Last night, Esteban was going to stop home for a little while after work, so after I picked up my new digital camera from EdFex (it’s so CUTE! Squee!), I scurried right home so that I could pick up some miscellany and the house would look all nice and tidy and I could be all smarmy, as if to say ‘Look at how clean the house is when you are gone! Obviously you are a messy bessy, only the male version of bessy which I can’t think of right now!’ Only I wouldn’t say it. I’d be like ‘Ain’t nothing but a thang.’ And then he’d persevere to be neater and not leave his little Esteban nests hither and yon like some oversized bearded raccoon.
But he never showed up. So I made my broiled salmon and marinara-over-rigatoni dinner for myself and sat around watching Lost In Translation and willing the battery for my new camera to charge so that I could play with it. And then Esteban called. From his parent’s house.
Apparently, he had already been there. Picking up some clean laundry.
‘The kitchen looks good, sweetie.’
Good? Good?! The kitchen looks INFUCKINGCREDIBLE. I mean, considering that he has literally not done a single of his kitchen duties in all of 2004, by rights, the kitchen should be covered in possibly grey fur, with large scales of mold on the walls. We should be wallowing in garbage in there. But no. No. Instead, there is a wide-open space decorated by flowering paperwhites and orchids. There is a calendar on the refrigerator and it is turned to the correct month. The cupboards have all been wiped down. Everything sparkles. Everything. Now when the microwave beeps, there is a choir of angels. This is not just good. This is the good that deserves a month of groveling and perhaps a shrine.
Of course, I’m probably being overly grumpy. The onslaught of Tilly’s nocturnal pleas for attention continues. This morning, it was 4 am. I pushed her out of my face and subsequently off the bed.
When Esteban and I first moved in together, he brought his rather talkative whiny Chelsea along with him and she would meow and meow and meow beyond the range of normal human tolerance. And apparently, one night, Esteban came to bed after I was asleep and Chelsea, figuring that movement meant that it was time to have adoration heaped upon her, began her feline tirade. And Esteban swears that in my sleep I said ‘Stupid cat! I will throw you up against the wall!’ Which was pretty much the only thing in our little bedroom that wasn’t our king-sized bed. That’s one of our private jokes that has bridged the years. Grumpy tired Weetabix? You get thrown up against the wall.
Of course, I’d never really DO such a thing. But apparently I would push you off the bed onto the carpet if you were relentlessly obnoxious.
Tilly was very sullen this morning. She did not join me in the shower for Between The Curtains Time. I think she held a grudge. She did however nose open the bathroom door afterward to make sure that I wasn’t doing anything that she might be interested in, and also to attempt to jump into the sink while I was brushing my teeth (with the new Colgate Simply White toothpaste, which make my teeth startlingly blue while I’m using it. Like I just blew a smurf or something). This is why I don’t have kids. I can’t even keep the cat in line; what would I do with a toddler?
I checked in with Jonathon’s teacher yesterday. Seems that he didn’t turn in one of his assignments last week. So I called him.
Weetabix : Hey Jonathon.
Jonathon : Hey
Weetabix : How’s it going?
Jonathon : Ok.
Weetabix : How’s math going?
Jonathon : Ok.
Weetabix : Are you doing the homework and stuff like you’re supposed to?
Jonathon : Yeah. I’m all caught up.
Weetabix : Oh? What about page 208, numbers three through twenty four?
Jonathon : (silence)
Weetabix : (silence)
Jonathon : Um’ oh, yeah.
Weetabix : Yeah.
He’s got until tomorrow and then he loses the Game Boy and his DVDs again, as well as his television. He should know better than to mess with me on this subject. I just want to stand over him, like some soccer mom slash gangsta chica, taunting ‘Bring it on, eighth grader. I will kick your ass every time. I earned that right by wiping eight hundred of your poopy diapers!’
He’s lucky he’s not a cat.
In other news, I’m still probably laid off.
They keep saying ‘if your jobs will be retained’ to keep the carrot on the stick. The prefix ‘as’ is silent, of course.
But one bit of excitement today: I finally got in touch with my college advisor who had been out on medical leave! Squee! I heart her so very much! We had a lovely talk and she will indeed write letters of recommendation for me (unfortunately, it is woefully beyond the deadlines for most of the programs, but hopefully they won’t hold that against me) and she’s now the chair of her department, so she feels this will make her recommendation that much more valuable. And I’m going to stop by her office next week and we will ‘sit and giggle’ (her words) and gossip and also she has ‘a proposition’ for me, having something to do with writing. So yay.
When talking about her medical leave (what an ordeal! I can hardly believe she is still intact), she said, ‘You know how it is as a writer. We tend to live on the edge and take everything for granted and be self-destructive’.’ And yes, I do know. I know exactly. Exactly. The truth of the matter is that I simply do not have enough contact in my every day life with creative people. It’s one thing to meet metaphorically via the internet and email (and to some extent phone calls) but most of the people I interact with on a regular basis never really understand the whole writer thing. And while my friends get that I’m not your average Cheesehead and they totally respect the writing thing (one of the reasons I love them totally), but there are some things that only other artistes can understand. So having this connection makes me want to jump up and down. I talked with her while I was at work and then had a stupid grin on my face and jumped up out of my chair from the exuberance, forgetting how terribly out of place I looked in the Cubicles of Lethal Outsourcing, but I just couldn’t help it. It was wonderful to remember that I’m not just a lackey for The Man.
By the way, Marn?I want her to adopt me. That is all.
(Ooh, and also Evany, who got the kick to the ass today! What is it with all the diarists losing their jobs recently! Man!)
