I always have ambivalent feelings toward uneventful, quiet days like these. Nowhere to go, nothing I absolutely have to do. You could say it's a lot of pressure to do something interesting. All the time in the world. It's already 8pm. Where has the time gone?
In fact, though I want more than anything else to write an interesting blog post, I'm at a loss for what to say.
It's been slow, leisurely. Even luxurious. Since my darling boyfriend and the light of my life departed at 6:30 this morning, I don't think I've spoken a word.
I went back to bed until 10. I've spent much of the day reading Madame Bovary off and on. A while out in the backyard while I wait for my laundry. A while sitting outside my front door, enjoying the late afternoon sunlight. A while longer in the early evening, letting the breeze in through the open door. I'm almost done, about 60 pages left.
In between, I've gone back and forth between YouTube videos, too long scrolling on Instagram (which I can never bring myself to delete because once in a blue moon I actually do find out about something exciting there), other minor rabbit holes.
A calm little cycle. Read for a bit, do a chore, make a snack, look at something. Rinse and repeat.
Days that are this calm do, of course, also bring about their own little anxieties. How long have I been doing this or that thing? Is there something important I'm neglecting?
Arlo was in SF today to see a friend's show. I guess I could've gone out to the city to see him, but it was up in the air what time he'd get there. I do hate to continue the ignominious lineage of flaky family members though.
Also, having too much time to think gives me too much license to think about the wrong things. emilyjones is, as Readers will know, numbers-oriented. Charmingly so, some would say. To a fault, those same people would concede.
Waist beads are maybe not the wisest choice of accessory for a numbers and metrics-obsessed woman.
Was I standing in this specific way when I took that picture? What time of day was it? How much had I eaten?
It is certainly a change to have a visible and tangible indicator of exactly how bloated your stomach is at any given time. I did not consider this when I bought them. The real question is, is this sufficiently obnoxious for me to take them off permanently? They are, after all, very pretty. And once I take them off I can't put them back on. Remains to be seen.
This has been in the back of my mind since I got them last week, but it's been especially present today due to the deadly cocktail of alone + didn't walk today + food schedule slightly different.
Logically I know that I ate probably the same amount as I normally do, but yet the prevailing thought is WOW you ate FIVE TIMES today.
It is becoming increasingly obvious to me that food and body thoughts are the preoccupations of the profoundly bored. Anyone with important business to do does not have time to think about these things, and all the better. Looking back on all the rituals I assiduously performed during the pandemic, they were all examples of, to put it bluntly, supremely unemployed behavior.
To be absolutely clear, I am fine. I never avoid eating because I feel weird about it; I simply eat while feeling weird about it. However, is it worth examining further that once I'm left without something better to think about, food/body problems are my first port of call? Eh! Perhaps worth acknowledging that walking and meal prep are the two things in my daily routine that I am the most on top of, because those are both the things I spent a long time being too into, and it's just sort of evened out over time. I definitely started checking step count again once I realized my period app was tracking it.
(Puts the FitBit back on, as a cursed amulet)
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Ah, be careful what you wish for. I was saying earlier how the day was very uneventful and I hadn't spoken a word. Well, then I yelled "fuck!" because I spilled so much of a delicious little cocktail on my sofa.
That is a delicious elderberry shrub cocktail, served on a yellow sofa.
I was mostly able to get it out. The sight of my rag makes me think of The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, where that damn cat is just moving a pink stain from one object in the house to another and filling the house with ever-smaller cats in hats. Until, if I remember correctly, the smallest possible cat removes his smallest possible hat which banishes both the stain and the cats to whence they came.
An inauspicious end to the evening. Maybe I should just go finish Madame Bovary. A book whose literary value and cultural significance rival that even of The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.
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Update from later in the evening: I did finish Madame Bovary. What an insane ending. God. Flaubert really ends it on a sour note. That was a great novel though. I plan to read lots of novels this summer.
The book club has voted on their next book: it's going to be Brokeback Mountain. I have no idea how the book is relative to the movie, which I also haven't seen.
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It's just been a weird mood sort of evening. I think when left too much to my own devices I am prone to moods. The kind of hysteria they used to have the decency to assign coke and orgasms for.
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