But I Want More Weekend

Mondays have rules. They are basically supposed to suck. Mostly Mondays follow the rules pretty well. As my granddaughters say, “They are good listeners.” The past few months there have been entirely too many Mondays in the week and many of them fell on Saturday and Sunday. Not this week though.

Himself ducked out of class early Saturday and was home by noon. I had a husband all afternoon and he was willing to go see the Harry Potter movie (in IMAX). We have not been to a movie since the last Harry Potter release. And we held hands…and ate out of the same popcorn tub…and raised the armrest between our seats so that we could hold hands easier..and we talked. This weekend He was BACK. Yea team. Yea ME. Then we cooked dinner together and talked and watched the sun sink into the horizon. There wasn’t any fireworks. Nothing exceptional happened, at least not to the more casual observer. If you look closely though, I am calmer. I am more comfortable in my skin and he is smiling still today. AND IT’S MONDAY! Rules are made to be broken. Mondays don’t have to suck after all (and neither do Saturdays and Sundays). We have wasted a lot of weekends being distant and alone. I want more weekends. I want them now.

I Want a House Elf

When Himself became involuntarily unemployed, my housekeeper went the way of triple soy frappacinos at *$s. I have never, even at the best of times, been what passes for a careful housekeeper. I like clean. I am not particularly bothered by messy. We kept a pretty good balance between living well and being complete slobs. I always thought a perfectly kept house was a sure sign of an inactive intellect. Without help on the cleaning side, the slovenly side has won the day.

So, the house is a pit. The garage is beyond belief. If I am in the home office when the Big One hits, look for me under two overfilled bookcases, three computer towers, half a dozen mother boards, and the used paper recycle box. Nah. You won’t find me.

Himself and I are both pack rats. It is true. I don’t have to squint too hard to see the health department picking their way through carefully defined paths to find the 100-year-old recluses who have become prisoners of their own hoarding. Yup. Could be us.

I save china, craft supplies, craft/sewing/quilting/knitting/woodworking magazines and power tools. He saves used computers, cables, chassis, sound cards, travel books, and anything he thinks I might wish I had saved some day. Did I mention cookbooks? and turkeys and dolls?

So, my mother died in February. A few months earlier my sister and I liberated her from the assisted living facility in Phoenix. We also went through her piles-o-stuff trying to be reasonably responsibe about what would have meaning to whom. The story about that trip could fill a years’ journal, but the short version for these purposes is that I brought home 8 rubbermaid crates–big ones mind you–chock full of quilting fabric, pieces, partially finished quilts, and quilts in every conceivable state of  completion. It seemed neccessary at the time. And I was depressed.

Depression does strange things to people. Some know they are depressed because they feel blue or eat too much or don’t eat at all–I do that too. What I don’t do is clean house. I see what is happening and I go to bed or go to work or go shopping for more stuff I don’t need. 63 t-shits is about 55 too many…and don’t get me started on tank tops.

So I have a filthy house with lots of junk in it that needs to be purged. (10 pounds less GSD fur though.) I’d love to have the HGTV chick show up with her crew—all except the cameras, please. And now I am not so depressed. I am getting better and the thought of cleaning this mess up makes me want to go back to bed or leave for work—at the office.

How do you go about learning to do something as unnatural as getting rid of perfectly good stuff? I mean I bellieve all the hype–the clutter is weighing you down and all that. I just don’t know where to start.

I have a plan. It is not very carefully thought out but it goes something like this. I have the names of several people who clean house for a living–side bar–my former housekeeper was sweet and I loved her but when she was done, I still needed a housekeeper–I am going to call and ask them if they are good at getting rid of other people’s junk. I am going to ask them to change their names to Helen for the day and teach me how to pitch stuff into piles and then pitch the piles into the goodwill bin. The following week we can worry about the cleaning part. Will that work? Do you think they will sign a non-disclosure agreement?

Then I’ll have to tie Himself to a fence post until the refuse is safely away. Otherwise, I’ll find it at the back of a closet, probably with the House Elf’s clothes.

I See London I See France…

So what is with the underwear people?  I have three granddaughters and I cannot find a pair of solid white cotton briefs to save  my life—not to mention a 5-pack of all white panties. Everything from snowflakes to Bratz girls are emblazoned on underdrawers and I cannot pay someone for white, good-for-your-coochie, easily washed and bleached, comfortable, plain old panties. Wassup with that? And while I am in a snit…what 5-year-old NEEDS bikini anything?

