This is the second time around in terms of my attempts to sort out the front room in R’s house. Which I guess is my house now, and will literally technically realistically be my house in a matter of months. Kind of like the proverbial millstone-in-waiting. An albatross egg, ready to hatch and peck my eyes out.
Still, we’re doing better on this attempt than we did on the first. 2 years ago R was still not ready to let some of the crap go, and I was spending so much time beating my head against the wall that when our relationship took a nosedive it almost came as a relief. It sounds strange to say that we broke up because of a house, but there you go. We did. A crapped-out house in a crapped-out slum of a neighbourhood that nobody in their right mind would choose to live in, but still I thank my lucky stars that R had the presence of mind to buy when he did because the fact that we – a freelance artist and a freelance digital media …. something – have real estate is a goddam miracle and when the time is right we’re going to sell Sell SELL! and live happily ever after in a different house in a leafy neighbourhood, hopefully somewhere just south of the A370.
Ralph is an honest type of person, with a healthy aversion to bullshit. He tells it like it is. Which is annoying, sometimes, when I need to be reassured that my new dress doesn’t make me look like a heffalump in a burlap sack, but still nice in that there are no ambiguous expectations. He also tells it like it is when it comes to what he does and doesn’t want to do around the house. The latter category includes working on the front room.
If I’m to follow in his footsteps and immerse myself in brutal honesty, I have to admit that I DO like working on the front room. It’s relaxing. I like painting, I like filling, I like sanding and I like to do it all while listening to my Last.fm channel because hot damn I have stupendous taste in music and I don’t mind singing along to all the good bits. But seeing as how I’ve been working on a rather large contract for the past 4 months and have very little time to do anything else, the assistance of a 6ft 4 man would come in pretty handy right about now.
We’re not those kinds of people any more; the ones who would allow a house to sabotage the love they have for each other. Those days are over. We’re solid now, engaged, planning for the future, learning new ways to communicate and trying to put our many bad habits behind us. Totes maturity … amiright? But I am considering training Errol up as a battlecat who can force R to submit to my otherwise rather puny will. At least until the house is finished anyway.