Friday, December 28, 2007

Standing Around in a Stupor

Both of us seem plagued with terminal boredom. Today as I was sitting down with my lunch, R walked over to the cupboard, opened the door, and stood there for a while staring at the contents. I looked over at him and said, “I am going to start eating my lunch.” And his response was, “Well, so am I, as soon as I can figure out why I’m standing here staring at this cupboard.” He never did figure it out and eventually joined me at the table, where I sat giggling periodically; the more I continued to think about it, the funnier it seemed.

Matters deteriorated further a couple of hours later when I went into the kitchen to get some coffee. He came in and opened the refrigerator door and stood there staring at the shelves of food but making no attempt to get anything out. I said, "What are you looking for?", and he said, “I don’t know, I’m just standing around in a stupor.” This struck me as hysterically funny, all out of proportion to the event. He said he has a particularly powerful urge to go get McDonalds to relieve whatever he is feeling inside. We had to have a serious talk with ourselves about not going to McDonalds, and succeeded in talking ourselves out of French fries and hamburgers.

Perhaps this unsettled feeling we have is a reaction to the stress of Christmas earlier in the week, including the big church meal on Sunday and the complicated arrangements to feed our son and the family he has created for himself at the church two days later because our house is just too small to easily seat them all at the able. I did not post anything about Christmas, it was rather stressful and something of an emotional let down.

At any rate, if opening cupboards and refrigerators for no reason is as bad as it gets, I guess we will be OK.

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