— पांच हजार छह सौ सैंतीस —
What a nuts morning I've had. I got here at 7:30, and had answered 35 emails by 10:30. That three hours, and especially the first two and a half hours, dealing with email was all I was able to do, getting new item information, immediate batching not-in-file skus for stores, running overrides for brokers needing to submit promotions past deadline, following up with vendors, and more.
And I left work an hour early Friday afternoon to give more time to prep for Gabby and Nick's arrival for dinner. I knew even then that I had a lot of work to get done yet, but nearly everyone else in the office was also gone, I had stuff to get done at home as well, so I thought:
Fuck this, I'm leaving. I'll deal with my work load on Monday! I had no idea that I'd have three hours of new work before I could even get to the lot of other work I still need to get to this week.
At least I don't have any fucking meetings today. That feels like a miracle. Maybe there is a God after all! Hahahaha no there isn't.
Anyway! Back to Friday: having Gabby and Nick over for dinner went fantastically. I helped Shobhit
fry the samosas in the hour or so before they arrived. We made 13 of them. I ate one on Friday; I think Shobhit also had one. I took four to share with Laney at the Fremont Solstice Parade on Saturday, and I want to say Gabby and Nick took four as part of the leftovers they took home Friday evening. That would mean Gabby and Nick ate three between the two of them at dinner Friday. They were as impressed with the samosas as expected. "You're right," Gabby said. "These are the best samosas I've ever had."
I totally forgot that, back when Gabby worked for Starbucks, she actually spent a month in Mumbai, training baristas for new stores they opened there. Of all the people I know, she would actually have the highest probability for whom Shobhit's samosas perhaps were
not the best she ever had—I tend to say that to people with confidence, under the assumption that the only other samosas they could possibly have ever eaten were from Indian restaurants in the U.S. But, apparently, I was still right.
Samosas, comically, are considered a "snack." They are packed with spiced potato filling so they are . . . well, very filling. Nevertheless, we had the samosas inside a basket on the coffee table in the living room. Gabby and Nick arrived right on time at 6:30, and within minutes we were sitting in the living room snacking on those things.
Beyond that, Shobhit made
five main dishes: Shahi Paneer (my favorite); eggplant squash (my second favorite); garbanzo beans (this round arguably even better than the eggplant); a potato and bell pepper dish; and the only one I wouldn't touch, an okra dish. Gabby and Nick had some of all of them.
That's not to mention the rice, or the yogurt with cucumber in it, or the aloo parathas. I really stressed to Shobhit that Gabby is nuts for potatoes—at a previous job they actually threw a baked potato party for her—which was why Shobhit made three things that were potato related: the samosas, the potato & peppers dish, and the aloo parathas.
Aloo means
potato in Hindi, so they are just paratha flatbreads made with potato inside of them. They were, of course, delicious.
We also opened a couple of bottles of wine over the course of the evening, and I made a pitcher of very refreshing cucumber water. We still have some of that leftover; I quite like it.
Between the samosas and first glasses of wine, and sitting at the table for dinner, we have them the Grand Tour of the Braeburn Condominiums complex. It's been a while since I've done this, but still I've done it so many times that I have the route down pat: I take the guests over to the top of the West Building, work our way down through terraces that exist on the fifth (top), fourth
and third floors of that building; down to the second floor common areas with the printer and wifi and pool table and packages room (previously art studio); over to the gym on the first floor of the East Building where Shobhit and I live on the fourth floor; to the 2nd floor terrace you walk through to the compost, gargage and recycling; and on up to the two terraces on the seventh (top) floor of the East Building, ending with the "Sun Terrace," my favorite of the two, on the southwest corner of the building, with the best panoramic view of the Seattle skyline. That was where we took the group selfie you see at the top of this post.
Shobhit also made a banana custard for dessert, which we ate along with slices of the
homemade carrot cake Nick apparently baked that very day. He was unsatisfied with it, felt the cake was too dry and they are still acclimating to the apparently odd calibration of the oven in their new apartment in Edmonds. The rest of us thought it was delicious. They left the cake with us and we finished it last night.
They were at our place for a solid three hours I'd say, and they both remarked multiple times how good the food was, and multiple times they thanked us for having us. They talked about having us over at their place for dinner sometime, which I would be delighted to do. Gabby said they are usually the ones hosting dinners and are not used to being dinner guests. The whole evening was quite lovely though, even when the conversation turned to Shobhit's soured attitude about finding a fulfilling career path.
Shobhit spent about two days prepping for that dinner, and he did a lot more of the work than usual due to us not being at home the same time in the evenings until Friday. I did a fair amount of the last minute stuff before they arrived on Friday, particularly a bit of housework, including vacuuming the condo. We still have lots of leftovers, particularly the Shahi Panner so that's basically all I've been eating, even though I'd have loved to have more of the garbanzo bean dish as well. I think Shobhit may have finished that one already.
— पांच हजार छह सौ सैंतीस —
— पांच हजार छह सौ सैंतीस —
I
already posted about the Fremot Solstice Parade, which I went to with Laney, so that really only leaves yesterday: which I spent with Laney as well.
We decided we want to go see
A Quiet Place Day One later this month, and while she saw them both, I had never seen
A Quiet Place or
A Quiet Place Part II, so that was the double feature we watched yesterday. Conveniently, Part II picks up right where the first one left off (we just ignore how much older the kids, portrayed by the same actors, look: production was two years later but in the narrative it's literally the same day).
