“What is THAT?”

He is pointing at a plastic bag.

“It’s a ziploc bag,” I say, narrowing my eyes.  He still looks confused, so I elaborate. “It is an empty ziploc bag on your coffee table.”

“Yeah, but HOW did it get there?”

“Same way the rest of the mess did. One of us put it down and didn’t pick it up.”

Am I talking to a four-year old?

He picks it up and pushes it at me, as if I need a closer look. “No,” he says frantically, “I didn’t put it there. I don’t HAVE ziploc bags. I never have ziploc bags.” This is true, he covers all of his leftovers with napkins and they always go to waste. Bachelor boy. “Someone else put it there. Did you bring over a ziploc bag of something?”

I give it a little thought. “No.” He’s starting to look a little crazy around the eyes as he starts opening drawers and rifling through papers. “Honey, WHAT?” I exclaim, exasperated.

“Did you lock the door when you left this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“ARE YOU SURE?”

“Positive. Because I thought for a minute that I didn’t lock it, so I came back up and checked.”

Is my boyfriend seriously suggesting that an intruder might have come in and LEFT a plastic bag? He goes to check the back door. It is also locked. He comes back into the living room and flops down onto the green couch next to me, hand pressed to his forehead dramatically. “I don’t get it,” he mumbles. “Why would someone come into my house and leave a plastic bag, but take nothing? All of my money is here, everything important.”

I don’t know what to do but point out the obvious. “Your brother has a key.” He closes his eyes and says nothing. “Maybe he came over to watch the game and he brought something to eat?” It’s the best I can come up with – E’s brother doesn’t have cable, so he comes to watch E’s TV once in awhile. Of course, his brother also doesn’t have money and he knows where E keeps his. But there is no money missing.

I soothe him with a bag of Cheetos and a Budweiser, and we watch TV for a little while. He keeps looking at the coffee table and shaking his head. At one point he picks up the bag and sniffs it as if to determine what might have once been inside. “Are you sure you didn’t bring in something in a ziploc bag?” I ask tentatively. “This coffee table is a mess, it could have been there for days and you just forgot.”

“It wasn’t there this morning,” he hisses. “SOMEONE left it there and it wasn’t me.”

“It wasn’t me either,” I snap, getting irked that I am getting irked about a freaking plastic bag.

Later that night, he lies awake and stares at the ceiling. “Where did that bag come from?” he asks out of nowhere.

I pretend to be asleep.

Of course I had a cold on my vacation. Of course I did.

The good news is that my teeth didn’t feel like they were going to fall out this time.

It’s been a peaceful week without the Interwebs. I fully intended to get back on the blog after getting back from my float trip in the middle of the week… but something (Antihistamines? Diphenhydramine?) slowed me down. I stayed in bed most of the first day back, nursing my one bug bite and my tiny sunburn and cuddling E, smelling him smelling like soap for the first time in several days. And I just did not want to plug back in.

For many days, obviously.

But I’m going back to work tomorrow and I have to wear real clothes… and so it’s time to check voicemails and blogrolls and any email that hasn’t forwarded to my phone. I’m actually typing this post on my Sidekick because I haven’t gotten back on the computer except to add to my Netflix queue. I haven’t even unpacked - everything is still in Rubbermaid tubs in the garage while I hope that everything will dry, cease to smell, and the remaining bugs will crawl out on their own.

And maybe my clothes will wash themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, I love camping. I’m a great camper. I’m a crappy swimmer but I love float trips. But I do not love hail. And there was hail.

I’d rather camp in the hail again than go back to the real world.

I’ve been swamped lately… pun intended, because the crazy rain around here has seeped back into my basement and I am once again smashing concrete patches into the walls in a desperate attempt to dry things out before I put my house on the market.

And that’s the other reason why I’m swamped! It’s time to move! Moving may be one of my least favorite things to do, yet I do it so often. But a quick look at the old bank account (and credit card statements) has convinced me that it’s just not a good idea to hold onto all this space for just little me. It’s not an investment if you can’t afford Spaghetti-Os.** I can get a 2-bedroom apartment for less than the price of this 2-bedroom house, plus I get relieved of such onerous tasks as mowing the lawn, cleaning the gutters, and patching the damn basement walls. I also save money on things like sewer and trash and water service (always included in rent) and utilities, since it’s cheaper to heat and cool less space. The most awesome bit will be not having to sock away money every month JUST IN CASE the old air conditioner finally gives out. I sooo hate having major home repairs hanging over my head.

My house is in good shape and it’s pretty. I have nice taste in decorating and have updated both the kitchen and bath since I moved in. The whole first floor has new-ish paint and lovely hardwood floors. But I still have to put a few hundred dollars’ worth of work into it before it goes on the market – MAY 26TH! So soon! I’ve been laying vinyl tile in the basement (waterproof is a good idea here), fixing drywall (ruined by rain drips), painting basement bonus rooms (which I never painted because I only ever used them for storage) and doing little things like planting flowers, replacing floor thresholds, quarter-round strips, and light switch plates.

