During the time that we lived together, Chez and I fell into a large number of routines. These certainly weren't planned. It just all seemed to happen organically and I felt powerless to change it.
This is how a day typically went: I would wake up in the morning, go out and buy a newspaper from a vending machine. I would bring it back to the apartment, eat breakfast and read. At some point in the morning, Chez would open the bedroom door and push Joad outside along with his bottle. Sometimes, she would throw the bottle to get my attention. Then, she would go back to bed, sometimes for a long as six hours. If I had to be at work earlier in the day, I would have to wake her up so she could take care of Joad. If I tried to touch her to wake her up, she would start swinging her fists aimlessly. When she woke up, she would start yelling and screaming at me for going to work and leaving her alone with Joad.
Something you need to know about the difference between Chez and me involved our taste in music. I liked the alternative bands and she preferred heavy metal, most of which I couldn't stand. The days that I didn't work would typically start with her coming out of the bedroom while I had the radio on 91X. She would yell, "Turn that s*** off!" I would reply, "But it's Midnight Oil (or The Cure, or U2, or New Order, or The Spin Doctors, etc.)!" She would respond with, "I don't give a s***! Turn it off!" This was our almost-daily comedy routine.
Another comedy routine would take place every time I saw Joad squinting and grunting. I would ask, "What are you doing, Joad?" Chez would reply, "He's taking a s***! What do you think he's doing?" Somehow, I don't think she was trying to be funny.
If I didn't have to work on a particular day or night, Chez would want to be driven somewhere. Anywhere. We drove all throughout San Diego County, even the northern parts just south of Orange County. We did drive up to the LA area one day. We drove around Disneyland and Hollywood. We stopped by saw Chud. His wife Elad wasn't there and Chud says he was glad she didn't meet Chez. He said that Elad would have thrown a fit because of the manner in which Chez hit Joad.
Chez especially enjoyed going to all of the malls in San Diego. There was only one mall in Roswell, and that could get old very quickly. She enjoyed the variety. We rarely bought anything outside of food at the malls. We also went to the beach and Cabrillo Point a few times, but she didn't care much for the water. She said just looking at it made her feel seasick. But that still didn't stop her from going there from time to time.
One day, I had to work. Chez wanted to go out driving. I told her we could go after I returned home from work, which would be around 11pm. I actually expected her to just give up and go to bed. However, when I got home, she had Joad and all her stuff ready to go. Even though I really wanted to just go to bed, I had to drive her and Joad around for two hours before we came back.
Chez told me that if she ever got a car, I would probably never see her. She would just take Joad and go driving all over the place. She would only come home to sleep and pick up her welfare check.
As I've mentioned before, Chez only ever made food for herself and Joad when I was at work. This meant that she never made anything for me. This wasn't really a problem. We typically had bread, cheese (the non-block kind), deli meat and canned foods. But it did create an issue one time. On a trip to the grocery store, she wanted to buy some mushrooms. When we got home, she started to saute the mushrooms in margarine. This was the only time I ever saw her make something that didn't come out of a can or box with powdered ingredients. I said, "Hey, that smells good. Can I have some?" "No, this is for me and Joad. You can't have any." Sure enough, she and Joad ate all the mushrooms without letting me have any. (Yeah, I know. I could have just gone out and gotten my own mushrooms to saute. But that just seemed really heartless of her.)
Because Chez wasn't making me anything to eat for when I got home from work, I would either make something at the apartment, or get something and bring it back to the house, as she was usually asleep by the time I got home. One night, I went to a taco shop and got some rolled tacos with cheese. When I opened the door, she was wide awake, watching TV. "What's that you've got?" "I bought some rolled tacos." "Well, it's nice that you thought to get some for me." "Do you want some? I have plenty." "I don't want to eat that greasy s***!"
When I wasn't at home, Chez typically would do the following things: Sleep (when Joad was sleeping), feed Joad, change his diapers, eat, watch TV, play video games and talk on the phone. Who was she calling? Her mother, sisters, other family and friends. She was making long-distance calls every day and talking for hours at a time. Our phone bills averaged more than $200 a month. I understand that she was homesick, but I know that all she did was gripe about me and talk about how much she wanted to come back to New Mexico. She would make comments that undermined my intelligence, like equating me to the "blonde" jokes that were popular of the time because of the color of my hair. I know this is what she talked about because she would flat-out tell me. (And it didn't help that none of the people she was calling would try to re-assure her that she had made the right choice and that she was where she needed to be in order to avoid a domestic violence situation. And I don't think she ever called and complained to her father because he would have been quick to put a stop to that nonsense.)
Another routine was what happened when she got her welfare check. After cashing it, the first thing we would do was go to Toys R Us and buy $200 worth of toys for Joad. EVERY MONTH! She would also spend about $100 for groceries, but would blow the rest of her money on video games and who knows what else. But if I said, "Hey, I need some of that welfare money to pay for those long-distance calls you've been making," she would reply, "I don't have any money left." Where was all that money going? I figured that she should have had at least a couple of hundred left over because she certainly never left the house. (Of course, she could have just ordered pizza and had it delivered when I wasn't there. I would never know because she would have thrown the boxes away in the apartment dumpster.)
Of course, me having to pay for everything meant that I had to start using my credit card every month to purchase stuff that should have been easily covered by our two incomes, if we had been able to come to some sort of agreement on how to pay for everything by pooling our cash. So, on top of me going into more debt, this was when I started stealing from my employer. A few days before my next paycheck, Chez saw that I had purchased some Hostess snack cakes and was eating them for breakfast. She saw this and asked, "I thought you didn't have any money. How did you pay for those?" Instead of telling her I stole from the theatre, I told her I took a cash advance on my credit card. She didn't question that.
But if this all seems abysmal, I haven't even gotten to the worst stuff yet. That will be tomorrow.
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