The Half Pair

It's a story by Robert A. Heinlein, in which a young couple who live in a 2-person spaceship discover one of the man's cufflinks has gone missing out the airlock, and they go back and retrieve it, because having one-half of a pair of anything means you're letting things go. Losing your slim hold on the veneer of civilization. Losing your grip, period.

Well, I now am the sad owner of a half-pair of diamond earrings.

The earrings were a gift from Hubby about eight years ago. We were dirt poor, perpetually broke, and that particular gift from him represented a month's food money at the time.

They symbolized his love for me, his utter devotion and foolishment where I was concerned, that he'd go yet further into debt to buy me a "trinket" that I didn't need and we couldn't afford.

And about six months ago I suspected I'd lost one of them.

I'd been going out, and putting them in, and got distracted and left the house after only inserting one of them. The other was still in the drawer.

I discovered my error halfway through the evening and was horrified to think I'd lost it. Upon coming home I found it sitting in the drawer right where I'd left it, and I made the fatal mistake.

I put it's partner in the drawer with it.

Now, when I say "drawer", it's not an exact description. I have this Ikea headboard which has two sets of "drawers" that slide into the headboard - so everything looks neat and tidy. The idea is, you can hide the mess that usually sits on your night table by tucking the night table/drawer back into the headboard.

But there is no back to the drawer. It is a flat piece of wood. You can pull it forward to put things on it, and tuck it back, but things can fall off the edge at the back.

And at some point in the past six months, that's what happened to one of my diamond earrings. I didn't realize it, because I had so much junk on the drawer. I kept pawing around in the junk, looking for stuff, every day when I got dressed.

And in between then and now, I vaccumed, and now I have one diamond earring.

This morning I went through the vaccum bag, in one last desperate attempt to find the missing earring, but sadly, it must have been in the previous vaccum bag, before I had noticed it was missing.

And yes, I finally let go and cried. Hubby had been almost sheepish at how small they were, he had called them "specks:" but considering the portion of our income they represented, they felt to me like 2-karat diamonds. They felt like love, they shone with the madness of lovers, of two people hopelessly in love with each other and reckless of the consequences of their insanity. When I wore them, I was a queen.

And the loss of one of them brought back to mind everything I've disliked about myself since I was five years old with a snot-filled nose and dirt-choked fingernails, chewing gum I'd pried off sidewalks.

That I'm careless. I'm irresponsible. I'm lazy and selfish. I didn't deserve those earrings, as I don't deserve any jewellery. I'm a dirty little kid with pretentions of grandeur. I think I'm so smart, but I'm a dolt, an idiot, a grease-spot on the fabric of life. I didn't deserve my husband, I don't deserve to have any husband, or any friends either. A messy, useless, whiny lump. Why, those earrings would have looked better on a pig than on me. It serves me right to lose one of them, I'm surprised it didn't happen years ago, I take such lousy care of my possessions.

And so on. If anyone out there has ever found me a bit sharp-tongued at times, take comfort - I save the most potent venom for myself.

The Honey Pot

Well, it's a Sunday night, and Boyfriend had to go home early (*sniff) because he was overtired and unable to breathe. Clogged sinuses. I felt very sorry for him.

Our weekend had begun well enough. We played scrabble, even though English isn't his first language. We watched some good tv. I made dinner. All the usual...

He was supposed to stay till Monday morning, but suffered this humungous fit of not being able to breathe and not getting any sleep as a result, and he shuffled off early to put himself to bed in his own chamber.

Leaving me to figure out how to spend my Sunday evening.

Since I don't work Mondays, Sunday evening is for me very much like a Friday or Saturday evening is for most North Americans. I can really do whatever I like.

Had Boyfriend stayed, I would have dutifully made dinner and we dutifully would have cleaned up afterwards. We would have gone to bed at a most respectable hour - especially since Boyfriend is in the habit of getting up a five a.m. to go to work.

As previously mentioned, our weekend had begun quite well. I ran the dishwasher right after dinner last night, and again after breakfast this morning. I noticed over the last month, when Pal was occupying my couch space, that I do seem to have developed a mania for running the dishwasher that surpassed even my own expectations. The fact is, I can't wait to run the damned thing! Dirty dishes sit heavily on my mind - precisely, I think, because of the danger that I might have to wash them myself, with my own two hands, if they don't come out clean enough. And they don't come out very clean at all if they sit, drying, in the dishwasher, waiting for someone to get around to running it!

