I want to take a second to finish off Friday before really starting my day. Not that a lot happened, but I feel it needs a bit more closure than what I gave it.

After finishing my last post I spent a bit more time with Zane. We had dinner together, leftovers from lunch that we had brought home, before he went to work. We spent that time watching a bit more of DBZ Abridged.

I suppose I should mention that I’ve never liked Dragonball, or Dragonball Z, or any part of that franchise. It just never appealed to me. So by proxy I never had any motivation to watch the Abridged series.

When Zane made a reference to something in Abridged that I didn’t get yesterday it garnered an, “Oh my god! You’ve seriously never seen it?”

It’s a common reaction from other people in my life. I’m not one for movies or shows, so when references are made to them they typically go over my head. Then there’s the whole having to justify why I don’t watch / haven’t watched / am not going to watch whatever it is being talked about. This instance was no exception.

The only difference here was I made a deal with Zane. The episodes were supposed to be super short; roughly 10 minutes long. The show is also a parody making fun of everything I disliked about the original shows.

We agreed that I would give it 1 to 3 episodes. I would try it out, and if I didn’t like it we wouldn’t have to watch it. We would find something else we both could enjoy.

So I tried it, and yeah… it’s a train wreck that just keeps going.

One of my favorite parts so far is this:

Goku: Hey Piccilo. Mind if I ask you something?
Piccolo: What is it?
Goku: You’re not human either, right?
Piccolo: Yeah…
Guku: And your dad spit you out as an egg, right?
Piccolo: What about it?
Goku: Are… Are you a Yoshi?
Piccolo: …Yes Goku… I’m a green f#cking dinosaur…
Goku: Can… Can I ride you?

I thought I would die. It’s full of stupid stuff like that. XD

I stayed up for a bit after Zane left, but eventually went to sleep, and stayed asleep until roughly 3am. I’m not sure what woke me up. It was one of those, “I woke up for a reason,” wake ups, but both the cats were quiet, no one was awake in the apartment, Zane wasn’t back yet… There was really no reason for me to have woken up. I stayed in bed, listening, and eventually went back to sleep.

I woke up again when Zane came home. We were talking, but I wasn’t fully awake in the beginning, so I don’t remember what it was about. I remember things more clearly as the conversation kept going.

He said he was awake, and going to go watch TV in the living room while smoking a bowl of hookah and asked if I wanted to join. I said I would, and somehow we got to talking about school.

He asked why I was willingly failing a class. What was it that made me not want to do the work?

That brought up a metric fuck ton a lot of icky feelings. I started shutting down. I could feel my walls going up, and I said that I didn’t want to talk about it, at least not yet. Zane didn’t push the subject and said he was going to go out to the living room. We could talk about it later. If I still wanted to join him I was welcome to.

I stayed in the room for a while, trying to figure out why I had such a negative reaction to a pretty harmless question. I wrote about it a few days ago. I’ve been writing a lot about it recently. I shouldn’t be feeling so hurt and vulnerable when asked about my choices. So why am I still so unsettled? Why did being asked about school make be feel cold and like I was a failure?

I didn’t like that I had closed off to Zane. I didn’t like that I had this aversion to talking about something important with him. I ended up going out to the living room and sat for a little bit in silence. I leaned against his shoulder while he watched a Youtube video called Cracked. It was about free choice, and it actually had a pretty good argument against it. Go go nerdy science stuff.

He didn’t press me to talk, and I was still working up inside of my head to say something. I was content to sit next to him with my head leaning against his shoulder until that happened, and I guess he was content to let me sit there thinking.

I eventually got up to make the tuna that was supposed to be made two days ago. The eggs were boiled so the time consuming part was done. We both had half a sandwich. I unloaded the dishwasher and cleaned the few dishes in the sink. We talked about what we wanted for meals next week and other items we would need to pick up from the store, like batteries for the xBox controllers, so the grocery list is mostly done.

We did normal things that made me relax and breathe through the worry about bring up uncomfortable subjects. Life still goes on, we’re still ok, and things are still normal.

Zane eventually asked if I was ok. And of course I said yes.

Zane: I’m going to keep asking that until I believe you. You know that, right?

/sigh

I said I knew that. I ended up talking about school, and work, and he let me talk. We were back on the couch. I was sitting near him, but not really cuddling against him like I had been. I was close enough to feel his comfort, but far enough away to have the distance I needed to think.

