This was that moment when things got …
weird, and downright surreal.
******
We went to The Barren's moms place for a meal for his birthday. We brought lunch and we sat in the backyard, at a table, 6ish feet from each other with our double masks on.
His mom and her longtime partner have both gotten the first dose of the vaccine, and were a bit more caviler about keeping their masks on the whole time...but thankfully, I am TOTALLY OCD about it and kept mine on which rubbed off on The Barren too and we were safer that way.
I have been giving a gift to his mom for decades on his birthday, a thank you for making the man I love. I call it her birthing day gift. It is usually something small, a token trinket. Mostly just acknowledging her part in the day. She has grown to love it and expect something. (I am totally fine with that!) There are FAR worse things a MIL can expect from her DIL.
After the meal these two jars were placed on the table, and The Barren was told to pick which ever one he wanted...it was part of his bday gift. My MIL and FIL have begun to grow their own. They were crazy conservative about drugs in the past and this overt, boldness takes a moment or two to adjust to.
They are both engineers by trade and so they are trying to crack the code of dosing edibles and those stories are quite funny. They are trying to make a brownie that is big enough to satisfy their chocolate craving but also not make them so shitfaced that they spend the rest of the day facedown in the couch.
Since cannabis has become legal, it has been a funny transition in our social groups. The parents, who were all hippies, but really pushed hard against their kids using drugs in college are now asking advise about strains and doses. While all us normal stoners, are kind of gobsmacked at their enthusiasm, after receiving so much shit from them for too long.
After the strangeness of the canning jar of pot, the conversation was all about how protected they are now that they have the vaccine. I couldn't help but feel like I was reliving a conversation with a former lover about how he shouldn't have to wear a condom because I was on birth control....maybe it was my own mindset, but things felt strange and almost funny.
These days things seem off center, tilted and lit strangely.
It feels like I am floating through most days and the repetition of actions is feeling like a movie scene replaying over and over. I wake up, pee and get into yoga clothes, check email for work and personal tasks, then do exercise and then errands, then eat something, try brainstorming, do laundry, do more wall gazing then try and think what to make for dinner and watch tv and clean up dishes, take a bath or shower, maybe have sex and then go to sleep and do it all over again.
What kind of life is it that we are living these days?
Maybe that is why these encounters with backyards and parents is so surreal. Life is downright surreal.
I got my parents appointments to get the vaccine this week, it felt like I had just scored the best concert tickets ever....they were thankful and then my mother said she wanted a different vaccine than what she was scheduled to get. We looked up the data and then I had another half hour call with her explaining how the vaccine works, the effectiveness of this one she is supposed to get and how she might not even have access to the single dose vaccine. It was stressful.
I am stressed out by my parents recently. My shifting role with them and what that looks like. In that daily routine, I would say a good few hours are covered in stress with my parents activities and making sure they are safe and have food in the house and that people are not taking advantage of them.
(ex: installed solar panels have created leaks in the roof, and the solar company offered them a flat fee to fix it, instead of fix it for them!)
*Sigh*
I am tired, and melancholy and am trying to see a light at the end of this all...
but it is hard.
I daydream of running away, and into the big memories of travels and sunlit days of the past. Laughing more and feeling alive...my actual dreams are dark and sad and scary and i am often left wondering how long it will take to shift into a new direction?
anyone else feel this fatigue? This shift/tilt of life?
3 comments:
Thank you for this post! It is totally and completely relatable. All of it. From the parental stress to doing the same thing every day and, honestly, everything else. I am so tired. I am also melancholy. I'm feeling defeated. When will this end? I need this to end.
Your story of your lunch with the in-laws made me smile. But yes, one dose of the vaccine doesn't make them bullet-proof just yet. Sigh.
I can relate to your parental worries. I'm sorry you're going through this, but glad you managed to get them a vaccination appointment. As we look back on the last years of FIL's life, we realise that he's actually been making poor decisions (which we tried to help him with but he resisted) for a lot longer than he would every have admitted, or even that we quite recognised as being part of his decline. It's tough. And I am hoping things get better for you as soon as possible.
Sending hugs.
Do we have the same mother? Mine has been saying maybe she'll wait on the vaccine; she wants to be sure it's effective against the new variants. I said, "MOTHER -- GET THE SHOT!" At this point, I feel like any shot is better than no shot, right? I told her I wouldn't be able to come home to see them until we're all vaccinated -- and then I threatened to sic my sister on her, lol. ;)
When did this shift happen, that we became the caretakers and the adults in the room?
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