Sometimes Re-Boyfriend and I hug each other and (I don’t even know who started this) one of us will say “I don’t know what I’m going to do with all this love!” This is either sweet or nauseating, depending on your vantage point, but it is also, at least for me, true. I love him so much that the love is like a physical entity and I literally don’t know what to do with it.

I am beginning to think this is what people mean when they say things like “I’m overflowing with joy,” or “I’m bursting with love.” I’m not big enough for all this. One day my love is going to emerge forcefully from my stomach and parade around my desk. Until then I’m going to feel unsettled and scared.

This is not to say that Re-Boyfriend is never passive-aggressive. And he is also a snorer, and a person who freakishly wants to do laundry with me.

But I love him way too much and it is making me very uncomfortable.

A Passive-Aggressive Rant

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and was subsequently bombarded with flying PAs. And if there is anything I hate more than zucchini, it is Passive-Aggressiveness, especially when it is coming in my direction.

PA Scenario 1:

“I’m not going to say anything about it, but you know you were a little drunk last night.”

“You just said something about it.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I said I wasn’t going to say anything about it, you’re the one who’s talking about it.”

“You can’t DO that. It’s like saying, ‘Wow, you’re really ugly, but I’m not going to say anything about it. Wait, why are you mad? I didn’t call you ugly.’”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“I hate you.”

“Why are you being so sensitive?”


PA Scenario 2:

“Your hair looks so nice blow dried.”

“Are you trying to tell me to blow dry my hair?”

“No, I was just saying it looks nice blow dried.”

“Does it look bad now?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So you just happened to tell me now, when my hair is sopping wet, that it looks nice when it’s blow dried.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“But if you wanted to blow dry your hair now, you know it might look bett—”

“Fine! I’ll blow dry my hair!”

“Why are you getting angry?”


PA Scenario 3:

“I'm sorry Re-Boyfriend got so drunk."

“Why are you apologizing? He’s always like that, isn’t he?”

“Um...No.”


Friends, family, co-workers and boyfriends all win, all the time, because apparently I slept through the class on how to fight like a pussy. The next time someone says “I’m not saying anything but…,” I’m going to say “I’m not saying anything but you’re a passive-aggressive dickwad. What? I’m not saying anything.”

Laundry

Since Re-Boyfriend moved in, I have tried to be flexible about various domestic issues—my refrigerator now actually holds food, and I have found new homes for the pots, pans and toaster that previously resided in the oven. However one has to draw the line somewhere and I choose mixing my whites with Re-Boyfriend’s undershirts as my domestic limit.

Post-cohabitation, the first time that I started packing up clothes to go to the laundromat, Re-Boyfriend said cheerfully “I think I’ll come too.” Thinking it might be fun to have some company on the trip, I waited, perched on the bed, as Re-Boyfriend ran around gathering clothes.

“Do you think this is a white or a color?” Re-Boyfriend held up a muted tan shirt.

“I have no idea.”

“Well, let me see your colors.”

“My colors?”

“Yeah, so I can see if this will get ruined if I put it in with your colors.”

“Wait, you want to do laundry together together?”

Re-Boyfriend stopped his (slightly frantic) gathering of clothes and slowly approached me.

“CB, it makes sense to do our laundry together,” Re-Boyfriend told me, using his infinite patience voice.

“But I don’t even separate my laundry,” I said, still a bit confused. He wanted to co-mingle our underwear and fold socks side by side? Why?

“You just throw it all in together?” Re-Boyfriend seemed torn between being impressed and alarmed.

“Yup.”

“Seriously?”

“Yup.”

He thought for a moment, eyeing his muted tan shirt protectively.

“Well, I’ll separate your laundry for you.”

It was then that I had to take a firm stance on the laundry issue, letting Re-Boyfriend know that even though we were sharing an apartment, sharing a bed, sharing groceries and sharing pretty much everything, I was not prepared to share my washer and dryer time with his clothes.

After repeating “You’re being so ridiculous” several times, Re-Boyfriend accepted my neurotic stubbornness but not without some obvious resentment.

Later that night the issue of the hamper presented itself. If I didn’t want to do my laundry with Re-Boyfriend, did I really want my dirty clothes hanging out with his, necessitating a separation on laundry day, a process which was sure to cause the same argument all over again? Of course not.

And so I decided to keep my dirty clothes on the floor on my side of the bed. (I have what could kindly be described as a “sliver” of space between the bed and the wall.) Since I was the one with the issues, it made sense that Re-Boyfriend should be able to use the hamper. Then when I stopped being ridiculous, I could join him in his hamper-using maturity.

However, due to a reasoning I am not quite sure of, Re-Boyfriend began to keep his clothes on the floor. Since he is not in possession of a sliver of space between his side of the bed and the wall, his clothes are strewn about the doorway, the bureau, the windowsill, the desk.

When I tentatively broached the subject—“Er, I’m not using the hamper, you know,”—I received the terse reply “Neither am I.”

When, a few days later, I asked about the escalating piles of clothes, Re-Boyfriend said, somewhat sarcastically “I wouldn’t want our clothes to touch each other.”

Then he laughed and told me he was just kidding. But his clothes are still on the floor. And so are mine. And so our bedroom is littered with clothes while the hamper stands empty.

