I am up in my office.  My dog is crated downstairs.

On my left is a big monitor with a window open to Microsoft Teams.  People from work are on:  John Hastings, Tim Townsend, Tom Borel, Robert "Hamburger."  A vendor guy leads us:  Casey Wallace.  I worked with him last year on fixing web application firewall stuff on our application delivery controllers.

This year he helps John to configure our new hardware.  We configure F5 OS, various networking items, then install guest tenants.  

I am bored because John is driving and there isn't anything for me to do.

I mess around with my glasses.  The lenses are progressive meaning:  the lower end is for things that are near to me, the middle range is for things at arms length or further out, and the top is to help see in the distance.

They are most helpful for the things that are close to me:  Monitors, phone, books.  Mid range stuff looks clearer but it's not as pronounced.  And although the top -- the section that helps me see far away -- is still helpful and clearer, I'm unsure about how much.  

I think I've also identified that the left frame is off.  things are still blurry when viewed through them.  I probably have to call to see if they can address it.  

I find I am fascinated by the change in my view of the world.  Different ways I shift my head result in objects becoming more blurry, or less blurry.  Sometimes the clarity stuns me and I think i haven't seen anything look this nice in years and years.  There is a three dimensional element to the world that didn't exist before -- objects pop out at me and the background feels like it has a soft-focus filter applied to it.  

I went downstairs to get an espresso and I hear the dog shift in her crate, scratch the plastic floor.  I feel guilty for not having her up.  She was up for an hour and forty this morning and then I crated her so that I could join this meeting.  She'll have to sleep for another couple of hours.  I feel like I have to exercise today -- some cardio -- I haven't been able to do more than fifteen minutes at a time lately.  I could try to do twenty today and then take a shower, eat lunch, then get the doggo up.  

I spoke to my mom for a while last night.  She guilted me:  I don't see her enough.  She wants to see me more.  Why can't she come over?

I think about what happens when she arrives.  Always bringing shit I don't want or need.  Flowers, some food that she bought somewhere and doesn't really like so she wonders if I might take, say, chocolate covered rice bars.  

She settles on the couch and immediately I feel a violation.  She is making herself comfortable here.  I don't like it.  I don't want my mom getting comfortable in my house, it feels wrong.  Then I wonder what is wrong with me, that I am so uninterested in my mom's happiness. 

childhood, of course, it always comes back to childhood.

My mom didn't meet my needs when I was young and I suppose I am resentful of this.  After the divorce, in particular, she was mostly absent from my life.  I was left on my own most of the time to figure out how to do basic things:  make dinner, do laundry, clean the house, get clothing.  She worked, and in her extra time, she worried about my brother, who was constantly a mess, in and out of mental institutions, suspended from school, destroying things in the house.  If she wasn't managing a crisis created by my brother, she either sleeping or trying to go to tag sales to buy useless junk.  Things she did not do:  worry about keeping a well stocked refrigerator.  Cook for us.  Clean or organize the house.  She was depressed and anxious and lost.  She got home from work and face planted on her bed.  Sometimes I would ask her for something and she would grunt an answer at me.   i can't i feel terrible i can't leave me alone 

Now she needs things from me and I know deep down in myself I don't want to give them to her.  Or I simply don't want to give her my time.  I want my own time.  I don't want my life to be overrun by her presence.

And yet, I give her so little right now, and I know this.  Probably too little.  

I think about the upcoming weekend:  my old friends Shinji and Josh.  Shinji will stay at my house on Friday night, and probably Saturday too.  I will drive him to the airport on Sunday.  Penny will be left with the dog.

Penny wants me to get bread at Panera.  I want to either code or play zelda.  

enough for today.

A slow day yesterday.

I wake up at 7:30, later than usual.  Take the dog out, play with her for a while, crate her.  I make a coffee for Penny and bring it upstairs.  One of her great joys in life is to be served coffee in bed, allowed to drink it for half an hour, laying back, scrolling her phone.

Once she is up I go downstairs into the basement and work out.  Mostly shoulder.  Some bicep.  Eleven sets.  Nothing special but it has been a while since I really tried to work shoulders hard so I felt it.

During the day we watch movies.  Day of the Locust with Donald Sutherland - great.  The Substance, recommended by Ray and also many of Penny's co-workers.  Stylistic but just OK, not that memorable.  A lot of Demi Moore nude and cronenberg style body horror.  

