new old more book profile blog rings host

prev not yet next
2001-11-05 | 9:17 a.m.

They haven't left yet. My whole life is on standby until they go. Tomorrow they leave.

If it sounds like I hate them, I don't. I just don't know how to coexist with them. When they come, my genuine personality seems inappropriate, so I try to edit myself, and I botch it, so I start to feel overwhelmed and depressed, and I end up taking four-hour naps. Every day. Which only confirms their suspicion that I am an unrepentant sloth. And it never seems like the right moment to say, "You know, I don't ordinarily take four-hour naps, or even any nap at all, except when I'm super-depressed or have eaten half a box of donuts for breakfast."

They are nice to me. Nice enough. He doesn't like my opinions (which I cannot always contain, try as I may) and he disputes them, but not in a way that invites discussion. More like an emperor making pronouncements. He is a business executive, and I assume it comes from that. More to the point, he now specializes in taking big companies through bankruptcy, especially selling off and closing down divisions. So if you see him walking through your manufacturing facility in rural Tennessee, it might be a good time to stock up on the ramen.

They gave me a hundred dollars for my birthday. That is hard not to like, though I do manage to feel guilty about it. One year we were at their house for Christmas, and I had a big fight with Duff, and in the middle of the fight I grabbed the $500 check they had given me and tore it to shreds. Then I put it in their wastebasket, thinking, Now they will know not to give me any more money, because I am an ungrateful wretch who doesn't want to be indebted to them. Duff was SO pissed. After we decamped, I felt bad imagining his mother finding it in the wastebasket. But I couldn't imagine it not happening, since it was about the only thing in there. But would you believe, a few months later, they mentioned that the check had not gone through, and did I want them to write another one? Bear in mind, this had already happened once before, where I really did lose the check. Gah, would you ever bend over backwards like that for an idiot like me? It defies credulity. I mean, if I wrote somebody a check for $500 and they didn't cash it because it got lost in their impossibly messy house, I'm not sure I would replace it. Would you? But they did. Much less if I found it in my wastebasket torn to shreds. She never did say that she'd found it, so I still don't know for sure.

Because of that, the second time, the wastebasket time, I couldn't quite bring myself to lie and say I'd lost the check in case she'd seen it in there and deduced what happened. So when she asked me if she should send another one, I said, I don't want to make you do that, I feel so guilty, I'm such an idiot. And then she sent the check, and we cashed it.

So you see what kind of person I am.

Tonight we go to a football game. A Monday Night Football game. This morning it occurred to me that the stadium would not be an unreasonable target for a terrorist attack. So if something bad happens to me, know that I appreciated your visits and your loyalty. Tell everyone I loved them, even if it isn't true, because that's what you're supposed to do at the end. And if they have a funeral for me, make sure they don't have any preachers up there. Duff says I shouldn't care because at that point it's about making other people feel better, but I do care. Though at least if that happens, the people who knew me best will say, Poor old thing, she wouldn't have wanted it that way. I derive some satisfaction from that.

prev archive next
0 comments

if you're not reading mawm you're not reading me
random