frigging westchester

I went to the mall last night. I need something for baby, and some panties for my weird chain letter. (btw, i can only think of five people to send this to. I need a sixth "fun friend". Hmm. Any volunteers? It's like a pyramid scheme, only, for panties, and it's not such a pyramid as all that.)

I managed to find something for baby. The Westchester (the only mall I know how to get to, in this whole freaking county) would have loved for me to buy baby a Louis Vuitton diaper bag, but as I didn't have $300-- in fact, my budget was under $10-- I managed to find something suitable in B. Dalton. The challenge, by the way, was that the baby's parents don't necessarily speak English-- I know the father, and know he's perfectly comfortable with English, but I also know that's a recent development for him, and I don't know his wife at all and therefore don't know how good her command of English is, and since the father said they're planning on going back to Poland before the child reaches school age, they may not teach him much English at all. So. My usual gift for babies is a really cool book. But, if they're not really going to want to read to him in English, what do you get?
I thought about getting just a picture-book, but...
I ended up getting a hardbound (cardboard-bound) edition of Goodnight, Moon. Every child should have Goodnight, Moon. Even if they don't speak much English to him, when he goes back to Poland he'll have this book as a souvenir of having been born in an English-speaking country. It's exotic, right?

But, of course, the Westchester had no stores at all for plus-sized women, only extremely expensive stores that probably have a section for plus-sized women. And, no, I'm not setting FOOT into Nordstrom's; it's the only store my supervisor ever talks about, and she wears $200 cardigans that look like hell. No.
There was no Old Navy, which has all sizes. There was no Lane Bryant, which the person mentioned in the letter. There was nothing else I recognized. They didn't even have a fucking J C PENNEYs. Nothing. It's a ridiculous mall. Dave won't take me to the Palisades anymore because he hates it, but dude-- THEY HAVE REAL STORES THERE, and WE KNOW HOW TO GET THERE. Two BIG pluses about a mall, in my point of view.

Anyhow, the moral of the story is, I fucking hate Westchester (we also encountered many self-important assholes while out, but that happens so much I don't usually bother recounting it. I mean, we also breathed air while we were out, and over the course of the day, I went to the bathroom several times. But that's hardly crucial to the advancement of the plot. There was also wind, and a little rain, and oh yes, the usual assholes. See what I mean?)

I'm also annoyed with Dave. I know, I know, I made just as much of the mess with the dishes as he did. But after emptying the dishwasher, running it, and emptying it, and running it again, I didn't empty it. So, the dishes piled up in the sink. I know, that's my fault; I should've just emptied it a third time. But, I didn't have time! I'm working two jobs, in essence, and have been doing all the cooking this week. I already don't sleep enough; I'm cutting back my sleeping so I can do the housework I need to and do the business work I need to, and then I sit at work for 9 hours and do fuck-all that's useful, and then I come home and I can't see straight.
So, last night, I asked Dave if he would please do the dishes. I needed him to do the dishes so I could wash the ice bucket of the ice cream maker and put it in the freezer so I could make ice cream tonight or tomorrow, and I needed to be able to wash my cast iron frying pan because it's starting to rust and really needs to be cleaned and put away.
I asked him several more times if he'd do the dishes, and then I went to bed.
I got up, and he hadn't done them.
As another aside, it causes me physical pain to do the dishes, and I don't mean the usual, I mean the skin on my hands is blistered and swollen because winter is coming, and it irritates it horribly when I take a shower. But I like to shower, so I still do it. I get out of the shower and moisturize and cover them with goo and all that. If I then go and do the dishes, well I'll be bleeding by 9:00. I mean, actual physical pain to do the dishes.
It also causes me pain to scrub the tub and wash the sink and dust the house, but I do those because it's less pain and the latex gloves keep some of it away. But the dishes are the WORST because the gloves don't help at all-- the hot water makes my hands sweat through them, and that makes them come out in blisters even worse.
So, in short, I'm pissed because I'm working myself into severe distress and Dave won't help out, but it's my own fault because it's not like I'm asking him to help with basic things-- I'm asking him to help with things I want. I mean, I'm the one who wants the apartment to look all nice because Katy's coming this weekend. Why should he care what the place looks like? This is my project. But, I could spend more time on this project if I weren't spending so much on cooking for him. But, i could also just buy him takeout; he's not making me spend an hour and a half to make him lasagna and another hour and a half to make him beef stew.

So, I guess I must be taking out all the stress I'm under on him, which isn't fair.

