Life Is Just As

foggy and depressing as the weather.

For instance, my couch is destroyed. My dad has been sleeping on it for over a year and a half now. The boards are all broken. It smells like pee. And underneath it, there are pounds of peanut shells that my dad has dropped there, along with enough of god-knows-what else to completely fill the space between the floor and the broken boards of my couch. It makes me want to cry.

My bathroom is also destroyed. The sink is brown and orange and nasty-dirty because my father doesn't know how, apparently, to clean up after himself. He also doesn't know that he routinely misses the toilet and pees all over the floor. About 6 months ago, I gave up cleaning it, because most of the time I am only halfway through when he comes to use the bathroom again and I have to start all over.

He has no consideration for other people's feelings. In his mind, all of this is okay because he supports me financially. It's all about money to him. He doesn't understand that sometimes quality of life is at least equal to, if not more important than, money. And my quality of life is almost non-existent.

I love my dad. I really do. If he would just go away for a week so I could clean, and then try to clean up after himself afterwards, I could live with it. Maybe move into a bedroom instead of my living room so I could have friends over. I only want simple things in life.

What I want, more than anything, is to present my father with the following plan.

1. You go spend a week away. I will spend that week cleaning my house.

2. I move all the things out my office and put my couch and TV in my office. This is your space. You may do with it as you like, but I get to close the door at my discretion. That way, you can pile junk up all around you and pee all over everything as much as you want to, and I am still allowed to have a life.

3. You will keep a bedpan with a wall on the front of it in your bedroom so that you can pee in it before you go to the bathroom. Then you will not leak pee all over my carpeting and will be less likely to miss the toilet and pee on the floor in the bathroom.

4. After you have use the bathroom, or walked through my house when you needed to use the bathroom, you will check the floor to see if it is wet. If so, you will clean it with my Swiffer Wet Jet. That'll probably work on the carpet, too. At least if it's wet with cleaner solution, it will smell better than if it's wet with pee, and the handle is long enough that you can use it without bending over.

5. You will wash and put away any dishes that you use, as will I.

6. You will put things neatly in cupboards and not stack them up until they are toppling over, and you will put EVERYTHING in cupboards rather than leaving it out on countertops.

7. You will keep all of your things in your room. Always. The rest of my house is my house.

8. If I should bring friends home with me, you are welcome to join us when invited, but if you are not invited, you will not ask me any questions or join in any conversations. I am a grown woman, and you don't need to know what I plan to do if I have male friends over.

If I were to lay down these rules, and my father were to abide by them, I might be able to start getting my life together. Until then, I will cry like the clouds and hide in the fog.