December 30, 1999

OK, so I forgot to update yesterday. I was feeling miserable, that's my excuse. I'm feeling much better today, though. It's the first time all week I've managed to put something on besides sweats, AND put my contacts in. I'm starting to feel almost human again.

Keith and I invited a bunch of people over to play Trivial Pursuit on New Year's Eve, but I don't think anyone is going to show. People just want to stay home. I suppose they're worried about Y2K stuff. I'm not too concerned, just sort of mildly curious about whether the lights really are going to go off when midnight hits. Of course, the drama won't be quite so tense out here on the West Coast, as we'll have had three hours in which to observe what happened to the EAST Coast.

Keith and I had a semi-bad night last night. Apparently he just wasn't in the mood to be social, and would rather have had a little "alone time" to unwind after work. But I did not realize this, so I WAS being social, and trying to get him to cheer up and be more happy, which obviously was failing since all he wanted was to quietly watch TV or read or whatever.

We agreed later on that we should communicate a little more when we're upset about something so that the other person is not left in the dark about why his or her attempts to be cheerful are so miserably falling dead.

It was just a frustrating evening in general, I guess. Then today, I sent Keith an email telling him what I did this morning (paid some bills, drank some eggnog) and that I hoped he was having a swell day, and that I was feeling better, and just generally all kinds of happy news that I thought would maybe at least get him to smile while he was at work.

The email I got back said something to the effect of, "Um yeah, work sucks right now a lot, our server was down forever but now it's back up, so I have all this work to do that could take me until Monday, and if the server hadn't come back up I just would have gone home at noon and had to come in tomorrow."

So, that didn't sound very happy or cheerful. Sometimes I wonder if I'm trying just a little too hard to be cheerful, or what. Maybe I should just accept the fact that sometimes Keith will not be in a very good mood, and there's nothing I can do to help. I just wish there was.

Oh, OK, another example from last night. We were watching "West Wing" and Keith had quiche in the oven, and at one of the commercials, he said, "Oh, time for me to go get the quiche out." I hopped up on his lap and kissed his neck and said "Oooh, are you sure that's what it's time for?" in a more or less over-the-top kittenish way. I was just trying to make him laugh.

But he looked away from me, and sighed deeply, and looked pained. So, that obviously didn't work, and hurt my feelings a little, to boot.

I brought it up later that evening, and his response was basically that he had a goal in mind ("Get the quiche out before West Wing comes back on") and I interrupted his goal, so instead of paying attention to what I was doing, all he could think about was the quiche. I guess that makes sense. It just goes back to what I was saying before, which is that sometimes I feel like I try too hard. It's just really embarrassing and frustrating and bad, when you make a joke or do something silly, to try to cheer someone else up, and their response is "uh, yeah, what are you doing, I'm in the middle of something" or "Uh-huh.. you know, I'm really tired" or whatever. So maybe I just need to stop trying so hard, because I feel like a lot of times Keith just isn't responding in the way I want him to, and that's perfectly OK, because God knows I don't always respond in ways he'd want me to, and it just frustrates and upsets us both, so maybe I just need to quit.

Phew. Did that make sense at ALL? The point is, I hope he's in a better mood tonight because I'm tired of trying to maintain my own good mood when he's feeling morose and nothing I do can cheer him up. Not that it's been happening a lot, just maybe the last couple days or so. But still.

I know I didn't get to the rest of my Christmas story, but I don't feel like writing much more today. Ooh, except one more thing I forgot.

I think I'm going to go off the Pill. No, no, not because of THAT. We're going to go back to using "other forms of birth control". I'm just tired of the mood swings. I feel like a lot of my emotional outbursts and feelings right now are because of the Pill, and I hate that there's some outside substance controlling how I feel. Like last night, was I really upset because Keith wasn't in a good mood? Or was it a hormonally-induced mood swing brought on by the Pill? I don't know. I hate not knowing. So I'm going off it for awhile to see if things improve (I'm pretty sure they will).

I'll keep you updated.

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