Calming down now…sort of. It’s been a pretty fair week for me. The job is okay. I got a nice raise and a nicer review. It feels good to be affirmed. I am not too accomplished at the self affirming stuff so I look forward to getting my grade card–well, mostly I look forward to getting my grade card/paycheck/reaffirmation. When given too much time to think about it, I act like the principal just called me in.
I work in a place where the fruit of my labor depends more than a little on the participation of people who stand to make a whole lot more out of the transaction than I do. They get a share–a commission–in addition to their bi-weekly stipend. Sometimes, I get a thank you…more times, not so much. You’ld think they would take more interest. Enough. Blogging about work is bad juju.

I am seeing my shrink again. I snail mailed my blog to her–because she asked. Maybe if she reads my blog, she will either decide I am just fine, thank you very much, or too sick to be left on the streets. Either way, the bill might go down. Nah. I have to get on an even keel pretty fast. I want a housekeeper more than I want a cute, tiny, shrunken head.

It is interesting to note that the system programmer effect continues to apply to my life. Because I have a safety valve (read shrink appointment), Himself is on wonderfully good behavior. The communication is indirect (he is male, after all) and subject to multiple interpretations, but we have watched a chick flick together, gone out to dinner (What! Out?), he vacuumed 10 pounds of German shepherd undercoat off the rugs (without being asked), AND he ditched school early two Saturdays in a row. I believe he thinks I talk about him.

Our acquaintance had his surgery Thursday. Friday we went to dinner and ran into a mutual friend who broadly announced, “D—- is coming home in a few days, everything went well, they got it all, isn’t it great?” I bit down so hard on my tongue I think I drew blood. Himself reached over and patted my leg.

If you aren’t in the club you just don’t get it. D—– isn’t just fine. He probably will never be just fine again. In fact, he is alive and maybe cancerless for the nonce–it’s too soon to talk about cancer-free. What I guarantee: he is not is fine. What’s more, he doesn’t even know yet how fine he is not.

I was up very early this morning. The alarm hadn’t sounded and wouldn’t for a couple of hours, so I curled up on the sofa with Harry Potter and a cup of coffee. I finished the book and the coffee at about the same time, went back to the bedroom to pop my handful of pills, dress for the day, and brush teeth and hair. There, spreadeagled in the bed, lay Himself, naked as the day he backed into the world (if somewhat larger) and sound asleep. Exercising all my voyeuristic tendencies, I stood and watched his chest rise and fall, noticed how his toes turn out to second position as he sleeps, and how the echo of the scalpel slash mars his belly from here to there. I  love this man. He is a treasure beyond price.

As he slept, I stroked his thigh, all muscle-hard from playing soccer and running first to third on a single, and wondered what dreams my touch conjured. I wondered if it was my imagination that the shorter leg stirred ever so slightly. Do nerve bundles ever mend?  Does it just need more time?

You know, the wishful thinking isn’t for me. He is the one who sees hands, lips, tongues, and toys inadequate. I just want to be touched and loved. I want to know he wants me whether the parts work properly or not. I guess I want a grade card–an acknowledgement–that even if the sex is different and maybe not 100% for either of us, the marriage is platimum.

Did I mention I am not so good at the self-affirming stuff? And why can’t a girl get white panties anymore?

The High Price of Sanity

I am spending money I don’t have to talk about problems I cannot solve, I am looking for solutions in the one place there are no solutions. This is not my gig. I am sad and frustrated. I may even be depressed over the situation I find myself in. But I can no more change the situation than I can fly to the moon in Jerry’s Cessna.

I like Coleen. I like being with her and talking with her and I like that she is smart and funny and real. I like that she cares what I am going to do that is fun this week–except that I have no flipping idea what fun is any more. I am going to go get wet at 5:30 in the morning. I am going to go to work, where it is not bad, even though I’d rather be going back to bed. I am going to the dentist on Wednesday where Mike will take one look at my gums and tell me I need to find a way to handle the stress or he will have to send me to the periodontist too. Some time during the day I will work on the two projects coming due and I will interact with people who vacillate between inept and belligerent. Then I will go home and try to figure out the honest, loving way to tell my husband (yet again) that he needs to just SNAP OUT OF IT!

“Snap out of it” won’t work any better this week than it has in four years. I miss him. I miss seeing that smile and hearing that growly voice. I want to know what hurts most so I can kiss it first and then I want to kiss away every hurt that ever caused him pause. And I can’t. It’s not my gig. It’s not my depression. It’s not my cancer. It is not in my control. Hell, I can’t even tell myself to snap out of it and make it stick.

