I was so excited about having salon day today! I love getting new color done and getting a new haircut with no shaggy ends, and that nice feeling of a professional blow-dry for 2 days.

HOW HARD IS IT TO COPY A PICTURE?

I don’t usually post in rage, but I am very upset. I know I have thick hair and I know you need to thin and texturize it to keep it from getting puffy, but that does NOT mean you cut it 3 inches shorter than THE PICTURES I GAVE YOU! If I could have seen what Mr. Fabulous (replacement of my old stylist) was doing to the back of my head I would have stopped him, but the front looked okay – how was I to know he was doing stacked layers back there? After all, THEY WEREN’T IN THE PICTURES! Yes, that is a plural. I gave him two pictures, one front and one side. Nowhere in the pictures were there stacked layers like this. Nowhere in the pictures did the hair on the back of the head end up three inches above jawline.

All the time I was sitting in the chair I was so happy because the front looked nice and the color is fantastic, all smiles. When he was done and spun me around with a hand mirror, I think my jaw landed in my lap. I made some sort of comment along the lines of:

“Wow, the color looks great. And the shape of the back will look really nice when it grows out.”

And then I got attacked with something called an anti-humectant. It turns out to be a glue-like substance called a pomade, and it was fluffed through my hair – roots too – before I could run. I HATE having product in my hair. It is sticky and yucky and if Mr. Fabulous would have asked before further violating my head I would have defended my butchered hair from the onslaught. But no. Of course not.

I go to the front to pay and everyone gathers round to see what lovely color I have and how the stylist has solved the problem of my too-thick hair that gets very puffy when it dries. There are ooohs and aaahhhs as I paste on a smile and turn around.

“Call me if you have any questions!” he says cheerfully. “You look fabulous!”

“Yeah, I think that back part will grow out nicely,” I say. “And then it will look like the picture.”

My Silent Prayer: Grow hair, grow!

I toss the cash on the counter and head out with a wave to Mr. Fabulous. I still left a decent tip because I do love the color, and the haircut might be called cute despite the fact that IT WASN’T LIKE THE PICTURE. Driving in the open Jeep with glue – er, anti-humectant – in my hair is awful because every time I run my hand through my hair to pull it out of my face, it feels sticky and disgusting.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to hop in the shower and wash away my lovely salon blow-dry just to get this gunk out of my too-short hair.

I don’t think I know enough swear words to describe these last few days.

E finally called me back today and I told him I wanted to come over after work because we needed to talk. He told me not to come over; he said he needed to think about things. I said no, you do not get to think until you hear me out because buddy, I’ve got something for you to think about.

And I let him have it. Ohhhh, did I let him have it.

You do not, I told him, treat people the way you treat me. You do not blow off your girlfriend whenever something else to do comes up. You do not listen to voicemails where the person you love is crying and just ignore her. You do not tell me you’ll call or tell me we will get together and then not follow through. You do not expect me to just sit here and take this from you when I have done everything for you. You do this to me, and did you know you do this to your friends too? Did you know they talk to me about it? No, this does not mean you’re a piece of shit, it means you’re full of shit because you think you’d do anything for your friends and let me tell you what the rest of us know – it’s only anything that is convenient for you. And the reason you’re not a piece of shit is because I don’t even think you realize it. You don’t even realize how much you hurt people even when we have to rub it in your face, because you are completely blind. So think about THAT while you’re off thinking.

And, I pointed out, I have never tried to change you into anything except what you told me you wanted to be. I have never tried to push you into doing anything you didn’t tell me you wanted to do. Don’t give me this “clingy” shit. You deserved every one of those tearful messages this weekend and you have no one to blame but yourself. Do you just want this to be done, then? Do you want this to be over? You don’t KNOW?

Well at least you know where I stand now, pal. And if you do want to try again, you had better be ready to step up and be a proper boyfriend and treat me the way I deserve to be treated – the way you used to treat me. That’s the only reason I’d ever consider it – because I know that you’re not really the jerk that you’re acting like. You’re a better person than that and SOMETHING is going on that either you’re not telling me or you’re not telling yourself. So go think about that too. Figure your mess out because I’m sick of trying to help you and never getting any support from you in return.

So take all the time you want to think, and you can think while you’re single and I will go live my life. And if you want another shot, you need to call me. I won’t be waiting by the phone.

