Resentment

I spent Saturday cleaning up the apartment once more while K went to the convenient care for pink eye. When she got back from her appointment, more medications in tow, I asked her politely to take out the garbage (I had already done the bathroom, kitchen, and our bedroom, as well as the floors) K declined and settled into her beanbag chair for a nap, as she’s wont to do. When she woke up and wondered why I was frosty, she passive aggressively turned up the volume on her iPhone to Christian Rock music and Instagram Reels while I took shelter in the bedroom watching a documentary on Vanessa Redgrave’s controversial Oscar speech from 1977.

When her foibles are too much, they are too much.

S warned me not to put up with her bullshit and I agreed with her for once. K has an irritating habit of sniffing back her snot, despite the embarrassment of tissues around every surface of our apartment. She won’t blow her nose until I, in passing fits of maternal kindness, hand her a tissue and urge her to blow her nose. Now I ignore her while rolling my eyes far back into my skull.

It’s Sunday and I expect a torrential downpour at some point. I just hope H doesn’t spring community dinner on me again.

Every washer is in use, and S is sleeping in. I don’t resent him for sleeping in, but I do resent him for leaving his laundry unattended. I took it upon myself to hoist his laundry into the dryer so I could use the machine for my towels. I’ve taken to using odor blasting washing machine beads because between him and P, the B.O. is quite rank and unsettling.

I feel like me and M are the only ones who ever do anything around here in manner of housekeeping. M had a family friend who dated David Lynch, something I’m curious about, but me being introverted and shy, I haven’t explored more details about. P has resting bitch face with her brows tightly knit and an irritating habit of leaving her laundry unattended with a hastily written note dotted with many smiley faces as if this absolves her of her discourteous nature in a crowded apartment complex.

It goes without saying K left the guinea pigs in squalor, so the mantel was on me to once again clean out their cage, change their bedding, and give them fresh hay, pellets, and water.

Why yes, I am exhausted, how kind of you to inquire.

I started a new book, one I find hard to put down. The attention to detail is precise and the escapism acts as a balm between the mundaneness of my life. Although, given the turmoil of the past few years, I don’t mind the mundane, I just wish I had a little help with the upkeep of things around here.

When S did wake K up from her nap yesterday, she did take out the trash and managed to lightly do some housework. But what grinds my gears is she signed her initials all over the deep cleaning sheet of our apartment taking credit for all the chores I did (and she somehow still wonders why I’m frosty towards her).

Yesterday I used up two of my Walmart gift cards buying two spare pillow sheets, a hand towel for the bathroom, some other sundries, and two tubes of Revlon lipstick and some Pond’s Cold Cream. The latter items being a bit of fun and mischief in a black-and-white world. The shades of lipstick I bought are called “Rumberry” and “Bombshell”. I unfortunately smudged the tip of my “Raisin Rage” lipstick last night before I left for a meeting, finding the currant shade smeared all over my hands.

I shouldn’t complain, I have the apartment to myself for a lion’s share of the day so I can read and sip coffee I like without K and her Christian Rock and her childish milieu to bring me down.

There’s another cup of black coffee I brewed on the coffee table and the freedom of no real chores to be done (save for the bit of laundry I have to do). I left K some bags of washing pods neatly packaged in a lunch bag on top of her never-ending pile of laundry, I suppose this sends the message “get your shit together because I’m tired of mothering you”. She has her co-dependency meeting tonight so maybe that will help things along. Everyone is a “mother” to her but she isn’t a mother to herself as I’ve had to be since my own mother’s untimely passing.

It gets tiring looking after everyone and feeling like it’s not being reciprocated.