sorry i’ve been such a crappy blogger lately

i’m on day four of a migraine. a new, unfortunate personal record of mine. might be stress-induced (stress? what stress?), i could be sick. hell, the smell from next door is coming back, maybe that’s doing it? in any case, i’m sure i’ll have something funny to say once i’m out of my stupor, so stay tuned…xox

here’s why it’s important to be nice to people everyday

b/c you never know what’s going on behind someone’s eyes. the person you have some random, fleeting contact with some random day could be having the very worst day of his or her life. something kind that you do for that person, even just something really small, something you don’t even notice you did, could brighten that person’s day like you wouldn’t believe.

not to harp on the oh-woe-is-us, our-neighbor-died-weeks-ago-and-now-our-house-stinks-and-we’re-traumatized [b/c, to be fair, as i mentioned, the smell is lifting (altho today was kind of a doozie, since it warmed up outside, hence warming up his air-tight house, which, in turn, passed more foul-smelling death air into our house...but i digress)] but last week, as you know, was bad. in fact, i never felt so terrible in my life. never. i felt horrified. i felt sad. i felt sick and violated somehow. and overwhelmed. and out of control. (and honestly, without sharing w/you on this blog, i think i would have felt even worse.)

there were three times during last week’s really dark days when my mood was lifted. and all three times had to do with some random person being kind to me/us. i think they all happened wednesday and thursday. wednesday night was our first night sleeping back at our house. after a horrible sleep spent breathing nasty air and having bad dreams, we woke with a start. or i did, at least.

“oh my GOSH, honey,” i said. “it’s trash day. i think i hear the truck!”

we threw on clothes and sneakers (well, sneakers for me, slippers for holly) and ran downstairs. i made it to the back door, trashbags in hand, just as the green garbage truck was beeping its way out of the alley. since baltimore–low on funds, like everyone else, i suppose–switched to once-a-week trash, trashday, thursday, is big in our household. it’s probably big in every household around here. if we miss it, we’re absolutely screwed. we don’t have a garage. and storing trash bags outside isn’t an option b/c of all the rats.

“maybe you can catch them!” holly shouted as i ran out the door in the pouring rain. “hurry, babe! catch them! call out to them!”

so there i was, carrying three trashbags, stomping thru the sopping wet yard trying to avoid potential feral cat crap landmines–oh and rat turds, gotta love those–my hair an absolute early-morning disaster. lord knows what i was even wearing. i think a jean jacket over my pajamas. and white sneaks. i ran thru the yard (it’s not all that big, but i still had to run) and swung open the gate.

“wait!” i shouted, sounding–and looking–pretty desperate, i’d say. “wait! i have…i have…”

the truck continued backing up and beeping the way big trucks do, into the street. i stood in the alley and put down my arms, defeated.

“trash,” i said, dejected. i walked back into the yard, my head down.

suddenly i heard something. it was the trashman! he had walked back from the truck into the alley and then into our yard (!!!)  to get my trash. i was in disbelief. he was like…an angel. in the form of a garbage man. a garbage man angel in a yellow raincoat.

“you came back!” i said.

he smiled. “do you want me to get that stuff, too?” he said, pointing to our bags (and bags and bags) of recycling.

“no, that’s ok. it’s all recycling. we’ll put it out tuesday.”

“you sure?” he asked, loudly over the sound of the nearby truck. “b/c i can take it now if you want.”

i was flabbergasted. he was so friendly and it was so nice of him to come back. plus i looked crazy and wet, and it was brave of him to even talk to me.

“no that’s ok. but thank you!! oh my gosh, thank you for coming back. that was so nice of you. and we really needed it today. thank you.”

no problem, he said.

the day before. on wednesday, veteran’s day, we went to our local safeway to buy odor-controlling supplies. like baking soda (didn’t work), air fresheners (didn’t work), etc. i was feeling pretty much my lowest. it was shortly after we realized our house was smelling even worse than it did last sunday, the day they found our neighbor’s body. i think my face was still swollen from crying like a crazyperson on our stoop. 

as we were walking in, there was a safeway employee selling hot dogs outside. they usually do that for charity, i think, and usually in the summer. it was cold for a change (as in: november weather. not this weird stuff we have going on right now) and if i were her, standing in the cold and just barely out of the rain, i don’t think i would have been so chirpy.

“happy veteran’s day, ladies!” she said, loud and clear. “would you like a hot dog?!”

her sudden, and random, friendliness caught us off guard. it was wonderful.

“happy veteran’s day!” we said back, smiling while we politely passed on the hot dogs.

“let me ask you a question,” she said, leaning towards us over the hot dog stand. “do you know what the veteran’s day color is?”

we paused, looked at each other, and said we didn’t know.

