I should write, I suppose. in Stuff & Things

Still here. Still rocking the three person relationship.

He got a new job after being unceremoniously laid off from the last place because they hired too many people after merging with another company. The new store has been around a long long time, like your great-grandparents probably bought appliances out of their catalog long time, so I think he'll be fine there. He likes it so far (it's only been two days) and they're all excited to have him there.

The sexin' is still out of this world. We have these days where we basically spend all day in bed, and it just turns into this surreal thing for me. I'm not sure how to even describe it, except to say again that to have found a man who listens and remembers what gets me hot and then put it all into play is fucking incredible.

Shady is great, too. They're getting closer every day. Apparently, he kissed her on the back on the neck after giving her a back scratch recently. To my knowledge, this is the first actual kissing that's been done between them. They make smootchy sounds back and fourth and grab each other's butts in passing, but this is a pretty big step I think.

She's doing a lot of paper craft, doing dolls and a doll house for my little cousin. Keeping busy when she's not trying to clean up after three other adults.

That sounds bad, I know. My Fibromyalgia won't allow me to help, my brother wouldn't help with housework if his very life depended on it, and I think The Boy is still unsure about just how to help. The fact that this place is kind of like a clean hoarder's house and the paths to get anywhere change and narrow all the time doesn't help. Seriously, it's not moldy ick and mice and cockroaches in here, it's just STUFF everywhere. There's no damn place to put anything and Shady has a hard time letting somethings go. We need to rent a big dump trailer and just get rid of a bunch of stuff. Anyway, I digress.

She's been having a lot of pain issues. Her sacroiliac joints are cramped up, which has been radiating down into her hips, which means she's in tons of pain all the time.

We're both having more and more trouble dealing with my brother. He refuses to bathe (more on that in a minute), he'll stand behind Shady and watch what she's doing online, he starts sentences with no context and then get frustrated when no one knows what the hell he's talking about. UGH. Plus, he's got some misogynistic notion that because he pays (in his mind) most of the bills, HE'S got the most say in what goes on around here. Um, no!

The bathing thing. Oh. My. God. I'm not even exaggerating when I say it's been at least six months. He's filthy and he stinks to high heaven. His room reeks - he never cleans that either - and when we went grocery shopping the other day, we almost had to leave Michael at the store because there's so much crap in the car there's no room for humans and groceries.

My mom gave me some insight to it the other day. She said she thinks it's like an Anorexic controlling their food. Apparently when he lived with our father, he would be physically forced into a cold shower every morning, so now he "forgets" to bathe so he feels like he's in control of it. I can see that, I guess. I wish the rest of us didn't have to suffer it though.

I'm going to try and slowly take the control back. Take over all the bills by asking everyone to contribute to a household account that I'll pay all the bills from. My grandpa's got his eye out for a car for us so that Shady or I can drive again and we can take our lives back there, too. Eventually I want my brother to go live somewhere else. I appreciate all he's done to help us, but now he's getting out of control and I can't handle it.

Anyway. That's life here.