Hey, Universe, I want my husband back. If I can’t have him whole, I’ll take him willing to be alive. Heal him. Heal him and send a few million dollars, too, so we can just go on cruises and act like the vacation never ends. He’s really good at vacation.

If My Mother Calls…

This morning, after weighing in at the 7 a.m. weght watcher’s meeting (down another 1/2 pound–yea!), I hied myself to the neighborhood Wally-World to partake of the most recent J.K.Rawling offering on the alter of Hogwarts. Yes, I am Pottie… Potterie… Potted… bePotted. I read the damned books and I love them. No apology, no reservation, good is just GOOD.

There is an unwritten law that forbids going into Wal-Mart  for one item and exiting promptly after locating and purchasing same. Saving a dollar on a book cost me the price of three tank tops, a black dress, two pair of shoes, and two yards of denim—in addition to the book. (For which I also got a free bookmark and Slytherins bracelet.) Everything was, of course, on clearance.

But I do digress from the title and point of this missive into the great wherever. I saw a wonderful rack of tee-shirts all emblazoned with slogans in varying degrees of  bad taste. “Nothing has been the same since the house fell on my sister” caught my eye and made me laugh out loud. I NEED that. The graphic of a young girl with a length of lumber behind her back and a devilish grin as she faces a prostrate male child read, “Does not play well with others.”  hmmmm. The one I wanted to buy and will probably return for said, “If my mother calls, I’m not here.”

I waited for ten years for my mother to call. She died on February 15th. She still hadn’t called. If she calls now…well, taking the message could prove awkward.

The Highway to the Sun

In Glacier National Park there is a stretch of road they call the Highway to the Sun. People actually ride bikes up 6,000 vertical feet just for the pleasure of coasting hell-bent-for-election down the same hairpin turns they struggled all day to climb. I’ll bet there are more than a few who have made the trek multiple times. I am amazed: First; that anyone actually can ride a bike up a mountain like that, and second, that anyone would want to. Guess Lance Armstrong won’t be recruiting me anytime soon.

For Christmas this year, Himself gifted me with a wonderful 21 speed mountain bike–bright red–with a helmet to match. I have ridden it once. My neighborhood hasn’t got fifty yards of flat space within two miles. I decided to take my new wheels on a jaunt around the block–maybe a mile and a half. The downhill part went okay. Coming up the street that parallels our street (with a canyon between) I had to stop for a cardio break every twenty yards. It took me forty-five minute to get back up that hill and part of the time I was pushing the bike. I don’t need 21 speeds. I have plenty of slow to carry the world.

Life has stayed pretty calm this week. I may just be on good behavior having come so close to really embarassing myself last week. Sometimes I watch documentaries like the one about the Highway to the Sun and think about the journey that is my life. There are peaks and valleys in my life. There are roads that wind back on themselves, mostly uphill and other treks that go through heavy underbrush of emotion and angst. Downhill runs either scare the piss out of me or leave me laughing breathlessly. Every once in awhile I come upon a wonderful vista that seems to stretch endlessly toward the horizon. In that vista the grass is green, deer leap and run, and blue skies are frosted with 7-minute clouds. The vista days make all the valleys fade from memory.

Tonight, I ripped a toilet out of the front bathroom. Well, I had a little help from the Crazy Norweigian who discovered that a cigarette lighter will vanquish over-zealously applied silicon caulk. He actually did the final ripping while the little fish (grandgirl variety) and I went for a swim. Then I put the new pot in the appropriate hole and explained the intricacies of modern plumbing to a nearly 5-year old grandgirl. She had to have the first flush. She didn’t have to have the first pee, but the flush was claimed. My granddaughter thinks I can do anything. Today, she might be right.

Shur Happy It’s Thursday

It’s Thursday evening. This morning I swam for an hour and got to work with a headache that threatened to blow through the top of the building. My head was on the second floor and the building is six stories high. I had a headache. It is still prowling around in the background, drat.

Colleen told me to notice what works. Hmmm for the moment the world is in a pretty calm orbit. I threw my fit and the dust really hasn’t quite settled yet. I am probably tiptoeing around because throwing a fit makes me feel somehow manipulative. Maybe manipulative is easier to stomach that being totally out of control. Then out of my sheepishness for getting my way through shit hemmorrage, I turn into Snow White in the forest singing to strange little men. Well, Himself isn’t little but he sure is messy.

What works? How will I know? I asked him to tell me. Uh huh. Right.