“maybe red, white and blue?” i said.

holly guessed yellow.

“hmmm…good guesses. maybe it is yellow. or red, white and blue!”

“isn’t it kind of cold for you to be working out here today?” holly said.

“no, it’s fine,” she said. “i chose to be out here anyway.”

before we went inside the automatic doors, she wished us a happy holiday again and i swear i could have jumped over the stand and hugged her. i think holly and i both felt like crying. it just cheered us up so much. i don’t know what it was but i swear it helped.

since our house was still kind of foul and we just couldn’t get ourselves to cook, we decided to go to our favorite local diner for lunch. it’s greek-owned, just like in jersey, and has fabulous scrambled eggs and home fries and pancakes and pretty much anything else you order, regardless of the meal (despite the fact that i named off only breakfast foods! you can see where my mind’s at…) it may have been wednesday, it may have been thursday. but we were both so tired and deflated and dirty-feeling w/probably smelly death clothes.

i barely had an appetite but knew i needed to eat. holly felt similarly.

this great waitress came over to take our order. she’s one of those professional waitresses, that’s what i call them. a woman who’s been a waitress for so long it’s second nature to her, and she’s pretty much unflappable and calls everyone “hon” or “sweetie.”

i don’t know what she said to us, but she was just so nice. so so nice. we were really disoriented and holly was having a hard time figuring out what to order. she was struggling between two hot sandwiches w/gravy, mashed potatoes on the side, that sort of thing. it was either a sirloin/roast beef open-faced sandwich or turkey. she settled on the beef, with the waitress assuring her it was an excellent choice. i loved her demeanor. she was so nice. and funny. she was like…a breath of fresh air. which we needed. obviously.

our food came quickly, as it normally does there.

“enjoy, ladies,” she said.

when she was out of earshot, holly said quietly that she brought her a turkey sandwich by mistake. i could see the disappointment in her eyes. it’s kinda like, when you want a certain something, you want it. and turkey is surely not a replacement for a sirloin sandwich.

“why don’t you just tell her, honey? it’s not a big deal. i don’t think she’ll mind.”

“no, it’s okay,” holly said, starting to cut into her food.

“are you sure?”

“yeah. it’s fine.”

i looked at her face as she started to get ready to eat a sandwich that she really didn’t want. i knew she would never tell the waitress b/c she knew she would feel so bad she brought the wrong thing, esp. b/c she and holly spent such a long time debating the merits of each, with holly finally settling on the beef.

“you’re a good egg,” i said to her. of course i felt like i was going to cry again. she got emotional, too. she knew exactly what i was talking about.

“this is exactly why i married you.”

b/c even when she’s having one of her very worst days–and her partner is pretty much falling apart in front of her eyes and her house smells literally like death warmed over (and over) and we don’t have a single decent-smelling thing to wear and our world has been flipped upside down–she still cares about other ppl’s feelings.

i’ve told you all about my theory about breaking the cycle of meanness. well here’s the other side of that: just being nice to everyone, as much as you possibly can. even when you’re having perhaps the worst day of your life, try to be nice to ppl. b/c you could be the “old man next door” who has absolutely no one, practically, in this entire world. you  might be the one person he comes into contact with all day. or you could be the two girls next door who are having the worst day ever. hold the door for someone. smile. make some idle conversation in line at the post office. anything. you could be the bright spot in someone’s day w/out even knowing it.

i’m happy to report that things are finally getting back to normal

my wedding bouquet, nov. 15, 2008. it somehow disappeared that day, but at least i have some fabulous photos of it (c/o the blonde photographer)

and right in time for our one-year wedding anniversary, which is today (!!?!). we knew it was coming, but we’d sort of forget every time we’d smell a random puff of death come from next door. (damn porous bricks. that’s what you get for doing the whole trendy exposed-brick thing, i guess. i should note that while the house seems increasingly better-smelling, we do have the random puffs. also the basement still smells kind of bad.)

as i was eating cinnamon toast and sipping coffee this morning, the today show announced the date.  i looked at the screen and there is was: sunday, november 15, 2009.

“oh my gosh happy anniversary, babe!” i said.

“happy anniversary!” holly cheered back.

we had completely forgotten and then we both remembered, as if it was the very first time we were talking about it. (even tho we were talking about it last night.)

“thank G-d that’s over,” i said.  