THE END

If you’re new here, get some background at E and Me, Part I, Part II, and Part III.

My doggy is gone. Lucy is gone to a new foster family and Tiffy the kitty is sick and will need medicine forever and ever.

And the mortgage company conveniently charged my May payment to “additional principal” instead of to my regular bill, so I look like I’m behind on my mortgage.

And my basement is still leaking. And it’s still raining.

Did I mention that my puppy is gone and my kitty is sick?

I am hating life today. HATING. LIFE.

For an update on this mess, see THIS POST.

You simply must read Part I and Part II before you even THINK about reading this.

—————————–

Hijinks indeed. Followed by exhaustion. Cuddles. A few kisses. Cover-stealing. Normalcy.

7:15 pm: I stir. Now I know he’s going to ask me to take him home. We still haven’t confirmed anything, he’s still in need-to-think mode. I get up quietly, let the dog out, make her dinner and cat’s dinner, and let the dog back in. E is snoring and I sneak back into my room. I steal a blanket from him.

8:10 pm: He rolls over and starts to make mumbly wake-up noises.

“Roo shungr?”

“Huh?”

“Are you hungry?” he asks, almost incoherently.

This means he wants to leave the house and get food before I drop him off. The Last Supper. I want to lie and say no but in a half-asleep stupor I say yes. “What are you hungry for?”

“Talayna’s.”

HE WANTS FOOD DELIVERED! HE WANTS TO STAY EVEN AFTER THE HIJINKS! I play it cool. “I’ll call. What do you want?”

“Sausage,” he mumbles. “Is okay?” What a loaded question.

The good people of Talayna’s inform me that a Chicago-style sausage pizza and a six-pack of beer will be delivered in forty-five minutes. I do love me some beer delivery. I do love that his favorite pizza place is close enough to deliver and let this happiness last just a little longer. It’s going to fall apart when he leaves, I know it, so thank you, Talayna’s Pizza, for letting me enjoy it just a little longer.

Back in my room, he has commandeered my blanket once more, but he lifts his arm for me to crawl in. He’s flipping channels and we come to the beginning of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” which, like most movies, I have not seen. He fills me in on the 15 minutes I have missed, and I get excited when I guess that the “X” is on the floor of the library before Indiana Jones sees it.

Everything becomes normal in the dark cocoon of my room. He plays with my hair. We eat pizza and drink beer while the movie plays on and I talk to the characters when I know something they don’t or when something doesn’t go my way. Our heads end up at opposite ends of the bed and we give each other footrubs. When the movie is over, I crawl up towards him and put the channel changer in his hand. (This is what a good girlfriend I am. I always give him the remote.) It’s 11:00 pm. He flips to SNL and watches the bit with Ricky Gervais and “The Office” before I hear him snoring. I make it through Weekend Update, dig for the remote under the covers, and turn it off.

“Slarmsef? he mutters. “Ftooworksevn.”

“Yes.” This one I understand. “I set it for six-fifteen.”

“Ffmph.”

We sleep. In the morning it’s still normal. Normal cursing of the alarm, normal waiting for the bathroom, normal sleepy eyes and his lovely messy hair. The only thing wrong is that I don’t have any clean clothes for him because they’re all in the back of the Jeep, and we both know why. We drive and listen to our normal Sunday morning radio station because they play bluegrass. He wraps up in the blanket I keep in the backseat because he’s always cold in the morning.

I pull up to his house and suddenly normal is gone, and it’s The Moment of Truth. He leans into my shoulder and sighs.

“You still need time to think.” It’s a statement, not a question.

He nods.

“What happens now?” I ask. “Are we or aren’t we? Are you going to call me?”

“I’m going to call you,” he says into my sleeve.

I tip up his chin and make him look me in the eye. “Sooner or later?.”

“Sooner.”

“I love you.”

His only reply is a light kiss, and he gets out of the car. I watch him walk toward the house, and on the porch steps he turns around, waves at me like he does every morning, and smiles a little. I wave back.

I suppose I still have a boyfriend. I fought and won this battle; we’ll see about the war.

You simply must read Part I first.

————————————————

“I don’t think I love you enough,” he says.

I am turning right and hit a curb so hard that he almost smacks his head on the window. “You don’t THINK you love me enough,” I say blankly.

“Not to marry you.”

“Not to marry me right now, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want to marry you right now. I don’t know if I love YOU enough to marry you right now.”