The weeks go faster the older I get. I was twenty five a week or two ago and now I am 58 and looking at 25 to 30 more years–maybe a few more or less. In any event, I am not middle aged. I am well into the second half and maybe the third quarter. Wishing hours or days away makes me crazy. There isn’t that much time to waste. It’s not like long summer days used to be. There is an urgency about living well and living right. I suffer fools even less gladly than I used to and I have never been too tolerant. I am not content with boredom or people wasting my time. All of a sudden my time is MY life. Imposing on it uninvited and for no good purpose meets with great disdain. And sometimes it pisses me off.

That tiny head belongs to me?

Tonight, I saw Colleen again. It’s been two years since I dragged Himself kicking and screaming into the den of all things verbal. When one goes to the shrink, one must talk. Silent communion gets expensive at $135 an hour.

Two years ago I wanted someone to tell him I meant what I said. I wanted someone to convince him that HE is enough; He is alive; and because he lives, I can live too. Today I went to have someone tell me that, if he decides not to come out of his cancer cave, it’s okay for me to live anyway, I also went to have someone tell me how. Maybe how will come next week.

Today we caught up with the details. Mother died. Sister is acting out her own pain and I may be the target–maybe she’s right–maybe I am too sensitive. Maybe I have enough pain without sharing hers. Grandgirls are growing up and are wonderous treasures, Saving gramma’s life is a heavy job for a pair of 5-year olds and a 3-year old. It would be a heavy job for a grown up—but they are so very good at it. I am not in early Alzheimer’s; I am certified. I am not bad; I am not guilty; I have forgotten how to have fun and I am too much in my head. I love my husband and want to beat the living shit out of him for being so consumately MALE. I’ll go back next week.

For this week, I will do my homework. I’ll notice what works and what doesn’t and I’ll try to do what works more often than I do the other. Next Tuesday I will report. I wonder how the report will go. I wonder if the glimmer of hope I feel right now will brighten into a light to read by.

When working in the computer world, there is a phenomenon I call the system programmer effect–or sometimes geek’s law. Whatever malfunction or system anomoly you complain about disappears as soon as your resident geek stands behind your chair. I think making the appointment to see Colleen invoked geek’s law. I have been more at peace just having called. I started something. I started something just to help me. Himself has respondend. I don’t know if the response is to the shit-hemmorage that preceded the appointment making or if it is a corrollary to geek’s law: “There will soon be a professional present so I had better start looking a little less like I need one too.”

I saw something this evening I have never seen Himself do before. He sent an e-mail (and copied me) to an acquaintance who has just been diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer. Himself welcomed the acquaintance to “the club no one wants to join” and offered to talk with him about whatever comes next. The Sphinx has not only spoken but got up out of the desert to do it. I am amazed. I am impressed. God, I love this man. I called the wife of said acquaintance and introduced myself, gave her my phone numbers and told her I will meet her for coffee, hand holding, whatever, whenever. I don’t know if either he or she will take up the offers. I Don’t know if it is even a good thing for me to share our story. So far it hasn’t got a happy ending. But at least so far it hasn’t got an ending at all. That in itself is pretty awesome.

Such a short posting to hold the word “I” more than 43 times! That does not include the “me”s. Writing into cyberville is indeed a narcissistic act. I don’t know whether to be pleased or sad that no one has read or commented. It is fine. This is a note to self. Self, listen up. Sentences should begin with a variety of words. People will think that you believe Copernicus was wrong after all.

Falling off the Dark Side

Cancer took a lot out of me and I have never had the disease. Don’t misunderstand. I’d really prefer to be the one to joust with the big C than to have Himself faced daily with, first, being mortal, and second, losing his virility. Losing his job, too, just cut the man off at the knees. Universe, heal him, please? At least knock off the add ins.

Whining is something I loathe. I understand it thoroughly, practice it intermittently, and wallow in it occassionally. The past week or so has been an occassion. The stars have aligned themselves to promote my self examination–again. Again–I am coming up inadquate.

I want my husband back. None of my cajoloing, wheedling, begging, or gentle concern gets as much response as an all out shit-fit. There may be a reason manipulation starts with M-A-N. Shit-fit it is. Bring it on. So I have been in that confrontational funk that follows telling the truth as I see it for the twenty-tenth time with no longer any real hope or expectation that anything will change or change for long. Are you listening, Einstein?  I don’t expect different results. I am not insane. THIS get attention. Like a recalcitrant child’s naughty behavior, it may not yield the attention I want but it does get attention. Sometimes any result beats none at all.

