Portlandia

 Entry 1.    12:45 p.m.

I have a post I am working on from yesterday, but thought this bit of an update is called for.  Up at 5 with the dogs.  Jenny came down just before 9. Leiney and I had been hanging out talking for about an hour. I got up and made Jenny's coffee and served her pancakes that Leiney had cooked. Jenny ate. She is cranky in the mornings now. Coffee cranky? Cancer? Doesn't matter. Just cranky. It's new, and given you wouldn't want to deal with me decaffeinated, I get it.  She remarked on her mood herself.  Afterward, she repaired to the master bath to soak in the tub. After she was in, I'm so fucking glad she doesn't have a little bell to pick up and ring, she texts Leiney asking her to send me up.  I go up, and she needs soap and a razor. Things three feet from her.  I get them, and don't remark on the ridiculousness of the expectation. I go downstairs, hang out with Leiney until she leaves at 11, and proceed to clean the disastrous kitchen. At about noon, I go check on Jenny. Having not seen her, I suspected she snuck back to bed. She had. She remains there. It turns out that she is angry with me because I declined accompanying her to Portland this weekend, so she could attend a friend's 50th birthday party. I had no interest. Given her failure to go an extra inch for me, and given I care for her assiduously, I am not at all moved by this juvenilia, although if written down in story form it might serve well as a vehicle of Juvenalian satire--but only if I were as angry as I was when I first got el pinchéd. It is one now. She hasn't left her bed.  The dogs and I are enjoying some peace and quiet. Oh, wait, I am enjoying them barking at nothing.

One last note: Her friend offered to fly her down and pick her up. She declined, weeks ago. She truly expected me to do it, because she asked.  I have learned the hard way from her that just because you ask for something doesn't mean you get it.

Entry 2.    3:48 p.m.

I am shopping for dinner. I managed to get Jenny out of the house and on a walk. She was too weak to grocery shop though, so she is back at the car.  She told me today she is convinced she is dying.  In fact as I was typing this she texted "I feel like I am going to pass out." Better check into that. It was nothing.

Entry 3     5:29 p.m.

I keep trying to finish yesterday's entry. But life conspires against me. I came upstairs, ostensibly to take a nap about 45 minutes ago. Jenny was glum on the couch. I needed space. I thought I'd finish yesterday's entry. I told Jenny I was off to take a nap, I needed space. I went into the office to write. I, instead, fell asleep.  I picked up the laptop upon waking and was reading for about 10 minutes, when Jenny appeared at the door of the office, where I was/am laying on a beanbag chair and sullenly asked, "Why do you lie to me?" I was a bit puzzled, or feigned it quite well.  I actually had fallen to sleep after all.  "You said you were coming up here to sleep. You were just trying to avoid me. I might as well just be dead." Well, that motivates me to jump up and run after her.   .   .  Sigh.

Entry 4     9:47

Today when we were headed to the grocery store Jenny suggested quiche for dinner. I don't make quiche. It's tasty, I enjoy eating it, but I don't make it. I told her I would be happy to have quiche, but that I wasn't going to make it. She volunteered to do it, and volunteered Leiney as an alternative. So, when I was shopping, I got stuff for quiche. I also purchased stuff for two more meals. This evening, after the drama around Portland, I went down to the kitchen and offered to make one of the other meals, realizing Leiney having worked all day would likely not really want to cook, and understanding Jenny's cancer-related weakness. She is so weak, she told me this evening, it wouldn't be safe to drive to Portland. 

Jenny was angry that I wouldn't make the quiche. So angry, and it was out of the blue, that she stormed out, got in her car and left for more than 2 hours, or the amount of time it would take to get 2/3s the way to Portland.  I was the contrary of nonplussed. This behavior was frequent last winter. So, alone in the house, I queued up The Omen, a cheery movie about loving family featuring Gregory Peck. I preferred him as Scout's father, to be honest.  More doting with Damien he was, and look what a dick he turned out to be.  

If you read this journal back when this used to happen, you know how this story goes. Sometime after she left, I received a long screed from her. It ended with her threatening to move in with her friend Jennifer.  Mind you, there has been no bickering, no fighting, no mean words exchanged by me, at least. Also, no thought given to her 16 year-old daughter who already feels abandoned by her. Also, I waited to read it for about 30 minutes, and then never did respond. Just like the old days.

So, she is angry that I didn't go to Portland, that I didn't make the dinner I said I wasn't going to make. She is angry that I didn't keep plying for discussion about her unhappiness today. It is true I didn't. Each time I do, when she is in a mood like this, she gets downright surly and aggressively angry about it, as if I should not even ask such an obvious question. She did volunteer she was scared she is dying, I countered her claim, stating even this week her doctor told her she is stable.  But, ostensibly  because I didn't plum the depths of her despair--after doing so with a therapist 4 days ago, she is pissed.

Really, this is a tantrum about Portland. More than that, it is a tantrum that she can't make me go or to feel guilty about declining the opportunity to drive her there and back. I wouldn't go hang out with her friend, a Trump Republican for chrissakes with a Trumpian family. That isn't why I declined. I opted out because why should I do more than I am? Why should I take her to see her friend who offered to fly her down and pick her up at the airport? It is all on me. It goes hand-in-hand with her idea that everything should be the same, despite the affair she refuses to break off.  So, there it is. I am going to sleep, never finishing the post I started yesterday.  Sigh.