I work on a thing for my employer but tell myself that I am working on it for me.  Administrative user logout on our IdP (identity provider) server.  It is a programming task and I find it keeps my brain busy, gives me something more interesting to focus on than the schlock on television.  I got to a point on my project where I understand the next steps and need to touch base with others on the team to make a determination as to what to do next.  I will need access to an Oracle database, I decided.  I spent a bit of time trying to stand up mysql on a docker instance and was ultimately successful but then realized that if we ever go live with a solution, mysql is a terrible system to use in production.  It would be better if I used Oracle for maintenance and supportability.

Penny and I take care of the dog together.  A couple of times Penny decides to take care of the dog herself, take her out for a walk.  This is always a relief to me, to have a break from it. 

I make hamburgers and fries for dinner and it comes out great.  Penny is happy.  She uses her phrase.  this is really hitting the spot.  That's how I know she likes it.

I am trying to plan visits with friends.  Old friends, high school friends, people who understand the old me, the version of me from my teenage years, when I was sad and lonely but also fueled by the energy of youth to socialize at all costs, to find ways to be interesting and valued by other people so that I wouldn't be alone, so that I'd have connections outside of my family, which I considered to be a fuckshow circus that needed to be left in the dust as often as possible.

This is an attitude that I more or less maintain to this day.  

It looks like I will see Shinji on Thursday night.  We may have him over the house, which would be fun, I think.  I could show him where I live, give him a picture.  I am proud of the house.  Proud of making it all electric, proud of the functional basement area that I use as a gym.  I didn't just pay someone to do the work, I did a lot of it myself.  

I am sad this morning.  The usual cocktail of stimulant drugs that I take has succeeded in waking me up but not in making me feel good.  Instead I feel hollow inside, like if i reach down into myself there is muck and grime.  I feel bad for ignoring my mother over the weekend and bad for my continued attempts to avoid her as much as possible.  If I see her I tend to feel shitty but if I don't see her I also feel shitty about it.

I cannot win.  The family I wanted to run away from as a child continues to haunt me.  There is no escape from it.  I can program, I can cook, I can play Zelda: echoes of wisdom on my switch, make love to Penny, watch movies, exercise -- and that feeling in my gut stays with me through it all.  

That feeling says I am a bad person.  That I am not doing the right things, that I do not measure up, that I am the source of other peoples' problems or that I am not doing enough to fix them.  That feeling says that I do not deserve to just sit around and idle with my wife and dog.  That feeling tells me that this life is insufficient and meaningless.  It whispers to me that something must be done about this situation.

But there is nothing to be done but endure it.

I am dreaming again

For months and months and months, no dreams.  No bleeding or hoping or running or loving while I slept.  I woke up tired, my mind a void, thoughts already racing.  Things to do.  The ConstantObligations in my head.

Lately, more dreams, trickling in, slowly, spotty, here and there.

Last night anxiety dreams about travel, about being single, about not having friends.

I took a flight to San Francisco.  I was in my mid-30s but I was not in my mid-20s -- I had features of both current me and mid-30s me.  

I went to escape but found myself trapped.

The dream started with me trying to get to the airport.  I took buses. I was in a great city, one with tall buildings.  I had to transfer between buses and I was conscious of the time.  It was going to be tight.  I kept looking at the clocks around me and they all told me I was going to be late.  I had to walk from here to there, one bus stop to another, in a strange downtown area, and if I screwed up the direction and went the wrong way, I wouldn't be at the bus stop in time to make it.  If I missed that bus, I'd lose an hour.  I'd miss my flight.

Uber either didn't exist in my dream or I was too stupid to use it.

I made it to the airport.  Went through the usual panic of do i have all the stuff I need.  tsa checking things and I can't find my fucking passport.  finally I see it somewhere, back of napsack, and pull it out, relief flooding through me.  

Before I know it I am in San Francisco and I assess what I have done.  And what I did was quit my job and fly here.  I didn't have a place to stay or a job.  I walked around the hills of San Francisco wondering what to do.  Who could I call?  I went through a list and kept coming back to my old high school friend Shinji.  But he was married and lived outside of the city.  Would he come and pick me up?  

