Pots And Pans

My mind is a collection of random, disconnected thoughts this morning, rather like a kitchen cupboard in a mild earthquake, the pots and pans rattling and banging against one another, making a discordant noise, pointless, tuneless, loud. I'm having trouble pulling my thoughts together, gaining hold of any particular series of ideas or points. I'm tired. I'm sad. I'm in pain. I'm dodging Katherine's annoyance with me for drinking a whole bottle of wine alone at home last night.

At least I got the laundry done last night, if not folded. It takes a great deal of effort for me to do my own laundry these days. The act of sorting it before washing, hauling it down to the laundry room down the hallway in my apartment, forcing my way over the lip and through the heavy fire doors that bar the way between me and the promised land of a washer and dryer. Then I have to load the machines, lifting laundry high out of my basket and into the bin of my chosen target, followed by the long reach across the machine to the controls. After washing, there is the water loaded transfer of clothes from the depths of the washing machine, across the room to the bowels of the dryer, facing me there with another set of controls far across an enameled, steel frame.

Doing the laundry requires three long trips from my apartment to the laundry room, one for loading the washing machine, one for loading the dryer, and a return trip with completed laundry, each of those trips wearing on me like a marathon runner in an Olympic race. In between, while I wait for the machinery to do its stuff, all there is for me to do is watch TV and drink a glass of wine. It's a wonder that one bottle is my total consumption.

Katherine folded the laundry this morning, the whole task being too much for me in a single night. While she moves about, putting things away, glaring at me on the passage by, I sit and type, drinking my coffee, eating my Honeycombs breakfast cereal. I bought a box for fun the other day, the box with the Star Wars character of Kylo Ren on it. No reason, really. I just wanted some. No breakfast in bed for me this morning; she was busy folding my laundry.

There are so many other things rattling about inside my brain, many of them products of the deep depression I have been dealing with lately. Questions about the pointlessness of my life, thoughts about suicide, wondering if there is anything I can focus on today. Then I realize, my dishwasher is broken. The filter needs removal and cleaning. Of course I can't do it myself, but if I can convince Katherine to help me, I can once again feel useful, like I can accomplish something. That's something, at least for now.