Mental instability

Brandon is gone again. I declined his invitation to go to France with him. Leaving my 2-year-old, travelling internationally with an infant, and being in a hotel all day while he worked in the lab didn't seem worth a $750 ticket, even if it was to France.

Unfortunately, this means that I'm stuck here without him for two weeks. Even with parents just 45 minutes away, things get pretty hairy when he's gone. I got sick the day he left. Aside from the physical discomfort and exhaustion, I'm pretty sure I operate on the mental capacity of a senile ape when I'm sick. As a result, when we went to my parents' house for the weekend, I forgot to bring shoes for Violet and at one point I had no diapers for Charlie. And when we went to pick up the perscription for my sinus infection, I realized that I had also lost my wallet.

Well, no big deal, I'm sure I just left it at the house. And when it didn't turn up there, I was sure that I had just left it at my apartment. But when I drove out to my apartment to look for it today and didn't find it there, either, I was stressed almost to the point of mental instability. I remembered the last place I had used it-- the Ghetto Kroger. I'm not applying that term liberally, either; it really is ghetto. There was a shooting there a few years ago. And on the day that I last had my wallet, I saw a giant cockroach crawl across the checkout belt and disappear under the cash register. The best part was that it wasn't even a Houston cockroach, it had a segmented body like one of those roaches from Madagascar. I kept thinking, "Okay, this store is so dirty that it spawned its own breed of cockroach. THAT is ghetto."

At least that disgusting image was burned so deeply in my mind that I remembered very clearly my last precious moments with my wallet--timidly putting my groceries, purse, and wallet in the bottom of the stroller, and walking home thinking that a giant roach was going to crawl out of one of those bags at any moment. So after searching my house, I drove along the path I had walked a few days earlier, and then went into Ghetto Kroger to see if it was in the lost and found.

Allow me to illustrate what I looked like at that moment. I was sick. I had unwashed hair and no makeup. I was wearing ripped sweat shorts and an old tee-shirt. Violet had snot running down her nose and refused to wear anything but her "Princess dress" which I'm fairly certain is made from an old tee-shirt and a pillowcase. She had no shoes. And I was pushing her and Charlie around in a shopping cart, asking for a wallet. I looked like a homeless woman.

When they told me it wasn't there, I just about lost it. I drove back to my parents' house thinking that I would never again allow Brandon to leave the house. That I would have to mooch off of people for the next two weeks because I had no cash, credit cards, or drivers license. That I wouldn't be able to call our bank and authorize Brandon's use of the credit card in France because I didn't even have our credit card number. That Brandon would be stuck in France without any money.

I called my sister and my mom to vent. I was freaking out. But something that my mom said made me think about checking the trunk of my car and voila... there was my wallet. A small miracle. But I still may never let Brandon leave the house again.