Post 299

I didn't forget that it's Friday. Freaky Friday will take a break this week. I will just have to do a longer one next week. Again, there's been too much activity this week to keep up with all of it. Mostly, that's due to a lot of people looking for Cloverfield stuff. And then some of it was due to my taking a few days off.

Anyway, I can't do both Freaky Friday and a catch up post. I only have this one post left before the long awaited 300th. And I want the 300th to be on a Monday. It would have been this past Monday, but I was getting some stuff done so that I could go to Shreveport. And I didn't want to post the 300th right before I was going to be in Shreveport.

So I went to Shreveport for a bit. My husband worked there Tuesday. I had thought about going with him earlier, but decided I didn't want to be gone unless it was only a day or two. When the schedule was changed so that he only worked Tuesday, I just couldn't get the idea out of my head. Maybe if I just get away from here for a day or so I'll feel better.

I can't say that I really feel much better. But I can say that if I'd have stayed here instead of going I'd have felt worse. I was spending too much time in bed doing nothing. Spending a day in a motel bed watching cable TV is a different thing entirely. I get a bit of knitting done, and I relax some. I can't relax here, cause there's always something else I really should be doing that never seems to get done.

The house is an even bigger mess than it was. I emptied the storage unit. I had only meant to have it for two or three months, and I think now it has been more than six. I decided that if I hadn't missed the stuff in six months, it was probably safe to throw most of it away. And that's what I meant to do, throw most of it away. Saturday I got out most of the stuff I wanted, and Sunday he picked up his bike. I thought the rest of it could be left behind.

Not that I'd really just leave it there for someone else to deal with. I'm not that kind of person. I went back Monday to start throwing the stuff out. Only I found a few more things that I meant to keep.

Wednesday I found a few more things. And then it gets to the point where you reach into a box just to get this one thing, and then you see all this other stuff in the box. Oh, I forgot about that. So then it's a lot of trouble to stand there and sort through the box, so I ended up taking the whole box to sort out at home. So if I meant to pick up just four little things, I end up taking home four boxes of little things. And then I had to make like four more trips, cause there was still stuff to throw away. And each time I ended up bringing home a few more boxes of stuff to sort through.

That last trip I really did have to just throw stuff away. Only the dumpster wasn't really in a good place near my unit. After dragging that stuff to the dumpster, I felt a twinge in my neck, and I didn't go back for that last box of stuff that needed to be taken out. But it was just that one last box, and it wasn't even a heavy box, so maybe they will forgive me.

I found all sorts of weird things in the unit. How did that get there?

I found a six pack of Dublin Dr. Pepper. I can't imagine why I would have put that in storage. I think that I was going to give it to a friend and had to hide it from my husband, and then I took the box to the unit by mistake.

I found a lot of books. The funny thing was finding a condom in with a box of books. Last year there was so much make-up sex, and we bought more condoms last year than we have in our almost twenty year relationship. We would go to the grocery store and buy condoms while we were there, and then later we would try to remember if we'd bought condoms earlier, so we'd buy some more at another place just to be on the safe side. There were packages of condoms in nearly every room, condoms in my makeup case, condoms in every piece of luggage, etc.... So there are condoms that turn up in weird places. The really funny thing about this one was that it was unwrapped. All sorts of odd images pop into my mind. Surely we didn't pack half a box of books, suddenly decide to have sex, unwrap a condom, and then change our minds and go back to packing books and stuff. Maybe one time we were in such a hurry to have sex that the condom went flying out of our hands and was lost? Were we playing around one day and deliberately started flinging condoms across the room?

There were about a dozen things of soup in the little microwaveable containers, but they were hidden under a couple of pairs of shoes. We always have stuff like that in the van, in case my husband has to go out of town suddenly he'll have soup and maybe peanut butter and crackers. If he doesn't feel like going out, he won't starve. But this stuff had been in the storage unit so long it had gone out of date.

I found a bunch of school stuff from about 2003. I realize that I don't need most of that, but I would have liked to keep some of it anyway, if I could have gotten it organized. So now I've finally thrown most of it away. I'm still hanging on to a bit of it. And some of it is notes on stories that I wrote for class. I can't find the completed stories now, so I'd better keep the notes just in case I have to rewrite them.

I took Russian classes. I can't speak Russian, but for about six months I could type Russian. I finally tossed that out. I couldn't read any of it.

There are more books. Some of these books are going to be sold to Half Price Books. It's too bad there isn't a Half Price Stuff that would pay you a little bit for all the stuff you end up not wanting. I could box up the odd pieces of Tupperware that I don't even use anymore cause it doesn't store well with the Rubbermaid stuff. And they could have some Christmas decorations that I ended up not using. And I have this toaster oven that's just in my way now. And I bought an ice tea maker at a garage sale and then didn't even use it. I haven't made waffles since we've been in this house. There's all this stuff that I don't want to actually throw away, and I suppose I should give it to Goodwill, but I don't want to. But selling it, even for just a little bit, that would be different somehow. I can't have a garage sale myself, and I'm trying to decide how much of this stuff should stay here until the club has their sale.

