Limping Along

I’ve found my breaking point : 6 months in a hotel.

I take that back. It’s not living in the hotel. If I had moved here with the understanding that I would always be in the hotel, that would be different. Like… I wouldn’t have moved here. Because who lives in a hotel by choice?

It’s the promise of having an apartment… If only…

If only…

• We had a couch and a bed.
• We had cardboard to make into a couch and a bed.
• Someone would give me the furniture maker’s phone number. Apparently I was described as being a ‘wild card’ and no one is volunteering the information. I just want to chat! Honest.
• The man who made our curtains didn’t choose a terrifying fabric for the bedroom when the fabric I chose ran out. I don’t know what happens to people who live in a completely red rooms. Probably nothing good. But the light coming through the fabric casts a blood red tint. Red Room. Red Room.
• The Hubs didn’t have the heart of a saint with his “well honey, the man has a lot to do… blah, blah, etc etc.” I know he can get tough. The man was named The General by his family when he was a child. Maybe if he finds me huddled in the corner of the hotel room rocking back and forth muttering “here’s Johnny, here’s Johnny”, he’ll jump on board my frustration-train.

The limping along from this post’s title comes from this: I really have very few responsibilities here in my Nigerian life.  In the hotel, I have to send laundry down to be cleaned. When it’s returned, I have to clip plastic tags off all the pieces.

And minus the fact that counting The Hubs’ dirty underwear before shipping it off to the laundry is not on my list of pleasant things I look forward to, that’s all the effort I need to put forth to get clean clothes. I know people who would punch a puppy if it meant their lives could be that simplified.

So where does the limping coming in?  I’ve lost any motivation for anything.  Dirty (alright, gnarly. Gnarly laundry happens a few days weeks- yes, weeks- after dirty clothes have been waiting patiently to be laundered) is spilling out of our closets and I have a bag of clean clothes that need the little tags to be clipped off.  I’ve tried skipping that step, but The Hubs said that when he stands up during a business meeting and starts twisting around because he’s being stabbed by a plastic laundry shank tag, it can be a bit detrimental to the overall demeanor he has been working hard to express to his colleagues. After The Hubs begs me to remove the tags 3 or 12 times, I feel like it’s my wifely duty to oblige.

See that back wall there? There is enough room in there that I won’t need to do laundry for at least 2..er.. 3 weeks.

The laundry is spilling out everywhere, the stuff from the US that The Hubs (who returned from the US last week) brought back is sitting all over helter-skelter (except for the Doritos… because I already ate those in a moment of crying-induced-mindless-eating), I have a slice of cake that has taken up residency in the mini fridge and has turned psychedelic colors over the weeks, and there are 15 shoes in the middle of the room- conveniently placed so that I can trip and swear and stagger over at least 3 of them every time I move.

Maybe I have Almost-Apartment-Hotel-Livin’-Blues.

My birthday plant was so sad, it killed itself.

Recently, a number of my mommy-friends have been spreading a hilarious blog detailing the fact that by the end of May, mothers are just not the same able-bodied, sound-minded mothers they were in the beginning of the school year.  Sound like you? (http://jenhatmaker.com/blog– Check out her blog…after you finish mine. I’m shellfish like that)

This is clearly my problem. It’s the end of the school year. I’m tired out. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I actually had kids too.

So I’m going to ignore the mess, the clutter, and the smell and lay on the couch and read Harry Potter and watch Gilmore Girls.

Poor Hubs. Here’s Johnny.