Exasperation

So I returned home yesterday full of contrition, intending to make amends for being such a beast over the weekend. The Professor was working at his computer, and his novel was up on the screen, so I simply said hi, gave him a peck on the cheek, and went to pill and feed my very vocal cat. The Professor got right up and followed me out to the kitchen though. After I was done tending the cat, he drew me out to the living room. It was nice at first, just sitting there, talking. But then he started picking on me, teasing me. I know it was intended to be good-natured, but he can be very heavy handed with his teasing. And it was the last thing I was looking for at the moment.

So my feelings started getting hurt, and I stopped being quite so affectionate. I didn’t pull away and I didn’t stop talking, and I was damned sure to keep the smile on my face. But I just didn’t feel like light foreplay any more.

Now, my turtle tank is in the living room, not far from the sofa. It was overdue for a change and cleaning, and I had intended to get to it over the weekend, but didn’t. It’s a fifty-gallon tank, and I have to bail it by hand and carry the water to and from the bathtub to clean it. I had decided over the weekend that rather than cut into my time with the Professor, I’d clean it Tuesday night, when he was teaching class. Well, the Professor started in on how the turtle tank was still dirty and didn’t I say I was going to clean it over the weekend. He claimed he was teasing, but he always claims everything he says is just teasing. It particularly stung because I had truly tried to arrange my schedule around his. He never even bothered to ask *why* I chose not to clean it over the weekend. I gave up, and got up from the sofa, leaving him there to watch while I cleaned the tank.

Insult to injury: I need the kitchen sink to wash the pump, float, and other small items from the tank, as well as to keep the turtle herself in while I clean the tank. The kitchen sink was again full of dirty dishes. Now the deal is I cook, he washes dishes. He doesn’t want to cook – says he doesn’t know how and he is very unwilling to learn even the basics when I try to show him. So before I could clean the turtle tank I had to wash the dishes he’d left there. While he sat on the sofa, I got to wash the dishes, bail 45 gallons of water out of the tank, clean the tank, carry 45 gallons of water back to the tank, prime the pump, and return the turtle.

You know what he said at the end of it? I didn’t get the tank exactly centered on its stand, and that it bothered him. Another “tease”, he claimed.

So I did the only thing a sane person could do. I opened my bottle of New Zealand Merlot, and I got completely buzzed. Which always makes me sleepy, so I went to bed soon after making dinner, the making of which was another fiasco I’m not going to bother getting into here. Nor am I going to get into killing the two inch long silverfish on the ceiling except to observe that I’m 5’2″, he’s 5’10”, and I had to climb up on the handle of the step ladder to get the damned thing because he doesn’t like squashing silverfish. He was happy to watch, though.

I wrote a quick e-mail to Candle about Squeek – I feel very badly for her. Since the Professor doesn’t know I’ve got the on-line diary, I had to twist the truth a tad and tell him that the pet of a friend of mine died and I was writing her an e-mail. When I wrote the previous entry for Candle and Squeek I had to keep switching to a different window every time he came into the room. It would have been too complicated to explain otherwise.

I went to bed drunk, sleepy, and feeling rather uncommunicative. At that point he decided to follow me into the bedroom and talk. I was buzzed, nearly asleep and annoyed, and NOW he wanted to apologize for teasing me when I got home. I told him I was fine, tired, there was nothing to apologize for and please let me go to sleep. So he did.

I don’t think he even realized what a dolt he was, sitting there in the living room watching me work last night. Damn, I still haven’t scrubbed the bathtub out from that yet. Guess I’ll have to do that when I get home tonight.