Although I am talking to myself here, I need to recount what is in my world. What is includes a man I love to the core of my being. When he cries I taste the salt. I bleed from his wounds. That sounds much more romantic than healthy but, for us, it has worked the better part of thirty years. He is a quiet man. Some say he is a silent man. In the past four years I ‘d have to agree he has lived somewhere in his own pain and has let few people in (optomistic estimate). I think he is in emotional solitary confinement. But before that, his eyes would shine when I entered the room. I could feel his smile wrapping around me from fifty yards away. People would look at him and then to the door to confirm the thought–she’s here. That kind of obvious devotion is a heavy drug. A girl grows used to it. A girl grows used to the man she loves setting the room aglow with a smile just for her. A girl grows confident knowing that there is only one person this man wants to get naked with. This girl grew to depend on that drug.

Prostate cancer is a no-fun disease. Early in our research into his options for treatment, a doctor (A DOCTOR!) said that if you have to get cancer this is the one you want. It grows slowly and there are several ways to get rid of it: surgery, raditation, radiation and surgery, surgery and radiation. Anyway he described it involved cutting or glowing in the dark.

The immediate effects of a radical prostatectomy are no fun. For three weeks, you pee through aquarium tubing running from your bladder, through your penis, into an industrial ziplock bag strapped to your leg.  There is nothing to tell you when the bag gets too full. A couple of Guinness will fill ‘er right up. Yup, the bag can get too full.

When the nurse finally cuts the tube and pulls out the catheter, your urine has formed crystals around the the bulb. The cut tube lets the air out of the bulb but the crystals don’t deflate. With a mighty yank, Nursey hauls the shards up your erethra. Although you have dreamed of peeing on your own for three solid weeks, all of a sudden it doesn’t seem like such a good idea. You are not sure you will ever want to pee again.

Then the fun really begins; you’re gonna pee whether you want to or not. The sphincter that controls the urine flow from the bladder was removed with your prostate. Now you have to retrain another sphincter to hold back your urine. Your sphincter may resist retraining wholeheartedly. That means diapers, boys and girls: Grown-up, show-under-your-clothes, how-many-do-I-need, where-do-I-put-them, bought in bulk, Depends.

The incision runs from your navel to your pubis and if several spots don’t heal just right, four years later your gut looks like you have three belly buttons lined up in a column pointing at a penis that has shrunk to the flaccid size of your most hideous teen-aged nightmares. And it never gets hard on its own again.

And those are just the results you can see.

The other result is that you are alive. You have no cancer–today. Your PSA is nearly zero. Every three months for a year you break into a cold sweat waiting to find out that your PSA is still barely detectable. Then you get to revisit the PSA gremlins every six months for two years—then every year. After five years the urologist will say you are cancer free. But in your head, you will never be cancer free again. Its marks are on your body, on your heart, and on your relationships. Cancer leaves deep scars.

So thats the diatribe. The facts for me seem to be that I am also a reminder that the pecker doesn’t peck. Mr. Happy ain’t so very happy. The man I love defines himself more by his erection than I would have ever believed. His doesn’t so he isn’t and because he is frustrated, sad, disappointed, impotent, he forgets to touch me. He forgets that I am the one thing in the world that spreads his grin halfway across the county.

If for one moment I believed that he did not love me, I would know exactly what to do. I KNOW otherwise. Not just because he says so; he shows me in a hundred ways even though I’d rather be touched. Because I know and believe he loves me and I love him absolutely, I haven’t a flipping clue how to help. I have told him. I have shown him. I have mothered him. I have vamped him. I have let him alone. Now, I am yelling at him, threatening him, crying, and whining. I have also made an appointment with my shrink.

It is clear to me that I cannot heal my husband, inside  or out. Himself has to find a way to be alive since it seems he is going to live. I mean to find a way to live with him and I would prefer not to have a shit-fit every six weeks.

It is morning in America…Awhile ago some pundit wrote that fully 75% of American families are dysfunction. I thought my family was the only one that didn’t function like Ozzie and Harriet. We definitely weren’t the Cleavers. Even the soap operas of my youth had loving mothers and present fathers framing their melodrama of unlikely circumstances and over-long kisses, usually with the wrong partner.

So, on a bright and glorious Sunday morning, Himself lies snoring in the next room and I have hemmed a ball gown, started the week’s laundry, and sit down to feel sorry for myself yet again.

I want to put some fun back into dysfunctional.