Thursday ramble

I can't even call this a morning ramble; I may have to finish it in the afternoon. When a certain airline opens its offices, I'll have to call them to figure out why they haven't refunded me after I canceled. I just did the same with another airline before I posted the roundup. Before that, I finished marinating veggies and making a side dish for our work picnic later this morning. I did the bulk of the marinating, and made the dressing, last night. I'd meant to get an earlier start--i.e., Tuesday night--but I ended up working until 7:30 and had other things to do when I got home (including time-sensitive travel reservations to make). So I tried to get home on the earlier side yesterday to shop for the veggies and prepare them.

It was in this context that I got home just before 6pm, took care of a couple of things, and set out on my bike to get the veggies. When I opened the front door (I come in the back from metro), there was a dead bird between by step and walkway.

It reminded me of the time many years ago that I was frantically getting ready for a party. The dude I was dating had invited a bunch of his friends, and he was going to come by the night before to help prepare. I left work on the earlier side but later than I'd have liked and already had more to do than I had minutes in the day, and opened the back gate to a dead possum in the yard. It was winter; the ground was too solid to bury it. I didn't know what to do. I texted the dude to say I'd need his help with something and his response was something akin to a shrug. I mean, he would help, but what I really wanted him to say in that situation--and a similar one about a month before--was, "I'll take care of it and it'll be okay." It's the corollary of the "you should have asked" principle. It wasn't about the action itself; it was about someone else taking the wheel and letting me know that I could let go for a minute. I was never going to get that from that guy.

It was almost liberating then, last night, that there was no one to disappoint me. I quickly dug a hole and buried it, and set off to the store. I got home, got everything done, made some more travel reservations, and crashed later than I would have liked knowing that I'd have to get up and do all the crap I told you about in the previous paragraph. I still need to clean up and get ready for the picnic.

I've had a number of instances over the last few months where years ago, my mind would have instantly gone to that place of "this would be so much more manageable if I had a partner," but this time--these times--my mind didn't even go there. It didn't go there when I had plumbing issues, or other homeowner incidents. I didn't even have to talk myself down from it; it didn’t even cross my mind.

And now, I'm off to take care of more things...