Wonderment

Recently I have been overwhelmed with a sense of wonderment. I find myself daydreaming for hours on end. I spend most of the day staring off into space wondering things. For example, I’ve just spent 10 minutes wondering why my passport is sitting in the middle of a pile of dirty laundry. From there, I spent some time wondering how a pile of dirty laundry came to be behind my desk. The passport has always been kept in my jewelry box because I don’t really own any jewelry and so I had to put something in there. How did it get to the floor? And why are all my clothes removed from the laundry basket and strewn about the house? Is someone trying them on while I’m gone during the day?

I’ve also felt incredibly stir crazy. My house has taken a turn for the worse and become some sort of flop house for anyone who cares to show up. I’ve tried to put my foot down, but it doesn’t do any good. I don’t mind Josh being here when he has a reason to be. There are times when I ask him to stay to watch the kids in situations like today when I had to work and both kids had the day off of school. I appreciate that we have been able to become friends. He talks to me about girls; I talk to him about boys. It’s nice to be able to have a friend like that just hanging around whenever you need to talk. But sometimes I really just need my space. It doesn’t matter if he stays in a separate room the entire time he is here and I never see him – sometimes his presence is oppressive.

This feeling leads me to completely neurotic, manic behavior. Because I have been supporting not only myself and two kids, but him and sometimes his friends as well, I have come to find myself completely flat broke. I have about 45 cents in the bank right at this moment. Thankfully, payday is a few days away but there is no reason at all that I should be so broke right now. We also have no food. I come home from work and all the food is just gone. It seemed like I was grocery shopping every night but by the time I got around to eating something, everything was gone. But in this manic mind frame there is only one thing I can think of. Like an itchy scab somewhere deep inside that I cannot get to, I know that I have to do something about the ladybugs.

Yesterday, we went ladybug hunting. At first I thought it was just the usual five or six ladybugs. But every time we caught one more appeared. Finally, when we had caught as many as we thought we could find and trapped them all in a jar we counted them. 21 ladybugs collected from my bedroom. If there were 21 cockroaches crawling and flying around in someone’s bedroom the odds are pretty good that they would just move out. I would. But these are ladybugs and so some cultural thing is telling me that I have to be nice to them. What do I do? I go shopping,

The first thing I find is the ‘Backyard Explorer Bug Hut’. This costs 14.99 and is exactly what I need for the ladybugs. But then my eyes came across the glorious Bug Vacuum. This toy looks like a small vacuum cleaner and sucks the bugs right up into a special “holding area”. You trap the bugs into the “holding area” with a swiveling magnifying glass. Once they are caught you can remove the “holding area” and transfer it to a special slot in the Bug Hut and let them crawl out into their new home. It costs 19.99. I have 13.00 in leftover giftcards and about 30 dollars in the bank (at this point.) It came down to food or the bug supplies. My daughter and I stood there for a long time trying to determine if we could live without one or the other or which one was more important to buy. We couldn’t decide. We knew we had to have both.

We get back home and find at least 10 more ladybugs in my room. They are easily sucked up into the bug vacuum and transferred to their new home. At last count we extracted over 30 ladybugs from my bedroom yesterday.

I feel slightly better knowing that I may have single-handedly saved a family of ladybugs who were just trying to live out the winter in my home. At least I did until they started drowning themselves in the little waterfall.

After all of this excitement I was really tired. Some friends wanted me to go out with them for trivia and dancing. I was too tired. Another ‘friend’ called while I was out and spoke with Josh. Apparently he wanted to buy me a ticket to a show at Empire last night. Josh was going to take the train home and get some money from his dad so he could go, too. I did not want to go. But more than that -- I did not want to go with this guy. He isn’t a bad person and as a friend he is ok. But I don’t like people who use the disguise of friendship to try to fuck me. (I apologize for the vulgarity, but I know he doesn’t want a relationship with me…) It is always completely transparent and irks the hell out of me. And while I would be this guy’s friend, I would certainly never be with him in any other way, shape or form. Sorry.

And besides, I was tired. I didn’t want to have to blow this guy off again. I also told Josh that I did not feel like hanging around some guy that just wants to fuck me. I told Josh to just call him back and tell him I already had plans (which was true). Of course he doesn’t do that. He has a nice long conversation with him then says “Oh, she isn’t going. Want to talk to her?” From there I had to endure 15 minutes of a guilt trip that I thought would never end but I firmly stuck with my story that I could not go.

Hours pass. Josh is at the show with this guy. 9 or 10 o’clock rolls around and I get a phone call. I have caller id. I can see that it’s the guy. I’m thinking, maybe it’s Josh and it’s an emergency or maybe he can’t watch the kids tomorrow or maybe they are all going to jail. I answer the phone. Of course not, it’s the guy.

Him: “Are you having fun?”

Me: “Oh, I didn’t end up going out after all.”

Him: “What?”

Me: “No one was really feeling well enough to go so we all cancelled.”

Him: “That’s fucked up. See you should have gone. I was going to buy you a ticket.”

Me: “I’m sorry.”

Him: “Well, do you want us to come and hang out with you later?”

Me: “Umm…no, I have to work tomorrow and I’m really tired.”

Him: “Oh that sucks. Ok I just wanted to see if you were having fun ‘cause we are totally having fun.”

Me: “Ok, bye..”

At around 10:30 I go to sleep. I wonder how Josh is supposed to get back in the house since he doesn’t have a key. I wonder if he is bringing the guy back to the house since that is the only transportation I have. Josh already knows that I don’t want him there. I fall asleep with these things going through my head.

I’m awoken at 2:30 am with the doorbell being depressed at least a thousand times. I stumble down the stairs and open the door and there is Josh with a case of beer and a dozen yellow roses. I let him in and quickly try to shut the door. He stops me and says, “No, he’s staying the night.”

What the fuck?

He gives me the roses, which he tells me he just shoplifted from Safeway. I guess this was to butter me up for the whole situation. They both climb the stairs totally and completely drunker than I have ever seen either one of them. And that’s a stretch for the guy who when I think back I can honestly say I have never seen sober.

Another funny thing here – the guy is well over 6 feet tall. Easily the tallest guy I know. I am 5’4” and I can touch the ceiling in my apartment without standing on my toes. It’s a small place. This guy has to duck or he hits his head on the lights. Interesting to watch when he is drunk since he doesn’t have the common sense to duck.

At this point I just give in. I crawl back into bed and lock my door thankful that at some point my daughter had crawled into bed with me because I would think that, even drunk, he would not try to jump into my bed with my daughter in it.

I woke up this morning to find him in my daughter’s bed which was of course the only empty one. He had been eating Cheez-Its in the bed and had stained her white sheets a gross orange color. I left for work thinking it would all be over soon. I come home at lunch time and he is still there. I go back to work. I come home at the end of the day and he is still there.

I gave him the worst, dirty, unencouraging looks that I could muster and totally ignored his presence after that. After about 20 minutes of it he finally left.

Later-

Josh: ”Dude, you were right. All he talked about was wanting to fuck you!”

Me: “No kidding. Why was he still here.”

Josh: “Awww…he just wanted to see you.”

Me: “Ew. Wasn’t that weird at all? I’m your baby-momma for god’s sakes. You’d think he’d have the courtesy not to have that conversation with you.”

Josh: “I didn’t think about that.”

To be continued...