I know that almost everyone who reads this blog has already gone back to work for at least a few days, but for me work doesn’t start up again until tomorrow morning.  A couple of months ago, when we weren’t sure how many of my future in-laws would be invading our home or how long they would be staying, I made arrangements with my clients to be “offline” from December 15-Jan 5.  That’s three weeks of vacation.  I worked like crazy (I ended up working over a few of my first vacation days but that’s okay) to finish up my projects.  I cleaned my house from top to bottom, inside and out.  I was ready for the in-law invasion.   And then it effing snowed.  Instead of coming to us and spending weeks of time in our home, we ended up going to them for a couple of days.  This has left me with quite a bit of free time to veg and watch Will play video games on the PS3.  It seems surreal that everything goes back to “normal” tomorrow.

Except it doesn’t.  Not really.

Some readers will remember some friends of ours who were having marital troubles.  They’ve spent about six months trying to find a way to stay together but it looks like that isn’t going to happen.  When everything first started going haywire, Will and I offered up space in our home as a “worst case scenario.”  For a while it looked like we were free and clear but now it turns out that he could be here as early as Wednesday.  There are not enough swear words in the English language to describe how irritated I am.  This is the same friend who forgets that Will and I exist until he needs a favor.

Am I a bad person?  I want to help our friend.  I hate that his marriage isn’t working and that he is miserable.  I want him to be happy.  I also don’t want somebody who is not me or Will to move in here indefinitely.  I don’t want to have to put up with even more video game noise.  He won’t have a job, which means that he can’t help with rent, bills or food costs.  He is already whining a little about how he wants to bring up his desktop computer, his twenty inch television, his queen sized bed and his futon frame and mattress–after I told him that he’d only have about a third of a 10×10 room in which to store his stuff.    Does it make me a bitch that I find this annoying and have to fight the urge to point out that we don’t have to take him in at all?  Never mind that now I’ll be trying to plan a wedding in the presence of someone whose marriage has just ended.

We first learned about his needing to come up after all early on Friday morning.  I waited until now to post about it because I had to work through the massive nutty that my brain staged after we got the text message (AT FOUR THIRTY IN THE MORNING).  I know that it probably won’t be as annoying as my brain first feared.  I knew that I needed to work through my staggering over-reaction (there might have been tears and ‘I thought we were done worrying about other people’ whimpering).   But still.  I’m 30.  I thought I was done having roommates (besides my fiance obviously) until I bore them from my own loins.

In other news….or original topic news….  I’m looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow.  It feels a lot like the night before the first day of school.  I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without working in my entire adult life.  I kind of like the feeling of a fresh-ish start.  I feel kind of like I should go buy a new binder and a few packets of loose leaf paper!