There were no words
In hindsight this is funny. At the time it probably wasn't. But I think in hindsight that it is. I get stressed when I have long days at work and I get stressed when I have doctor's appointments. No particular reason why ... other than work is work and I don't like doctors. Last night JJ and I went with Thuy, Jina and Thuy's brother, Hoan, to dinner at Big Bowl for Thuy's birthday. Afterward I went over to JJ's for awhile and did some work for about an hour. After that, I let myself be grumpy because I had a doctor's appointment this morning and a take home midterm to work on that has been driving me nuts. [The midterm, if you'll allow me to digress, is TWENTY ONE ESSAY QUESTIONS. It's insane. Granted, he says he's going to pick a subset of the questions but still there are 21!] So there I am at JJ's, lying on the couch with a very clear, "Don't touch me, don't talk to me" vibe going. Seriously. I could see the bubble around me, just daring someone to pop it. In reality I was tired, stressed, it'd been a long day and my tummy was full. All conditions very conducive to lying down, not moving, not talking. Poor JJ though ... given my recent health issues with the falling down and all he's sitting there thinking "She's not talking ... did I make her mad ... does she feel okay? ... What's going on?" whereas I really was just thinking, "Oof ... tired ... don't feel like talking ... please don't touch me ...." To top it off, this morning JJ took me to my crack-of-dawn doctor's appointment (more on that later) and I said probably 10 words from the time I saw him to the time I got out of the car. Well that was nothing ... before 8 am it's just too much effort to speak sometimes. Back in the swimming days my suitemates and I would grunt our assent to one another that we were ready to go to practice. Not because we didn't love each other but because pre 7 am just calls for different lines of etiquette. After the doctor's appointment I was better and was speaking and explained to JJ how I just cope with stress and tiredness by not speaking. Unfortunately for him this is also how I cope with being mad at him or others, how I cope with being moody, how I cope with anxiety, how I look when I'm feeling weak and about a dozen other conditions. I think the plan is that we have to come up with some sort of gradation of not-talking-ness. I'm thinking: * Tired and stressed = no talking + grumpy look + raise right arm * Mad at JJ = no talking + grumpy look + wiggle big toe on right foot * Anxious = no talking + grumpy look + do the chicken dance * Not feeling good, might fall down = no talking + grumpy look + fall down Hopefully that'll clear things up. :-)