It’s not my desire to clean that has been squashed, it’s my desire to move.

Astounding.

J’s going to flip when he realizes that his pushiness backfired. Yes, I enjoyed myself and got away from the stress and all that. In doing so, I lose that urgent need to get away from this place. Oooops.

Moving? Staying? Moving?

Probably moving. But the stress of everything that it entails has left me utterly frozen. Prior to going to the beach, I was way, way stressed, and it caused me to go into a manic cleaning state, ready to get shit DONE so that we could move forward with whatever was going to happen.

Upon coming home, I found that my stress level, which had been dropped slightly due to the Gulf of Mexico, skyrocketed when I came face to face with all the work I had left undone PLUS the amount of crap that had piled on top of it while I was gone. I became completely unable to do anything.

At work today, I took a stand and refused to be frozen. I texted J and told him I had a plan, and we were going to eat quickly and kick some ass.

Yeah, not so much.

I have, yet again, done nothing towards making this place rentable/sellable/saleable. And to make matters worse, my best friend called to see if I wanted to hang out tonight, and I told her that we were going to be viciously working in the house. So now I feel double crappy. And, OF COURSE, feeling double crappy freezes me even more. Probably I need help. I had a panic attack on Thursday, cried at the beach house on Friday, and freaked out before work this morning because I didn’t have any pants (on top of all the other stuff going on).

I seriously don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Ostensibly, I’m at home packing for a long weekend at the beach. In reality, I’m at home, whining inwardly about how much I don’t want/need to go to the beach.

I must be nuts, because it’s a completely free beach vacation. People sign up to win those all the time, yes? And yet, here I am, wishing I could stay home and clean my house instead.

Forget the crazy guy across the street. J needs to try to get me committed.

I came here to write about how bad I wanted to move, how scared I was of my neighbor, how my whole life is falling to shit and I couldn’t stand it anymore.

And then I hid in the laundry room because I haven’t eaten all night and couldn’t find any food, and I was hungry and freaking out about everything. And, yes, the tiny space between the washer and dryer, with the door closed, makes for a good calming place for me. Unless someone else closes the door, then I get intensely claustrophobic. But that’s another story.

As I sat there, waiting for the tears to come, completely overwhelmed with everything, it suddenly popped in my head. Popcorn!

And then, while that was popping, I had a realization. FUCK HIM. I refuse to live in fear of a pathetic old drunk. Yes, he’s drunk. Yes, he’s angry. Yes, he’s crazy. Yes, he has a house full of guns. Yes, he was arrested on five separate counts last night. Yes, he assaulted an officer. Yes, he threatened to kill an officer. (Okay, I really need to shut the hell up.) But seriously, FUCK HIM!

I’m in my house, terrified to step foot out alone. Scared to walk to my car and back. Planning alternate routes to alternate dumpsters. Visualizing how exactly I could hide behind cars and crawl towards my home, avoiding his shots. Debating whether crawling or running/screaming would be more effective. Even in my thoughts, when I try to scream, “HELP!” nothing comes out. That’s actually been a recurring nightmare my entire life. Anytime something bad happens in my dreams and I try to scream for help, I have no voice. Again, that’s another story.

So my point is that I refuse to give that man the power to make me live in fear. I refuse to let HIM make me leave my home, just when it’s starting to feel like an actual home. I refuse to add a huge load on top of my already overworked brain. I’ve already got anxieties coming out of my ass, and I’m prone to panic attacks. Living in a constant state of “OMIGOD, DRUNKY MIGHT KILL ME” is just not an option. I don’t think my brain or my heart can handle the stress. So I let it go. We’ll see how that goes. No! No, that last sentence just sounded like an admission that I probably couldn’t let it go.

So here, now, I am Officially letting it go. Also, I will put forth all that energy into getting his ass removed from property, hopefully to either a place with padded walls, or bars on all the windows.

J just got a phone call from one of the older ladies on our street. At a quarter ’til midnight. Because Drunky, her drunken neighbor (hey! he tried to break into my house one time!) started beating on her door and screaming, “YOU FUCKING BITCH!” At a quarter ’til midnight. To an 80-year old lady.

You know how people joke about reaching the end of the internet, how someday they’ll be nothing left to see? I feel like that this evening. You see, I just watched a VIDEO of my GREAT-GRANDPARENTS. ONLINE.

There are no words.

Mind.Blown. from somefatchick on Vimeo.

The lady in the red/orange dress is my great-grandmother. She died when I was 5, but she looks just like I remember she did, before she got so sick. Great Grandma had the same legs that I have, the same legs that my grandmother has. After watching this video, J announced that Great Grandma and I also have the same elbows. The password for the video*, if prompted, is “elbows.”