“i know, right?” she chirped.

then i perched in front of her on the couch–she was sitting there working on her little netbook–my knees resting on the edge of the cushion. i looked down as hovered above her, grabbed her little face in my hands, gave her a gentle kiss and told her how happy i am that i married her. we are both out of work (granted, i am very busy w/my freelance journalism/copywriting and holly’s very busy w/school…but full-time work, we’ll say) and our house smells vaguely of death and yet…i have never been so happy.

after the week we’ve been thru (and i can say with full certainty that it was the very worst of my life), the BFGW doesn’t seem like such a big deal. i mean, sure, the post-traumatic stress is still working its way out of my system, but it honestly seems–well, not quite like cake (um, no. definitely not cake), but i’m just looking at things with brand-new eyes (and, err, nose) after this week:

we’re alive. we have each other. we have a good solid roof over our head. happy anniversary indeed. i love you, honey!! here’s to a million more. mmmmmwah.

breakdown, part 2

last night i closed out my entry on a high note: we stopped by our house in the afternoon and the death smell was lifting, thanks, in part–or so we thought–to lots and lots boxes of baking soda. and time. today we came back and the smell was worse. worse even than the day (sunday) they found and removed our neighbor’s body. i simply cannot describe the feeling, the crushing blow this was to us, especially me.

i got one good whiff of it and then walked out, closed the door and stood out on our wet, rainy stoop and just cried. i cried and cried and cried standing there until holly came out and warned me that the neighbors would start to wonder what was going on. and i said, what the hell do i care what our neighbors think. i cried until i gave myself a headache, until my face was swollen and my lips hurt. even tho we have put blood, sweat and tears into our house, i wish it wasn’t ours. i wish we were renting it so we could just break our lease and get the hell out of here. but responsibility calls. this is our house, this is home ownership and we need to deal with it, whether we want to or not.

holly has spent a great deal of time on the phone over the past couple days trying to figure out a) what can be done about his house (empty, easy to break into, a huge fire hazard, sealed up, unventilated with rats inside and out) b) who/where he may have relatives and c) make sure all of his books are donated to the local university he retired from (as a librarian). tho we don’t/didn’t know much about him, he told us on several occasions that he wanted to donate his books to that university, but felt overwhelmed by the task of going thru them and packing them up. we offered to find ppl to help him, but he said he wasn’t interested. we think he was just embarrassed to have ppl come in his house. that’s how full of books and paper is it, apparently. (the cops and fire fighters told us there was just a narrow path for them to get to him.) maybe that’s why he kept to himself so much, never had anyone over. he was just ashamed. it’s very sad. i’m really surprised we were even able to talk him into getting an exterminator (two years ago; obviously it never worked).

by talking to three ppl that knew our neighbor–including the lone cousin he kept in touch with, an elderly woman (in her 80s) in texas–we’re actually learning a little about the quiet, eccentric man that lived–and died–alone next door to us.

he was a hermit, she told holly tonight. he loved to read, but had a problem with buying books (as in, he couldn’t stop). he was always “a little strange,” she said. and tho she told him for years to write a will, she doubts he has one. he wanted to be cremated without a service. he was a agnostic, or an athiest, she said. he really did plan on moving to texas, apparently (he always told us he planned to move to texas), as he put a deposit on a home there. she wound up talking on the phone to the detective that came here sunday night. they’re having a hard time identifying him, and the detective was inquiring about dental records. yeah. so. no wonder we can’t get the smell out of here. not to be disrespectful. but it’s the truth.

re: his empty house, turns out baltimore city is even more dysfunctional than we thought. they won’t shut off his water until “something happens,” such as a flood or a pipe burst. they won’t shut off his power until “something happens,” such as, oh i don’t know, G-d forbid a fire or something (every house on our block is connected; you do the math). and they won’t secure the place (“secure” probably means board it up, which will really really suck in terms of trying to sell or rent our place in the future, which is our plan) until “something happens,” like…robbery. or squatters. or drug addicts who are firing up crack pipes amongst piles and piles of papers. or hookers who use the space to do business. (this has happened with at least two houses across the street from us). so you can see we have a vested interest in his house. that’s why we’re happy his remaining relative is interested in finding a local lawyer to try to do something about his house. we’re in the process of locating one for her. here’s hoping something good can happen. maybe she can sell it.

so here we are. back in our house. it smells like a friggin winter wonderland here as we’re burning body shop oil non-stop. (we came up with the idea of buying one of these tealight oil things) so we’re mixing cranberry and pine and oh it smells great when its burning. but once it’s out it’s…cranberry, pine…and death! (hey, jessie, you told me i had to start joking around about things so there you go) the death smell has settled near the front door and the top of the stairs and the basement. and you stiff hard enough anywhere you can pretty much smell it. but that’s where it’s the strongest. i’m sitting on a puffy armchair that probably smells like it, too. but what the hell are we supposed to do? sit on the floor? exactly.

