The wrath of the feminine in The Dark Craptastic (July 2019)

Have you ever noticed that when women get mad, they Do Things? In my case, I had a sobby breakdown, ripped through Wal-Mart, (bought some Lysol wipes and some melatonin) and took on the kitchen. Kind of dozed off while he did his Supernatural shtick, but then Kitten sat on my legs (sofa) and I couldn’t get back to sleep til 7 am. And I was up again at 9, because Eldest sat on my midsection when she got out of bed (because I crawled in with her.)

So today I took my office apart, dragged out some trash, and put the kids’ old trundle bed in there. Once, we used to think we’d have sleepovers and shit, but that doesn’t happen with special needs kids.

But hey, it’s a bed. Alas, on the floor. But that’s all right. Wal-Mart has bedframes, and they’ll be here (Kitten needed one, too) in a few days. I whipped everything out of a bookcase in my Fungeon and found those markers I thought the girls ran off with last year. Still sealed and shit. Amusing. I hope I didn’t yell at them much.

Also found my kitty ear headphones, which I meant to yell at Kitten about (she likes them very much) but I hadn’t yet because I hadn’t had a proper look for them first. So I’m not entirely horrible.

Made the girls bathe. Dusted Daddy’s ashes-box. Put my old comfort toy in with him. (I found it in the laundry, don’t know why it was there, I promise I haven’t used it since I was like two.) Gave Daddy back his cat collection pieces. (I buy kitty knick-knacks at Goodwill, when I find them and I like them. What I want is ye olde standarde Lucky Cat, but I can’t find one. I have a Toysmith plastic one, but it isn’t the one I honestly wanted, it’s just cute. I also have a porcelain Siamese, a white ceramic cat, a primitive-art style moggy, a purple plastic Espeon (not technically a cat, but the child who gave it to me wanted it in the kitty cadre) and a Lladro-knockoff white and blue ceramic cat. As an aside, all the cats have been assigned names of K-Pop band members (the lucky cat is Taemin, though, and the Espeon is Espeon.) I also have two stuffed cats - Ava, the beanie baby (whose name matches the heroine in my first novel) and a pink one Kitten gave me one day.

Kitten very much likes to give gifts. Lu doesn’t as much. Her addition to kitty cadre is a heart-shaped box with a Persian kitten on it. It counts!

The cats are thrilled to have a bed in my office. They’ve been sacked out on it since I brought it down here.

The kids made it themselves. Wrong size elephant-print fitted sheet, dinosaur flat sheet, and a ladybug print comforter we’ve had since Eldest got her first bedroom. I am just oddly grateful that they looked at the bare mattress and realized that I couldn’t use it like that. That was kind. I rewarded them. Popsicles and soda. They forgot pillowcases, but I can handle that bit myself just fine.

Spouse offered no help at all and no, he didn’t vacuum that floor, or clean up in there enough to. It’s like he never said he was going to do it. If I brought it up, he’d probably say he doesn’t remember saying that. And it’s probably true.

But I remember, and I can’t keep myself from holding it all against him. Maybe that’s wrong, but maybe I don’t care. When we get hurt, it’s human to lash out at the source of our pain. Why aren’t I allowed to be human?