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.
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