It’s 12:28 a.m. and I may never sleep again. The scene of depravity that I just stumbled on in the den has burned itself into my brain and it will fester there until my last moment on this earth.
I went to bed at eleven, and left G still on the couch watching TV. After reading myself into a trance (Junot Diaz’ “This Is How You Lose Her”–ironic, given the way this story is going), I switched out the light and tried to fall asleep. I almost had, then jerked awake because my nose was stuffy. 12:05 a.m….dangit. I poked around in the medicine cabinet for one of those sexy nose strip things and couldn’t find any.
So I walked toward the den to grab my phone and type a note to get breathie strips tomorrow. As I opened the door from the hallway, a guilty looking G whirled his head around from where he sat on the couch and I heard a strange clunking noise as he tried to hide an object on the lower shelf of the coffee table. My eyes darted to the TV, expecting to see some horrifying adult pay-per-view. Nope, just a sci-fi movie (and not even a sexy one at that). Then I looked closer at the object he had tried to hide.
What do you think it was? Given the level of panic on his face, you might guess crack pipe. Then he started to giggle and I saw that the secret object was my kitchen shears. My fancy German steel kitchen shears. The ones I protect from the children when they want to cut paper. The ones I squawk over when he uses them to slice open a plastic bag. My precious.
The father of my children was using my kitchen shears to cut his toenails. He was staying up late, waiting for me to sleep, so that he could do perverse things with foreign objects.
As the truth of the moment revealed itself to me, I stood frozen in the doorway, one hand covering my gaping mouth. Seconds ticked by as he waited for my outrage to pour forth.
“I would rather have found you in here with a woman.”
He cringed and laughed. ”The clippers just don’t do as good of a job.”
Like he’s done this BEFORE.
“I was going to put them in the dishwasher.”
We laughed so hard I bent over double. When I finally got myself back together, I said, “You KNOW this is going in the blog.”
So that’s why I’m sitting here in bed typing at 12:40 a.m. Some stories just beg to be told.
And damn if the fool didn’t just come in here and waggle his eyebrows at me in a suggestive, “Hey, the kids are asleep” fashion. I met him with a steely glare.
“You have GOT to be kidding.”
He plopped down on the bed beside me and said, “Hey, at least I wouldn’t scratch you.”
