So yesterday I spoke to Omar in the morning about what we were going to do, and he suggested meeting in the city around 4p. Of course, I have box office tonight so that would leave us without much time together, or as I put it, "So you only want to see me for four seconds?" "Well, I have things to do around the house, do you want to come over and keep me company?" "You bet!"

So I went over to his house. This is significant, since it's the first time that I have been invited over since he moved. In fact, as he told me, I am the first guest that he has had at all in the three months he has lived there.

It's an interesting living situation, since it is both an apartment building with separate families on every floor, but it's also one big house since everyone is either related or has known each other for twenty years.

On the ground floor lives the owner of the building, and that's the apartment that Omar rents two rooms in. On the second floor lives his wife and daughter, and on the top floor lives the daughter-in-law and granddaughter of the owner, and the granddaughter is also the best friend of Omar's daughter--he has known her for her entire life and has basically been her father figure.

So everyone lives together and everyone lives apart. It's similar to my living with the Callahans.

I took the Bergenline van to his place, which was a bit complicated since there are barely any street signs on Bergenline Ave., so I would be peering out the windows wondering if I were in fact still in Union City or had gone too far, possibly to Hoboken. Or Pennsylvania.

Fortunately, by the time that I was relatively near his house, the street signs had returned. I thought it was because the street planners had thought that nobody would be on Bergenline if they didn't already know where they were going, but was informed that it was because that's a marginal enough neighbourhood that kids keep stealing the signs.

I'll bet some of those signs were stolen by the grandparents of the current sign-stealing delinquents and they never got replaced.

I'd actually been in his apartment before, but it was before it was his apartment. It was very nice, of course, very neat. Very him in a way that his apartment with his ex never was, because that place never had anything displayed in it that was Omar's.

The Lancaster house is him, but it's also his ex, this is the first place I have seen that is only Omar.

Nobody was home, so he showed me all around the house, and I met the dogs and cats. His wife has an hysterical dog that is usually caged all day so he is the most needy animal every to have lived. I don't happen to believe in crating dogs--I know that many people do it and that it is a perfectly reasonable and humane way to treat them, and that some dogs if left alone in the house all day would destroy the place, but I still don't care for it.

I think that this dog would be less annoying and needy if he didn't spend all of his time alone in a cage in a room, that's all.

He wanted to introduce me to Nikki, his adopted daughter on the top floor, but she was asleep (at 1.30p). He brought me in to watch her sleeping, like she was five years old, which was very sweet.

We made lunch and ate in his wife's kitchen, then proceeded to do the chores, also in his wife's apartment.

She is like me, messy and not good at making a house pretty, so Omar is helping her fix the place up so that it will be a nicer place for his daughter to live. This is Omar's forte, he is great at renovating things because he both has the skills and the stick-to-itvness necessary. He can concentrate until something is finished, even if it takes more than one day, he doesn't lose momentum as others do. And by others I mean me.

One room had been painted already, but needed touching up. I offered to help paint, but he didn't invite me over to work, he invited me over to keep him company, so my job was to look for badly painted areas that needed fixing. There were a lot more than he had thought, bits that his daughter hadn't painted properly. The light in that room is a bit glary, so they were hard to see, but I got very obsessive over it.

The second job was scraping a door that had already had the stuff on it to melt the paint, and I insisted on being given a scraper and helping. Peeling off great strips of paint is fun! And the door was beautiful under all that mess.

While we were doing all that he was talking about somebody, saying some rather pointed things about them, and I said, "Wow, what do you say about me when I'm not here!" He answered that he mostly spends his time defending me, but after thinking a bit he said, "The one thing that I say is that I wish you'd understand why I have to disappear sometimes."

I answered that I do understand, and I really do, but that doesn't make it hurt less when it happens. And of course, I understand more when it isn't actually happening. Right now we are in a good place, so discussing times when we aren't communicating is a very easy, logical thing. Being in the middle of one of them, not so easy.

I think I am getting closer to believing that my not seeing or talking to him for a little while doesn't mean that he is gone forever. We are a permanent part of each other's lives--he says that he doesn't get close to that many people, so that once he lets his guard that far down with someone, that means that that person will be in his life forever.

While we were working, I asked him if he was going to tell them that I had been there. He paused and thought about it, then said that there was no reason to hide it, that of course he was going to tell them. And then while we were working, I went into the other side of the apartment and ran straight into Lorelei! So it was a good thing that he hadn't decided to keep me a secret!

I really love Lorelei, I think she's a great kid. I know that she likes me, she may be a performer but she's not a good enough actress to completely detest me while being as friendly as she is, but I also knows that while she likes me as a person, she doesn't like me as her dad's girlfriend. And yes, I know that I'm not exactly his girlfriend, but neither am I not exactly not, and that's the fastest way to describe our extremely complicated relationship.

She's going to the Edinburgh Festival this year, and so we talked about that for awhile, since I went twice. I think she's really going to have fun, there's nothing like it.

It was funny to hear them talk together--she is both open with him, telling him everything, and at the same time quite pert and impatient, like any kid is with their parents when they think that they don't know as much as they do. Which is every kid in history.

Then Nikki was up, so I got to meet her at last. And I also got to say to her, "I watched you sleeping!" which somewhat startled her, but it was too good a line to not say.

After as long as I could stay without getting to the show incredibly late, he walked me to the bus to go into the city.

It was the best kind of day together, hanging out, working on the house, it reminded me of being in Lancaster. I mean I like being out with him, going to movies, walking around, but I like just being home with him best.

Today's horoscope:
Under your current circumstances, it would be foolish to make a promise. Respect other people's opinions and the pace at which they move. It can be liberating to realize that you have almost no control.

One year ago today:
Apparently, they realized that they had left a little bit of blood coursing around his body and wanted to rectify that error and remove it immediately. And they wonder why he is so thin.

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Last Updated Fri 20 February 14:48:09 2004