— चार हजार सात सौ तेरह —

I made a truly delicious dinner last night, and Shobhit threw his into the garbage.

The nuances of what happened are more complicated, mind you. As in, it's not quite as bad as that makes it sound, but . . . it was still plenty bad enough, and could have been avoided. Even though he was not observing any type of Hindu rituals whatsoever when we first met, in the past year or two he has started, for reasons he can never quite articulate, as even beyond that he remains pretty much wholly non-religious. But, apparently once every six months, he avoids eating eggs for ten days. He never announces this to me, though. I just know it has something to do with the anniversary of his father's death (in 1990), and after doing a bit of Googling, I think eggs are just one of the foods avoided for "strict vegetarianism" as part of a Hindu mourning period. I can't find anything online specific to ten days, or to death anniversaries rather than just funerals, but I do know from experience that Hindus sort of improvise a lot of this stuff. I think Shobhit might do this thing every six months because his mother, who actually is devout, does it.

It has never before been made explicitly clear to me, however, that this "egg fast" is directly tied to the anniversary of Shobhit's father's death, nor do I have an even remote recollection of the date his father died. Usually this makes no real difference to our lives; I have in the past suggested a certain thing for dinner that included eggs, and Shobhit has declined because he said he was not eating them for a certain period.

Yesterday, before he left for work, still concerned about his high blood pressure, he suggested maybe I make burgers again for dinner. I didn't really want a veggie burger two nights in a row, but when he also said, "Or just a sandwich," I latched onto that idea.

As is often the case, I made dinner for both of us before he was home for work, but ate mine as soon as it was ready. We have a packet of Field Roast Wild Mushroom Deli Slices Shobhit himself wanted to buy the last time we were shopping at PCC, which was unusual for him; I noticed them in the fridge when I was trying to decide what to make for dinner and decided they would be perfect. We also have some Costco "Everything Bagels" which I already discovered when making a different kind of sandwich for lunch yesterday are particularly delicious after being toasted.

And, I thought: egg! That would be great on this sandwich. I sautéed onions, and the Field Roast deli slices for a bit, and fried up a couple of eggs for each sandwich. After toasting the bagel, I added mayo and mustard, and sliced tomato. The soft-toasted everything-bagel sandwich with mayo and mustard with mushroom deli slices and onion and egg and tomato . . . it was truly out of this world. It was different from any other sandwich I had ever made and I loved it.

I was certain Shobhit would too, especially with the extra salt, pepper, and a large amount of cayenne pepper I added to his. I was pretty pleased with myself, having made a delicious sandwich I was sure my husband would be very pleased with.

So much for that. When he got home and saw the bagel sandwich waiting for him on a plate being stored in the microwave, he took a bite out of it before even reaching the couch, and then exclaimed, "It has egg on it! I'm not eating eggs." Then he immediately walked into the kitchen, opened the cabinet under the kitchen sink, and tossed the sandwich, with one single bite out of it, into the garbage can.

It was the most willfully inconsiderate, plain-asshole thing Shobhit has done in recent memory. He acted as though I should have known he wasn't eating eggs. How the fuck could I have known? "Have you seen me eating hard boiled eggs in the morning?" he asked. He never ate fucking hard boiled eggs every single morning. Jesus Christ.

I was infuriated, and I told him so. He had not five minutes earlier asked how my day had been; now I told him that was the worst thing to happen all week. I was in the middle of making chai on the stove as this happened, and Shobhit was already preparing himself a can of lentils in his own pot to eat with tortillas. The sandwich I had made for him would have been so much better than that.

Allowing for his, let's say, "ethnic customs" is one thing. But we've been together almost sixteen years now, and this was never a significant issue before. There is no reasonable expectation of my anticipating his refusal to eat eggs, for ten days, twice a year. I was very vocal in my anger over this behavior—he could have handled it way better than to literally give me a dirty look and then toss what I had made him into the fucking garbage.

And finally he said, "What do you want me to say?" He was clearly starting to feel bad. "I want you to say you're sorry!" I said. It took a minute, but he finally did. After a while, he said he was sorry so many times it got to be excessive. He even asked me at one point, "How long did you slave over it?" Okay, that question was unfair. I didn't slave over it, and it didn't take that long. But I did a damned good job, and even he acknowledged he probably would have loved it . . . if he were eating eggs. I guess in the future I'll be more mindful of making sure eggs are okay when making something he doesn't know I'm making. But, I don't want my saying that to suggest that I am taking all of the responsibility here either. His totally irrational "egg fasts" are fine, really, and something I can live with. But in a scenario like this, holy shit can he stand to be more empathetic and compassionate in his reactions. It's like he thinks he isn't even capable of it.

I debated whether to even write about this today. In the end, I decided I would, for purely selfish reasons. It gave me something unrelated to COVID-19 to write about. It was the most notable thing, maybe even the only notable thing, to happen all day. All week. It least it wasn't boring, right? A little drama.

— चार हजार सात सौ तेरह —

— चार हजार सात सौ तेरह —

We settled down to watch this week's Westworld once the chai was done and poured. The episode was slower than most, I'll admit, but I still liked it; Shobhit kept falling asleep. Once it was done, I came back to the bedroom to work on captioning Australia photos (I'm into the Kangaroo Island photos now) so he could get back to his news programs, which much more easily kept him awake.

What else is there for me to tell you, then? Pretty much nothing! That stupid bullshit with the egg sandwich last night took all of a few minutes but it's the only thing that gave me anything to write about. Sometimes I do wonder what it would be like if someone else in my life wrote about it in intricate detail every time I was a total asshole. I'd probably be into it, honestly. I'm just that narcissistic. Also, I might learn something about myself and how others perceive me. Of course, that's just an added benefit to being a narcissist.

Right now as I type this, the sun is out. I never went outside yesterday. I haven't and won't today either. One of these days I'll take another walk. Even though I still do my every-other-day regimen of push-ups and planks that I've been doing for many years, I'm still getting far less exercise than normal right now: no daily walks home from work, no walking half the distance to work in the mornings. My work station is literally, like, three feet away from my bed. Well, from Shobhit's side of the bed, so I suppose my work station is maybe six feet away from where I sleep. Either way, not exactly a long commute there. It's a longer walk from my bed to the bathroom.

The cats continue taking turns hopping into my lap at random intervals all day. Shanti has spent more time in my lap since I've worked from home than she ever did before. Even cats respond to routine, though, and I think she's just accepted this as part of both our current daily routine. It's both sweet and annoying: she's warm and soft and fluffy; I also have to reach around her to type, and she sheds even worse than Guru so I get white cat hairs all over my black keyboard.

Anyway. I expect on the whole today will be way better than yesterday. We have our family Zoom meeting at 5:00 this evening. It's been a while since I've so looked forward to something. Even though I reached out to people a lot more than usual the first week after our return from Australia, by and large since then I still haven’t spent that much time on video calls. Our next "Town Hall" meeting for office staff was just sent as an invite over Outlook from work this morning: it's set for Friday next week . . . over Zoom. With over 100 people who are office employees, that should be interesting. Usually we're provided lunch after those meetings. Should I ask about that during the meeting? "What's for lunch?" That'll be my contribution.

— चार हजार सात सौ तेरह —

[posted 12:36 pm]