Nine items for the scutwork this week. Got three done today; may as well pace myself.
Pushing myself later on wakeups because I’ve got the overnight shifts starting this next Sunday. It’s going to get to the point, probably by Friday, where I’m doing the scutwork in the morning instead of at 4pm, which is going to be better, actually.
L’s going to be out of town for about nine days. Neighbor is apparently going to come over daily to make sure everything’s okay. I may enlist him on the dogs’ second feeding (they are fed twice a day) just so I can buy myself some more sleep time; I can get the bowls ready and have them in the fridge for when he gets here. That will depend on his willingness and how familiar he is with the routine. It might not be possible. We’ll see. But the idea of seeing him daily is kind of nice. It’s weird that she goes out of town without him. I’m still afraid to ask him what’s going on between them. He might not answer anyway, and what if he tells her I asked? Bad scene. Best not.
(Though at some point, if I’m feeling a little bolder — maybe after I have at least $1000 put away in case I’m kicked out — I may make some flippant joke in passing and see what he says.)
I’ve thought about the shit with Stuart (I was right; he’s blocked my sockpuppet now) and on the one hand I know I was a bit itchy trigger finger with the unfriending him. On the other hand, he was asking too much just expecting me to relocate to BC when he would barely talk to me, and then on top of that not tell me what I was getting into or why he wanted me to get into it. AND, I thought I was all big and bad being over the thing with Matt? Yeah… he reminded me too much of Matt with that mess. So we’re triggering my fear of winding up homeless again AND reminding me of the man who wasted twenty years of my life and who then sat on his hands as I ended up homeless and then helped mess up my daughter… THANKS, STUART. No, really. Don’t let the door hit ya.
Incredibly, I still feel bad about it. I also wonder whether he might have been sweet on me after all and whether that would explain the extreme response. I don’t understand the mixed signals — “done with relationships” versus calling everyone he knew to get me housed in BC on seemingly a whim — and maybe I’m just wrong anyway and it’s just Stuart doing his usual Not Making Any Fucking Sense. But I’ll probably always wonder. At least a little.
You know what, though? Apparently I still want a man who’ll fight for me a little. Like, act like he’s actually happy I’m around and make the effort to not scare me off and, if he accidentally fucks up and I take it the wrong way, take the initiative to try to correct the problem. Not this cowardly fucking mess I just got dumped on me. Again. By a whole new guy.
And to think I started down this path because I was tired of being hung up on Neighbor. Joke’s the fuck on me, innit.
Oh. Interesting thing happened. So. On Neighbor’s garage, to the left of the garage door as you face the garage door, there’s a spigot. Sometimes I wash my hands there. Well, there happens to be an escaped mint growing there at the junction of garage-wall and ground. The faucet running happens to water it nicely. It’s gorgeous, nice big long broad leaves. Probably a mutant spearmint, but who knows. I’ve had my eye on the tallest growth for a while and meant to ask Neighbor if I could have a cutting of it once I had the money to get a plant pot and some soil. Well. Last week when I went to do the scutwork and then wash my hands, I noticed that exact growth had been clipped off. What the fuck?
Yesterday I happened to look out the window where L has her raised-bed garden boxes and… there’s this green branch stuck in the sand in one of them. I haven’t been out to look more closely at it but goddamn if it doesn’t look like the mint. And it’s limp, because if she’s trying to root it, she’s not doing it right. GRRR.
Fucking hell. Not bad enough she’s got the man, she has to take my fucking mint too. Well, I’m not going to ask anymore. I get some supplies together, I’m just clipping some fucking mint and they can fucking cope. And it’ll be mine. In a pot. Not in her fucking garden.
It’s weird. I kind of like her. I’m definitely grateful she gave me a place to stay. But I still feel weird about her. The jealousy is part of it. But also, she goes around with her face constantly stuck in her laptop (you laugh… no, I promise you, she is worse than I ever was), and she always has this air like she’s just tolerating me. Except when she really wants me to do something, and then she’s all friendly and shit. I don’t know what’s going on there. I’d like us to be friendlier but I don’t know how to get there. I am not going to put my energy into something, though, that’s likely to backfire. So I lay low, strive not to piss her off, bond (such as it is) over the dogs, and… just get on with things. I don’t know what else to do.
What I need to put my energy into:
1. Getting healthy. -Er.
2. Sorting out my employment situation. Whatever that looks like.
3. Getting back to Ohio.
I don’t really think I have a future here.
Hell, I haven’t heard from my brother Doug since that one time he called after I got here. Not even that. I’d call him, but I don’t know what his work schedule’s like and, well, Stuart just demonstrated it again: if I make the first move, I’ll be seen as the pest and put off til later. I don’t like going where I’m unwanted, where I was not invited, and where I don’t belong, and that includes phone calls. I dunno. It’s a whole thing with me.
I am just so goddamn tired of being lonely though. There is no end to it in sight. God.