look, humans deal with much more traumatic things on a daily basis all over the world. but this is our little trauma right now. and yeah, doing 10,000 pounds of laundry maybe doesn’t seem like such a big deal to some of you, but it is to us b/c we’re already exhausted. and we don’t want that laundry soaking up the death smell once we’re done w/it. which it will since everything around here does. i’ve got deep rings under my eyes, and can only tolerate bad-for-me food b/c honestly, it’s the only thing i can work up an appetite for.

we’ve got a load of towels in the dryer and sheets in the washer. next up is a comforter and then some pajamas. we’ll lie close together in our own bed tonight and try to regain some sense of normalcy. we’ll try to keep pushing out thoughts of what might have happened to him, and hope to G-d he didn’t suffer. we’ll try to ignore the bad whaffs of air to seem to come out of nowhere. we’ll try to wake up tomorrow and feel normal and go on with things. b/c sometimes, most times, the very best thing you can do is not run away, but just go on with things and take everything one day at a time.

i finally had my breakdown

yesterday. at the gas station. just after we left our house–our smelly, quiet house–the day after they found the old man, our next door neighbor, dead (for at least two weeks) inside his house. his smoldering house full of books and papers and the smell of death–something between rotting roadkill and spoiled dairy–which has settled into every fiber of every fabric-based item in our home. the furniture. the bedspreads. the pillows. even the freshly laundered clothes folded in our drawers tucked away in our closet.

i tried to keep my chin up. i tried to keep my chin up as we placed arm & hammer baking soda boxes–the kind you put in your fridge, with the tabs so you can pull off the sides–all around the house to soak up the stench. i tried to keep my chin up as we sprayed organic citrus air freshener we bought at safeway only 15 minutes prior, remarking to holly how good it smelled, how it might really be helping. i tried to keep my chin up as she looked for something to wear to class that evening–something that didn’t stink. i tried to keep my chin up when we figured out that there was absolutely nothing that didn’t stink. (she held her breath as she put on a blue nike t-shirt. “spray perfume in the air and walk thru it,” i said, which she did, despite her thoughts that it might make matters worse.)  and i tried to keep my chin up as i spritzed a bleach solution behind us as we walked out and locked the door behind us, holding my breath so i didn’t smell the stink still seeping out of his house.

i tried not looking at his front window. the one the fire fighters had to climb thru, its thin, dirty drapes parted for the very first time since we’d moved there, almost three years to the day. i tried but i couldn’t look away. the flies were still in there, but the condensation on that window had finally disappeared. i wanted so much to picture the jumpy, bearded old man we were used to seeing, but all i could imagine was what the cops described to me, despite my pleas against it. a victim of loneliness, despite his proximity to so many people. i hope he died quickly, we keep saying to each other. i hope those knocks against the wall we heard weren’t him needing help.

it finally hit me at the gas station as we stood outside our cars on our way to our wonderful friends’ place where we’re staying. the sadness of the discovery, of his circumstances, finally peeled off and all that was left was a selfish, panicked ache. the stifling weight of everything we would have to do to make our home livable again. all the laundry. all the scrubbing. the steam-cleaning. even the washer and drier smell like death.

what will we do first when we get back to the house? i thought as the gas pumped. we could wash our sheets and blankets. but how can we do our laundry and keep it from smelling as soon as we take it out of the dryer? is there a way to clean the dryer? how can we do it all at once? a laundromat, but will we be able to find a laundromat with enough washers and dryers free to do everything all at once? how will we get it there at once? could we really ask friends to help us empty our house like that? could we ask them to help fold? how could we possibly fold everything at once? could we do it all while the cleaners are there? so when we bring it back, we could put everything away in a clean-smelling house? will our house start smelling again with his sealed-up house just four layers of brick next to us? can we get the furniture and carpet steamer ppl there at the same time?  how much will this all cost? how am i going to meet my deadlines? how is holly going to write her paper and do her take-home exam? how can we possibly concentrate? how bad will his house stink once all the food in his fridge goes bad? what if he left food out? how long will all of his floor-to-ceiling papers and books hold in the smell? when oh when will it finally get cold in this goshforsakin city so his house can cool the hell down? i can’t take this. i can’t take this. i can’t take this. i can’t take this. even the clothes in our drawers. even the clothes in our drawers. 

i put my fingers thru my bangs–slightly salt and pepper by now b/c i’ve had this damn rash so long that i haven’t been able to dye my hair at home like i usually do–and tears came to my eyes. my hair probably still smells like it, i thought. i’d been too busy even to shower until late last night. and now i have the smell on my hands. an invisible film of death everywhere.

i couldn’t get the citrus smell out of my nostrils, out of my brain. i cursed myself for even buying it.

i looked at holly as she was putting the pump back. i walked up to her.

“honey,” i said, the tears coming. everything’s too heavy. everything’s too damn heavy. i can’t stop my mind from running and i can’t, i just can’t.

