— पांच हजार छह सौ इक्कीस —
Sheesh, having taken Monday off unexpectedly has sure fucked up my week. I am backlogged on more things than I can count.
I have mentioned this to a couple of people this week: I am a
planner. This is why, even though I had all sorts of things I
could have been doing at home with Guru all day on Monday, I could not take any more than just that one day off—in spite of both Gabby and Noah telling me to "take all the time" I need. I spend a lot of that day not knowing what to do with myself, simply because I had nothing outside of work planned for that day. I usually have any given day planned many days, if not weeks, in advance.
The flip side is this: I had not planned for the sudden lack of a day to get work done. Somewhat ironically, I feel more behind now, as a result of an
unplanned day off, at work than I did after returning from my week off for my Birth Week. But when I have planned time off, I can adjust my work load schedule. I did not do that for this week, and there's a lot going on at work this week.
None of it is more important than the death of a beloved pet, of course. Hell, none of it is important than my life outside of work, period. I mean, it
is important to be making a living I guess, so there's that.
Guru has been entirely unaffected by the abscence of Shanti. He truly could not be bothered to give half a shit. Also: we are seeing immediate improvements, actually, in Guru's behavior and apparent well being. I don't know how true this is, but Shobhit is convinced Guru likes things to be clean. He yowls as though in deep discomfort if there's so much as a hair floating in his water dish, which gets refreshed frequently as a result.
And over the past month or so, Shanti was getting
really messy with her eating. She was getting food all over the carpet around the food dishes, and also all over the wall above it. I spent some time cleaning it all up on Monday. I was never fully sure whether it was one or both of them making that mess, but it seems pretty clear it was only Shanti: Guru has not been making a mess since Monday at all. This is actually resulting in him eating more again, in Shobhit's opinion because his eating area is cleaner again (which may be true, I'm not sure), and may actually result in him gaining a bit of weight again. Even Guru was getting pretty lean at 7.5 lbs. If he could get back up to 8 or 9 lbs we'd be more comfortable with Guru's weight.
For Shobhit's part, somewhat surprisingly, he never reacted to Shanti's passing the way I did. He spent a lot of time consoling me after the shock and horror of how I found her on Sunday, but also took the time he needed with her at the Timberline vet hospital Sunday night, with her body. Shobhit has commented more than once that he hasn't cried yet, suggesting he still might, but I sort of don't expect that anymore. Shobhit really did spent time kind of saying goodbye to Shanti over the course of last week, as we both knew it was basically the end for her. Given that he wasn't home when Shanti was found, Shobhit was just definitively more prepared with everything he had to deal with than I was for what I dealt with.
I couldn't even bring myself to put Shanti's body in a box—Alexia did that for me. I will forever be grateful for that. And then, of course, at Timberline Shanti's body was taken back out of the box at Shobhit's request. I forgot to mention in Sunday night's post that the guy who spoke to us about being in that room with her, and how he told us we could take all the time we needed, there was no time limit. "We had one person stay with his pet fot 16 hours," he said. Jesus Christ. I don't think we were there any more than an hour.
I have such a definitive view of life and death, for me, there is no comfort in spending time with a lifeless body. Once Shanti died, when her body just stopped working, that wasn't her anymore. Shanti was over, gone, no more. The body was just what housed her, and she left, into the void.
— पांच हजार छह सौ इक्कीस —
— पांच हजार छह सौ इक्कीस —
As for last night, having discovered yesterday that
Dune Part Two was already on Max, that's what I spent basically the entire evening doing: watching that movie. I had really hoped to get to a theater for my fourth time seeing that movie, but it's currently only playing at Regal, not at AMC—Shobhit discovered two Regal tickets still on our bookcase, which I clearly forgot about months ago. I thought maybe I would use those to go see the movie again this weekend, but in the end I couldn't bring myself to do that when I could just watch the movie at home. The Regal tickets will be better served on the rare occasions that something I want to see plays there but not at AMC, something I haven't already seen and isn't already streaming.
I will say, there's a difference in the effect between watching
Dune Part Two in a movie theater and watching at home—the very large screen TV we now have as a hand-me-down from Alexia notwithstanding. That doesn't mean I didn't still love the movie, because
I absolutely did. I love that movie so much every time I see it, Austin Butler's Feyd-Rautha is actually starting to look hot to me. (Every time someone does something power-crazy or violent, the movie cuts to him looking like he's about to cream his jeans, and that's . . . kinda hot. I texted exactly that to Gabriel and he responded,
Psycho...)
Anyway. Going forward I will always watch
Dune Part One and
Dune Part Two back to back, and intend to do a double feature as such with Laney later this summer. But, my OCD proclivity had me wanting to see
Part Two one more time so I will have seen both of them the same number of times before I watch them back to back.
Shobhit worked an evening shift last night, got home around 9:30. This means he was home with Guru while I was at work, then in the evening the other way around. Shobhit's still worried about Guru getting lonely when we travel, but I think he'll be okay. I am certain he never paid any attention to Shanti when we left them home together anyway. God knows he paid no attention when Shanti died.
— पांच हजार छह सौ इक्कीस —
[posted 12:32 pm]
