Ode to Screens

This should have been about how Nick's glasses fell out of the window Wednesday night. My drapes swished, we heard a woosh! and then a clattering, and all we could do was stare. Except for when Nick punched my wall, in a show of manly problem-solving.

The next morning I awoke to an empty bed and, leaning out my window, saw the top of my boyfriend's head. And all of this is made even more charming by the fact that the glasses never fell out of the window at all, but were discovered later between the bed and the wall.

This is not about that.

Nick and I have two key differences in our outlooks on life, you see, and it's driving us just a tiny bit crazy.

Cleaning

I hate cleaning, in ways that I cannot even describe. I do as little of it as humanly possible. Contrary to popular rumor spread by Nick, however, I do not enjoy living in squalor, so I try to avoid messing up the place to begin with. Particularly since I have a bit of an aversion to touching things once they are visibly dirty, I feel that this is an extremely clever plan.

Nick, aka Mr.-I-Scrub-My-Apartment-Thoroughly-Once-A-Week, does not cooperate.

We cleaned yesterday. Last night, I watched fish-poaching liquid spread evilly across the stove I had just spent over an hour returning to a high gloss (since Nick tends to use it, it had become too dirty for my casual spot-cleaning ages ago). "Just think how easy it will be to clean that up now!" Nick trilled, as I heroically refrained from strangling him.

He spills on my couch, apparently reasoning that I run the cushion covers through the laundry after each visit, as if I have time for such nonsense. He drops food on my floor and then looks at me like I'm crazy when I send him off for a damp paper towel--surely I was planning on mopping the whole place again soon anyway, right?

Actually, most of his worst trespasses involve food, which leads inevitably to the next conflict.

Vermin

I believe that mice have virtually supernatural powers. And Nick refuses to accept this obvious truth.

Wednesday, I nearly tripped over a bag of potatoes in the middle of my dining nook floor. When my head spun around, Exorcist-esque, to shoot a gently enquiring look at my boyfriend, he was exasperated. "Potatoes don't need to be refrigerated!" he insisted.

This was not the point. "Mice," I hissed.

"So put it in the cupboard. Put it on the top shelf!"

My God, he is so naive.

So. Last night, I heard what was definitely not a mouse. In fact, it was so soft and so infrequent that at first I was not sure I was hearing anything at all, but, predictably, my nerves refused to just drop it and let me sleep. At a slightly louder noise that was definitely in the apartment, I grabbed my glasses and sat up just in time to see a light gray shape bound from the dining-nook table to the sill of the open window.

Too big for a mouse or even a squirrel, too not-flying for a pigeon, too nimble for the rat I have nightmares about finding in here someday. What the...?

I shoved Nick. "Something's in here."

"Hello?" he called out sleepily.

"Something," I clarified. "On the table--" and I switched on the light, only to be momentarily struck dumb. How could he? Sitting on the table were the remains of the sweet Italian sausage pizza I had heated up for him after we had discovered that we suck at poaching fish, "--eating your pizza," I snarled.

"So go get rid of the pizza," he suggested cavalierly.

I chose to believe that he was still foggy from sleep, and stared at him until he got out of bed himself. He peered out the window, and announced, "A cat."

I live on the fifth floor, by the way.

When he returned from throwing out the pizza and closing the window, I snuggled my way across the bed and looked him in the eye.

"This is exactly what I've been talking about."