This is all worth it because if I can sell it for the price my agent recommends, I can pay her commission and all my credit card debt and some of my student loan debt AND have a little saving fund money left over when all is said and done. God, a clean slate would be SO. NICE. No more debt to pay each month, no more extra bills each month, less rent, no more yardwork… wowza. Give me off-street parking at the apartment and put a remote-start in the car and I’ll be just fine.

The other bonus – which had BETTER HAPPEN IF HE WANTS TO LIVE LONG – is possibly living with E in the new place. His apartment now is a little one-bedroom shotgun and he’s got it quite full. I really do want to find the new place in his neighborhood because I lurve it there, and if we find a place together – HALF the rent. HALF the utilities. My shopping nerves are tickling even now. Juicy Couture jeans, I have missed you.

E is a little weird when we talk about it though, which I seriously do not understand. Why would he be up for us living together in Vegas and not here? What’s the difference? We’ve both lived alone for years and we like our space, but splitting the rent we can afford a bigger place so we can have a little room to move. We work opposite schedules so it’s not like I’d be sitting around saying “whatcha doing?” and bugging him all day.

It’s a big change, I know. It’s one that I’m ready to make. I don’t have a clue how long it will take the house to sell so it’s not like I need to rush the conversation, but seriously? I don’t get the reluctance to talk about it. Why would we do this somewhere else but not here? Obviously I don’t want to push him into anything (well, not TOO hard anyway), but really, if we live in the same neighborhood, we both know we’ll be at each other’s houses so much that one of us is basically paying rent on a closet.

Any assistance in the moving-in-together-conversation or fixing-the-house arenas is most welcome.

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** Yes, I know. Credit card = my fault. So it’s Spaghetti-Os till I pay it off. And how will I do that? Keep reading.

The happy fun of going to the  Cubs-Cards game yesterday (7-3,go Cubs go!) was tempered by a migraine and a very drunk boyfriend that I was about to punch in the head. It drives me nuts sometimes – he is normally such a sweet and considerate guy. He worries about me and takes care of me when I’m sick. But yesterday, good lord. Some sort of E-replacing, beer-based demon ate his brain, and that was NOT what I wanted to deal with when I was stuck at his house, unable to drive myself home or even sleep because I was in so much pain.

I woke up this morning, still woozy from the supa-strength narcotic pain meds, in a snuggly cuddle with a snoring boyfriend whose first slurry words were “I love you so much” when I rolled over and woke him.

Anyway, on to a different thing that might put you off your appetite instead.

I was reviewing some OR instrumentation today. Some of these names make about as much sense as the names on OPI nail polish. Maybe less. You could guess that “In the Navy” is dark blue and “Canta-berry Tales” is probably some shade of dark red, but put your imagination to use on these…

Brain Spoon?

Big Ugly?

BEAVER RETRACTOR???

Oh, it was cold up there. Good thing I had a little Bailey’s in the hot chocolate or I might have crumpled. 36 degrees in misty rain and gusting wind for four hours – people die of hypothermina in situations milder than that.

But the Cubs didn’t! We stayed till the very end and danced to “Go Cubs Go!” and waved the big “W” flag as the Colorado Rockies fled the field with frozen heads hung in shame.

It was so different to go to a game at good old Wrigley Field again – it was my first trip there in about twenty years. I’m so used to Busch Stadium with its millions of lights and colorful ads and Jumbotron. Even before the flashy new stadium was built in 2006, we had the lights and screens and music. There’s a Build-a-Bear (a Fredbird, really) inside Busch Stadium, along with an arcade and a million other things to divert you from the game you ostensibly came to see. In weather like we had on Monday, you probably wouldn’t have seen over 40,000 people sitting outside at a game in St. Louis. They’d be in the stadium bars and restaurants and watching the TVs and Jumbotron to see what was happening on the field. It’s not that we in St. Louis are necessarily big wusses, but it’s what’s available to us and so we take advantage of those things.

At Wrigley we had no choice. Go big or go home. We went big – literally, bundled up in layers of warmth and waterproofing, giving us an excellent cover for the bootlegged booze. We watched the game as it played out on the field, not a screen, and the scoreboard behind us was the old kind where you can see the person inside pull down the numbers and replace them. There were no instant replays. No trivia for the crowd. It was kind of heartwarming.

But you know, foot-warming might have been better. I couldn’t feel my toes for about three hours after we left, but it was such a wonderful day. A wonderful weekend, really. E and I did the roadtrip with some friends, and we all stayed at a Very Nice Hotel off Michigan Avenue for free, since it’s part of the family of hotels for which he works. Dinner the first night was at Morton’s with E’s dad, and I may or may not have had one too many vodka and Diet Cokes. E kept pinching me under the table to keep me from talking, lest I say something completely retarded in front of his AA dad. Oops.

And as usual, I forgot my expensive camera at home.

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Two Updates:

1. The girl who had dinner with George Clooney did NOT get fired. He got permission from the boss to take her to dinner – how’s THAT for slick? At the Very Nice Restaurant, the customer is always right.

2. While we were up there, we talked to Archie about the Vegas deal. Everything is still kind of up in the air.