I got home

I got home around seven and the hallway light was doing that flicker thing again where it can't decide if it's on. I didn't fix it. I'm not going to fix it tonight, probably not this week. I put my keys in the bowl by the door, missed, picked them up off the floor, put them in the bowl again. Took my shoes off without untying them which I know wrecks the backs of them but I do it every single day so the shoes already know.

There was a smell in the apartment that I couldn't place. Not bad. Just a smell. Old coffee maybe, or the trash that I should take out but the bag isn't full yet so what's the point.

I had a thing of leftover rice and some chicken from two nights ago in a plastic container, the kind with the lid that never seals right anymore. Put it in the microwave. Two minutes. The microwave does this hum that's a little too loud, like it's working harder than it should for what it is, and the whole time I just stood there with my hand on the counter looking at nothing. Watched the container go around. There was steam on the inside of the door near the end. Then the beep. Three beeps actually, and then it beeps again later if you don't open it, which is rude honestly, like it's nagging me. I opened it before the second round of beeps because I didn't want to deal with it.

The food was hot on the edges and cold in the middle which is the standard microwave deal. I ate standing up for a minute and then sat down at the table that has a pile of mail on it I haven't gone through. Some of it is probably important. None of it is on fire so it can wait.

My phone had the work stuff on it. I could see the little badge number. There were a few messages in the group, somebody asking about the thing from this afternoon, and then a direct one from my manager that just said "quick q when you have a sec." I read it through the notification without opening it so it would still show as unread, which is a small dumb trick I do so I don't feel obligated yet. I knew if I opened it I'd answer it, and if I answered it there'd be a follow up, and then I'm working at 7:40 on my own couch in my socks. So I didn't open it. I put the phone face down. Then I turned it back over because I don't know, habit.

I ate the rest of the chicken. It wasn't great. It was fine.

At some point I opened one of those random chat things, Knot.chat, just to have something on the screen that wasn't email. I wasn't looking for anything. I got matched with somebody and we talked about, I want to say, vending machines? They were saying the vending machine at their gym only takes exact change which is insane in this year, and I said the one in my old office building used to eat dollar bills and never give anything back, like a slot machine that always loses. They typed "lol that's robbery" and I said "yeah it owes me like four dollars." That was basically the whole conversation. We went back and forth a few more times about nothing. They mentioned it was raining where they were and I said it wasn't here yet but the sky looked like it was thinking about it.

It was kind of nice in a low way. No name I'll remember, no reason to keep it going. The thing about those conversations is the second they get good they also start to feel like something you have to maintain, like oh now I have to be interesting, now I have to ask them about themselves and remember the answer. And I already have a phone full of people I owe answers to. So when they asked "what do you do for work" I just said "boring office stuff" and then I said I had to go, which wasn't even a lie, I didn't have to go anywhere but I was done. I closed it. Didn't say bye properly. They'll be fine.

I washed the one fork and left the container in the sink to deal with later, which is a lie I tell myself daily and it's always the morning me who pays for it. The microwave clock was blinking the wrong time because the power must've blipped at some point and I never reset it. It said 12:00. It's been 12:00 for like a month.

The work message was still sitting there. "quick q when you have a sec." I have a sec. I have a lot of secs right now, technically. But I'm not going to. I'll answer it at 9 tomorrow and it'll turn out to be something that could've been an email and probably was already in an email I didn't read. That's usually how it goes.

I sat on the couch for a while not really watching anything. The fridge kicked on with its own hum, lower than the microwave, and the two of them weren't in tune so the apartment had this slight wobble of noise. I thought about taking the trash out. The bag still wasn't full. I left it.