Temperamental

This guy I was talking to at work on the phone today did this thing, this thing I think is a guy thing. It made me so angry. I had to keep putting him on hold to try to get control of my temper.

Towards the end of the call he puts his kid on the line to take down an address I’m telling him to send information to because he can’t write and before he puts the kid on he asks me to cooperate with the kid like the way I’m acting with him isn’t being that way and has everything to do with me and nothing to do with his feeling so damn comfortable subtly taking control of our conversation because of my natural social deference toward him, alternating with my outright frustration in the face of how he’s managing to maintain the conversation on his own ignorant terms when he knows fuck all about fuck but is acting like it’s me not him when its him not me.

There’s a new QAA (Quality Assurance Advisor) sitting across from me temporarily, a guy, and he is so low key and so receptive I’m starting to get self-conscious around him. I’m starting to notice myself wanting to act ways that I think he would like so he’ll like me.

I have to keep putting the guy driving me crazy on the phone on hold. I’m telling the guy temporarily sitting across from me what I’m doing. He’s being encouraging. I’m telling him this guy on the phone is making me so mad I can’t function. I’m telling myself it’s good I’m telling the guy sitting across from me temporarily this because I don’t want to act like I’m someone I’m not for him even though I also do want to do that so he’ll like me. But I also don’t want to do it because on what basis would I be acting? I would be out of control. I would be in a fantasy of what I thought he thought was beautiful.

In reality what do I know about what he thinks is a nice way for a person to act? I only know what I think. I only know how close or far away I am to being the way I want to be, like even though I feel embarrassed for having this problem with this guy on the phone I can tell who I am by the ugly unfortunate issue I’m having with him acting like he’s the sweetheart and I’m the problem when he’s not the sweetheart.

On my bathroom break I look at myself in the bathroom mirror when I’m washing my hands. I’m wearing a nice pink necklace I got at the beach which makes my skin colour from my sun tan from being at the beach look pretty but it’s also drawing attention to the stringy, up and down wrinkles on my neck that look like the way a chicken’s neck looks. The QAA sitting across from me looks young. How could a guy like that like me when I’m so old looking? I’d have to fool myself pretty hard to see a young looking face looking back at me. My nice hair cut helps though.

This morning walking into the mall, which I walk through to get to work, a man opened the door for me. I couldn’t understand why he would open if for me. I don’t act the way men want me to. I don’t act the way they think is beautiful. So why would one open the door for me? But then I see this woman walking towards me who looks like a regular normal woman, with regular prettiness, and I think he would open the door for her too. I look normal enough just like she does. Why shouldn’t he open the door for me too? It’s something men do sometimes for women, for regular women. How it’s actually easier to open a door for an older woman who isn’t beautiful anymore. How it’s also easier when you’re an older woman to have the door opened for you.

Men

No idea really how to talk to men. Not just talk but develop relationships with. My girlfriends talk to them.

Actually I can and do talk to them. Actually I’m married to one.

But I can’t handle the going into the abstractness to deal with the opposite sexes of ourselves between us. It’s not that I’m not smart. I’m smart enough. I just can’t remember who I’m supposed to be when I’m acting like that. I’m sorry.

I’m okay if I have something to discuss. Work. The workiness of our workingness together is a good subject of communication, isn’t it? But look! Behold my girlfriends. They are having much more interesting conversations with them. They look like they’re enjoying themselves. What are they talking about? How are they doing it?

I think it’s technical. I’m squinting my eyes so I can focus in on and study their moves. I’m making better friends with my girlfriends too. We have more in common than I thought. I should have been appreciating them more before. Now I am.

No title yet

First we saw Richard. He was looking across the street at the parking lot of the plaza. He had this wild and excited look on his face. There were other kids too running toward him bigger kids. He didn’t look like he was scared of them so I was wondering if it was a game they were playing, like tag. Like Richard, they were also turning around looking at the parking lot. The way they spread out together in one flowing motion was like they were some kind of spawn brought in by the tide. They looked like the characters running alongside Tom Cruise in the War of the Worlds remake about the future that are being chased down by mechanical robots with guns from outer space.

