This story may invlove sex related material. And God related material... though I might let God have a post all alone.

So, on with the sex. Obi started work a week and one day ago. Now, when he works our sexlife often suffers, we talk about it and we're concious that we need to make time for each other. Now we're waking up an hour and a half earlier, and if we want to get a full night's rest we need to go to sleep earlier too. On a work day we have four hours together - time for dinner and winding down after work, running errands, keeping house... time for not a whole lot really. Some nights time just gets away from us and we know if we take that extra hour or two to love each other we'll both regret it at work the next day. Last week I worked a long strech to make up for the hours I didn't have the week before because I'd been sick.

He initiated a few times, which is great. Often he gets lazy during the week and treats sex like it's a weekend activity - and I'm not cool with that. But I kept falling asleep. The long hard days did me in.

We promised to make time for each other Friday night, but I piked. But I knew I had sunday off, so even though I worked both jobs saturday I was determined. I drank a late coffee. I was getting laid or else... So there we were, freshly showered. He lit candles and turned on the radio (they have a block at that time that's all love songs, so that was great.)... But for some reason he just wasn't getting as into it. He seemed distracted. Then he says...

"Did you leave a tap running in the kitchen? I hear water."

I wanted to scream, to tell him to focus, possibly to call him a moron. I remind him that I'm not dumb enough to leave a tap running and that it's raining outside - he's probably hearing the downpipe or something. Making-out resumes. Things are looking up, but he's still weird. I sense something off and start to withdraw into myself. He says:

"No really, I hear water. Can't you hear that?"

I tell him to go check because it'll set his mind at ease when he realises that nothing's there. He goes. Then he starts to swear. Obi doesn't swear. Occasionally he chips me for my foul language. I know it's serious. The tiles by the door are wet, and the carpet is squelchy. There's water gushing in under the door. A lot of water. I know we need to act, but there's just nothing in my experience I can draw on. I try to take charge anyway. We get dressed. Not properly in my case, I pulled on some dirty jeans, a singlet and a long-sleved shirt. No knickers or anything. I'm expecting to tear it all back off in half an hour....

The water keeps comming. I tried to block it's entry with almost every towel we own, but I just don't have enough hands. We live in a basement. We reasoned that the drain on the other side of the door must be blocked and if we could just clear it the water might stop. The water's in the bedroom now. Obi reports the laundry is flooded too. I get him to call the landlady. We try to open the door to get to the drain and clear it, but the water was more than a foot deep out there and we had to slam the door really fast. I give up trying to stop the flow now, there's too much water - we need to get the electronics off the floor NOW. And unplug stuff. The last thing we need is an electrical fire.

We were planning to move at the end of the month. We'd packed the non-essentials - like Obi's books. They are in boxes, soaking up the water on the floor. In a rush everything ends up on the kitchen table, on the chairs, on the bed... We finally convince the landlady that we're flooding and need help (at first I think she didn't understand. She was saying "I'm flooded up here too - you should see the lawn") Once she realised we meant the water was in the house though she called her son for help and he took charge of the situation. He called a plumber and the insurance adjuster and set up the restoration people to come at 8am. He informs us (kindly) that the restoration people will need everything out of our flat and if it's not empty at 8am they'll remove our stuff for a large fee that we will have to pay as we're not insured.

So, at 1am we call Obi's parents and barge them out of bed. We need reinforcements. There's 2 or 3 inches of water in our unit. It's sewer water. It smells. It's cold. Many of our extra boxes got wet and couldn't be used. Sunday is washing day, most of our clothes were in a basket on the floor, getting soaked. There's a basket of sex toys on the bedside table that needs to be quickly boxed before the parentals see it and die of shock/embarrasment. My cat's food bowl is floating toward me. Our once-carefully stacked recycling is also floating, making us look like slobs. We hadn't done the dinner dishes. My cat was in distress. The plumber had cables and loud machines going every which way. Eight other houses had been hit so outside was a bit like a block party. Somehow, we got everything out.