He didn’t interrupt me, or add any comments until I was talked out. And from there we analyzed what was going on, where things were stemming from, etc. That’s going to be in my Musing Post which I still haven’t gotten around to doing yet.

I’m glad that I hadn’t written it yet, though. I’m glad I talked it out with someone first, actually. I think it made me really be honest rather than glossing over things I didn’t want to address.

Anyway, after all of that we broached the subject of quality time. It’s one of the things that has been nagging at me. My two primary love languages are physical touch and quality time.

Zane counts watching shows together as quality time. We’re on the couch cuddling normally. We talk about the plot line in-between the commercials. For him that’s being engaged together.

And to a certain point it is for me, too, but I don’t get a much from it as he does. I would rather us be doing something. I would rather get lunch together, like we did yesterday, or clean the room together, have deep conversations.

I don’t know. There’s still a part of me who feels that watching TV is a waste of time. There’s so many other things I need / aught / should / could be doing. Productive things. Never ending to-do list things.

Normally, when I watched TV with I lived with Joshua, I would sit and listen to the show while cross stitching, rather than truly ‘watching’ it. But Zane doesn’t feel connected when I do that. For him that’s not quality time. I’m doing my own thing and not really paying attention to what’s going on. So I haven’t been stitching while we’re doing the TV thing.

Lately I’ve felt like while he’s getting the type of quality time he wants, I haven’t been getting the type of quality time I want. And I suppose that isn’t exactly what I want to say since we still do things together. I suppose it’s more that it feels very one sided to me since I feel we watch TV all the time; every day, but because of our schedules we aren’t able to ‘do’ things together very often.

We talked about our different views. I asked if we could start listening to audio books together. Zane said sure, and asked if I had anything specific in mind. I mentioned the Game of Thrones books.

I actually have hardback copies of the novels that I had planned to donate. Both Trevor and Zane thought I was crazy for that since they could be sold for a fair amount of money. That seemed like more effort than it was worth, and Zane wanted to keep the books to read anyway, so I shrugged and basically said whatever. He can keep the books on his shelf and it wouldn’t affect me in any way.

When he asked what book I would be interested in listening to I suggested the first book in the series. He’s already read it, but I haven’t, so I thought we could listen to the first one and then continue the series together.

He was interested in the idea, and said he didn’t mind starting from the beginning with me. So I think we’re going to try to add that into our days. Maybe not everyday, but I’m ok with that. It will give us something to do away from the computer / TV. It will let me cross stitch while we’re still doing something together, hopefully. We haven’t tested it out yet, so it might not work for us. But I feel good that we were able to talk about it and brainstorm different options.

Once all of that was talked about I was exhausted again, in a good way though. I felt lighter and more at peace. I kissed Zane goodnight and went back to bed. By then it was around 5am, with my alarm being set for 7:30.

Zane came to bed around 7. When my alarm went off he offered to get up and cook breakfast for me. I was speechless for a bit as my brain processed this.

I said that he didn’t have to do that, but if he did I would be ridiculously grateful. He said that he was hungry, was awake, and would cook for us while I showered.

<3

I have no words.

When I got out of the shower I was surprised with half an apple, two stripes of bacon, an over easy egg, a piece of toast and a small serving of homemade hash browns.

<3<3<3<3

I made my coffee and stood in the kitchen eating my fabulous breakfast while Zane cooked his food. I had been planning on skipping breakfast in favor of staying in bed. Instead I had an amazing meal while we discussed what the day held for each of us.

Once I was done eating I went into the bedroom to get ready for work. I even had a few minutes to sit and write out my to-do list for the day. When I was ready to leave we hugged and kissed goodbye and I headed off to work, which is where I am currently at.

I feel rested since I got so much sleep. I feel like my day is off to an amazing start because Zane and I were able to have time together rather than a groggy, half slurred, “See you later,” like how most of our mornings have been this month. Most of that is due to our schedules being polar opposites, and not something that either of us can really help, but I think it’s part of why the quality time thing started to bother me.

I feel better because I have a game plan for the few things that were giving me a bit of discord, and because I was open about those issues instead of harboring the negativity away.

I feel good. I still need to take care of some things. There’s still a few battles to fight. But I feel prepared for them.