Complicating our plans here, which we mostly still stuck with, was Guru's seemingly quick decline over the weekend. I'll do a bit of a spoiler alert and say he actually has markedly improved since yesterday afternoon, so at the moment things are looking better than I feared. But, Guru was spending so much time lying under the bed in our bedroom, eyes wide and looking frightened, plus we weighed him on Saturday and he was down to 6.6 lbs—he was at 7.2 lbs when we weighed him around the time of Shanti's death last month—it was getting worrisone. He's visibly thin, and I saw him even staggering slightly when trying to walk.
I made a vet appointment for him at City Cat Vet Hospital yesterday morning, for 9 a.m. today. I genuinely thought we were going to have to consider euthanizing him.
And believe me, this is not something I take lightly. But Shobhit is actively making that decision worse, because he wants to do the same thing we did with Shanti, where we just ride it out until he dies of natural causes at home when it's time. Shobhit refuses to see how inhumane this is to the animal, insisting that it's actually better for them. It drives me crazy that Shobhit has no respect for the lifetime of experience I have with pet ownership, or even what veterinary professionals literally tell him about how animals don't think the same way humans do. It's really making me think about Shobhit's and my very future together, because it's like he wants to exert this control over the fate of our pets even when it's clearly not what's best for them, and I am left feeling powerless.
In the end, it all became moot, at least temporarily: I booked that appointment, and then got an email indicating I would need to reschedule. Our vet has covid! Oh for fuck's sake.
Mark, the Veterinary Assistant there, exchanged a couple of emails with me about this, and asked for Guru's symptoms to see whether he would need to refer us to an emergency clinic. I sent them to him, including the fact that Guru meows incessantly in the middle of a room at nothing, and fairly regularly will seem disoriented or confused, particularly over the weekend. Laney has said more than once that it sounds like he's getting a form of kitty dementia, and I think she may be right.
Even if we'd kept the appointment today, though, I wanted to get a vet assessment of him before we made any decision. Shobhit is wildly resistant to euthanizing him under any circumstance and he needs to be disabused of that idea as a conviction.
Anyway, Shobhit worked yesterday from 8:30 to 1:00, and when he suggested Laney and I watch our movies up in the condo so Guru would have company, I compromised and we did go upstairs to watch the first movie. Guru usually comes out to greet even guest visitors—he did with Gabby and Nick
on Friday—but this time, he stayed under the bed. I actually pulled him out, and tried to being him to the couch with me during the movie. He left and went back under the bed again. All of this made me feel just more dispirited about his condition.
Laney and I went back downstairs to watch the second movie. We had shifted the start time back from noon to 11 a.m. because Shobhit and I thought at first that we would be going to Costco afterward and they close at 6:00 on Sundays. I did not realize the movies were 90 minutes and 97 minutes respectively, so I really did not need a solid 5 hours reserved at the Braeburn Condos theater—in the end, we were done before it was even 3:00 in the afternoon. I was back up in the condo again before Shobhit got home.
And by this time, it was almost as though Guru had seen my email to the vet and decided,
I'm not ready, I better rally! When I returned to the condo this time, he actually came out to greet me at the door. And although he had been eating less previously, he ate about 3/4 of the breakfast he'd been given, and as of this morning he'd eaten nearly all of the dinner I gave him last night. As of this morning he's acting a lot more like his old self again, alhough he is still having bouts of incessant meowing. So I don't know if he just had some kind of temporary sickness over the weekend, or if he's just having an "up" period now in the midst of ups and downs of his last days.
I rescheduled his vet appointment for Wednesday next week, and for now I'm keeping it. When I thought this might be the end for Guru, I told Laney to assume we'd have to cancel the Happy Hour plans we had for after work today. But since Guru is visibly improved as of today, the Happy Hour is back on again—Shobhit has today off of work and is spending the day with Guru.
It seems likely Guru's days are still numbered—he and Shanti were litter mates, after all; same age and same genetics—but evidently it's not his time just yet. My primary concern is just not to go through what happened with Shanti a second time, something Shobhit is actively refusing to consider. He tried to accuse me of being selfish and that I just wanted to avoid my own trauma, but it should be obvious to him that my trauma was caused by the thought of what trauma
she had gone through—the scene I came home to was horrifying. Without giving Guru a truly peaceful passing in a controlled setting, we run the risk of inflicting the same trauma on him. And Shobhit's refusal to see that is a problem.
It's like Shobhit think he's "the decider" here. The pets are and always have been my responsibility, Shobhit's feeling that I don't pay them enough attention notwtithstanding. There's a difference between what's the most comfortable for us and what's the right thing to do. The upside is that we're not as close to that decision as I feared, so that's actually a relief to both of us. For now, anyway.
— पांच हजार छह सौ सैंतीस —
Shobhit actually ran the errand to Costco on his own, so I never did go anywhere yesterday, besides to the theater downstairs. We spent the whole rest of the day watching TV: the back-half four episodes of season three of
Bridgerton on Netflix; then this week's epsidoes of
House of the Dragon and
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Max. It must have been nearly six hours straight of TV watching.
— पांच हजार छह सौ सैंतीस —
[posted 12:33 pm]
