Vacation: The aftermath

1) Tell your family you are going on a mainland vacation with friends when you are actually visiting your boyfriend on the mainland.

2) Tell your employer you are spending your vacation time with family. And probably won't be leaving the state.

3) Have your father call your employer while you're on vacation because he mistakenly thinks someone may be illegally impersonating you. (Turns out another reporter just has a similar sounding name. Oops.)

4) Call your father to tell him no one is impersonating you but avoid any direct conversation with family or employer about vacation.

5) Have friend in China contact you to say that yes, even she knows what you were really doing on vacation. Even though at this point, your web of tangled lies is so thick you're not even sure what you were doing on vacation.

6) Have your rent check bounce while you are on vacation. And you don't get the message from your landlord until two days later. And oh yeah, you never mentioned to your landlord that you were on vacation at all.

7) While on vacation with boyfriend, lose debit card on mainland, call mom in Hawaii for help. But at least the card gets canceled.

8) Come back home only to find landlord has slipped a Xerox of your contract under your door, highlighting such snippets as: You aren't supposed to leave for more than five days without telling her. If your check bounces once, you have to pay in cash from then on. There is a late fee attached to late rent payments. If your rent is really late, landlord can boot you out.

9) Talk to landlord only to have her say, no, this doesn't mean she wants you to pay her in cash. And no, by the way, she's not upset with you. Why would her slipping the contract under your door and then highlighting the parts that would make your throat tighten make you think she was mad at you? Just write her the check including the late fee and all will be OK. This time.

10) While you are stressing out about all these details with patient boyfriend, who tells you to give yourself a break, you manage finally to reveal the whole clusterfuck to him and he pauses and says, "Well, then. All of this is your own fault then." Oddly enough, at last, you feel a measure of relief.