May 14, 2023
I’m tired and cranky. It’s Mother’s Day, but that’s not why I’m cranky. Patti’s mom and my mom are no longer alive. It’s my life that’s feeling more and more out of control. Patti makes decisions for me, my work makes decisions, and time doesn’t allow me to make more than a few decisions without major restraints. Patti said the phrase that makes my skin crawl. She said, “I told you that.” She follows this with the exact time and date of when she told me it. When she says this, I am tempted to remind her that my brain doesn’t have a record function. I also know she never discussed the plan with me as fully as she thinks she does. I’m sure I was told about the plan, but I had many unanswered questions that didn’t let me retain the mysterious plan. Eventually, she tells me about my part in the plan and tells me it will be easy. Her version of easy is she can see it in her head. I’m left to figure out how to bring her “easy” vision to life.
Another frustration in my life is our upcoming vacation. We’re going to Jamaica in June for our anniversary. She scheduled the trip for almost two weeks of time, and I won’t have that much vacation time by then. We just took a vacation in February, and it wiped out most of my vacation time. She has a government job and gets oodles of vacation time. Again, I just have to deal with her plans with no input on my part. I think of us as equal partners, but that’s not how Patti sees it, apparently. Discussing these things with her is worse than just living without a say in our lives together. I have PTSD from past vacations. Now, add the lack of decision making and it’s no wonder I don’t look forward to vacations.
May 15, 2023
Today, I was eating lunch at about 7:00 pm. Most people would call it dinner, but it was my second meal of the day. I really don’t have a dinner meal. Now that I’ve sufficiently talked about unimportant things, I’ll get back to the actual point of this paragraph. There was one other person in the room, but they eventually left. I had my earphones in and was listening to a podcast. I was close to finishing my meal and a group of three people walked in. They all looked young and nerdy. I say this mainly to establish an interpretation of their behavior. All of them were staring at their phones. It was quickly apparent that a young woman in the group had her speaker phone on and was talking to someone. At first, I thought they were all watching a video of someone talking, but I quickly learned this was a phone conversation with just her. I could fully hear the person on the other end because they were loud. Actually, they were super loud. I had a hard time listening to my podcast when the person on the phone spoke.
My time for lunch was ending, so I went to clock back in from lunch. As I stood, I knocked my chair over. Instinctually, I said “sorry” for the loud noise. I looked at the group and none of them looked my way. I almost said, “Really! You guys are not even going to look up from your phones to acknowledge another human being?” I walked by them and clocked back in from lunch. I still had a little bit left of my lunch to eat. One thing to know about my meal is it is always the same. I cut up several vegetables, mushrooms, garbanzo beans, brown rice, and many spices. All of this gets put into a container for work. I steam it in the microwave for seven minutes. It’s hot in temperature at the beginning of the meal, but it’s spicy at the end of the meal. This final spiciness is because of the large amount of cayenne pepper I add to each meal. When eating these last bites, I am usually sweating. Today, the added weirdness of this group made me finish my last few morsels quickly to get out of the room. I was dripping sweat on my stuff as I gathered it together. I should have shaken my head over their table like a dog. There is no way they could ignore that.
Thoughts from Life 
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