What a totally fucked weekend. I go through the entire work week deferring and compromising myself saying that I will make it up on the weekend. Sleep in. Read a book. Exercise. Fuck. Write a story. Learn Chinese. Play with my kids. And then the weekend comes and I never ever never ever never ever catch up. I just get more unsatisfied. Take this weekend for example. On Friday night I am supposed to meet my wife for a late dinner after work. Kind of low key. Be nice to go back home and get some after. When she text messages me that she will be playing majong, home late, thanks for understanding. I get home my two daughters are there, one is so tired she is throwing a huge fuss, she listens to me but i want to tune her out.
On Saturday, we have no ayi until 1pm and i am pissed, thinking that during the week when two of the three kids are at school, we have two ayis to take care of the house and our infant. This makes no sense. So I bide my time, stalking the house, waiting for the ayi to show up. She finally does, it is now after lunch, and I take a post lunch nap. Just as I am out, one of my kids comes and pounds on my chest, waking me up. My wife takes the whole gang out at 3pm and I get to go on my run. But my run is slow and burdensome, because my body is getting slow and burdensome. I make it home in sixty minutes, just in time for them to arrive. The noise, the noise. Shower and huddle around before we head out to a dinner party. A dinner party out in the suburbs where the rich people live and we are decidedly middle class. I think of my dad as we arrive with three kids and an ayi, thinking this is as weird as the once every two year dinner party they took us kids. eventually 20 or 30 or 40 or it didn’t matter people show up. i know no one except my own family. i am hiding in the basement with the kids and the ayis. i wander up from time to time to be around the adults and the non servants and find myself extremely uncomfortable. some of the grown ups notice this and try to bring me into the party but i resist, both knowing what they are doing and liking them for it and also knowing what they are doing and wishing them a slow and painful death. the party mercifully ends and i pull on my hair and arms and shake until two am.
On Sunday we need to host an old japanese couple and i think this is preferable than being around the 20 or 30 or 30 americans with their chinese wives. but to host them we have to pick up one in-law, drop the kids off at the other in-law, pick up the said old japanese, drive another 30 minutes to the restaurant. great food, i give it that, hot singers in the band, i would take it that. but two hours having conversations that are just one misunderstanding after the other lead me to play bubble breaker in plan sight. the drive back is another 90 adventure in tedium in reverse. drop off the old japanese, then stop by one in-law and get kids, then drop off the other in-law, then home. everyone is asleep in the car when we get home, so i leave them there and come upstairs alone. maybe 10 minutes alone, i hope. do i still have that porn lying around? unlock the front door and…flood. a layer of water in out kitchen, living room, and dining room. but not just water. dirty water. like with some pieces of partially digested food.
turns out some kind of drain backup. i’m thinking we should have bought a higher floor. we get some workers to take all the water off the floors, they do a a so so job. our wood floor needs to be replaced. everything needs to be sanitized.
the weekend mercifully comes to and end with a garden salad at hooters and me taking stock.