Just Because I Didn't Say It Doesn't Mean It Didn't Happen

Note: In an effort to curb my abuse of parentheses and the consequent, almost-continual derailing of my trains of thought, I'm now moving to an end-note system for my posts. Wherever you see asterisks (*) after a sentence, if you scroll to the end of the post, you'll find a semi-related tangent. Hopefully now I'll be able to complete a thought once in a while, before bounding off to some other, equally-fertile ground.
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Hey, you notice that so far we haven't had an "LJ is gone again, hallelujah*" post??

There's a good reason for that.

No, he's not still here. But it's only this morning that I'm willing to accept his absence as a fact.

Confused? Yeah, so was I. He was here Friday morning; he was here Friday night; he was here Saturday morning and afternoon. Saturday evening, I went to see the Christmas lights at the zoo with Debbi.** When I returned, he wasn't here; Tim said he'd come back for a few minutes with a friend of his, and then he'd left again. Since that's pretty much an hourly occurrence when LJ is in town, I figured he'd come back around 4 AM or so, probably drunk, and either sleep the day away or puke the day away, depending on the hangover.

But Sunday morning came: no LJ.
Sunday afternoon came: no LJ.
Sunday evening, and Monday morning, and Monday evening, and Tuesday came: no LJ. Not a sign of him, nor a phone call to tell me "hey, you were out when I left, but I just wanted to let you know I made it back safe" or anything like that.*** Apparently I am now so insignificant as not to merit such courtesies; after all, you don't have to call a hotelier and tell him that you're leaving. (Of course, even at a hotel, you DO have to check out...which is more than I got.)

Curiously, this is the last straw. This is the offense that allows me to say, when he calls, "Hey, listen, if there's anything you want that's left at the house, let me know so I can drop it off at your mom's--anything else is going in the trash or going to Goodwill, because you now officially live elsewhere. " I mean, seriously. What a jerk.

So: LJ is gone, finally, again. And this time, I think it's for good. (Well, I mean, it was always for GOOD, but this time I think the for-good-ness is permanent.)
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Notes:
* (I had to look this up. Didn't there used to be an "i" in there somewhere??)

**(Debbi's doing well, though in a few months she'll weigh less than me, for the first time in our adult lives, and I don't know how I feel about that. Or rather, I DO know how I feel about that, but would prefer not to acknowledge it because a) it seems petty, and b) acknowledging that it bothers me would open the door to the possibility of having to DO something about it, and frankly I'm just not ready for the whole diet-and-exercise hoo-raw right now.)

***(Also no acknowledgement of the $110 he was supposed to collect for the cell-phone bill from the sister of the friend who's on my cell-phone plan but now locked up, so his sister is keeping the phone and she'll pay the bill on time, she PROMISES. Well, the bill is due again, and I've sent her a text message asking her to call me, and I've tried to call the number but she doesn't answer, and I'm sure she doesn't have the voicemail password, so if it gets to be next Friday when the bill is due again and I don't have $220--$110 for the bill I already paid and $110 for the current month--I'm reporting the phone as "lost", changing the number, and going to the cheapest possible plan. I've been more patient than most people would be--originally one friend was on the plan, and he was going to pay, he PROMISED--but then he didn't, and LJ took the phone away and gave it to this other friend. The other friend was good about paying--except he paid LJ, expecting him to give it to me, which rarely happened (about twice in the 2 years he's been on the plan.) Now HE's locked up, and his sister wants the phone but apparently doesn't want to pay...well, the charity bureau is now closed, as I've gone out of the "giving" line and moved into the "getting" line.)