Text Pests

On my way home from work, I get a text from the Mrs. The Mr would like to know if you would ring at around 9 tonite?

I start laughing and reply. Er...ok but only if I actually get to speak to you. Does it have to be a threeway every night?! Gosh! LOL.

The Mrs’ response? U love it!

I get home to an empty house and despite my desire to live alone sometimes, I am perplexed by the unexpected lack of company. I text Big Sis. Where is everybody?! It turns out that Bro-in-Law is at uni and Big Sis had gone to an event at a church which has unfortunately been cancelled. She laughs at my message and says she is on her way home. I take advantage of the empty house and feel motivated to do stuff, which for some reason only seems to happen when I am alone. I wash the dishes and cutlery so that it doesn’t build up to a shocking level, take my washing out of the machine and replace it with a new load and then grab something to eat, while carrying my damp clothes into the living room to hang up to dry. I watch some TV while I do so and soon Big Sis arrives home, makes us both a hot drink and then sits down for a chat.

By that time, my second load of washing has finished, so I start to hang that up too and realise it is nearing 9pm and my plans for a nice soak in the bath before talking to The Mrs are looking unlikely. Just after 9, I go upstairs to my room and see a text. Read your blog about NY Guy! Lol! I laugh and put my stuff down, when she calls. “I’m going to call you back in a second!” I tell her. “I didn’t forget!”

I call her back and she says, “Yeah, I read your blog. What’s that about? He’s such a cook!” [Or some other mispronounced insult, I can’t remember.] We talk about it and I laugh sardonically inside at the thought that if I was a sporting event, maybe he would give a crap. I might have initiated the break-up, but he started the heartbreak. “So, do you want to speak to The Mr?” she asks. “Er…I think I’d like to have some alone-time with you first, thanks,” I reply, laughing at how I have seemingly acquired a two-for-one offer with this friendship. He is reading a book on the other side of the room, anyway. We chit-chat about our days. She tells me how irritable she was feeling at having only a few hours sleep, due to noise pollution in the form of snoring from him. She announces this part rather loudly, thinking he isn’t listening anyway because he is reading his book. But he is listening and pipes up a reply. The Mrs turns the light off. “You’re tired, go to sleep now, good night,” which is seemingly her standard answer to him with everything at the moment and cracks me up. “Oh no,” she says jokingly, “he’s coming over, he’s coming to join the conversation!”

I can hear him in the background quite clearly. “Speak to Em,” she says, “Tell her how you feel. Tell her how you feel about me trying to break up with you all the time.” I’m not sure why I have suddenly become a therapist. I hear him talking quite clearly in the background. But The Mrs wants more. “Do you want to speak to Em or not? No, speak to her, she's on the phone. Take the phone!”
The Boy obeys. “Hi Em.”
“Hello,” I answer. “Sorry she's making you speak to me.”
“She's not making me speak to you.”
“Well, she is there saying, ‘Speak to Em! Take the phone!’” We laugh.
The Mrs is still there is the background. “Tell Em how you feel.”
“Yeah,” I agree, playing along. “How do you feel?”
He obliges. “I feel bad about Claire trying to break up with me all the time.”
“Does it make you feel sad?”
“Yeah,” he replies in his laid-back voice, “It does make me feel sad. So sad that I could maybe even cry.”
I laugh. “He's doing that voice again!” I say to The Mrs.
“No I'm not!” he laughs.
“Yes he is!”
“He is,” she agrees, “He's doing the 'pity me' voice!”

We laugh about it and we chit-chat, with The Mr telling some dodgy jokes again, this time revolving around ‘a man went to the doctor…’ which I still find myself cracking up about, despite how bad they are. We have some very bizarre topics of conversation that are borderline politically incorrect and in response to a topic about race that I won’t repeat, for some reason they start jokingly arguing again about whether I am ‘yellow’ (The Mrs), ‘tanned’ (The Mr) or ‘beige’ (me). The issue of my height once again becomes a talking point with The Mrs mentioning something about me being little.