“honey, i can’t…”

“i know,” she said. and hugged me. right there at the shell station.

it smells like cinnamon and death in here, one officer joked when he walked through our house sunday afternoon. cinnamon and death. cinnamon bath and body spray. and death.

“…i can’t take it.”

“i know.”

“i can’t take much more of this.” even the clothes in our drawers. on repeat in my mind. cinnamon and death. damn him for saying that. even if he is brave. damn him for saying that. damn him for telling me what the old man looked like when they found him lying near his kitchen.

“i know, honey. i know.”

every single thing we’ve been thru since we bought the doggone house. the burglaries when we were renovating. the flooding basement. the flooded ceiling. the mice. the feral cats in the walls and spraying the yard and sh*tting on the roof. the friggin crackheads shouting at all hours. the violence we see out our bedroom windows. our wedding. planning our wedding. going thru it–just getting thru it w/barely any family support. our layoffs. everything. and more. so so much more. and now this.

“this is the worst,” i said to holly. she knew i wasn’t just talking about that moment. i was saying, this is the worst of everything. of everything we’ve been thru, this is the absolute worst. the smell of a lonely death seeping thru everything we own. and, at this point, our house is everything we’ve got. every single thing smells like death. everything is tainted now.

we will get thru this, her dark brown eyes said to me. she stepped away and put both her hands on my shoulders.

“i love you,” i said.

“i love you,” she said.

tomorrow we will go home. we dropped off seven more boxes of baking soda this afternoon. i bought every last one the store had. we brought in all of our palm trees from the roof and lined them up along one side of our bedroom, the wall we shared with the old man. the air will be clearer in our bedroom when we sleep there tomorrow night. his body’s gone, the smell is lifting, the plants will help clear the air. we will walk in and be brave and face this. we will reclaim our home as our own. it’s time to go back. it’s time to go back home.

well now i feel like a giant ass

b/c the old man really did kick it.

if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know who i’m talking about: our old man neighbor, the loner, the one we always checked in with each other about–that we’d seen him around. the one i’ve been irritated with for months and months: for his overgrown yard, rat factory garage, unconnected gutters…for reporting us to the city for a bag of leftover recycling that was mistaken for trash when i don’t even know if he’s the one that reported us. the one we could have reached out to more b/c we knew he didn’t have any family or friends.

we’d been smelling something weird in the house since wednesday or thursday. honestly, it smelled like a dead mouse, but just in the front of the house. we figured this was the case, since we just hired a new exterminator and he’d set a bunch of traps. as the days went by, it got stronger. hell, just this morning holly was sniffing really deeply–reallly really deeply (ugh)–by our front window looking for clues. we lifted up the arm chairs yesterday, half-expecting to find a rotting mouse or something. late last week we lifted up the couch. nothing there either. the smell sort of seeped into the basement, too. i’d even decided i’d call the exterminator to have a look this week since we just couldn’t find anything. it got to the point that we couldn’t do anything for any period of time (homework for holly, various writing assignments for me) b/c the smell got so distracting that we couldn’t concentrate, let alone cook, and it really freaked us out that we couldn’t locate its source.

we didn’t see the old man on halloween (us three next-door neighbors: the “BGE guy,” old man and holly and i usually sit on our marble stoops each year with bowls of candy for trick-or-treaters). heck, we hadn’t seen him for at least a couple of weeks. we decided today we’d knock on his door to see if he was ok. if no one answered, we’d call 311, the non-emergency police line.

we knocked before we left to go out this morning. no answer. then we knocked on our neighbors’ door (the one who lives on the other side of the old man, the aforementioned “BGE guy” and his family) to ask if they’d seen him lately. or smelled something. but they weren’t home. we knocked on the old man’s door when we got back. still no answer. we talked to a couple more  neighbors and asked if they’d seen him lately (he usually walked out to the local grocery store a couple times a week) and they all said, come to think of it, no we haven’t. so that’s when we decided we’d call 311, all the while expecting it to be nothing. he’d be alive–and mad and freaked out when the fire department kicked down his door, hell that might kill him, we figured–and we’d have wasted a whole lot of emergency responder time over a dead mouse in the wall, and we’d feel like the crazy, worry-over-nothing neighbors.

as soon as the officer got to the old man’s front door he knew. he said he could smell it from outside. plus there were flies on the inside of the windows. and condensation. (we’ve had an abundance of flies lately. it’s been odd, and i…don’t want to talk about it.) he was “95 percent sure” he said that our neighbor was dead inside the house, and had been so for some time.

soon the fire crew came, took out their ladders, climbed up and opened his windows to get in. we watched from the roof (we didn’t want to be in the house, but we didn’t want to be outside of it either; the roofdeck seemed like the best possible option, tho we noticed we could smell it from up there, too) as the firefighters and officers put on oxygen tanks and masks to go inside. that’s when i knew that our very worst baltimore nightmare had come true.

