Not At My Best Today

My taking care of Grandmother is really fucking with my sleep schedule. No need to set an alarm nowadays; Grandmother weakly tapping her fingernails on my door is enough to wake me up -- and start my day off on a frazzled and irritated note. Thus I do my best to sleepwalk, to function as much as I need to in order to give her her insulin shot without waking up too many parts of my brain. Otherwise I'll be on all morning. That might be good on days where I have to go into the lab, but on weekends, it just fucks me up badly.

I had chores I wanted to do today -- not because I think they needed to be done, but because I wanted to prove to Father that I'm doing work around the house. That wasn't enough of a reason for me to stay up; I went back to sleep, figuring I'd wake up whenever.

Whenever wasn't when I heard the door chime because someone came in; it was minutes after that, when Grandmother rapped my door like a cat would again. When I came out, she asked me, "Going anywhere today?"

Ugh. I know what's coming:

"No."

"Can you take this meat to your aunt's?"

Shit. It's one of those days where I don't feel I need to go out, which makes it much easier not to spend gas or money. But her friend came by with food he or she bought -- her friends always do that -- and she's being so generous she's making me change clothes to give this food she got for free to someone else.

Still groggy, I found an excuse to not immediately bolt for the garage: The Miami Heat-Bastard Seattle SuperSonics game was in the final minutes. Ooh, had to see that while changing.

When that game got done, I finally had the energy to get out of my room. There, as I was reaching over the dinner table to grab the food that I need to deliver to my aunt and uncle, Grandmother said, "She's coming over. You don't need to drive to her place and give it to her." And immediately I started to whine -- "Then why did you make me get up and get dressed when I don't have to do anything? I've had to get all prepared and now you tell me that's all for nothing??" I even went back into my room and came out again to yell at her some more because I wasn't satisfied with the amount I yelled at her the first time. I don't like it when my plans change once, let alone twice. But looking back on it, goddamn I was so immature about it. Having my plans change twice meant I got to do what I wanted to do before, which was stay home. And besides, it wasn't a big deal. So what? Man, sometimes I hate myself.

So I'm in this immature state and I decide to climb back on the bed. At this point it's a quarter to 3; I assume that I still have time to either take out a pail and water to clean the plant or go outside and chop down the snowbank. Till then, I'll just watch St. John's upset Duke and the beginning of the Celtics-Lakers game.

Then I hear the door open again. Didn't think they'd be home this early ... whoops. Well, no use doing chores for show now. Father did not yell at me ... and so I start questioning myself again. You know, I could have done something. That plant does need to be cleaned; that snowbank could use some decking. Felt so bad that it spurred me to hang up all the newly-washed clothes that I threw on the ground, and restart taping up my Entertainment Weeklys.

All in all, I could've been better. Instead of lazing around, there were things I could do and, just as important, I could've not acted like a little bitch when I was asked -- not told, asked -- to do something I didn't want to do.