my valentine's day

yes, I got a few cards from friends, and that was nice, and my mom sent me a box of Aplets and Cotlets but this has otherwise not been a wonderful day.

I spent it in a very "me" way: mostly alone.

I gave my exam in my one class (and realized I screwed up the Bankhead Hat stitch pattern; I forgot the intervening plain-knit rows, so the hat ISN'T a Bankhead hat and is less interesting, and I feel bad about that but not bad enough to rip it out)

I came home, because I had to grade and do some other things.

(Oh. I did run out quickly to Lulu and Hazel's, bought a jelly roll. Didn't get any treats; everything they had was either hard and crunchy - so no good for my bad teeth - or those sugar cookies from the grocery with an inch of kind of blah frosting on it)

I graded.

And then I made the jam bars for the funeral reception tomorrow.

I briefly contemplated phoning out and getting a pizza to pick up but then remembered it's valentine's day in a college town, so likely all the pizza places are already overloaded with business, and I didn't want to add more hassle to them.

And I realized: that's my life, isn't it? Doing my work, making food for other people, and deciding not to do something that might risk "bothering" someone else

I don't know.

I'm also weirdly sad. One of the people I follow on Twitter, Holly Brockwell, had taken in an elderly ill cat and started treating her. Named the cat "Furious Maud" because she looked grumpy (though apparently she was a very, very sweet cat). Maud had some kind of lymphoma, she was getting chemo for it. Earlier today Holly posted that something had gone wrong with Maud's back legs (and I thought "oh, that's not good"). Apparently she got her to an emergency vet, but then a while later she posted something along the lines of "My baby has gone to sleep. Thank all of you for loving her with me."

And I had to put down the grading I was doing and cry for a few minutes.

I don't know why it hit me so hard, but it did.

I am wondering, honestly, if little things like that - mourning a cat I never met, belonging to a person I never met or will meet - feels...."manageable" to me. That if I give in and let myself feel sad over the bigger things, I'll start crying and won't be able to stop, and so I look for surrogate griefs to try to work through the bigger griefs in my life. I don't know.

I still feel....I'm still feeling very hard the whole "My dad worked his whole life and it amounted to a recycling dumpster full of paper" and the fact that my mom is finding and sending me small things (she found a craft project I did ages ago as a kid, and sent it along) and that also reminds me that someday she, too, will be gone, and I'll have to try to navigate life all on my own and it scares me. Already I have too few people to provide advice and comfort and emotional support when needed, and I don't know how to get more of them. Part of it is the "afraid of bothering" other people thing - one of the legacies of my childhood is having been told a lot by my peers to go away, because no one wants me around, and I guess I internalized that somewhat and am afraid a bit to reach out now.

But I also know everyone is busy, and I am not going to ask the woman caring for an ill husband for help or advice, or the person with small children at home, or the person fighting a chronic illness.

And so I keep trying to figure out my way on my own, and sometimes it feels like so much and so tiring. I still need to do the Sunday school lesson and maybe more piano practice. And figure out something for dinner. (I wish now I had a frozen macaroni and cheese, but I don't have any, and I don't feel like driving out to a grocery to get one now)