i wasn’t out there when they cracked the windows open, but when i came outside a little while later, there were still flies swarming on the formstone front of his house. the smell spilled out onto the sidewalk. it morphed into a smell that i don’t want to ever smell again. it’s burned into my memory.

i felt selfish for feeling so grossed out and disgusted. after those grossed-out type feelings passed a little, i felt just plain weirded out that we were just going on with our lives as he lay dead inside. (he must’ve had a heart attack and fallen on the ground, the crew told us.) once i got all those feelings (temporarily) out of my system, i started feeling really sad for him. that he didn’t get to die with dignity or with family around. that he was so alone in this world that the two girls next store wound up smelling something and called the police and the coroner had to take him out in a bag. that’s no way to go. then we both started feeling bad for not making more of an effort. we should have brought him hot meals, holly said. i shouldn’t have been so mad at him the past few weeks (since we got that environmental citation i suspect he turned us in for), i said. hell, the last time i saw him, just over two weeks ago, i’d say, he was standing in his doorway, wanting to say hello. he was oddly friendly all of the sudden, and i figured it was b/c he wanted to keep us off his trail (from suspecting that he was reporting our trash that wasn’t really our trash). he startled me, and i said hello and that was it. i was grumpy. little did i know that would be the last time i’d see him alive. now i feel terrible about it.

i take comfort in the fact that, in my mind, he’s not alone anymore. and with loved ones long gone. i wish the cops hadn’t thought it’d be funny to tell me gruesome details i pretty much begged them not to tell me so i could picture him as i had known him: as the white-haired, long-bearded eccentric man, always in his tan safari hat with the string hanging around his neck. walking quietly to the supermarket, always in khaki, multi-pocketed cargo pants and a dark blue jacket, always buttoned up, even on the hottest days. who mumbled about public television shows even i didn’t watch (like britcoms; oy, the britcoms) even when i worked at one (admittedly, i watch very little public television; yes, even when i worked at a public television station). who thought we were spying on him when we built our decks. the ex-morgan state librarian who tried to be friendly to us, even tho it was painfully obvious it was hard for him.

we won’t be staying in our house for the next couple days. (i’m writing this from our good friends’ house) it needs to air out. my whole head needs to air out, actually. i’m going to saline spray the hell out of my nose before i go to sleep tonight. we think our freshly laundered pajamas may have an odor to them, but honestly, what can we do? i’m going to ignore it and just put them on and try to go to sleep.

we continue to shake our heads b/c we never really thought it would come to this. we didn’t really think he’d “kick it” and then we’d “smell something.” it was always this morbid half-joke. and here’s it come true.

i’ve got to admit that this is just too much. i just want some peace and quiet. i just want all of this disgusting stuff to stop (and i haven’t even told you the half of it; i am saving some real doozies for the book). i know i joke around a lot about everything: about our neighborhood. the hookers and the dealers and the rats and the alleys. but at this point, i gotta say:  i really just want to move away and leave this all behind. i don’t want to go back to our house. i feel like everything’s changed. i don’t want to sleep there. i don’t want to live there. i feel crazy just thinking about it. baltimore, i’ve had enough. i really think it might be time to go.

in other news, i have a rash.

this is not really news. at least not to me. or holly. as i am always getting some sort of rash. it’s annoying, and, at 31, getting a little old.

i spent much of yesterday and today running to doctors and pharmacies, with the top of my hands and wrists itching like crazy, praying i didn’t see anyone i know since my eyelids are swelling up, too. oh yes. yes yes yes. as a grumpy ex-colleague of mine used to say: “if it’s not one thing, it’s another” (the not-too-distant cousin of the equally annoying “damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” which she also favored. i cannot stand either one of those expressions, btw. it’s like, well, duh. there’s truly always going to be something. it’s called life.)

anyway, i have a theory about this rash, but i’m going to hold off and keep you waiting until my book comes out. in the meantime, it’s keeping me up at night–or at least waking me up–and making me glad we have our overpriced/gay-unfriendly cobra plan. i am hoping the antihistamines i was prescribed work so i won’t have to take the scary steroid pack i was also prescribed b/c woohboy, the one time i had to take that (for chronic sinus headaches) on about the second day i was filled with such a sudden, ravenous, completely insane hunger that i swear i could have eaten a couch cushion. or my arm. good thing we had tositos in the house. i wish i would have chewed them better b/c they scratched my throat.