This video was shot before my own mother was even conceived. And yet, here I am, sitting in my underwear, watching it online. In color. Online. Mind. Blown.

* I downloaded it from where the distant cousin posted it, then uploaded it to Vimeo. I don’t know if incoming links would have shown up, but I really didn’t want to risk discovery.

Getting J to go to the pool with me is like trying to yank rotten teeth out of an alligator that hasn’t eaten in three weeks.

Seriously, it’s bad.

I mean, I could be exaggerating, but then again, I’ve only been trying to get him to go to the pool with me for SEVEN FREAKING YEARS. Will tonight be the lucky night? Somehow I doubt it, but I did beg, and I did promise that we’d come home in 5 minutes if he wanted to. And I said he didn’t have to get in. Cross your fingers for me, because the pool filter is broken at work and my body is itching to get in the water. After our walk tonight, I was ready to dive right in. He doesn’t follow my logic, though, and says that it is too humid outside to go to the pool. Cool water cools you off, don’t you know? Men.

FUCK.

“What is it?”

“Umm…I think it’s a fruit pie. Or a hashbrown.”

Hilarious laughter ensues. We’re trying to figure out exactly what this thing was that we served to old people during Meals on Wheels this afternoon. It’s rectangular, brown, bumpy on the outside, with a slight color on the inside. And thin. And utterly unidentifiable.

Withstanding curiousity has never been my strong suit, so I gave in and tried it (we had a leftover kit hiding in the backseat of the car when we finished the route, even after giving away 5 extra things).

“I think it’s got ham and egg inside some breading.”

“You think?!”

“Maybe. Definitely not a fruit pie.”

We didn’t just sample mystery foods today; we also looked at a house! Unfortunately, it needed some serious repairs & updates, and would probably cost $30,000 to fix up. Um, yeah, NO.

J’s in deep shit right now. I mean deeeep shit. I mean, ass chewed on a near-daily basis, and he’s not looking too good.

It’s hilarious.

Because, this shit he’s in? It’s with a three-year old, and it’s over a SNOWCONE. Yeah, that’s right.

Two weeks ago, Thomas had his first snowcone, and I told him I wanted one too. He insisted on calling J to tell him that he needed to buy me a snowcone. Cute, right? Then a week went by, and Thomas has his second snowcone. I told him that I was jealous, because I still hadn’t gotten a snowcone.

So Thomas gets on the phone again. “J, why you not get Em a snowcone? They were closed? Well, you just have to get Em a snowcone. Go get her a snowcone tomorrow.” It was agreed.

Unfortunately, we forgot to go until after closing time. So they day after that, I saw him again. “J got you a snowcone yesterday?”

“No, we didn’t get a snowcone.”

Thomas thinks about this for a minute, then says, in a voice like he suddenly understands the entire world, “J doesn’t like snowcones, does he?” I assured him that, yes, J does like snowcones, but we had simply forgot about it.

On Monday, I came back to work after a long weekend. The first thing Thomas said to me was, “J didn’t get you a snowcone, did he?” with the most depressed little voice, like he was truly hurt that someone he loved was being SO WRONGED.

So he gets back on the phone with J, like it is up to him to personally solve this tragic lack of snowcones in my life, and J gets his ass chewed by a three-year old. “J, you didn’t get Em a snowcone. Why didn’t you get Em a snowcone? Em needs a snowcone, and you need to get her one!”

Last night, though I wasn’t even in the mood for one, I looked at J and said, “We should probably go get a snowcone. You know, so you don’t get in even more trouble over it.” J laughed and said that, no, he actually liked the amusement of being in trouble with this little guy.

This morning, within the first few minutes, Thomas tells me very matter-of-factly, “J didn’t get you a snowcone again.” Is the depression showing on my face? Is my husband just undeniably a loser on this front? Has this kid lost all hope in humanity? His mommy turns to me and says that, last night, T was announcing that J didn’t like snowcones.

“But J does like snowcones!” I try reassuring him, but he doesn’t want to hear it.

This afternoon, he got on the phone with J one final time (after a day full of telling me that I need to make my husband get me a snowcone). “J, you’ve got a mission. You’ve got to GET EM A SNOWCONE! Because you didn’t get her a snowcone, and you have to get her a snowcone!!!”

We’re going to have to go get one tomorrow. Otherwise, I’m afraid his little brain is going to explode, and that’ll just be too messy to clean up. Who wants to clean up brain matter on a Friday? Better to just get the damn snowcone and be done with it.