“She's not that little!” says the Mr. “Well, you are quite little, actually. I want to pick you up and spin you around. And then put you down so you stumble around like a drunk toddler.”
It’s an interesting simile. “What toddlers do you know?!” I ask. “Have you seen a drunk toddler?”
He explains, “Yeah, like when they come off a roundabout and are all woozy and start hugging each other and telling each other they love them. They're roundabout drunk.”
“I must have had a sheltered childhood,” I say, “I've never got drunk on a roundabout.”
“No, you made it sound like drinking a bottle of Teacher's while sitting on a roundabout! That’s what you do when you’re a teenager, like when I used to hang out in parks at night and steal sofas to sit on. Getting drunk on roundabouts is not the same as getting roundabout drunk. It’s two different things!”
I laugh at his explanation. “I never did that. I obviously had a sheltered childhood. Where were you stealing sofas from, people’s houses?!”
“No, not stealing them! You know, when people just leave them out to get rid of. That’s not stealing, they’re throwing them out anyway.”
We then have an argument about what a roundabout is. “That’s what you turn around on, on a road,” says The Mrs, “You mean a Merry-Go-Round.”
“No,” says the Mr, “That’s a road roundabout, put I mean a park roundabout. The ones that just spin around. A Merry-Go-Round is different. That’s one that has horses and stuff on it.”
“That’s a carousel!” she argues.

We talk about medications and compare them. The Mr wants some that will make him skinny. He wants to take mine, despite the fact that he doesn’t need anti-depressants. “No, the effects have worn off now,” I say. “My appetite is back with a vengeance.” The Mrs mentions reading the medical notes at work of a patient she knows well. “Did you read mine?” I ask, despite the fact that I haven’t been institutionalised (yet) and even if I was, I live miles away from the Health Trust she is based at. “Er…no, because they don't have yours.” Knowing they probably wouldn’t be very detailed even if she did have access to them, I ask “Isn't my blog pretty much the same thing?!” “No, it's not quite the same, really.” I like that she humours me. It’s probably why she’s so good with working with mental health patients. We're all a bit mental. But at least we’re aware of it. The Mr laments that he is fat (which he isn’t). “Maybe I’ll just become bulimic,” he resigns. The Mrs agrees. “Yeah, let’s all become bulimic.” “I already am,” I say, “But I’m a bulimic with amnesia.” The Mrs laughs. “What?” says The Boy. “I do the food binges,” I explain, “but I just forget to throw up afterwards.” We all laugh.

The Mrs passes the phone to him and we have a quick chat and he asks me what I am doing tomorrow and what I have to do at work. I tell him and realise how mind-numbingly boring it sounds. The conversation turns back to sleep and snoring and The Mrs informs me that The Mr bought her earplugs. “Oh, how thoughtful,” I say, but The Boy obviously doesn’t know about The Mrs’ history with earplugs and doesn’t sense my subtle sarcasm. “Yeah, I thought it was quite thoughtful, but she wasn’t very happy.” The Mrs explains. “Yeah, that’s because I am reminded horribly of times past!” She is referring to her ex. “I’ve had enough of earplugs! Don’t you remember Em, he bought me a year’s supply on eBay!!!” I sigh, “Ahh, the romance. Well I suppose it’s sort of thoughtful, but it might be more thoughtful to just not snore in the first place?!” We laugh. I remind her how I bought her a pair when she got married. “Really?” asks The Boy, “You got her that at her wedding?” It was meant to be a joke, but it wasn’t a very funny one. This was before I realised that the extent of the snoring warranted the year’s supply.

In answer to the problem of getting enough sleep, I recommend the use of Night Nurse and realise I am starting to sound like a drug addict. The Mrs says she is already starting to feel tired and thinks that if she falls asleep before him, maybe it will make her less likely to wake up from his snoring. “If he does wake you up,” I suggest, “Stick your fingers up his nose.”
She laughs, “I thought you were going to say ‘arse’ then!”
“Well, you can do that if you want, but it seems a little drastic.”
On that rather interesting note, we decide that it is time for bed and say our goodbyes, with promises to catch up again tomorrow.

I surf the net for a while and make little blog notes so I don’t forget what I want to write about. I realise that time is slipping away and that I should get to sleep now, while it is a reasonable hour and getting up early in order to make it to work by 9.30 is still feasible. Cut to 1am and I am still lying awake, even after turning the lights off and trying to make myself sleepy. My earlier ambitions for getting up extra early and going to the gym before work - which would ensure a pre-9.30 arrival into the office - are looking laughable, so I reset my alarm and try to drift off, hoping for at least a nice solid six hours, and wondering if The Mrs will get the same.