Toe-mato in Candy Corn on the Cob (October 2019)

I forced the hall closet door open today and slammed it into my third toe when I did, so I splintered my toenail three ways and there’s a magnificent little bruise running right along the top. Because I needed this kind of pain. How the fuck can something so inessential hurt like this? I mean, honestly, I’m not a fucking ballet dancer, so why do I need a third toe? Fourth toe. Whatever. It’s the one next to the crumpled abortion that is my pinky toe.

And why do we have skin that just gets moist and flakes automatically off? To be fair, I have psoriasis, so that might not be normal, but in a moist zone, I find I have these days where there’s just a heavy flood of dead skin cells. Like people stew. And I bathe and stuff. (Frequently!) Annoyingly, it doesn’t happen while I’m in the shower. Nooooo, it waits until like 3 pm when you’re in Target. You’ll have this sudden horrible urge to itch somewhere skin folds on itself, and you’ll have a hell of a time finding the closest bathroom so you can scratch like mad and then wash your hands. (Important, that last bit.)

I have done a massive load of work this weekend. I have some left, though, like workshopping one more story and this week’s (pointless) craft notebook exercise. These are pointless because we do them in class. Why should I do them ahead of time when we’re just going to do them right there at the table for an hour? Yet, I have to have them and they must be printed out before class. I’ll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll round up the last of the work and walk it down the plank, capping it all in the head as I go. I’m savage. If something doesn’t get done ahead of timeline, it might not get done at ALL, and that will NOT DO. I’m…very hard on myself about this work.

I had a conversation with a friend, and she pointed out how many job openings there are where she is, and how many of them I could do with a BA and a social worker license. That has led me to realize that I am not stuck here when I graduate. I don’t know why I thought I was, but yeah. I could go anywhere. I don’t want this house and I don’t know if I like this area. I could go to Cow Land. (She’s in Cow Land.) I could go to Minneapolis. I could move to St. Augustine. I could live in Texas or Utah or anywhere. It’s terrifying. But the only family I have is Mom, and Mom has Idiot Brother living right with her (and he’s a sex offender, so I can’t bring the girls down there, and of course, I can’t leave without them.) Mom’s about to turn 70.

Am I still gonna have a mom when I graduate? Will I need to move down there? I mean, I have this time in which I am…I suppose…consciously uncoupling. It’s been a very long time since being married had any benefits involved. I feel bad for wanting to leave, though, but he is not making me want to stay, either. I feel suffocated when I’m near him. I hate depending on him for anything. I know it won’t happen. Even little shit. It won’t happen. I started stew before I had to take Alaina out for an emergency soda (she didn’t want to be in the house during a horror movie, I respected this, but her sister didn’t want to turn it off, so I removed Alaina and took her for a treat) and I had to CALL to tell him to water dinner. (The meat was simmering, and you know how that goes with stew meat - if it dries out, it’ll fry, and then it will harden, not get juicy and tender.) He didn’t bother to get off the sofa and add the V-8, the herbs, or the veggies, so I had to cook it an extra hour (to soften the baby potatoes) when we got back (at four.) It’s not hard to mind a stew pot. It really isn’t.

I mean, honestly, you water it so it doesn’t boil dry and you stab a potato every ten minutes or so. The hardest task was honestly chopping celery. And then there was a hullabaloo over getting clean bowls and spoons when it was all done, and in the end, I forgot to make bread. I should have reheated biscuits from the freezer, but I forgot I had them.

Am I wrong to expect help when I have to leave to support a child? I would have taken over his stew pot, because I’d expect to eat it and I don’t like burnt stew.

I just keep putting effort in, and he doesn’t give it back. But on the other hand, he’s another adult and he did just go buy toenail clippers (so I could remove the broken shards of toenail and admire the growing purple blood blister where they used to be.)

Fuck I gotta walk AND drive on that tomorrow. I already tried both, on first trip to Wal-Mart of the evening (Kitty needed safety pins to take in the waist of a cute dress she bought six sizes too large.) It was quite painful. I might have to try slip on shoes for a couple days. I just have the Converse sneakers, and they put pressure on the toe line because there’s an insole in mine (lifting the foot, in the attempt to make it not over-pronate.)

But it’s not quite so bad now that the toenail is mostly off. It’s band-aided. I kind of want a few shots of whiskey, but not enough to go actually get them.

Bed, then. Good night, Neverland.