anyway, the rash kind of threw a temporary wrench into my very temporary joy that a national story i wrote was going to be picked up by the today show, which is my very favorite show next to the golden girls (yes, apparently i’m 80). it is my big dream to be on w/meredith, matt, anne and al. i got word that a reporter was going to do it and i immediately thought: OMG MY RASH. THE RASH HAS MOVED TO MY EYELIDS AND THEY’RE STARTING TO SWELL AND I’M GOING TO LOOK LIKE I HAVE A PEANUT ALLERGY AND I JUST ATE A PB&J IN ROCKEFELLER CENTER AND NEED AN EPI-PEN.

my panic was, of course, unwarranted (as it usually is), b/c even tho they’re probably doing the story this week, not only will i not be on, but, for various (long winded) reasons, i will not even be mentioned. this is fine, tho. b/c i want my first visit to the today show to be for my book. and just the mere fact that something i wrote, that i came up with the idea for (while in weird-o acupuncture over the summer) is being picked up by my fave news show makes me extremely happy. and plus, i have a rash. it’s bad enough just telling you about it. like hell i’m gonna go on national tv w/it. c’mon now

something better change around here or else somebody’s gonna lose an eye

that’s pretty much what i said to holly. after she said, with a sick smirk on her face, that she felt like punching me in the throat. which was in response to me telling her that i felt like elbowing her in the face.

yes, folks, this is the face of pms X 2, which is what i talked about the other day. which is perhaps the biggest downfall of being a partnered gay female of childbearing age. since it’s about my turn to get my “monthly gift” (ha, those commercials are so funny) this PROVES that *i* JESSICA am the ALPHA FEMALE. i have, with my pheromones or whatever the hell it is that does it, dragged her ass into my cycle.  not that i’m gloating. well maybe a little just b/c i think it’s really funny. but the gloating lasts about two seconds considering the havoc hormones have wreaked on our household the past couple weeks.

i love holly. i love her dearly. we love each other dearly. but i am telling you something’s got to give, or, yes, somebody’s going to lose an eye.

it’s like this push-pull. when i get hormonal, i don’t want her near me. but whatever prehistoric pheromones are lurking just under (or on?) my skin make her morph into peppy le peu. she’s suddenly all over me. i’m like EW GET OFFA ME! and she’s like, well, she basically like the clip below.

(watch her face. oh that is SO me right now.)

did you see what happens to him at the end? yeah.

anyway, that pretty much sums up us right now. when we’re not at each other’s throats, she’s on me like white on rice. sigh.

why do so many straight women sigh and say they wish they were ‘a lesbian’ when they’re having problems with men b/c ‘goshdarnit, it’s got to be so much easier’?

tell me. b/c i really want to know. give me one doggone reason you think it’s easier?? b/c you…both have boobs? yeah, not so much!

news flash for ya, ladies. it’s not easier. it could quite possibly be harder. in fact, all the civil rights/legal stuff aside (like how we’re paying $200+/month more than “individual plus [opposite sex] spouse” for my cobra benefits; and, now that i’m laid off i can finally tell all of you that i was being taxed over $350 more each month for holly’s benefits than my heterosexual colleagues, who were not being taxed *at all* on their spouse’s benefits. yup, holly’s benefits were viewed as “taxable income” by the govt. since we’re not “married” under state law. you know, after the $25k wedding w/the rabbi and all. and 150 guests. but i digress)…anyway, as i was saying, all that stuff aside, i will highlight only a couple reasons being with a woman isn’t the fantasy you imagine:

1. pms

oh. you think it’s bad in a household with just *one* of you going thru pms? HA! that’s not bad!!! TRY TWO! TRY TWO WOMEN AT HOME WITH PMS. try that on for size and get back to me when you’ve changed your mind. (hm? what’s that? you already changed it? what, so soon??)

for a long time, holly was like, when it came to “that time of the month,” oh, i’m totally the “alpha female.”

what’s the alpha female, you ask? i’ll explain:

whether us ladies are aware of it or not, there’s always that girl in a group house, family, etc. whose doggone pheromones or whatever they are screw up everyone else’s cycle. that’s what holly and i call the alpha female. usually what happens is that the women, whether’s there’s two or 20, sort of…fall in line. oh but not in our household. nooo,  that would be far too easy.

so holly’s been thinking she’s the alpha female. and i’m like, whatever, babe, kind of secretly believing she is simply b/c she’s stronger than me on some levels (ok many levels), as in: she can lift heavier things than i can and is a better driver and whatnot [no she’s not “butch” but those of you that know the two of us know exactly what i mean. i should mention that a certain relative of holly’s that shall remain nameless (coughcoughsharon–hm? what?) recently called me “a skirty girly girl”  and even tho i kind of am i’m not that bad). but then it seemed like i was dragging her ass into my cycle. and then sometimes it seemed like i was being dragged into hers. so we basically have this constant hormonal tug’o'war going on where we’re essentially at each others’ throats two weeks each month. we sometimes get this weird phantom pms from each other, too. so basically that’s pms four times a month.

