I woke up this morning to the sound of somebody sotrming into the apartment. D.'s water cooler blew a fuse during the last big windstorm, and the repairman came by today with a replacement. He stormed in at eight in the morning, yelling merry small talk so loud that it woke up the entire household, (including, "I DIDN'T WAKE YA, DID I?"), and then stormed out.
And then D., apparently a little cranky from having been woken up so early (as was I), walked into the kitchen where I was standing, and let out a bellowing cough ALL over me. He did have the decency to cover his mouth -- sort of... As it was, visible strings of nastiness flew out of his mouth and landed on my pajamas. Naturally, I was like, "do you mind not coughing on me?" I'm nine months pregnant; I don't need a cough on top of everything else... But then D. got all defensive and bitchy and whiny and bratty, as he does every single time anybody gives him ANY sort of minor criticism. So then he stood there yelling that he'd COVERED, and that that ought to be ENOUGH, don't you think, since people can't HELP coughing?
Yeah, but they don't have to fucking do it ON me...
I went back to bed. I was awoken two hours later by my room-mate and two guests squealing and running around the living room. I still have no idea what they were doing. So, tired but semi-conscious, I got my ass out of bed and prepared to make breakfast. I got Neil a bottle of New York maple syrup (possibly from Toronto, but whatever), so I was going to make pancakes.
Right. So, I did the dishes LAST night before I went to sleep. I stayed up a lot later than I wanted to, because I wanted to make sure the kitchen was clean enough, and there were enough dishes, for me to make breakfast. But sometime between two or three in the morning, and ten in the morning, my room-mates and their guests had managed to completely trash the kitchen.
What the fuck???
It took me an hour to clean the fucking kitchen.
THEN I made pancakes.
And when breakfast was finished cooking, everybody grabbed some, scarfed it down, and wandered off to do their own thing. Only Neil said thank you. (And he said it like he meant it, too... This is one of an innumerable quantity of things I love about Neil... He almost never fails to notice things and say thank you...) I mean, it's not like pancakes are hard to make or anything, but it would have been nice if somebody other than Neil noticed that I was in the kitchen for two hours in order to feed them. One person just stood in the doorway of the kitchen looking pissed off because he hadn't gotten a slice of ham. Even though he'd said he didn't want ham. This individual was then indignant that we didn't have any paper towels.
I retired to my little corner of the apartment to read and talk to Neil. Oh, we weren't having any real deep conversation or anything. Just bullshitting about motherboards, and maple candy. Coffee talk: you know... And every five minutes, somebody would interrupt. Every time, it was somebody needing something from Neil. And usually, it was just attention: "Look, Neil, I can stand here breathing on you and looking needy! Be impressed and compliment me!" The other times, it was somebody making some vaguely sexual remark about Neil.
Now, okay, first of all, Neil happens to have dated two of the people who were in the house at the time. And fine, we've all got a past and a history and all that... But it FUCKING PISSES ME OFF that these individuals need to make constant remarks about how they've had sex with him. If ever Neil met an ex of mine -- or anybody I'd fooled around with -- and the ex said something about having sex with me, even in the past, I would be infuriated. And I hear this shit ALL the time. It's maddening, and it's embarrassing, and it makes me feel like sinking into the floor and disappearing. You just don't walk up to your ex and his girlfriend and say to him, "I've replaced you as the person I'm fucking." It might seem friendly and funny somehow to everybody else, but it's NOT friendly and funny to me, especially since the people in question basically haven't said a word to me all damned day, other than "is there more ham?" It's like I'm completely invisible. I'm not usually such a jealous person -- really, I'm not -- but I swear to gahd these people go out of their way to make absolutely sure I know they've slept with the person I'm in love with. It doesn't seem like friendly teasing to me; it seems almost hostile.
Right, and then there's the guest -- the one with the ham; or rather, the one without the ham -- who cannot seem to be more than two feet away from Neil whenever he visits. He'll stand in my way, he'll drape himself over Neil's shoulders, he'll be all kinds of cuddly and flirty... It wouldn't bother me except that this person can't manage to acknowledge my existence unless we're talking about Neil or food, and even then, he spends most of the time interrupting me.
They didn't thank me for the gifts, or acknowledge them, really. (Except Neil, who opened his last night because I couldn't keep a secret anymore... Neil thanked me profusely, hugged his syrup, and smiled as blissfully and contentedly as a canine with a rawhide and a sun spot...) They didn't acknowledge the gifts, really. Admittedly, I sometimes forget to say "thank you, so-and-so," but I always manage to look them in the eyes and say, "wow, this is really cool."
Well, THEN, it was, "we ARE having the roast turkey tonight, right?"
Right. By this time I was exhausted and kind of wanted to take a nap, but... okay, fine...
"Well, we HAVE TO. I looked up what things are essentials for Yule, and turkey is one of the TRADITIONS."
Well, fucking great. So YOU make the fucking turkey.
But that's just absolutely out of the question. If there's going to be a dinner that's anything more substantial than TV dinners or peanut butter sandwiches, it's going to be cooked by me. This is custom. This is not a custom I usually mind, because I like to cook. But I like to cook WHEN I LIKE TO COOK. Not when I'm being TOLD that I must make a certain meal because it's a tradition. Fuck that! It's not MY tradition. MY tradition says that you eat what you've got, and if it's something really good, then great; it adds to the celebration.
So I willed myself to wake up a little more, and set the turkey on the counter to thaw for an hour. It had been in the refrigerator for a good long time, but parts of it were still frozen. And even though you're not supposed to thaw a turkey on the counter, I don't suppose one can completely destory one in the space of an hour. I hope.
