Around the time I found out Josh was going to be leaving me for a while, I also found out that my mom wanted to move out of her recently remodeled basement apartment and into the house the I was currently occupying. It's her house, and as I would have just been living in the upstairs by myself, while she would be cramming my three little brothers into the basement during their stays at her house, it makes sense that she would move upstairs. So, knowing I would have to move all of my things anyway, I started thinking about going somewhere interesting/fun during my time alone. Of course, the last time I went somewhere like that, it was in 2007 when I went to Oahu for three months. It had been fun, but not exactly the experience that I had wanted it to be. So I decided to give Oahu another try.
When I talked to Alex about going with me, she got really excited and said that we should do it. That was our whole plan. We immediately began our search for housing and jobs. We researched the cost of a plane ticket. We calculated into our plans where our money would be coming from and how we would cover our living expenses if we didn't have employment by the time we reached Hawaii.
For me, this was really easy. Having Josh gone would mean I would have a nice income again. Even while paying off debt, I could still have some money for myself to afford my basic needs.We had paid off my car with our tax return, and Josh decided to sell his two-door Tacoma since we WILL be having babies once he gets home, and our bills dropped significantly. Don't get me wrong -- we are still really hurting in the debt department -- but we would be paying for everything in payments anyway, and with our budget worked out, I still had enough money to play.
When we found Diana on craigslist, she sounded perfect. Her ad said that she was looking for someone to come and help out around the house while she was on bed rest with a difficult pregnancy. The ad described the job as being really casual: get up with the boys in the morning and hang out until Diana woke up. Then if you see something that needs to be picked up, pick it up. The ad said there would be light cleaning and some childcare for her two and three year old boys. This was all in exchange for room and board. Sounds good, right? That's what we thought, so Alex started emailing Diana and asking for additional information. They started talking on the phone, and even though Diana seemed kind of rude at first, I figured it just had to do with her pregnancy and that it would pass. Diana said we could both come and stay with her. She said the bus stop was about a mile away and that we could drive her car, use their gated community's workout facility, and find additional employment if we liked. The only thing that rang an alarm bell for me was that Diana told Alex that she hates Hawaii.
Who hates Hawaii? we both wondered. We soon found out.
Alex left for Hawaii about three weeks before I could go because Diana had kicked out her former nanny and she needed Alex there ASAP. I didn't hear from Alex much, but I figured it had to do with the weird time difference and her being really busy and having fun. When June 8 came around, I had second thoughts about going, but I had already commited with my ticket, so I flew to Hawaii.
When I first got into Honolulu, I called Alex, and she said that they were just leaving to come pick me up. I assumed they lived really close to the airport, so I went about collecting my things. There was a problem with baggage claim, and some employees told me to go to the wrong carousel, so about 45 minutes later, when Alex and Diana showed up, I was just getting around to finding my suitcase. Alex totally crept up on me, and once I recovered from the surprise, I gave her the biggest hug (even though she isn't much of a hugger). We finally located my suitcase and went outside to find Diana.
Let's just say that from the time I got inside of her car until a half hour after I'd pretended to be asleep, Diana talked nonstop. Don't get me wrong, I love talkers. I am married to Joshua, who could talk anybody's ear off for days on end. But Diana talked solely to complain. In those first three hours with Diana, I learned about every single one of Diana's "friends" and what awful people they are and all of the evil, vindictive things that Diana wants to do to them in order to "get even" for all of her perceived injustices. Diana cussed extensively, gossiped about people who I would never meet, and was a terrifying driver. (We almost crashed while driving home because Diana was going way too fast and didn't see when the driver in front of us stopped. She even had to swerve onto the shoulder of the road to go around the stopped vehicles.) I had never spoken to Diana before, she was planning on leaving her children in my care, I was going to be living in her home, and she didn't have a single question for me? Another alarm bell rang in the back of my head.
Finally, three hours after I'd gotten to Hawaii, Diana decided she was finally tired, and she left me alone. I sat in the dark for a quiet moment, trying to figure out how, exactly, I wanted to ask Alex what the heck we had been thinking. Finally I sat up and crawled to the foot of my bed, where the head of Alex's bed was. Alex was playing on her phone, and she smiled at me.
"Hi," I whispered.
"Hi," she said back. She continued typing on her phone.
"How's it going?" I asked.
"Oh... It's good." Her eyes didn't leave the tiny screen. When Alex didn't say anything for another minute, I laid back down on my bed and closed my eyes. Alex continued texting for a while longer, but then she put down her phone, and in a hushed voice said, "I can't take it anymore!"
She confessed that she had been trying to stay positive for the last three weeks, because she knew that if she'd told me how bad it was, I wouldn't have come. She said that the kids were great, Diana's husband Christian was great, but that Diana was one of the craziest girls she had ever met.
She continued by explaining her typical day to me. Alex was waking up every morning before seven to get the boys out of their room, change their soggy diapers, and feed them breakfast. Then she was taking them for walks and to the nearby parks so that they could get out of the house and enjoy Hawaii's fresh air. Around ten Alex was feeding them a small snack, and by eleven thirty the boys were eating lunch that Alex prepared for them. From noon until three Alex could do whatever she wanted while the boys "napped" in their locked bedroom. These were Alex's only free hours while the sun was shining. By three the boys needed to be changed again and fed some sort of snack. Then Alex would take them for another walk or let them watch TV while she scrubbed dishes, washed the family's laundry, mopped the floors, cleaned up after Bubbles the dog (who was NEVER let outside), and took out the garbage. The boys ate dinner between five and five thirty, after which Alex gave them both baths and prepared them for bed. Bedtime was at seven thirty, but if Diana was in charge for some reason, they could go to bed as early as six forty-five. The sunset was already over by the time Alex was done working for the day, and if she didn't leave the house as soon as the boys were locked in their bedroom, Diana would demand Alex's attention until Alex's energy was completely gone and she insisted on going to bed. And that was Alex's day EVERY DAY. Did I mention that Diana doesn't have a job and that she sat around all day while Alex did all of this work? Did I also mention that Christian frequently came home from work by four thirty and sat in his computer room playing games until long after the boys were asleep? This house was absolutely ridiculous, and DEFINITELY not as advertised.
That night Alex and I began to plot our escape from Diana's house. I had never even walked through the entire house, but I knew that the longer I stayed there, the more I would die inside.
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