Cut Down In The Prime of Life

Not really, but kinda.

It's birthday week, and I took today off in order to go to a food festival. Instead, I have some sort of flu. I haven't been sick since Covid, a year ago, and I stood next to little kids for several hours on Weds, so maybe this is to be expected.

Oh my gosh. Wednesday was amazing. We went to a club and saw my favorite YouTuber, The Kiffness. Mrguy bought me a t-shirt and everything. I drank some beers and a free bourbon, and stood for three hours. Met very many nice people who like kitties (and The Kiffness) including nice moms who brought their little kids. Mrguy is now a The Kiffness convert (not that he wasn't before) and is at this moment enjoying going down the rabbit hole of memes that Kiffness builds his songs around.

Me? I'm down for the count. I woke up the next day not feeling excellent. Then I took a bath and had five or six or ten watery poops before I realized that I wasn't going to be able to go to work. I did a fair amount of work while sitting on the sofa, and it wasn't until right before therapy that I started to feel exceptionally poorly. I thought of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and if you miss the reference, that's ok.

This was followed by a phone call with my sister about problems with the caregivers. I truly sympathize with her, but have a hard time hearing her woes explained to me in her particular tone of voice. She persists and persists, telling me that she lost her temper with our one caregiver who keeps changing her schedule and then in the same breath tells me that she's a really nice person and a good boss and that she's being taken advantage of. In addition:

"Nobody who isn't me can understand how difficult this is."

Apparently so. I know that she's suffering, but she likes to share the suffering. She also suffers on behalf of others, telling me that she doesn't sleep at night because she worries that something will happen with a caregiver and it will affect me. She seemed to be insinuating that I am responsible for her suffering on my behalf. It's twisted, I tell ya.

In conclusion, then we argued about something and she quasi hung up on me and then sent me a conciliatory birthday greeting a few hours later. With love.

Sure.