All in all, it’s going much better than expected.

I think the best part of my job is that I occasionally get to work with numbers. Trying to answer such questions as “How much money did we make off X last year?” or “What was the financial benefit of trying Y last month?” can be more creative than one might think.

While I am sure accountants and other financially-oriented people have an idea of the numbers in question, I am also quite sure that no one knows the actual amount of anything. Then I come along, take one of the accountant’s ideas, put it in a spreadsheet, add and subtract a whole lot of other ideas, until, in the end, it is no longer an idea of a real number but a complete fabrication.

Once I give that fabrication to senior executives, it becomes a gospel number, one that can never be questioned. And this gospel number is used to generate a whole lot of other idea numbers.

“Hank, the numbers you gave CB are wrong. If we made [$gospel number] from x, we couldn’t have made less than [$idea number] from y.”

“Good thinking Sally, I better rerun those numbers.”

I am sure that in the beginning numbers were off by a dollar or two, as they are apt to be when one is dealing with a large operation. But over the years, things have gotten completely out of hand, and now I’m not sure how anyone knows if we are even making money at all.

Sometimes I see important people discussing numbers that I have given them and I laugh.

Sympathy for Money

You know, it is one thing when my company wants to pay me crap money to do nothing all day. It is quite another when they want to pay me crap money to run around like a monkey performing meaningless tasks that have the due date of precisely one second from when they are given to me.

It is all becoming eerily reminiscent of my old job, a place where the pay was worse and my image was that of an overworked office Mother Theresa. Superiors would routinely refer to me as “a blessing.” Unfortunately, instead of giving my blessed hard-working ass a raise, higher-ups would walk by my desk, give me pitying looks and either tell me to “Go home” or comment “God. On a Friday night?” with a bit of an eye roll. Sometimes they would become aggressive, repeating their command to go home until I was forced into the unlikely position of insisting that I didn’t want to go home, that I was happy right where I was. The truthful translation of that would have been "Stop giving me work if you want me to leave, fucktards."

In one instance, my boss actually waited for me to pack up my belongings, then watched as I shuffled off to the elevator, presumably to ensure that I wouldn’t make a beeline back to my desk. As I glanced back in incredulity, I saw that he looked very pleased, as though he had done his good assistant deed for the year. He was still pissed when his project was a few hours late the next day.

Now people are beginning to give me sympathetic looks in the hallway. I know where this leads.

Update: I just reread my resume. If I had never met me, I would think I was important. Christ, if I ever get to leave the office, I'm going to buy a new interview suit.

My Reproductive Knowledge

Obviously I know babies do not grow in one’s stomach, and that eggs do not start popping out 12 hours after a missed pill. I mean, seriously.

However, some of you do not seem to know that Vitamin C is totally fine for people on the pill. (Okay, fine, I actually didn’t know that either, but I Googled it.)

And, my period came this morning. I was relieved, but also a bit disappointed because I had been planning on live-blogging its arrival today. (“10:35am Another bathroom trip. 10:40am When I wiped I saw what appeared to be spots of dark blood but may only have been errant poo. 10:50am Another bathroom trip.”)

Once in awhile I decide I’m pregnant. Usually there is a reason, albeit a really crappy one.

Three months ago I thought I was pregnant because I was two hours off schedule taking the pill. A few months before that I thought I was pregnant because I was badly hungover, vomited in the morning and decided that I had thrown up my pill and started producing eggs. Today I think I am pregnant because my period is one day late.

Since he is the father of my imaginary unborn children, I generally tell Re-Boyfriend the good news.

“I’m pregnant,” I’ll announce, hoping for either an eye-roll (“Oh, come on”) or a concerned hug (“CB, you know you’re not really pregnant”).

Instead, what I unfailingly get from Re-Boyfriend is total abject terror.

This morning

CB: I’m pregnant.

Re-Boyfriend: Oh my God.

CB: My period is sixteen hours late.

Re-Boyfriend: Oh my God! Your period was supposed to come sixteen hours ago? Oh my God.

I grudgingly took his intended role and explained that everyone is late from time to time and that this had happened before and that really, it was highly unlikely that I was pregnant.

Then it was Re-Boyfriend’s turn to agree that science was on my non-baby-making side and that everything would be just fine.

“Okay. Okay.” Re-Boyfriend bit his lip and generally failed to appear comforting. “But if you get your period today, will you text me at work? Or call me? Oh my God.”

"Fine."

"Are you sure? Promise me you'll call."

I’m never telling him I’m pregnant again.

But on the upside, worrying about growing a new life in my stomach has made me almost forget that my boss is fucking his ex-assistant. I didn’t even smile when I inadvertently referred to him and Perky as having had “worked very closely together.”

Okay, I’m lying, I actually laughed when I said it and watched closely for a reaction. Unfortunately, it’s hard to distinguish my boss’ ordinary look of suspicion and consternation from one specifically induced by a fear of being found out as an assistant-fucker.

NOTE: To all those who inquired, I'd rather not be more specific about the evidence of my boss's fuck life with Perky but rest assured it is both very clear and not that interesting. (There's no Monica dress or anything that you're missing out on.)