I am a nightmare-ridden person. I can feel an occasional cold hand snaking up my neck, just a harbinger of bad things, sad and scary things. The coattails of mortality, hearing fate snicker, etc, though I don't believe in it, from my gut. I think that contrary to all evidence, we still have choice and will. I feel scared, bogged down, my head is reeling from so much fear, and the physical weight of so much panic, and the shittiness of leaving dog behind just because she was being naughty, and my landlady's accusation that I have kutte paal liye. Of all the places I expected this accusation to come from. And also from her other words, that she probably will look for another renter. I am tired, dear god, I am tired. Tired of so many walls to break down. And how mother feels like a time bomb. And how the possibility of being back to that night in November feels like irrational fear. Everything in me balks from it. How the maid is being an absolute piece of shit, how much thoughts of Lily bog me down. And I told myself today, I am done with dogs and cats. The two bloody cats have also started coming in: everyone wants to make a home of this place, including Soni, and my landlady, a dog lover herself, possibly wants me out. It feels like one is completely powerless. One pays good money to all these people, and they still can say and do what they like to you.
Today I thought how much I would like to er, make love, to my dear friend S. But I wouldn't want to come anywhere close to any of the random guys.

I think this is the closest to contentment that I know.
Mother's BP is sort of (hopefully) getting under control.
I made a list of chores on Friday evening, and completed most of them by Saturday, and also took her to the doctor. Chores included washing clothes, buying vegetables and fish. No dry groceries this week, really. Also fixed the sink pipe and the shelf doors (a bad job, though).
I'll still take some time getting used to how washing clothes in the machine is the opposite of labour-consuming. It's like magic: how you can put in clothes and carry on with other work, with only the occasional looking-in. And it uses so much less water than the semi-automatic. Or maybe it was me who was filling the water till the given mark when it would have worked fine with less water too.
It's getting to be 5 on Sunday, and I have eaten, bathed, washed my hair. I took a very long bath today, and mixed the last round of water just for pleasure, though I was washed and done, otherwise. I would enjoy baths more if I had running hot water from a shower that pelted down thick beaded strands, like it was at the hotel in Chandigarh, and if the bathroom stayed warm for a while afterward, but this will also do, especially because that wastes a lot of water, plus it's not as cold as it was these last few days.
Mother saw a painted stork in Sanjay jheel today. I am very glad that they have begun to go to the lake and the park. She looked very nice in the bright, rani-coloured shawl I had bought her from Chandigarh. She wore a warm violet salwar, kurta and a white sweater with it.
I made doughy pasta yesterday, but got the sauce right. Ate lovely crunchy toast with butter and jam, a recent discovery. It tastes even better with honey and butter.
The poet (fawh!) texted, asking to meet yesterday. But I have no interest, and the days have been too full to accommodate that and also content. Of course I woke up remembering the Kolkata douchebag and I was texting a drunk guy who talked about how cool it was to meet his ex-girlfriend, but it's all fine.
I kept thinking of the luck potion, Felix Felicis, in Harry Potter, and how he kept having this feeling that something good would happen, but also how it was actually a placebo.

Ma's BP is still very high: 170/100. I have been panicking since last night. The doctor added another medicine. But now she feels discomfort after the second Nebicard of the day. I just don't know why this is happening. I so so don't want to go through a major event again and don't want her to.
Looking at Facebook, I feel incredulous at how many people are completely untouched by such loss and illness and how for some, it just doesn't seem to end. And also incredulous at how I am not allowed someone to depend on. That others are also going through parents' illness but they don't panic like me because all their stakes are not in one person. 

I am going to write a series of short posts about all the things I had meant to write since I meant to write so many things, then didn't.

I feel SO SO cold. Temperatures are supposed to have gone up from today, but after a bath and change of (I think) month-long home outfit, I eventually piled on the following:
a t-shirt
a woollycot shirt
a thick sweater
a padded jacket
a shawl worn like a skirt over woollycot pajamas
half-fingered gloves (because, why not, when the aim is to be completely warm)
tupi
double-layered shoe-like sockers from Nepal

C had bought these lovely double-cover gloves from Nepal, which is infernally stupid since she lived in Bangalore at the time, and is now in sweltering Singapore. I was shivering on my way back last night and thinking that they must be languishing and forgotten somewhere in her vast cupboard, if not given away without being worn. It was also stupid of me to not have bought a pair since I could have made good use of them, but I wasn't into gloves then.

I went to Sri Lanka. My travel companions were quite a duo. I don't plan to travel with them again, though half a country away, I am happy to be friends and exchange pleasantries.
I am growing embittered with how things have fallen/are falling into place with most of my friends while I stay stuck and get ever more mired in my life which I don't want. Though if I weren't so discontent with the bits I don't like, I would see that it's purposeful and challenging, which I really need, because I am not really self-motivated. Also, my self is untarnished by compromise which always make me treat myself badly.

Two of my authors have fallen through this week. I am struggling to come out of a half-year haze. Things are becoming like at my last place of work, and it's hard to care. I recently went on a work trip and laughed and said mad things like I don't have the chance to do much of anymore. Perhaps it's because the person I was with is new to the company, and is not a little mad herself.
I am actually very scared about the work situation.

Ma's pressure, we found at the cardiologist's, yesterday, was 190/90. He increased her medicines and said it would come down, and maybe it's the cold. Also said the way to check the condition of the heart and arteries was to do a stress echo once in every two years. He also pooh-poohed me down when I asked about testing microalbumin. The treatment won't change, he stated, while staring at me like I'd asked him to eat a horse.
I now pray like I used to before, for help, for her health, for my work. I have broken and have no room for that anger for F anymore.

Office has so many people. So many that one has to speak to and deal with, who annoy you, bore you, whose speech is like white noise but who have made themselves important.