We got to bed at 4am, staying at Obi's parent's place. We still wanted that frolic. The sky was lightening with dawn. Sleep won out once again.

The night before had been chaos, but Sunday was all about hard work. I woke up at 9 and barged Obi out of bed. I could have slept 100 years, but a part of my soul is strong enough to say "I can sleep some other time." We had only the clothes we'd worked in the night before. We stank. We had to get new boxes. And call in and let both our bosses know that working monday wasn't going to happen. And then check in on our landlady and see how she was holding up. The whole street was clogged with restoration trucks. We were amused and took pictures - we weren't the only ones taking photos. We triaged our stuff - what needed to be saved, what could wait, what was fine? and started moving it over to his parents. Washing everything. Repacking. Re-sorting things that had been in piles for charity but had ended up packed in with stuff we were keeping. Drying out things like Obi's passport and computer. We worked at it all day and into the night. I felt like we didn't get anywhere.

Obi promised we'd make time to have fun, maybe play an hour of video games - or in the least make time to enjoy each other. I hadn't had a day off in what seemed like forever. But time ran out again. We were sick with exhaustion and from breathing so much dust and germs. We could hear his dad snoring up a storm. Love could wait.

Monday - yesterday - was a better day. I got up early, made a start, made solid progress. But, I started to crack around the edges. Being with Obi has made me soft. I used to be able to handle any crisis for any period of time and just keep plodding along. Not any more. After lunch I just cuddled into him and cried. I was so tired. And stressed. His parents are driving my nuts already. This house is filthy. I hate hate hate it. I'm not the tidiest person but I endevor to make sure my guests are not made uncomfortable when they are over.

So we went to bed for a nap and so I could have a little break down and a hug. There suddenly appeared a window for intimacy. He was on me like a rash and I wasn't saying no. Yes! This was what I needed. The door was locked. Mom was napping, dad was working downstairs. It was safe. We needed each other. He asked if he could have me, though he didn't need to ask. He was an inch away... and then his phone rang.

There's no excuse for what happened next! He has caller ID - it was his best mate. He knew the call wasn't important. He answered anyway. His mate wanted to play video games. He knows we were flooded and had to evacuate, that we don't know if Obi's pc even works anymore. Obi's like "No, I'm in the middle of salvaging everything we own. Games is not a priority right now." He was frsterated. Which is great - a year ago would have been a whole different story. But.. well, I was hurt, offended and had lost my lady-wood 15 minutes later when he finally hung up.

We cuddled some more and he decided he was going to try again, or make it up to me or something. He was doing wonderful things with his hands. Suddenly the world seemed like a very good place. He was saying all the sweetest things to me. O-town was just over that next hill and my train was going there fast. Then, the dog started barking and Mom's voice outside our door calls down to dad "Mom and dad are here now!" (Mom's parents)

There was no salvaging it that time. It wasn't going to happen. We got back to work, both unnapped and unsatisfied!

We managed to get damn near everything packed. And I had a stroke of great luck - my suspervisor gave me today off as a bonus We just had to set ourselves up here in this one tiny little room. Clean our electronics with some disinfectant, set up a desk for Obi, put away the mounds of clean clothing. It got later and later, and I kept telling Obi that if he wanted to have fun he needed to hurry up but he spent a lot of time just sitting - I know he was buggered. It seemed to take forever to get his pc and all it's cables cleaned and plugged in, pack his lunch for work, find and set his alarm clock, shower... Then it was 11:30pm. We were in bed. His hands seemed to be everywhere. He says "I want you.." Yes! yesyesyesplease "...but I think it's smarter if we sleep."

Ugh.

Anyway, so we'll get half a month's rent returned to us. Most of our packing was done in short order. Now we just have to return our keys, and wait out the remaining time before we fly home... and maybe eventually get a full night's sleep as well as time to love oneanother.

How was your weekend?