I started thinking about hotels but they were $500 a night.  I could pay that for a night but what about tomorrow night?  And the night after?  The money I had worked so hard to save would be gone before I knew it.  The weather was balmy, maybe I could just find a place, sleep outside.  

I was berating myself for not having more friends, and wondering why I did this thing, why I came out here without a job or a plan.  I heard peoples' voices in my head, people commenting on what I had done.  peter's gone of the deep end, they were saying.  nobody does this.  just quits their job and moves.  it's erratic behavior.  i wonder what is wrong with him.

In my dream, I wondered what was wrong with me too.

I woke up in bed next to Penny, relieved.  I am here.  Old, yes, forty eight.  But I am in my house and I am warm and comfortable and there is nothing urgent to do today.  In my dream I remember thinking about all of the things I had to do that very day.  Find a place to charge my phone, call friends, find a place to stay, start looking for jobs, get a decent outfit for interviews -- I might have to sign a lease somewhere within twenty four hours -- and how the fuck am I even going to pass a credit check since I just quit my fucking job?

Old insecurities.  Old fears.  Bits of my old life all mushed together -- me leaving my ex Maria nine years ago, 2016, me leaving my job around the same time to take a self imposed break and get drunk for half a year.  I drank to punish myself for leaving her, because I could not make that relationship work.  I drank because it is what I thought I was supposed to do after a breakup like that.  I drank to celebrate my newfound freedom and I drank to trap myself in a new prison because it made more sense than being completely free.

I am on the floor of the living room again, writing with the macbook on my lap, the one I got for free from my employer.  

One of the things I sometimes think about is -- why do I write about what I write about in the morning?  Why did I just include "for free from my employer" after macbook above?  Why that descriptor?  It could have just as easily had no modification.  Or a different telling detail:  glare hitting my face, reflected off the lights above.  : my mind still foggy from sleep : Penny upstairs, still asleep.

I am trying to avoid talking about penny and ivf.  I was supposed to be on a plane at this very moment, traveling to Albania to get an egg retrieval done at a clinic.  

Instead I am home.  Instead Penny and I went out to the movies and then dinner at the town sushi place that we like.  We caught Superman, the new one.  It's goofy and modern.  It is the only superman movie with a dog.  

I could write about Superman.  I could post a mini review here.  But that's not real.

What is real is my sense of relief that I am not traveling right now.

What is real is the momentary sense of peace I have here in my living room doing absolutely nothing, the quiet of the house surrounding me, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator compressor and the ticking of a wall clock.  I don't have to listen to Penny and I don't have to think about anyone else.  Even the dog is gone, kenneled at Thrive

this is her first night without us  Penny said

Yeah.  Well since she was a baby-baby, I said

how do you think she's doing?

i think she doesn't care.  she doesn't sleep with us in our bed, she's used to sleeping in a crate.  She'll be okay.  

we agreed it would be good practice to have Shelley stay overnight in the kennel for one night, even though we were going to be home because our trip was cancelled.

Our trip was cancelled because the newer reaadings from Penny's blood work showed that she had probably ovulated already, which means the eggs dropped out of her follicles and are sitting somewhere in her, waiting to be impregnated.  In ten minutes I'll go upstairs with a coffee and we'll make love.  I often don't come with Penny but I realize I will have to today.  

My father's brother is being buried in two weeks, on a weekday, in Pennsylvania.  There is a military funeral.  I will have to decide whether or not to go.  I should probably ask my Dad if he is going.  I could drive down on a crazy trip.  I could do it in a day.  It would be an interesting experience.  I will think about it.

I am going to look at porn for a few minutes to get aroused and hopefully help me finish when I'm with Penny.  I am attracted enough to her but it is sitll hard to come when we have sex.  The friction isn't quite right.  So I have to be really worked up to pop while in her and she is not going to let me stop until I come because of the ovulation.  She sees this as another chance to get pregnant, and those chances are dwindling.   For her, this will not be romance, not today.  This will be about ticking a box and getting something done.

What I want to do is work but I can't work today because I told the office I will be out of state at my uncle's funeral.  Nobody can see me online.  Penny won't want me to work.  She will want me to spend time with her.  

I don't really want this.  I want time to myself.  I always have.

One of the central conflicts in our marriage is a silent one:  She wants to be with me all the time, and I need pockets to myself, but I cannot directly come out and say this because it sounds hurtful to her.