My ex has a new kitten. She's very cute and, at five weeks, as the kids like to say, "smol." I'm not certain at what point "small" became too difficult to type, but as an editor ...

At any rate, the cat is not the point. Rather, she invited me up, this time insisting I pay for the Lyft in both directions, which is not how we've done this before. I can swing $70, but $140 is too much. (She told me to call my mom and ask for more money, which is A) not how this works; and B) really fucking insulting when she used to berate me for having my parents willing to help out in a pinch but happily enjoyed the results.)

In addition to wanting me to cover all costs, she made it clear that she doesn't want to act like a couple if I visit (actually not plausible; that's how we've interacted each time I've visited since December) ... but ... she has expressly forbid sex and wants to get really drunk and stoned, at which point she may be more amenable.

The relevant consent conversation happened, with her being the one saying, "Look, if I want it at the time, that's consent." Except it isn't, by a fair country mile.

She was asking for it ... did you see what she was drinking?

Thankfully, the logistics worked in my favour. I've got a guy coming by in the next hour to pick up my broken fridge in the hopes of being able to repair it. He thinks he knows the right control board, but it'll take three weeks to source, so I'm just getting a new fridge.

How Amazon can take fully a week to ship something is beyond me, but here we are.

He'd been angling for this evening, which will happen, but also left the rest of the weekend open. I mean, he's getting a free fridge that partially works but drains battery like nobody's business.

The only way to make this a plausible idea was being able to Lyft to Temple from Killeen (relatively cheap at $20) to stay with another burner friend until she had to hoof it back to Austin, and at this point, she has so much shit going on that it was a nonstarter.

For context, this is the woman who picked up a few bags of trash Monday, then sent me pics and info about a piece of land they're considering for the commune they intend to start up (I'll be on growing food and solar). So it's not like she just knee-jerk said no, more "now is not a good time."

I got back to my ex, let her know it wasn't feasible, and she hung up on me. Her son is going to be on ESPN tonight, and she wanted someone to watch with her. I could not care less about cross-country, and watching it on TV sounds like hell.

I'm glad her kid is excelling nationally, but still, it's people running on a screen.

It means giving up a chance to do laundry, but it just didn't feel right, which I've not gotten from her since we reconnected intensely. Why invite me and then say you don't really want me there, you just don't want to be alone?

That's your fucking problem, not mine, and I'm sure as fuck not going to feel like I need to spend my limited resources on an aloof partner who doesn't want to act like we know each other too well to make it a platonic visit. That flew the day we met in 2009, but only for about 12 hours.

I guess I should be grateful that we got to see each other a few times over the past few months. I can feel my heart rate decreasing as I walk through the door and put things in the fridge. Within minutes, it's like we never got divorced.

That was nice ... this is unpleasant sounding.