a desperate longing to be over it
I feel like I'm creeping up on hitting a wall, getting more easily exasperated with everything about everyday living right now. I've had so much more patience with it than I might have expected, more than arguably a whole lot of other people have, for fully eleven months now. And now, I'm just fucking sick of everything. I want to go back to working in an office. I want to be able to take my cats to the vet and go inside with them. I want to have a reaction to the cats puking without it being a borderline meltdown.
That's kind of what happened this morning. I have learned to use the flashlight app on my phone as I walk through the entry hallway to our bedroom from the bed to the bathroom when I get up in the morning, just to make sure there's no cat puke to step in. That's what I did this morning, and there was none. But, Guru must have puked when I couldn't hear him as I had my podcast playing AirPods in my ears as I got ready, and halfway through that, Shobhit told me there was puke in the hallway. I was pretty irritated but not massively so; I just cleaned it up, shortly before I finished up with my hair.
I am also doing laundry. When I told Shobhit I would be doing laundry, at first he said, "Why?", a response that still baffles me. Uh, because the hamper is full? Because if I wait until this weekend I'll have to separate it into three loads instead of two? Also I knew he would add things to it from clothes he has all over the fucking condo. What I did not know was how much additional laundry that would be, and even then I barely managed to cram the darks into one single load.
And, as I was loading those clothes into the washing machine, Shobhit told me Shanti puked over by the food dishes. Jesus fucking Christ. This was where I kind of lost it, saying "Fuck. FUCK!" several times. Oh my god, I was so mad. Shanti isn't even the one with digestive problems. She's just a pig and semi-regularly eats too fast and so she barfs it back up.
I still had my podcast playing, and suddenly I noticed Shobhit standing near me. What the fuck did he want now? "What. What!" I said, reacting in, okay, not the best way. He just said, "It's gonna be okay." Never mind the fact that whenever Shobhit completely loses it (which happens easily more often), there's no rationalizing with him. It still effectively got me to shut up. I just didn't say any more, finished loading the laundry, and went to my work desk to start my work day.
In any event, I seem to be more susceptible to stress triggers lately. I'm so fucking over all of this. I want to say I don't know how much longer I can take this shit except I don't have any fucking choice in the matter.
The coming spring will perhaps offer some relief as, at least then, there will be more opportunity to spend time outdoors, and thus with more friends and family.
As for last night, I rode my bike, first to the lab at Buck Pavilion to get blood work done, and then to the office to swap out paperwork. It was nice and dry and not too terribly cold yesterday, so once I pumped my tired after four or five months of no use, I took a nice bike ride for the first time since probably October—I can't remember exactly. It was nice to get on it again, and I hope to get more in the habit from here on out so the bike rides with Dad in April and June aren't too exhausting. I balanced my phone against my bike pump set atop a package from the mail which itself was balanced atop a sort of post that's in the parking garage, to use the self timer and after four tries get a photo to post and mark the occasion. I got several compliments on that photo.
So anyway, it was after 6 p.m. when I got back home again, and I was just finishing making chai when Shobhit got home from work, with a bit of food from Saffron Grill for dinner. We ate while then watching his SAG Awards screener for the film Minari, which I really loved—second solid A of the year. Shobhit guessed around three quarters in that I would give it an A-minus, and I thought, perhaps. My appreciation for it keeps growing in retrospect, though, and I could find nothing really to criticize. It's not a flashy or exciting movie, but it's certainly a beautiful portrait of an immigrant American family, and I can find no flaw in it. It's very different from Nomadland aside from its subtextual portraiture of America, and a somewhat similarly gentle tone, but I think they make great companion pieces.
It was 7:00 before we started the movie, which was two hours long, and then I took another hour to write the review, after which time it was time for bed.
[posted 12:31 pm]