Baby Steps

It can be easily inferred from my last few posts that I’ve been spending a lot of time with Netflix these days.

My routine (or lack thereof) is easily governed by the weather. Last week and the week before that were oppressively hot and humid (or sunny and beautiful, as an optimist might say), and in a direct betrayal to the centuries of tropical-climate-inhabiting genetics on my mother’s side, I do not handle heat very well. Thanks to my lovely father, I have the constitution of a pasty Welshman, and in extreme heat situations, I get heat stroke and sunburns and have an undeniable desire to retreat into a cool dark place and... well... watch Netflix, I guess.

The weeks preceding the dog days of summer were rainy and grey – conditions even more conducive to becoming a recluse. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that in about five weeks, Jean and I have blown through entire series’ of House of Cards, Lilyhammer, Breaking Bad and Orange is the New Black.

Saturday morning, the inevitable happened. I had an “I’m bored” breakdown. (As a side note, I just can’t read or even think about the phrase “I’m bored” without hearing the voice of Louis CK’s television daughter). We had just stirred awake and were kind of joking around in bed, and during a lull in conversation, I looked at the perfectly blue sky and thought OH MY GOD. What in the fucking fuck have we been doing?!

The first step, as always, is acknowledging you have a problem. That step was easy, because the cabin fever induced depression had already bubbled to the surface. “We’re depressing”, Jean declared. To which I agreed. God, he’s depressed about this Netflix situation, and he spent the entire first week of his time off from work landscaping... a.k.a. chillin’ outside and being productive. If he’s feeling depressed, what should I be feeling?

So... we went for a bike ride. It wasn’t really a huge leap forward, but at least it was a nudge in the forward direction. He lives in what we call the “country”, which isn’t really the “country” as you might imagine it, but it’s definitely quiet, on the rural side and is punctuated with farmland. There’s a back road through the cornfields where we rode through a gentle breeze as the sun was setting and believe it or not, I didn’t miss Netflix. Not one bit. (And, I should mention, it was about ten thousand times less terrifying than riding my bike around my place in the city, where I’m always in a state of constant sweaty panicky fear for my life.)

We almost managed to avoid getting stuck in front of a screen for the rest of the weekend, but Mother Nature was cranky last night and there was a succession of angry thunder storms that ultimately kept us indoors.

Tonight... well, we’ll see. I’m optimistic.