special they had offered. I had never heard of this Gad Elmaleh guy but I started the special -- and was immediately engaged by it. Turns out he's a Moroccon-born comedian super famous in his longtime home country of France, has spent most of his career doing comedy in French, and only recently embarked on a comedy tour of the U.S., where he is almost completely unknown. I certainly didn't know who he was. But that backstory made for an unusually fascinating comedy special, and set him apart from the parade of white guys who are featured in the majority of these specials. And this one actually was pretty funny -- I laughed consistently. A couple of times he used joke constructions actually rather overused by typical American comedians, which somehow worked better coming from him because of his unique perspective. He also talked a lot about the frustrations with inconsistent and irrational English grammar, which I suspected Shobhit would relate to. (A typical exchange when I correct his grammar, which last happened only a couple of days ago: He'll say, "English is stupid." Then I'll reply, "I'm not denying that.") But, Shobhit is not into standup comedy.
I had been so full from the truffle macaroni and cheese I had for lunch with Karen that I didn't even start getting hungry until that one-hour special was over. So then I went to the kitchen and made myself an omelet. I ate it in the living room and asked Shobhit if he wanted to watch some Roseanne, and he said okay. So then we watched probably five episodes from season three. We should really start coming up with other things to do besides just watching TV all evening. My life is becoming a mirror of what I used to feel real, intense contempt for my mother for doing when I was a teenager. All she did was watch TV. If I had a teenager now that kid would probably find me just as contemptible -- and lazy. Okay, maybe not quite as lazy. I do walk or bike to and from work, after all. All my mother ever did was walk to the kitchen. I win!
There I go, winning again. #winning
Anyway, I was back up to 150 lbs this morning, after being more than a pound lower yesterday. I blame the truffle macaroni and cheese! Which forced its own way down my throat, I swear! You should have been there, it was horrifying. I might actually have been lower still today had I stuck with the original idea of skipping dinner altogether. I probably could have done it; I wasn’t seriously hungry by the time I had that omelet, just a little hungry. But whatever. Who cares? There are more important things going on in the world.
Shobhit did get me out of bed when I was very nearly asleep at about 10:00 because Guru had puked a large amount by the front door, which was very, very annoying. I know I'm the one who has always done most of the tending to the cats, but Jesus Christ -- I had just gone to bed, and he was still up. He did apologize for that, I guess. And I learned later that Guru barfed again 45 minutes after that, and this time Shobhit did clean it up himself. So the evening wound up relatively egalitarian after all, at least when it came to feline vomit.
[posted 12:20 pm]