We told Richard that Jacob was over behind Chat, the Hebrew Day School with two tennis rackets if Richard wanted to go over and play with him. Richard had sweat on the back of his head hairs at his collar. He had sweat on his bangs. Richard always hangs around the park getting in on every possible game he can.

Richard said, sure he was going to do that. He said there was a fight over in the parking lot. He walked toward it to show us where it was happening. There was a guy on his back down on the ground. He was moving his limbs but staying down. Larry was asking Richard who the kids involved were to find out if the guys involved were the same two kids who took Jacob’s baseball glove in the spring because Larry’s still planning to call those kids to task when he gets the chance. Richard stared over at the movement in the parking lot and answered Larry’s questions.

I was calling Jacob on my cell phone to let him know Richard would be coming over to play with him but decided not to because Richard didn’t look like he was ready to go yet.

The kid who was lying down stood up with some of his friends around him. Larry and I started walking toward a girl standing near the outfield foul territory of the baseball diamond. She said she knew the guys who were fighting. We walked past this other kid who was standing straddled over his bike watching the parking lot. A guy playing left field was trying to get his attention because someone had just hit a fowl ball right beside this kid. He was trying to get the kid to throw the ball back to him so he wouldn’t have to walk all the way over to the edge of the field to get it himself.

Larry called Jacob to tell him Richard should be coming over to play tennis with him soon, to stay where he was and not to come over to the park because there had just been a fight but Richard would be there soon.

When we were a few blocks away part way down the hill that goes to the valley Jacob called us from the park to tell us the kid who we had seen lying down had been stabbed. Larry told me he had seen something red on the kid’s back but he just thought it was just his friend had something red in his hand. I told Larry I didn’t notice anything red on the kid’s back. The police were coming and the two kids who had done it were hiding behind the Irving Chapley Community Center.

Larry called Jacob back to tell him if the police ask him any questions to not tell them anything because Jacob didn’t see anything first hand and it was up to people who saw things first hand to let the police know what they saw. Larry said to me Jacob has a do-gooder tendency that could get him labelled as a snitch.

We were going to walk along the path beside the river but right away it was way too full of mosquitoes. I told Larry I couldn’t take it anymore, I needed to turn back. We were running. It took a while for us to lose the mosquitoes even though we were way past where they had first started to bother us.

Sleepover

Jacob’s friend Spenser slept over. They go to school together. Its Jacob’s first year at the school. He should have made friends with this kid sooner.

They are playing Halo. For a while they were fighting zombies on the front porch. When fighting zombies it’s important to rearrange all the porch furniture. I learned that when I came home and found the furniture that way.

Jacob has so many toy guns. He still likes playing with them and when his friends come over so do they.

It’s hot out. We have air conditioning. It’s better to not go out.

Spenser is twelve. Jacob turns twelve in a week and is worried he won’t get a birthday party again this year. Last year none of his friends were around. You can’t have a birthday party when there’s no one around to invite.

Jacob and Spenser giggle a lot.

Dead things

- Eli and Jake went down to the valley and brought home a brown snake. It was so sweet. It would stick out its tongue to smell the air when you came by to visit it. I talked to it every day.

Then Jacob left the top of the aquarium open a tiny crack. It was such an athletic snake. We knew it could get out because it was always finding ways to climb up to the top of the aquarium and curl up beside the light. It got out.

Just as Eli was leaving on his trip for leadership training in the reserves for two months, he found the snake. It was curled up in one of his boots.

Eli put the snake back in the aquarium. It was just a small snake. It wasn’t supposed to have so much personality. According to the article we read on the internet it was supposed to be nocturnal and maybe not want to eat the worms we fed it so soon after being captured. And just sleep under things we put in there with it to sleep under.

The snake wasn’t the same after being found in Eli’s boot. (Eli does have pretty smelly feet) Its eye it looked at me with was dull like it didn’t know me anymore. It didn’t stick out its tongue. It didn’t curl up so much but laid more in a straight line. He could barely lift his head.

- My dad.

- The two stuffed grape leaves which no one ate that were in a bowl initially covered in saran wrap but then the saran wrap came off, and moved around to various locations in the fridge depending on where there was room for them in relation to the other stuff in the fridge, for the past two weeks.