Lazy Poo Day

No real picture for this post today, so please enjoy this lovely picture of a brooding Jack Sparrow that I got here.



I got up this morning and took a walk. I'm trying to make that a daily thing. I'm also trying to get in the habit of exercising in the morning after I get home from my walk, but some different circumstances threw off my routine today. I'm sitting in my comfy chair reading blogs with a baby on my lap who is apparently not feeling very well. He's doing his "I'm sleepy" behavior, but he won't go to sleep. Not sure what his deal is.

Meanwhile, I have a big project I need to do today. I'm not looking forward to it, so I haven't started it yet. The last few days have been hot and super humid. I don't think I've ever been so sticky in my life, and it's zapped all my energy. "You should drink more water," would be good advice. Except as I learned LAST summer, they treat our water here once a year. Normally, we have pretty tasty water, and I drink a lot of it. But whatever they treat this stuff with is beyond nasty. I can't stand the stuff. And that's how my water tastes right now. Ick.

So here I've sit in my sticky hot house (and no J, I don't want to hear how cold your toes are right now. You and your central air can go jump in a lake!) wishing I had something more fun to do.


So I think I'll tell you the story of how I almost married a Hoarder.

The year I graduated from high school, scholarships were hard to come by. A friend of mine was one of our valedictorians, and she didn't even get one. Looking back, I realize I might have had more of a chance if I'd actually applied for more of them, but I think I was pretty much waiting for the Scholarship Fairy to leave a little gift under my pillow while I slept.

I only mention this because I think if I'd had financial abilities to finish school, this situation probably wouldn't have happened. 1. I would have known that I had many years to get through, so I might not have tried to squeeze so much out of my first year in school. 2. I might have put more effort into making friendships on campus if I knew I was going to have all these people to lean on through the years. 3. I wouldn't have seen "marrying a state resident" as an opportunity to finish school.

As it was, I knew going into it that I probably wouldn't be able to afford more than a year of college.

And I loved college.

Add to all that the fact that I've always been very focused on having a family (In the last 17 years, I've spent 10 of those in my first marriage, almost 3 since marrying Surfer Pirate, and been engaged twice to guys I didn't marry. What's that tell you?), and had no problem with getting married young.

Spring Quarter had either just started or was about to start (back then, my school was on a quarterly system rather than doing semesters), and I was having to face the fact that I was almost done with what college I could afford. I wanted to continue, but didn't know how or when that could happen.

As much as I loved school, I was homesick. All of my roommates (6 of us in an apartment-style dorm) were within just a few short hours of home and could take off for the weekend if they wanted to. I was 9 hours away with no car.

As I said before, I really didn't spend enough time making friends, so I was really lonely. I didn't have much for female friends to confide in, and males (either of the friend or boyfriend variety) weren't happening, despite my (sometimes quite pathetic) efforts.

All of those details = Recipe For Disaster

I was at a school dance. Dances meant guys, and I was all for that idea. I had my eye on this really cute guy with light brown hair down to his shoulders, and was trying to figure out how to get his attention. I was interrupted by a rather nerdy-looking skinny guy. He struck up a conversation with me, and I halfheartedly answered his questions while keeping one eye on my Target. Eventually, Mr Personality * asked if he could take me out some time and could he get my phone number. I gave it to him, hoping that now he would leave me alone and I could get back to trying to break the heart of the guy across the room.

*Seriously. Go look at that link. I swear the guy in that video HAD to have been modeled after him.

Never did get that cute guy's attention.

Meanwhile, Mr Personality called me right away. Free dinner? Sure. I'm in.

BIG mistake. Big. Huge.

From there, I'm not really sure what happened. I found myself in a serious relationship with this guy. As far as his good points: he drove a pretty nice car, owned his own house, had a good job, was taking college classes in computers, liked to garden, and had beautiful rosebushes. (I was a horticulture major. Those last two points meant a TON to me.) And he had state citizenship - meaning if we married, I would instantly qualify for in-state tuition, and I could continue going to school.

His bad points?

He was 12 years older than me. He was 30 when we started dating, but turned 31 shortly afterwards (I found out later my roommates called him Mr. 31 Flavors). He was NOT sexy -not even a little bit. Super-skinny, bad hair, and he had the lips of an 80 year old man. (He also dressed like an old man.) He had a weird way of "gardening". I swear he must have stood on one side of his garden and literally just thrown the seeds anywhere. There was no organization to it at all - random vegetables coming up everywhere. I helped him weed it one day and must have pulled up half his celery plants before I realized they were something he actually wanted in there. And those college classes he was taking? Turns out he was a career college student - had been in college non-stop for 10 years! He was also doing some sort of investment stuff that had to have been illegal based on his secrecy about it.

But he had two REALLY bad points.

He was a Hoarder. Back then, the term for it was Pack Rat. His house was FULL of piles of newspaper, gutted televisions and microwaves, bicycles, and TWO dressers full of those little tiny LED lights that they put in alarm clocks. There was stuff EVERYWHERE! He said everything was some project he was working on. Even without the classes and a full-time job, he wouldn't have been able to complete all of his "projects" in 60 years!

The second really bad point is what eventually ended the relationship. Once he'd brainwashed me into believing I was supposed to marry him, he started in with the emotional and verbal abuse. I was fat (I had a 22 inch waist at the time). I was worthless. He acknowledged that he wasn't a Great Catch, but I would never be able to get anyone better than him, so I may as well just stay with him. He convinced me that he'd been abused as a child (I don't buy it. His family was great), and he tried to get me to figure out who had abused ME. He said "abused people are always attracted to each other." (So THAT'S why he liked me, not because I was cute!) He tried to use my having been picked on in junior high as "proof" that I was a constant victim. (Seriously, who WASN'T picked on in junior high? Kids are horrible to each other at that age!)

And I bought into that crap.

This is what happens with you're lonely and desperate.

We had been eating a lot of salads made from all his fresh garden veggies. I hate radishes. Absolutely hate them. He was growing 3 or 4 different varieties of them, and always insisted in putting them in our salads. He got really mad if I would pick them out. Rather than fight with him, I would make sure I mixed them in with a bunch of other vegetables to mask their flavor a little. One day, I suddenly had this image of myself teaching my children how to do the same thing so they wouldn't upset their father. I realized I would be living in a world where it would be the kids and me against him - not a team. I didn't want to do that. I was willing to put up with being treated like crap, but I wasn't about to let that happen to my future children.

So I broke up with him.

Whew!

I've learned from that experience that when my body won't get warm no matter what I do, and I can't stop shivering, something is VERY WRONG. I ALWAYS shivered when he was around.


About a year later, I found out from my former roommates that Mr Personality had gotten himself into some trouble. Apparently, he had been charged with voyeurism. Some woman who lived a few blocks away from him had discovered a little electronic devise attached to her house. It was some sort of light sensor, and when the light would be turned on in her bedroom, an alarm would go off in his house. That would tell him it was time to go stand outside her house and watch her get undressed. It wasn't hard to track down who put the devise on her house - he'd carved his name on one of the pieces inside of it.


Dodged a bullet there, didn't I?