ammogirl

So.  Here I am, running on, oh, four hours of sleep, and all I want to do while Lindsey is in her tennis lesson is read my damn Stephen King book, because I’ve had it for a WEEK, and I am only halfway through.  And that is not okay with me.  But instead I had to listen to a Tennis Mom while she talked at me about her daughter.  Even though I had established first off that I have very little free time right now so I like to utilize tennis hour for me only, reading here, alright bye!

But no.  She would start talking, and while I tried to ignore her, we were the only ones in the room and I’m not rude (really!) so I would politely look up while she went on–”Oh, you’d nevvverrr be able to tell she’s 11″  “My daughter just has such a feeeeel for the ball”  “She practically grew up on the tennis court, she can hit the ball with her eyes closed, just look at her”–and I would nod and smile, and then glance, puzzled, at the courts, where her fabulous daughter had thrown herself in a dramatic heap after tossing her racquet to the floor in anger.  I wanted to say, “you’re right, I’d never be able to tell she’s eleven” implying that, ahem, she acts more like five.

After awhile I gave up, slowllly tearing my eyes from the pages in front of me one last time, the creepy world of Stephen King fading away (but only until I go to bed.  more on that later) and just gave my full attention to her.  Because she very clearly wanted it.

You guys.  Trust me.  I do not radiate Please Talk to Me wavelengths.  Yet I am a magnet for people like this.  So I heard all about how she didn’t appreciate being ‘called out’ over not bringing in coffee today during a meeting.  And then I heard it again.  And then I heard how her husband didn’t understand why she was upset, and that she had to relate the entire story to him (and by default to me, AGAIN) how it had gone down so he could SEE SHE HAD BEEN WRONGED…you know?

I…had no idea what to say to all of this.  After the billionth sentence ending in “…you know?” and a pause, I tossed out, “yeah, no–you shouldn’t have to deal with…that?” and thank god it satisfied her and on we went to topic #572: the Moving Back to the States, No Jobs in Sight, Building a House blues.

It was then that I casually placed my hand in my pocket and very stealthily drew out my cell phone, laying it on the table just so, where I could see the time pass…so…slowly and she would not be able to see that I was doing so.  And I realized that 51 minutes had passed.  Fifty-one minutes.  She had talked.  For FIFTY.ONE.MINUTES.

I can ramble with the best of them, but 51 non-stop minutes to someone who is clearly longing to be doing something else?  Never.  Especially after today.  It was totally painful for me to sit through.

Anyway, yeah, when I was getting ready for bed last night I looked at my closet door, which is slightly propped open so I can hang my robe on the corner, and noticed I had placed my Mardi Gras mask right above it.  I thought, “I should probably fix that” but then stupidly left it, so that anyone who happens to be scared of the dark, sleeping by themselves, and owning an industrial-sized imagination could glance over all bleary-eyed in the middle of the night, see a person just waiting for their chance to strike, and thusly lay awake terrified with no further chance of getting back to sleep.  Not that that happened to me last night.  At 2 am.  Nope.

Tschuss!!