Yesterday was not really a good day, despite that I finished reading Anne Carson’s sequel to Autobiography of Red: Red Doc>.

I was making dumplings filled with ground pork and corns when he came to the kitchen and announced there’d be some possibility that his company will go through another round of layoffs in the next month. How was this information sourced? Someone on Blind said they saw men in suits – likely the consulting folks – having lunch at the company’s cafeteria. And what about the layoff schedule? Someone else on Blind mentioned something about March. I was making dumplings when he told me all these, and suddenly I felt very, very tired. Dumpling making is a tedious process. It takes three hours for one person to make a bunch of dumplings alone. The first hour is for making the dough, kneading it twice, and resting it so the glutens can form. The second hour, while waiting for the dough to be ready, is for preparing the spiced oil, the water soaked with ginger, Sichuan peppers, and the white part of scallion, and for seasoning the ground pork. The last hour is for cutting, shaping, and rolling the dough into small pieces of round dumpling skins, then using them to wrap the seasoned pork filling. I was in the last hour of this dumpling-making process when he strode in and announced the “news” to me. Tired of standing by the kitchen counter for more than two hours already, I was tired also because of this news.

This was why the dumplings came out less impressive than they should have been.

I did not sleep well either. Yesterday’s siesta was okay, but upon waking up I think I was hit by something akin to a panic attack. I couldn’t sit up from the couch, and I couldn’t take on my sweater after finally struggling to sit up. I had arrived at some ideas for what to cook and what to read the day before, yet I just couldn’t summon any energy to move forward after waking up from my mid-day nap. Then, last night I had trouble falling asleep (once again). My stomach was quite gassy (not sure why) and my mind was racing. Throughout the whole night I dreamed and dreamed, moving across different scenes and talking to various people I don’t recall knowing in real life. After a short period of dreaming, I’d wake up, only to find it was still in the middle of the night. This dream-and-wake-and-dream-again cycle kept going on until I finally woke up to see a dimmed ray of light beside me – he was awake as well and was looking at his phone as usual. It was morning. The time to eventually get up.

I don’t know if he is as bothered by the news as me. Perhaps my unsteadiness was caused by the fact that I’m entirely dependent on him, at least economically. I was ruminating on the possibility of losing everything we’ve worked so hard together to gain: our house, our garden, our quiet but content lives far away from home, and even our cat. Of course my rumination didn’t lead to anywhere except for me being even more anxious, but this futile stream of thoughts at last enervated me and I was able to resume my daily chores.

To think as if thinking could help, but it can’t.