SO, THAT'S WHAT'S UP

I just don't feel like writing. I think about it all day, but thinking is as far as I can get.

I am very depressed and anhedonic. I'm not interested in much of anything. I am escaping into the usual, streaming some series I have probably already watched, and working on a needlepoint project or two. I endeavor to do a chore or two, some laundry, some ironing, a few of the dishes, maybe water the trees, but I just want to zone out. 

I have had some good talks with KH and SMS who are similarly despondent. We all share a feeling of ubiquitous dread, waiting for some other major shoe to fall ... more virulent strains of Covid, another political setback, major earthquakes, the end of Roe versus Wade, the further ascendency of idiocy ... I don't know.

My malaise is compounded by my life with Janet. She is back with the Domineers but not happily. The host Domineer got a new puppy, pretty young. My mother has been haunted and in severe mental anguish as the host Domineer abused the puppy, got angry and threw him against a wall. I wasn't there, I didn't see it, but Janet returns to and mentions it several times a day, although she continues to sit next to the host Domineer and play dominoes with him and the rest of the group. 

It is entirely true that it was a bad idea for this man to get a puppy. He is not of great patience. He is also in his 80s, in poor health, and unlikely to live for too very long. This dog will outlive him.

But this is not germane to my mother's anguish. And she is anguished. She thinks she should have called the ASPCA on the host Domineer. I am saddened and confused by the all of it. I don't know how to comfort her or to help her find some peace in the situation. I would not call most of these folks highly evolved, although I don't think they are quite that cruel and self-indulgent as to hurl a puppy across a room. 

Getting Janet up and going gets harder every day. We had arranged for me to teach yoga to the Domineers but it grew too late what with getting Janet ready on both Tuesday and Thursday. And by the time I get her out of the door, I am in no good or positive mood to be teaching anyway. 

Underlying this is, of course, early mourning for her passing, although I think she will probably make it well past her 95th birthday in February. She just gets more frail and less present, at least with me. Patrick stopped by today around the time she got home from dominoes and she was very engaged. 

So, that's what's up: I'm down.