Food Money Sex: Living With An Ex-Sister-in-Law in Arlington

• Does: Government contractor, 37
• Lives: Arlington, 2 roommates—a toddler (2.5), shares 50% of my DNA, no job or useful skills; an ex-sister-in-law (43) who ‘s the homeowner and my landlord. We live in the same house but have separate entrances no common space, hereto referenced as “sister.”
• Is: Female
• Makes: $123,900
• Married? Divorced (twice), meh; currently in a committed relationship for 5 months
  

• Friday: Around 8AM every week day, one of the four people who sits in the converted storage room with me at work (what the government designates as an office) goes to the kitchen and makes his tea. When he comes back, he formally offers me some McVities digestive biscuits. (If you’ve spent any time in the UK, you’ll know what these are.) I appreciate this ritual very much. There is something very civilized about it. Today, I take 2 and eat them with the coffee that I brought from home. Lunch is homemade ham-and-white-bean soup, which I share with my program manager and another coworker. Post-soup, I have two mini pecan tarts from Harris Teeter. For dinner, I had plans with “sister” to try Taqueria El Poblano in Arlington. The sign in their window said “Voted Best Margarita in Arlington,” so clearly this needed to be investigated. Verdict: they were strong and packed a punch, but not “the best” in Arlington. But, you’re getting your money’s worth because they’re heavy on the tequila. (El Paso’s in South Arlington is our usual spot for good margaritas and TexMex.) Some parents from my daughter’s school came in, recognized me, and had a bit of a “my two moms?” look on their faces when they surveyed our setup—since “sister” and I were sitting next to each other, trying each other’s drinks and sharing food while my daughter ate a mountain of guacamole and watched Frozen on her Kindle for the 10,000,000th time. To be fair, “sister” has asked me to marry her, if only for the tax benefit and endless reality TV show possibilities: “I Divorced my Husband and Married his Sister.” But it would be strictly platonic since neither of us like getting down and dirty with the minge and, therefore, would make for a very bland, low drama, and snore worthy show. No one really wants to see us debating cancelling cable and sharing a Hulu + Live TV or Netflix account. Upon arriving home and putting my child in her PJs and to bed, I broke into the Halo Top peanut butter cup ice cream in my freezer (320 calories for the whole pint!) and ate all the peanut butter pieces (like a true asshole) before putting it back and promptly falling asleep on my couch for about an hour.
• Saturday: On weekends when my daughter doesn’t go with her dad, we go to Starbucks and I get a Venti Quad Soy Latte and she gets a boxed milk and the food box with the eggs, apples, peanut butter, scone, and grapes. On this day we had plans to go to the ICE! event at the Gaylord at National Harbor. It was the first time my boyfriend would be meeting my daughter, so we didn’t linger at Starbucks because my kid has a tendency to look like she’s auditioning to be an extra in an Oliver Twist reboot and I wanted to at least *try* and brush her hair so that she didn’t look like she had spent the past week sleeping in an alley with stray dogs and cats. Toddlers come with a label that says “results may vary on any given day.” Really, they’re like mini Godzillas… mission: total destruction and get as dirty as possible in the process. Somehow, one crumb of chocolate can ruin an entire outfit (how?) and 0.000003 seconds of turning your back is enough time to destroy an entire room. BUT, she’s the only person I know who can be bribed with a box of raisins… so there’s that. “Sister” was also coming with us to the Gaylord and had promised to bring the mini-Bailey’s for post ICE! coffee. She has all the good ideas. Once we were sufficiently over ICE! and the crowds at the Gaylord, we thought we might try and get some lunch somewhere nearby, but the one restaurant we tried (Succotash) had a 35-minute wait. With a 2.5 year old who had already done ICE! + the Christmas train + the carousel, 35 minutes might as well have been 3 days, so we bagged it, got in the car, and drove to Texas Jack’s BBQ in Arlington. Fact: THIS is the place to come for the best margaritas in Arlington (IMO). The Omohundro is legit. I ordered the Huevos Rancheros to eat but wasn’t all that hungry and ended up taking most of it home. “Sister” had very graciously offered to babysit the small person so that my boyfriend and I could go watch the Auburn/Georgia game and we ended up at Capital City Brewing Co in Shirlington around 4PM. My go-to drink at home or at a bar, on a plane or on a train, in a boat or with a goat (it could happen) is a gin and tonic with two limes. Sapphire or Hendricks. I promptly ordered one of those, and maybe another after that…and maybe another after that. The bf is a non-discerning beer drinker and he asked the bartender if they served any “poor people beer”—because you can drink a lot of it and still remember your name later—to which the bartender answered “no.” So he ordered something that wasn’t a Michelob Ultra or a Miller Lite (his staples). By the time Auburn had lost miserably to Georgia, we were both on the less alluring side of drunk and best friends with the two Army reservists who were sitting next to us at the bar. My boyfriend (also an Army veteran) spent some time talking shop about units, deployments, and duty stations, while I looked at my Twitter and Instagram feeds. We did a shot (or two) with them. I never do shots and neither does my bf. Regardless, at that point the non-poor people beer + shots had taken their toll and I could tell my bf had hit “the wall”—that moment when the fun has stopped and you are too drunk to do anything but throw up and pass out—and it was time to leave. We got a Lyft home and he passed out in the bed (fully clothed) at, literally, 8:45PM. When you’re old like us (I’m 37, he’s 43), you start early and end early. It’s a thing.
• Sunday: I woke up at 3:18AM and the only thing I wanted was a ginger ale. I don’t drink soda…well, very rarely…but in an act of divine providence I had a can of Seagram’s Ginger Ale in my fridge, which had literally been in there for about 8 months. I must have been saving it for THIS day. I am fucking Nostradamus. I sucked it down and got back in bed for more sleeping. My boyfriend really hadn’t moved since he got in the bed 7 hours prior, but I knew he was alive because he was snoring. My daughter woke up around 7:30AM and I got up to tend to her. He lay in bed for about another hour and a half before we all made the pilgrimage to Starbucks for coffee, boxed milk, a muffin, a banana, and the egg, grape, apple thing. He went home to Ashburn following this coffee excursion, presumably to lie on the couch and feel like shit for all day. My daughter and I shared some of the Texas Jack’s leftovers for lunch, I managed about 32oz of water (I’m usually good for ~96oz on a normal day, but fuck it, I guess), and I had an Amy’s Broccoli and Cheddar Bake frozen meal for dinner, along with a glass of Justin Vineyards Reserve Malbec.