nice, right?

also (#2) we have so many shoes in our house. omG the shoes!!!! you would simply not believe all the doggone shoes. or the clothes in general (#3). or the sheer girth of bras we have accumulated thru our 8+ yrs together (#4). also jeans (#5). also everything (#6).

oh and i just thought of another: IT TAKES FOREVER TO CHOOSE A BEDSPREAD (#7). or towels (#8)! or furniture (#9)! most men don’t care about that stuff. if they do, they’re lying just to make you shuddup.

so basically, if you’re thinking of “switching teams,” how about you picture pms times two (four, even) and no closet space. and you don’t really want to come out to your parents, do you (#10)? i mean, talk about awkward! exactly.

if you’ve read this carefully and you’re still thinking about gettin jiggy w/the womenfolk, you’re probably kind of gay already in which case you have larger issues and if you want to talk i’m totally here for you.

pillow talk

it’s taken me about eight and a half years, but i’ve started noticing that holly and i have some really funny conversations as we’re going to sleep. she usually gets into bed before me. ok scratch “usually.” her ass is always in bed before mine.

it used to be that i would stay up til all hours of the night typing away on my laptop, but she’s really not havin it anymore. i mean, she never really was havin it, but i think she’s tired of me making a racket (“racket” being, like, walking in and, say, breathing and then brushing my teeth; oh and heaven forbid i move the covers and she gets cold for a nanosecond! anyway, i digress) and waking her up (she is an incredibly light sleeper. it’s kind of crazy. i’ve got a post coming up about that).

now that she’s in school full-time and not getting up at the buttcrack’a'dawn to manage hugeass construction jobsites, she’s gotten a whole lot better at staying up later, even, dare i say “late.” and i’m not being quite as difficult about getting into bed at a decent hour, probably b/c i don’t have a full-time gig, so i have way more daylight hours to do my writing. what that means is that she’s still awake when i get into bed. so we can actually talk before we both fall asleep.

so last night i come to bed and she’s watching some annoying/scary-looking semi-medical show on TLC (yes, we watch tv in bed and save your lectures; we put on a timer and it helps us fall asleep–man i’m snarky today! anyway) and pretty soon it’s apparent it’s one of these “i didn’t know i was pregnant” shows, where, you know, a woman is eating dinner w/her family christmas eve and suddenly “doesn’t feel good” and goes to the hospital thinking a spinach dip or something made her sick and lo and behold, out comes a baby.

yeah, one of those.

we’re not big on the medical shows in our household, so i was surprised she was watching it at all. so right after, you know, the woman’s husband comes home to find his wife randomly holding a newborn baby and tons of blood in the bathroom, we have the following conversation before i get into bed:

me: “those ‘i didn’t know i was pregnant’ shows really freak me the hell out.”

holly: “yeah.”

(pause)

“at least you don’t have to worry about that.”

me: “at least there’s that.”

score one for the gays. hey we may not have equal rights or anything, but at least there’s no unplanned pregnancies. so we can add that to the list of advantages.

last week we had another funny conversation. i think it was the middle of the night. we just saw our neighbors get the sh*t kicked out of them on the street, called the cops, etc. about 10 mins later, i started laughing, b/c you know, what else can you do sometimes, when things are just so sad and ridiculous? you gotta laugh (and plus, it’s not like anyone died) anyway, i get reminiscing about some of my old apartments. there was the place in takoma park with the permanent residents–little brown roaches that somehow, thankfully, stayed strictly in the kitchen (i left about a hundred dead ones for the landlord to see when i broke my lease and moved to dc and got an unlisted phone number so he couldn’t find me). then the efficiency in adams morgan with the bathroom that was larger than the kitchen. i actually had to buy this silver rolly stand from ikea so i had a place to put my microwave and toaster oven. and i kept it in the living room.

“we’ve lived in some places, huh, hunny?” i said with a sigh and a nostalgic chuckle as i rolled over to cuddle against her.

“no, you’ve lived in some places. i’ve just come to visit.”

we both started laughing so hard. it was so funny i had to write it down in the “notes” function of my ghetoass sprint iphone wannabe (the Instinct; never ever get it, btw, piece’a crap). i decided i’d start doing that with these bedtime conversions b/c i know i’ll forget them.

i was like, “thanks, babe. but it’s not like you didn’t visit my ass every other day so i don’t even wanna hear it.”

then we just laughed more.

oh that crazy pillowtalk. if each of us could only be a fly on the wall, even just for five minutes, and listen to everyone’s conversations. there’s funny sh*t happening everywhere all the time. even at 2am in southeast friggin baltimore.