Yesterday, I went to art class, only it was cancelled. My teacher was sick. For so reason, the school refuses to put on sign on the door. So you just wait around until you see someone else coming to class, and one of you waits by the door while the other goes to get someone to officially say that there's no class today. So the teacher is usually there at nine, and the class officially starts at ten. I got there at about 9:30. Another student got there just as I did and found that the door was locked. She announced that it was freezing, which it wasn't really, and ran off, leaving me with her stuff. She didn't say where she was going or please watch my stuff or anything. She just left. So I'm just standing by the door with my stuff and her stuff. I should just take my stuff back to my car and then go to the other building and try to find out what's going on. But I don't feel like I can do that with the other student's stuff still next to the door. At about 9:45 another student comes, and she says she'll stay with the stuff until 10 if I want to leave. While we are discussing the situation, someone comes with a key to let us in, but tells us not to get our stuff out. Class is cancelled, she's just there for a few minutes to pass around a sign-in sheet. We're not allowed to stay in the lab without the teacher, unless they hire a babysitter, which they did not.

This made me mad, but I've gotten used to this sort thing from them, and it didn't cause me any particular problems, so I didn't make a scene this time. Another student is quite convinced that this will ruin the piece she's working on. A couple of weeks work and almost fifty pounds of clay, all probably for nothing. By next Tuesday the piece will have dried too much and start to crack. If you've planned to do something on Thursday, sometimes you absolutely have to do whatever it is on Thursday, or the whole thing is ruined. But they still won't hire anyone to keep the lab open when the teacher is ill.

So I am debating whether or not I should drive over there today. He said that he was going to be there, but if he was sick on Thursday and sick on Wednesday, might he still be sick on Friday. And even if he comes in for class, he might not stay for "office hours", and I don't think I want to waste my time and gas for maybe getting to work two hours. Maybe I should just accept that this week has been a waste of time and not worry about it.

Back to trying to sort through the junk. Here's some stuff from when I first learned that I was going to get a divorce. Emails from him. Emails from the Homewrecking-Slut. Me asking her to stay away while we deal with our business, and her refusing. We're considering getting a divorce for no other reason than she is a slut who won't go away and mind her own business. She knows we're still in love and that we never stopped being in love and that before her we weren't even fighting much less talking of divorce, she knows he's only even talking to her because he's mentally ill, and she doesn't care. I need to see a doctor, but I don't have any money. She's determined to make the worst time of our lives into a vacation. I can't see a doctor, but they're going to take a tour of Texas.

That's all stuff that I would like to be rid of, but I have to keep it. And here's stuff from the lesbian he was going to leave me for years before that. But I didn't know at the time. At the time I had a job and money in the bank and no debt, and while it would have upset me to learn what he was planning, I would have gladly shown him the door and been done with him. I'm not sure what he thought was going to happen with a lesbian. Did he think that her girlfriend was going to let him move in with them? Did he think that they were just pretending to be lesbians? Anyway, if I had known back then he would have been out of my life a lot sooner and with a lot less pain. And accept for getting him to sign over the apartment, I wouldn't have had to ask him for anything. But now everything is different.

Here are a bunch of old Christmas cards from people I don't even remember. That's not so strange. A lot of other people go overboard with the whole Christmas card thing. I usually don't. But here are cards that I meant to send, signed and sealed and ready to go, but no postage. Only I don't recognize some of these names either. Who did I care enough about to buy Christmas cards for, but now I can't even remember who they were?

Here are a zillion little things like postcards. We were very happy together. I don't want this stuff anymore, but it's hard to get rid of it. If it's damaged I throw it away, otherwise it goes back into a box. Here's a book he bought for me back when I was seventeen. It's damaged. I shouldn't keep it anyway.

I hate this house. It's home, but right now I hate it. I loved the apartment, but I couldn't take him whining about moving. So, we moved here, and he wasn't willing to do the work that needed to be done. Less than a year later, he's whining about moving again, but we're not moving. We took my mother's money cause he just had to move here. I'm never moving again unless he pays back my mother's money. I told him once we moved that was it, so he shouldn't be in such a hurry. But he didn't listen and was surprised that I was trying to make long term plans for the place. He kept talking nonsense about Maine and London. The Homewrecking-Slut lives near London.

I hate this house when I am by myself. When he is here he does things that upset me about 75% of the time he is awake. I am in limbo again, and I hate it, and I can't really decide anything until March. Either way, I'll still live here. And I hate it.

Since I managed to get the stuff out of the storage unit, we have money to pay the rent this month. My husband had been out of work for more than two weeks, and since he has been back to work he hasn't made any commission to speak of. That's pretty much all of the money that we'll have for about two weeks. After that we will have to pay both car payments, so we won't have much money to spare then either. This is really starting to suck. I can't waste gas. I can't buy more clay or any other art supplies. I can't go out to dinner with my friends tomorrow. I'm not even going to drive over to the bookstore to see them. They'll try to talk me into going with them, just have a sandwich or a salad or something. Or someone will offer to loan me some money. But really, I shouldn't even drive over there. It will take too much gas.

I can't think of anything that I want to make for the sixth project in ceramics class. We're supposed to find some common object in the house and copy it. People copy lamps and shoes and such. I'm trying to get rid of stuff in the house, and I'm really not in the mood to make useless copies.

My husband will be gone today and tomorrow. It shouldn't bother me. Somehow it does. We briefly toyed with the idea of my going with him again. Today could have been spent on another motel bed watching cable TV while knitting. But tomorrow I wouldn't have the motel room, so what would I do? Spend the day at the mall? Not a good way to save money. I'm stuck here instead.

I could ramble on like this for a long time. But I really need to stop now. I should sort through some more of those boxes before the trash collection tomorrow.