-- चार हजार छह सौ पचास --

Last night was a night for me not to go to a movie, since Shobhit would be home for the evening, and so I watched several episodes of TV instead.

I walked home, and arrived at 5:23. Fed the cats real quick, and then put this week's Watchmen on my computer so I could get that watched before Shobhit got home. He got off work at 5:30, but with traffic, there was only a few minutes left of the episode by the time he was coming in the front door.

We made soft tacos for dinner, using sample small tortillas Scott gave me yesterday at work, and then rancho chili beans with chopped veggie hot dog in it; sautéed onions; leftover potato dish Shobhit made for Thanksgiving; grated cheese; and chopped brussels sprouts in lieu of shredded lettuce (this was my least favorite part). We watched this week's His Dark Materials on HBO Go while we ate.

Then we watched episode 4 of the Spanish teen high school murder mystery series Elite on Netflix. We had some ice cream while we watched that one.

I wound up sticking around for the episode of The Simpsons Shobhit then watched. We almost then watched an episode of Cheers, but I was tired and so I went to get ready for bed.

So that was my evening, in a nutshell!

-- चार हजार छह सौ पचास --

-- चार हजार छह सौ पचास --

Apparently one of my nieces has been cheated on by her husband. I won't say which one here, although any family members who might read this will certainly know who I'm talking about. (I only just now realized: all of my nieces are married. For now, anyway.) The only reason I know this is because said niece has shared several posts on Facebook about it. Such is one of the many dark sides of social media. I can empathize with the impulse to lash out when someone is experiencing crippling grief, but putting it on display on Facebook is probably never the greatest idea.

Also, I have no interest in villainizing anyone in this scenario. It may be true that in most cases—but not all!—having an affair is a dopey mistake at best, but I have just had way too much experience over the years with people close to me who were the ones who cheated, from a parent to one of my closest friends. And the tendency of everyone else in their lives to turn them into a pariah is, without fail, way out of proportion to the crime. I wish more people were capable of empathy in situations like this, for everyone involved, not just for one person. It may also be true that dishonesty is a far bigger betrayal than the act itself, but that does not mean that anyone else is blameless. It takes two to make a relationship work—and most importantly, keep working—always. Always, always.

I also actually know very little about which to make any real judgments either way, which is ironic considering I also think far too much about it is being discussed on Facebook. Fucking Facebook. I keep imagining what my parents' separation that lasted about a year in 2002 would have been like, if it happened ten years later. They truly had no idea at the time what kind of bullet they were actually dodging just by . . . well, just by being older, I guess. I shudder to think what kind of shit might have been flung back and forth about it on Facebook (and not even by my parents themselves, but by the other people in their lives). And the thing is, the objective truth is always at least slightly off center from the biased picture being painted by any single party. And that's at minimum; often the truth is wildly different from the picture being painted. That's all I can think about when I see these Facebook posts scrolling by.

-- चार हजार छह सौ पचास --

[posted 12:43 pm]