Well, then the guests needed food. And no, they weren't going to be waiting two hours for the turkey. They were going to be making sandwiches. They stood in the kitchen, raiding the refrigerator, giggling and slapping at each other, taking their sweet merry time with their sandwiches. So, the turkey sat on the counter for an hour and a half. And then, the guests left their dirty silverware and plates strewn ALL over the kitchen.
I had to do ANOTHER load of dishes. I don't understand this... Call me a goody-two-shoes or whatever, but I always thought that, if you were a guest at somebody's house, you at least SORT OF cleaned up after yourself... I mean, you didn't bring over candy and throw the wrappers all over the place, or make yourself a sandwich and leave the silverware all over the kitchen. I thought that, at the VERY least, you were supposed to rinse off your dishes and leave them in the sink. There IS one individual who is an occasional guest here, who will clean the kitchen until it absolutely sparkles, out of respect for his hosts. But THAT guy isn't here.
Somebody made coffee and accidentally dumped coffee grounds into the pot. She insist that we have inferior coffee filters.
Everybody's smoking and it's bothering my resperatory system (I mean, three smokers in one house with NO windows open?), but we can't open the door more than an inch or two because somebody will bitch that it's cold. Neil, concerned about me, opened it a little more anyway. And as soon as he got up to go to the bathroom, the room was filled with loud complaints about the cold.
"Hey, do you want some candy? Do you want some candy? Do you?" Everybody gets asked, by name, except me. I don't get asked if I want any candy.
They're playing a role-playing game. There was one person here who hadn't played any games with the rest of the group before, and they asked him if he'd like to play. Nobody asks me. I would have said no anyway, because they get disgusted with me for not knowing the vocabulary and treat me like I'm a complete moron. But they asked the kid none of us really knows all that well, and they didn't even look my direction.
Somebody asks me for a bag of my lemon tea. He brought his own tea with him, because he's always complaining that our tea sucks. But now he wants mine. "That stuff makes me fall asleep," he says of his own tea. "I need something else..." He's whining -- literally whining. And now he's all defensive and pissed off because I asked him what happened to his own tea. And now, obviously, he's not giving up until I give in.
I am so fucking sick of these people taking advantage of me.
Neil comes into the kitchen to get some coffee while I'm rinsing dishes. "Thank you," he whispers to me.
"You're welcome," I reply. "I don't know if anybody else is welcome at this point, but you are."
He looks at me sympathetically. He says, "They appreciate all of this too... they just don't often say it."
I am extremely skeptical. Appreciate it? Fuck that, they don't appreciate it. They stand next to me demanding ham. They stand there demanding that I make a huge turkey dinner. They stand there demanding tea. And the rest of the time, they ignore me. They don't acknowledge that I got them gifts. They don't offer me their games or their candy. They don't acknowledge my existence when they're talking about having fucked my boyfriend -- or WANTING to fuck my boyfriend. Appreciate it? These people treat me like I'm the fucking maid. No, actually, last I heard, maids got paid. They treat me like I'm a fucking slave. Like perhaps I should be seen -- rinsing dishes in the kitchen -- and not heard.
Except Neil.
But Neil, for nearly everything, has always been the exception.
I am so tired of being a mother to these people.
No, I'm not speaking about Neil. Neil doesn't whine at me for things. If he asks me to bring him coffee or make something to eat, he doesn't do it while I'm ninety percent asleep, and he's got the respect to say "please" and "thank you." And to sound very much like he means it. I'm not talking about Neil at all. And I'm not talking about the guest who cleans the kitchen, either on the occasions he's been here. I'm talking about everybody else who lives here, or comes over here.
I'm talking about the room-mate who, the other day, brought a pile of dishes into the kitchen where I was having my breakfast, and set them down in front of me. I said, "the dishwasher's empty," and he groaned audibly because I wasn't automatically jumping up to do his stupid dishes.
I'm talking about the room-mate who NEEDS turkey tonight and expects me to make it. Who has been glaring at me all evening because I insisted on having the door open a little bit because I can't fucking breathe so much cigarette smoke. The same one, mind you, who got pissed off at me the other night for being "mushy" with Neil, and kept me awake by throwing things around the kitchen, storming around the living room, and repeatedly slamming her door. You think a door can't be slammed AT a person? Tom Robbins claims that teeth can be ground AT someone; I claim, whole-heartedly, that a door can be slammed AT someone.
I'm talking about the guest who hasn't said a WORD to me since she got here except to tell me that the coffee filters suck. Oh yeah, and to sort of sniff at my silly attempt at a Yule tree.
I'm talking about the guest who interrupts me no matter what I'm saying, no matter whom I'm talking to; gets angsty all the time about food and beverage; and perpetually has his arms around Neil... but who has nothing to say to me.
I'm pregnant and I'm uncomfortable. I'm retaining enough water to fill about 75% of the Puget Sound, and it really hurts. My leg muscles are sore and the joints in my fingers are swollen to massive proportions. It is a little bit difficult for me to manipulate things. Typing this is actually somewhat painful. I am tired and I don't get enough sleep at night. I have a tiny little person -- who isn't nearly so weak as one might think an infant to be -- kicking a hole into my left side.
And nobody but Neil has bothered to ask me how I'm doing.
I'm TIRED, dammit, that's how I'm doing. I'm tired of cleaning up after everybody and still getting this Look like I'm not doing my job well enough. I'm tired of, "oh my GAWD the bathroom smells bad!" and getting that LOOK, like, "Helena, why aren't you cleaning the bathroom?" Why not? Because I think I COULD get down on my hands and knees and clean the weird mold stuff that grows in the bathroom, but I'm not entirely sure I could get back UP very easily.