morning rant

I had originally planned to follow up my previous entry with something related to it (i’ll get to that this afternoon) but instead I need to get a little something off my chest.

To give a little background before going into the thick of this entry, when I first started dating my girlfriend I had mentioned to her a few times how my head had, then recently, started throbbing on a constant basis. With her background in medicine (though that’s not what her career is today) she couldn’t resist trying to figure out what could be causing it. Eventually she felt it could be blood pressure related. With her encouragement I finally got checked out and sure enough I did have moderately elevated blood pressure. With her help we got it under control through diet. I had been eating an enormous amount of salt without even thinking about it. She helped me to cut that down, including making me a low salt lunch to take with me to work everyday. She was very good about getting up before I did to make it for me before I headed out the door (guess I should mention we live together). This was something she volunteered to do; I didn’t ask her to do it but have been very grateful that she does. And I’ve told her how thankful I’ve been for her taking the time to do this. Since the beginning of this year she’s been real spotty with it. I haven’t complained to her because it wasn’t something I expected her to do. Well, in the beginning I did develop an expectation because she was very consistent with doing it every morning. But I did drop those expectations when it stopped happening consistently.

This morning, as I’m starting to head to the door she says, "you got some time to wait, speedy, so i can make your lunch." Mind you our usual banter is laced with copious amounts of sarcasm. So I answer back, in kind, with a sarcastic remark about it being ok to set my stuff by the door first before heading out, something I do every morning. So then she starts in on how I should be nice to her this morning because, despite being tired, she made the effort to get up to make my lunch. I, with the idea we are still bantering, said "the first time this week!", which is true. I then realize that things are spilling over to serious when she comes back with "you know, you’re more than capable of doing this every morning. I’m tired and don’t even feel like doing this with you bitching at me about it." This actually runs through me a bit, I didn’t even start this interchange this morning but she’s acting like I have. But I’m not taking it to heart; she’s having a grumpy morning. But I did respond to that by saying, "it doesn’t only take that for you to not want to do this." Not really sure what I was getting at by saying this… probably was trying to point out that she hasn’t been doing it a lot recently but, clearly did a bad job getting that point across clearly, ha! She then ends it with, "it’s too early for this, here’s your lunch, I love you and have a good day." She gives me a kiss and then I’m off.

Now this isn’t really that big of a deal, at least to me but by the time I got to my car I felt like she was starting to get agitated with me over our exchange of words. I’m grateful that she makes my lunch, when she takes the notion to do it recently, but it’s not something I expect her to do nor is it something I complain to her about when she doesn’t, not once. But she does expect me to get up every morning, whether I’m running late and/or haven’t slept the night before, to make her coffee and will pout about it if I haven’t. But I didn’t really feel like I needed to go out of my way this morning for something that she 1) volunteered to do and 2) has been spotty at best with doing for the past 3 months. If you volunteer to do something you do it without the expectation of praise or special treatment. If you’ve been bad about doing something recently you had been doing more consistently before, don’t expect any special thanks. She complains about being tired every morning when she, on the average, gets more sleep per day than I do. She takes medication that does make her more drowsy as a side effect which does explain why she has troubles waking up in the morning (even though she’s been on this medication for over a year and should have adjusted to it by now). I have sleeping problems, usually wake up at 5 am every morning despite not having to be at work until 8 am. Hell, sometimes I wake up before that. We both go to bed around the same time, sometime between 1030 and 1130 but she almost always wakes up just before or after I have left. But then she’s grumpy about waking up this morning, the first time this week, to make my lunch and thinks I should just take her grumpiness without a response? Blah! I’m not wired like that.

I don’t think she has really figured out that part of my personality that likes to maintain a balance with all things. You show me kindness and I’ll return it in kind. You show me grumpiness and… you get the picture. I’ve been this way the entire time, I’ve even told her about my ideas of maintaining a balance in life. I do concede, though, that I probably could have been bigger and not thrown her grumpiness back in her face. But since I didn’t initiate this exchange I felt like I needed to response, especially when she started showing signs of real agitation and was trying to give me flak for, basically, responding. But also, as I mentioned in the previous entry, this is just one situation where my bedroom frustrations with her play out in other parts of our relationship, an admittedly unhealthy way of handling things, ugh.

Later this afternoon I promise to write about something not related to my girlfriend, ha! I know I sound very bitchy about her but I assure you I do love her and she does treat me good…. for the most part, heh heh.