a rough day, a lousy date

For a variety of reasons, I'm as crabby as all get out today. Last night the Sober Husband and I had one of our semi-occasional date nights. I'd actually planned our favorite date evening-- dinner and a play at one of our favorite small local theatres -- so spirits were running high. However, during the play the Sober Husband got a text message from our babysitter saying that a bug got into the house and that Lola was in hysterics. A later text message said that quite a few bugs were coming into the house, crawling under the door jamb from the backyard.

Up until now this had been a lovely date. The day itself had been dreadful for me (I was stuck at home with Iris, who was running a fever and crabby), and I needed an outing. We'd been revisiting an old plan, to ditch the poor children with some chump and fly off together to Barcelona for a much-needed romantic vacation. We even have enough frequent flier miles for one free ticket to Europe. We'd had a lovely dinner at a place with a lot of romantic significance from our earliest dating days, before the play. But after the text, the Sober Husband immediately became cold, withdrawn, preoccupied, and judgmental. While he was texting during intermission, I bought myself a beer, and he then accused me of drinking too much. "Two and a half beers over four hours?" I said incredulously. "That's too much?" He wanted to get back home to Lola, and I was irked. "It's just a bug. I want to see the end of the play."

Noticing our conflict, a snoopy usher said, in a failure at sotto voce, "She sure is high-strung." I dumped the undrunk beer into the recycling container and stalked off. "Leave me alone!" I hissed at the Sober Husband. "I guess we aren't going to Barcelona, since we can't even get through a three-act Edward Albee play."

At home, I tried to just go to sleep and, as Shakespeare so wisely noted, let sleep knit up the ravell'd sleeve of care, but then the independently wealthy fellow who bought that horrible modern house on our block started up his giant Tesla coil. Evidently the man has hired some Burning Man type to build him a massive Tesla coil, and, being a man of independent means who can sleep whenever he wants, he only enjoys playing with it very late at night, in front of his house (and I happen to know he has a small backyard he could use). On a prior occasion I sent the Sober Husband out to find out the cause of the hellacious racket, only to get the report, "That guy has a giant Tesla coil. It's really cool. We talked about Tesla coils. I told him how I used to build them in college." Last night around midnight I freaked and ran out, in my sushi print pajamas and bare feet, and told my very rich neighbor that "MY ALARM IS GOING OFF IN SIX HOURS" and "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH NOISE YOU ARE MAKING??" He, defensively, said, "[Sober Husband] said it was cool] and "[Sober Husband] didn't say it was too noisy." I wanted to say, "FUCK [SOBER HUSBAND]", but refrained. Instead, in the delicate tones which years of law school and litigation taught me, I informed my rich neighbor that it was far too late to be making such a hellish racket when the rest of us have early-morning obligations, and then I stalked off with as much dignity as possible for a middle-aged, barefoot woman wearing flannel pajamas with little pictures of sushi all over them.

And now today, for no reason, events are conspiring to remind me nonstop of my first marriage. At my gym, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by the Swans was playing, the song which, stupidly enough, my ex said was "our song." Then in the car the Bryan Ferry song played which my ex said was the only thing which could comfort him the first time we broke up. These are both fairly obscure old songs which a person could spend a decade without running across, so the coincidence seemed odd. Then yet another old song with particular sentimental significance from that failed marriage came on the radio. I changed the channel with vehemence, while my own current Tesla-coil loving spouse sat, aloof and unnoticing in the passenger's seat.