The above is a picture of my newest work-in-progress, and a way of knitting I learned just tonight: toe-up on two circs. If you don’t knit, this is all Greek to you, but if you do knit, this is so cool! I feel really smart for learning it. I came home and showed it to Rick, full of enthusiasm. “Look! I made a toe! It’s a toe! A toe that I made!”
He examined it and pronounced “You could make nut sacks like this.”
I looked at him for a beat before replying “You realize that’s going on the blog.”
Rick and I were drunkenly filling out brackets for March Madness last night. He picks based on the actual team’s record, I go on instinct with a strong preference for funny mascot names and with a bias for Pittsburgh teams. When we were finished, we compared brackets and discovered that although we had some wild discrepancies as far as who was getting to the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight, both of us had Pitt and UConn going to the final with Pitt winning the whole thing. I proposed that since we were projecting the same winner, we make our bet based on who had correctly predicted the most winners overall (I am up one at this point, because I said Morehead was going to get in and they did). Rick agreed, then we had the following conversation:
Rick: So is this for money? We’re betting money?
Julie: No. If you win, I’ll be your sex slave.
Rick: I like that.
Julie: What do I get if I win?
Rick: You’ll be my sex slave.
Julie: That doesn’t seem quite right.
Rick (with a leer): Oh, it’s right.
I was rudely awakened at 5 AM this morning by a flick to the head. When I asked Rick why in the hell he had done that (after a brief interval of crying, because seriously, one minute I was dreaming and there was a little conflict happening in my dream anyway, and then the next I was flicked in the head, and my sleepy emotional state couldn’t cope), he said “In the dark, I thought your head was the cat.”
Wait, what?
Apparently, I had been talking in my sleep and said “Hey!” pretty loudly. This woke Rick up, and in the darkness, he misinterpreted and thought the dark shape on the pillow was the cat, sitting on my head. Because my head, it is cat-shaped. And because Rick doesn’t like for Freddie to be on the bed, he flicked. This is generally a surefire way to get the cat off the bed. Except when he’s not actually flicking the cat, he’s flicking my head. That’s just a surefire way to make both of us miserable for the next few minutes.
Tonight when he gets home, I will draw visual aids to make sure this never happens again.
Rick: “Hey, did you see that commercial? The one where you can put any picture on a stamp? Probably they don’t mean any photo, probably they wouldn’t let you use a picture of an erect penis, but still, you could have a stamp with your kitties on it or something.”
Julie: “How much have you had to drink?”
Hey, you know what I got for my birthday? (Aside from that really cool Monday Night Football Steelers win over the Ravens in overtime that happened after midnight and thus technically on my birthday.) A cold! Actually, Rick got the cold that Monday when we were watching the game, and after I spent all day in the car with him driving back on my actual birthday, I got it too. Thanks, honey! He got me other, less germy things too, so I won’t complain too much. Also, the entire world and everybody on the internet has it, so it was probably inevitable.
Today is the first day I sort of feel like myself. I am very very sleepy, but I can think more or less coherently, and I have a drive to do things for the first time in a week and a half. This morning I actually emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it with the Leaning Tower of Dirty Dishes that had been sitting in the sink. And tonight I’m going to the laundromat, but that is more out of desperation for clean socks and underwear instead of a desire to be cleanly. I even have a desire to drink alcohol again, which must mean I am getting better. Because for a whole week all I wanted was juice. Lots and lots and lots of juice. I revert to a five year old when I am sick, and I rocked the Juicy Juice like a preschooler at snacktime.
Things happened in that dim time while I was on my sickbed, but all I can really remember is that Rick tried to teach Freddie his right from his left in an attempt “to evolve the species.” Rick also started making toys for Freddie out of pipe cleaners, which Freddie loves above everything on earth (including Humpy) and which invariably end up underneath the fridge. Freddie then moves through the stages of grief, piteously crying at the refrigerator, digging under it in denial of the fact that his paws won’t reach the toys, and finally attacks the refrigerator in rage, pounding on its door. He never does get to the acceptance phase, though. And Rick, cruel cat father, laughs at him and won’t retrieve the toys, claiming that Freddie plays with them by the fridge on purpose because it’s more fun to play in the “danger zone.” For someone who swears Freddie is stupid, I think Rick ascribes way too much intellect to the cat.
(Because that sounds nicer than: How I know Rick is well-trained.)
We were talking about Macbeth as we walked to the subway last night, and both agreed that it felt really long in the second act in spite of stellar acting. Rick then said “You know that really long scene between Macduff and Malcolm? They could have used a dramaturg there.”
Thank you, yes, they could have. This is the second only to last weekend when I showed Rick a scarf that I was knitting in a chevron pattern (which basically makes the scarf edge wavy instead of straight), and not realizing that it was designed that way, he commented “It’s really nice, but you’re going to have to block the hell out of that, aren’t you?”
He got some for that.
Sitting in traffic on the way home from Manhattan Friday night, I extended one finger to within an inch of Rick’s leg and said “Not touching you.” He quickly moved his leg so that I was touching him. I pulled my finger back and looked out the window on my side of the car, waiting for the red light to change.
The next thing I know, there was a flash of orange light on my left side and I looked over to see my boyfriend had ignited a lighter by my left leg. I jumped away from it, at least as much I was able to with a seatbelt on. “Not burning you,” he said sweetly.
“Dude, what the fuck?” I asked. “Why would you do that?”
“I’m just taking it to the next level,” he replied.
Many things flashed through my head, but in the end I said the only thing I could: “I am so blogging this.”
Becky’s gone. She went quickly in the end, which was a blessing, but if I’m quiet for the next couple of days (as I may or may not be), you’ll know why.
Send good thoughts for Rick and his brother Bill and their mother. To lose two of the four siblings in less than a year, it’s something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. And her kids, who are still very young (her oldest will be 21 next week), could also use some good thoughts.
I’ve lost track of time in the last two days. I’ve spent some time at the hospital with Becky. Rick has spent much more time there. We go, come back, Rick goes again, comes back…between the repeat visits to the hospital and the shorter days here (the sun goes down a full 15 minutes earlier in Western Massachusetts than it does in Brooklyn, I swear), there is a lot of sleep at odd hours. I sent Rick to bed at about 7:30 because he was sleeping in a chair and almost fell out of it.
It’s a lot of ups and downs here. Rick was told early Wednesday morning that she probably wouldn’t make it. A few hours later, and the supervisory doctor said no, they would keep her on antibiotics and observe her for a while. Yesterday afternoon, she seemed to be failing again. This morning, Rick went to the hospital with Becky’s husband to put Becky on “comfort measures,” which basically means to take her off the machines and everything, and the doctor says that the x-ray is a little better (it ain’t great, by any means – she’s got abscesses in her lungs in addition to the pneumonia), and everyone should just wait until Monday morning when her attending is back on the floor. When we went this afternoon, her hands were cold again and her vitals were down again as well. I can see the roller-coaster taking its toll on Rick and everyone else, and I can feel how easy it is to fall into thinking that warmer hands or slightly improved vital signs are a sign of improvement, because that’s all we’ve got. But although Rick and I talk to her when we’re in the room with her, and although I did her hair last night with some ribbons their mom sent over, it doesn’t really feel like Becky’s in the room with us.
We just keep putting one foot in front of the other…
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