“So you see what I mean then?”

“I see that you’re full of shit, either right now or for the last eight months when you’ve been saying you love me, saying you could stay with me always, telling me that we’re a team, telling me the sky’s the limit for us, telling me opposites like us can be good for each other.”

“Look – ”

“I’m looking,” I say sarcastically.

“I mean don’t run over that guy.”

He’s trying to hold my hand. I push him away and make my mean face. “How long have you been feeling this way? Because you told me Tuesday that I was the best. That you were so happy. Are you a liar then, or has someone besides me been in your ear the last couple of days?” I pull into my driveway. “Was it Craig, telling you that if you love a girl you should get married, like he’s going to? Or your dad, telling you all women skip birth control pills so they can get knocked up and trick you into getting married?”

“I talked to both of them, yeah. But – ”

“And you didn’t talk to me. Neither one of them know ME. And you’re making decisions based on what they say about me. Not what YOU know about me, not what you know about us.”

We get out of the car and walk into the house. The living room is a mess so we go sit in the bedroom. I can tell this makes him uncomfortable and I don’t even care.

“We’re not everybody else,” I continue, pissed and still crying. “Why do you let anyone else’s assumptions get in your head like this, and then dwell on them for three days? If you want to know what I want from you, ask ME.”

“I just needed some time to THINK. I didn’t mean to not talk to you but I had to think about this on my own.” His face is getting red and his eyes are watering.

“I can respect that you needed to think. But I can’t respect the fact that you left me – ME as an individual – completely out of the equation during this all-important thinking. We’re a team. And I’m kicked off the team now, am I?” Still bawling.

“No, that’s not it at all, it’s just – ” He stops and runs his fingers through his hair, grabbing it as he flops down on the bed face-down. He looks so miserable. I am seized with the sudden urge to pet him. I want to scratch his head like I always do when he’s upset. So I do. He looks up at me. “I just don’t know.”

I stop crying and sniffle for a moment into my tissue. “Don’t you love the life we have?” I ask quietly.

He nods and turns his head a little, the way he does when he wants me to scratch a different spot. I oblige, tangling his curls in my fingers. He likes that too. I can feel myself breaking inside.

I told myself on the way over to his house that if he said we were done, I’d just go. I’d give him the bag of his stuff and I would leave and move on. And here I am, practically begging for him to reconsider. Am I just afraid of being alone then, that the prospect of life without somebody scares me so much? Or is it that life without HIM scares me so much that I will fight tooth and nail, pretty much begging him to look at this again? Am I doing what I think he’s doing, looking at people in general, or am I doing what I tell him to do, looking at US for who we are?

I lay down on the bed next to him. He turns and we look at each other through reddened eyes.

“I don’t want you to do this,” I whisper. I mean it.

“I just don’t know what to do.”

“Do you want me to take you home?” I hold my breath, please-say-no, please-stay-and-remember-how-good-this-is-and-don’t-leave-it, don’t-leave-me. He shakes his head, almost imperceptibly, and says nothing. I move my fingers, still scratching, behind his ears, down his neck a little, onto one shoulder. I can feel him relax a little. This is what we’ve always done, this is how it should be.

We talk more, laying on the bed and sitting on my porch, then back to laying on the bed. More conversation in the same vein. I tell him he deserves to be with a good person and be treated right. He’s insecure. I point out that I’m no angel. He’s quiet. I tell him that I talked to K, that she and P come from such different backgrounds but they’ve been together three years and made compromises because they love each other. And they’re so good together, we both know that. He ponders this.

“I need time.”

“What does that mean for me? Am I just waiting, or am I going on with my life and just seeing if you come back?” I’m terrible at loose ends and he knows it.

“We’ll talk, we will. We’ll be with each other, I just need to think about all of this.”

What else can I say? The dead horse has been beaten to a pulp and the vultures are circling. “All right.” (5:01 pm)

We stand up, and I have to say something else. “I want you to kiss me.” It just spills out of my mouth. He hugs me, as though that could be enough. I lean into him and he pulls me against his chest, my head on his shoulder. He pushes me back and I don’t let go, my eyes starting to brim with tears again. “Just kiss me once, if you really love me like you say you do, and then go do your thinking. Then go.”

He kisses me. And kisses me. And hijinks ensue.

You simply must read Part III now.