But, I ASKED him if he'd do the dishes, and I said it had to be last night so I could freeze the ice bucket, and he DIDN'T. Don't I get to be just a LITTLE miffed? :(

And I just wasted a whole fucking bunch of time typing that, but I had to or I would've yelled at him when he got up and that's not fair.
But, now I don't have enough time to do the things I absolutely have to this morning. Plus I have to do the dishes.
FUCK.
I hate my fucking life sometimes...

having said mean things about dave,

having said mean things about dave, earlier, i have to recount something nice he did that was really sweet.
the alarm went off-- my cellphone beeps every morning at 8 am to remind me to take my pill. i was making lunches in the kitchen yesterday when it went off, and i called to dave to ask him to shut it off for me. he did, and i continued making lunches and running around.
I paused and he came to me with my pill and a glass of water. I didn't want you to forget, he said.

wasn't that a sweet thing to do?

another email excerpt

>>Drinks are better heated or cooled. They just are. (dave)

> There must be an exception. Isn't there an exception? (me)

I pose this challenge to you, dear reader(s?):
Are there any drinks best consumed at room temperature??

I can't think of any. I used to drink tap water straight from the tap, but it was naturally cooled to below room temperature in the pipes at my parents' house, and it came cool from the well.

What don't you either microwave or put ice in or store in the fridge, out of choice rather than necessity?

another reason why westchester fucking sucks

OK. My apartment, kinda small. 2 bedrooms. tiny kitchen. really tiny bathroom. third floor walk-up.
Fifteen hundred fucking dollars a month, not including utilities.

Besides that, it's a decent apartment. Much nicer than Jersey City.

One drawback: Lady downstairs = fucking psycho.
Actually, all the lady downstairs are fucking psychos. The one that has the apartment in the back told us we couldn't walk up the back steps into the building, even though we live here, because they're hers. Ooooo... kay.
There's a landing on the stairs. Obviously, the lady just downstairs from us thinks it's hers. Even though her doorway's nowhere near this landing, and we have to walk on it every day.
First, we had a mini-fridge we just couldn't get up the stairs. We left it there for a week. During that week, she moved the fridge several times. I opened it to air it out; she closed it. She turned it to face the other way.
And then she concocted some cockamamie tale about how if we left anything in the hallway the fire inspectors would fine us. (Uh... ok.)
I thought, OK, sure, whatever, that fridge doesn't belong there anyway, we'll make a space, and so we did, and it's part of our kitchen counter now.
Then, I had a carpet. It didn't fit in my room, which is carpeted anyway-- it kept peeling up and tripping me. Fine, I thought. It fits perfectly on the landing there, and will keep people from tracking dirt up.
She keeps folding it up or kicking it over. LET ME REPEAT-- her door is on the OTHER end so there's NO reason for her to even BE over there, much less kicking over my rug's corners.
During the summer, Dave and I would open the window to ventilate the hallway, because it provided airflow into our apartment.
She would close it.
Sometimes within minutes of my having opened it.
Finally I spoke to her about it. "Having it open lets in the hot air," she said.
"The air is cool on the first floor, yes, but whether it's open or not, the air's hot on the third floor," I said. "Seeing as both you and the first-floor occupants have air-conditioning, I thought you wouldn't mind if I sacrificed the coolness of the first floor for the ventilation of the third. Since it cools my kitchen off by 10 degrees to have that window open."
"Oh, okay," she said. And continued to close the window.
I started opening the top of the window so she'd have to bring out her stepstool to close it again. That's as petty as I got.

Lately, since about September, she's been turning the hall light on. I'd turn it off when I went out in the morning, since it was light then. It would be on again when I got home at 5. (Sunset's still after 6 around here.)
She hadn't done that last winter, but now she's doing it. I don't know.
And today, I got home, and she had turned the hall light on, put up heavy, light-blocking drapes on the hall window, had a stepstool up at the window, and had folded up my rug and laid it next to the stairs up to my apartment.

So I removed her stepstool, opened the dark drapes, and put my carpet back down. (It's got creases in it now from the number of times she's folded it over and stepped on it.)

It's just WEIRD. Neither of us can see that hallway when we're in our apartments. And I don't think that hallway is in either of our leases.
I Just Don't Understand What Her Fucking Problem Is.

So... should I go ask her why we have to have a pitchdark hallway, and why she keeps fucking with my rug, or should I just play dumb like I have been? Should I say, "lady, this town is so inhospitable we're leaving until Feb, could you just keep the psychopath stuff under wraps a bit until we leave?" should I say, "Lady, I just checked with the landlady and she said the hallway wasn't part of either of our apartments, so having a power struggle over it is pretty moot. I mean, I have six windows in my apartment, and you probably do too, so why do you feel the need to control this one?"
Or what?