Morning obsessive thoughts

For reasons I don't understand, I started the morning annoyed at my mother. I was rightly annoyed at my roommate, because he'd turned the AC down below the agreed-upon level and I woke up around 4:30AM, freezing. I'd told him to leave it, that it would cool down, but nooooooo. And this was after I told him he could stay (and he is).

RM has yet to get up--and I have no intention of knocking on his door to make sure he hasn't overslept. He usually uses me (particularly, my alarm clock) as an initial alarm clock and then has an actual alarm clock that goes off ten minutes later as a backup. But I turned my alarm off when I woke up, so if he's counting on that he's SOL. Also, we had a power outage during the day, and I had to reset my clock. I told him to check his, but he seemed to dismiss it. I'm telling you all this to say that there is a good chance that he's overslept... and I in no way think it's my responsibility to make sure that that's not the case.

Also, I wonder whether at some point in the morning, my irritation at RM somehow morphed into irritation at my mother. Or maybe that phone call the other day sparked further irritation.

The particular irritation was based on memories of cooking with mom. I'd been thinking about this recently when I made tiramisu, because I once made tiramisu when I lived at my parents' house before I'd found my own apartment in Boston. I'd made it for a potluck, and then my parents wanted to try it, so I (we) made it again. Later, my mother would discover that Costco sold tiramisu and would proudly announce that it was much better and why bother making it when Costco's was so good (not to brag, but my tiramisu is so much better than Costco's). But mom loves going on about how commercial products (such as Celeste frozen pizza) are so much better than anything I make. But I digress.

I was making this tiramisu for the potluck, and my mother was dissatisfied with my delicate handling of the lady fingers in relation to the coffee, so she picked up the dish of coffee and poured it over the lady fingers. I, needless to say, was livid. Not only does that overwhelm the entire flavor of the tiramisu, but it also makes the biscuits entirely too soggy, and too saturated to absorb the cream.

We can go on about how mom's behavior was just plain rude and meddling--and not a one-off occurrence. I remember making something else that in no way concerned her, when she decided it didn't have enough garlic, so she took it upon herself to put in a whole bunch more.

So you'd think that since I was channeling my RM irritation into mom irritation, the meddling thing would have taken prominence, but my thoughts focused on mom's inability to appreciate subtle flavors. Maybe it was because I was making my oatmeal--putting in strawberries and blueberries--and I thought about how mom puts everything in the house in her oatmeal, such that the flavors just compete.

In any case, I told myself to stop obsessing about my mother. And I did.