So I load and lock the dishwasher at every available opportunity and run it as fast as I can.

Since Saturday afternoon, it had been run twice - once last night, once this morning.

I had also run two loads of laundry - this in the time that Boyfriend was visiting, mind you. I had mentioned to Boyfriend I needed help to turn the futon over so that I might take up the slack of the overlarge cover I had put on it and baste it into place so it didn't look so wrinkled and saggy all the time. So one load of laundry consisted of the cover. Boyfriend's last act here today was to help me turn the futon back on it's right side after I'd finished basting. A heroic effort, since you recall, poor fellow was a little short of breath at the time.

The other load of laundry consisted of the fitted sheet of my white sheet set - I have to wash and dry these sheets separately, given that they are so large and have such a high thread count, and the dryer is a "110" dryer and takes forever to dry a facecloth, much less a 300-thread count queen size sheet!

Last night, while we were trying to sleep, you see, Bijou decided she had to go out and in and out again and finally in one last time: and on each occasion of opening the bedroom window, she pounced with her wet paws onto my 300-thread count queen sized white fitted sheet.

About twelve little puddy-footy-prints adorned the sheet this morning. So, the fitted sheet was the second load of laundry to go on since yesterday afternoon.

In Boyfriend's short visit from Saturday afternoon till Sunday afternoon, we'd had dinner and breakfast, and the dishwasher had been run twice. I'd done two loads of laundry. I'd basted the futon cover into place. We'd gone to a couple of shops - Fabricville to pick up elastic, WalMart to pick up a kettle, Provigo to pick up some foodstuffs, and a Jean Coutu to pick up some antihistamine for poor Boyfriend's sinuses. I had even sprayed the oven because some of dinner had become encrusted on the bottom, and cleaned it out two hours later!

However, today, after he left, I did precisely nothing at all.

I watched tv. I drank two rather large glasses of wine, ate a baked potato, ate some chips with dip, and more wine.

Nothing is cleared away, no laundry has been put on to run, no vaccum cleaner has emerged, no sewing has been started. Or finished.

I have been the proverbial bump-on-a-log all evening, about as useless a human being as there could possibly be. I watched "The Honey Pot" - an old movie with Rex Harrison and Maggie Smith, thoroughly enjoyable for it's double-entendres and general silliness. And, after I finish this blog, I'm going to bed, leaving every dish and glass right where it is, with no more need to run the dishwasher tonight than to run a marathon for pleasure.

In short, I have discovered that I'm incapable of relaxing when another human being is present. And, conversely, or perversely, if you will, incapable of moving my butt off the couch when not being watched.

Sort of the polar opposite of Dr. Who's "Weeping Angels" who move to kill when nobody is looking at them but who turn to stone the moment they are seen by someone. I "turn to stone", or as good as , when nobody is looking!

When someone is, with me, I must dutifully buzz about, tending to this and that chore, playing the part of Suzy Homemaker to the hilt.

Left to my own devices however, with no witnesses to my shame, I can lie on the couch and do nothing with the best of them, reverting to a pre-adult state of responsibility akin to the proverbial lout-on-the-couch I find so easy to criticize in others.

It is true, you can never know for sure what another person is really like till you live with them. And despite all the loneliness and anxiety and frustration, I'm thankful I'm having this bit of time to live with nobody but myself for a while, just to find out truths like the one I discovered today. Namely, that when anyone is watching I'm a sanctimonious snob who can't sit still for five minutes lest a chore escape being done; but turn your back and, to quote Garfield, "if I were any lazier, I'd slip into a coma."

Perhaps it was a general haze, made up of billions of microscopic particulates of pretention, that clogged my beloved's sinuses and irritated his sensibilities.

A stranger passes

I've just today ended a (rather short) era - the era of a Guest-on-my-couch-for-a-month. It was a fairly interesting time, and it passed rather as I'd expected it to - swiftly, pleasantly, with no major upheavals.

I have quite a small apartment - it should be called a 4 1/2, except that neither bedroom has a closet, and the smaller bedroom is quite occupied by the detritus brought here from a house - a house where three generations of my family had lived, though I don't think I can quite get away with blaming them for all my mess.

Suffice it to say that the small room is packed from floor to ceiling on all the walls, as well as in the middle, so really, I have a one-bedroom place to live in.