• Friday: Gas: $35.06; Brown’s Arlington Honda: $58.91 (oil change, state inspection); Mega Millions ticket x 10: $20 (all losers); Taqueria El Poblano: $62.03 + tip (my share + small person food); Parking: $2.
• Saturday: Starbucks: $15.92; ICE!: $114 (I paid for us all because it was my show, so to speak, and I invited them); ICE! Parking (pre-paid): $15; ICE! Train & Carousel Ride for the small person: $14; my boyfriend picked up the tab for my daughter and I at lunch; Capital City Brewing Co: $55 + tip (and I know we drank more than $55 worth of booze, so cheers for the hook-up); Lyft: $6.08
• Sunday: The bf paid for our morning Starbucks date; Home Depot: $65 (peel & stick floor tile and a wax seal kit for the toilet)
• Total: $463

• Friday: After coming home off of my 2 1/2 really strong margaritas and putting my daughter to bed, my boyfriend and I tried to get some sexting action going, but it was sort of a nonstarter because I was tired. I mean, I had just fallen asleep on the couch and by that point it was almost 10:30pm. It is a real rock & roll lifestyle over here, y’all. These days I need a solid 8 hours to have a chance in hell of keeping it 100. Otherwise, it’s sort of like a Tammy Faye Baker meets Jocelyn Wildenstein meets the Walking Dead fiasco on an episode of Botched.
• Saturday: There was no sex in on this night because booze had fought the good fight and won.
• Sunday: I woke up at 5AM with my boyfriend’s hand on my boob, he was asleep…I was horny. So I stuck my hand down my panties and proceeded to rub one out while he slept beside me. I was quiet. It was delicious. Around 6 or 6:30AM, since he was sleeping on my side of the bed, I got on my knees and reached across him to try and get my phone off the nightstand to see what time it was. Well, that stirred something because the next thing I knew, his hand was between my legs rubbing on me and he was getting a good morning BJ. This turned into penetrative sex, with me on top, which then turned into to me saying dirty things in his ear while he jerked off and finished on my boobs. With as hungover as he was, and not being a morning sex person, the fact that he was 1) hard and 2) could finish was a very pleasant surprise and honestly, fairly impressive.

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