A Pal of mine had been having one difficulty after another finding a place he could afford, trying to be a good dad while working one measly low-life part-time job and putting megagobs of energy into trying to start a business. Add disagreements with an O.C.D. friend of his and an ex and three teenagers trying out their whims on him, and I simply felt that Pal could use a break, and offered him my couch while he found his own place.

It is one thing to have a body on one's couch when that couch is in the basement of a house, and quite another to have said body on said couch when said apartment really only has one bedroom.

Gone were the late-night runnings of the dishwasher, or putting on of laundry. Gone also were the early morning vaccumings, washing, more dishwashering… The layout is quite "open" - so that meant that turning on the lights was something I had to do after Pal's alarm would ring - initially a full hour after I got up!

Pal was really pleasant all those days I woke him up, which was, incidentally, ALL of the days he stayed here. He'd wish me a good morning. Had our places been reversed, I doubt I could have been so agreeable an hour before my alarm was due to go off!

I'd bring him orange juice, he'd feed the cat; I'd go away on weekends, he'd put the garbage out on the right days - we somehow got along through both our schedules, his much more hectic than mine.

I didn't get to watch much baseball - apparently the Canadiens are making an uscheduled run at the Stanley Cup, and Pal is a big hockey fan. Since the Jays traded Roy Halladay, my heart hasn't been into the game as much this spring, so I just asked Boyfriend to record my shows for me and let Pal watch his games on my tiny tv.

Well, today Pal took almost his last possession away, leaving only an old clunker of a computer in my "extra" room, and I immediately leapt into action at 10:15 p.m., starting laundry and loading and running the dishwasher. It is a relief to get back to - I hesitate to use the phrase "normal" in anything connected with my life - but part of me wonders just what happened here this past month.

I think I gave a friend in need shelter and an ear to bounce some thoughts off of. But I don't feel I know Pal one whit better than before, and I think this is what gives me pause.

See, I'm no good at chit-chat, or surface conversations. I want to get to the good part, the meaty part, the juicy part, all the time. I never get tired of analyzing feelings, for example, or discussing the Meaning of Life - and I don't mean the film!

But I didn't learn anything about Pal this month. Nothing I didn't know already. I don't know if he learned anything about me, one would hope so, but these days I don't seem to have a lot of hope hanging around waiting to be tacked on to this or that issue.

And I find it sad that two individuals can rub shoulders and get in each other's way for thirty days without learning anything about the other person.

That we both managed to be agreeable and personable to each other, at our advanced age, is a minor miracle. Perhaps I should try to be content with that.

And tonight when he picked up the last of his stuff, save for the aforementioned boat anchor in the storage room, I had another Friend over and we were watching Star Trek on DVD, and I was tired and grumpy and nearly shoved him out the door. Not my nicest moment. He seemed to take it in good humor, as always.

But I think I could have been a little kinder.

Another Reason Not to be a Morning Person!

I got up at 4 this morning. Not worried about it, since I'd gone to bed at 9:30 p.m. last night. I'd just had plenty of sleep, that's all. But I have discovered yet another reason it's not necessarily a good thing to be a morning person.

I mean, here I am, I've had all the coffee I can hold. I've had my shower. Boyfriend has gone off to work (yes, believe me, he KNOWS it's Sunday), cat's been fed, dishwasher and clothes washer are rockin'.

I look at the clock. 7:39.

Guess I can't call anybody.

Let's see, I'd like to call my Cousin to tell her what I bought her son and his fiancée for their wedding gift. She'll be up soon, but since it's Sunday morning, I don't want to call too early.

I could talk to Daughter. Oh wait a minute, she and her Boyfriend don't have the kids this weekend. Hmm. Better wait till later. Much later.

I want to call my Dad today. But he's in Louisiana - an hour behind us. Several hours to wait before calling him.

I've been working up to calling a distant cousin of mine to explain why I haven't called her in 2 years. But she's nearing 80 years old, lives way out in the country and has one phone that is firmly anchored to the wall downstairs by her front door.

And now the clock says... 7:40.

Sheesh! Let's see, my friend K is always up early - oops, she just got married. Best to wait for a work day.

So I wrote a short blog about darning my shirt this morning.

7:53

Geez!

And I know, from having been the recipient of early morning telephone calls for years from my ex's ex, that "night owls" do not appreciate a sunny phone call waking them up, so no calling Hubby...

Still 7:53.

There is a definite drawback to being a morning person! No wonder they all go out jogging! Hell, I could give myself a blooming pedicure and be done before it was a decent hour to call!

Guess I'll run the vacuum.