The best-laid plans...

"All right. Are we doing this?" I ask, hopping up from my yoga mat.

"Now?" replies David, looking up from his laptop. He's in the midst of programming a new script app.

"Now," I say, cracking my knuckles.

"Now, it is." He shoots me a broad grin. 

I race him up the stairs.

My clothes are off before I reach the bedroom. I turn on David's bedside lamp. Whoa! Too much light! It is WAY too bright in the room. I hunt through my bedside table, discarding items. 

A pencil.

Ear plugs.

Arnica cream.

A colourful chiffon chemise!

I drape the black and floral chemise over the bedside lamp. Now the room is too dark.

I turn on MY bedside lamp. I open my bedside table again. I find a chiffon scarf in blues and greens... that is... too small. Bright light beams from its edges. 

Where are my...? My eyes light on the wardrobe by the window. Atop the wardrobe is a basket holding my belts and scarves. YES! I flourish a pink and yellow floral square scarf - I could easily be mistaken for a 1950s magician... 

This scarf covers the full lamp shade, but its fabric is nearly transparent. The room is, once again, too bright. I artfully drape the first scarf over top of the pink and yellow scarf. Perfect.

David enters the room, doing his best impersonation of a naked Kramer. 

"Just a sec," I say, grabbing my scarf basket and making my way to the...

Tripping over a pillow at the foot of the bed, I land, arm first, against the wardrobe. Foot first too, apparently, because my big toe is now yelling at me.

"GAH!" I yell.

"Are you okay?" David asks.

"Yeah, yeah..." I limp towards the wardrobe, depositing the basket back on top. I look down to my arm where there is an abundance of scraped skin.

"What did you do?"

"I tripped and ran into the wardrobe." 

David shoots me a concerned glance, cataloguing my person.

"No blood!" I happily report. I start pulling the scraped skin off my forearm.

"Is it broken?"

Tentatively, I circle my wrist. Sore, but not unbearable. "I don't think so." I'm now pulling off more skin near my elbow. How many parts of my body made contact with the wardrobe?

"Do you need an ice pack?"

I start to shake my head, but then test out my wrist again. "Yeah, maybe." Admitting to an injury is not my strong suit. "Yes please."

"I've got this!" David runs down the stairs.

"Don't FALL!" I yell. 

The laughter starts even before he leaves the room. By the time he gets back, I am having a full-blown giggle attack.  As I velcro the cold pack to my wrist, my giggles turn into snorts.   

"We can recover from this," says David.

"Can we, though?"

"Yes," he says. "We are doing this."

"We'd better put some music on then. I'm gonna need a distraction."

"Music! Yes! Great idea!!" He swipes on his phone screen. Smooth jazz... with a LOT of saxophone.

"Too much sax," we both say at the same time, before both dissolving into laughter once more.

"We could always just put Love Over Gold on," I suggest. "No! Wait! Jackie Gleason's Music for Lovers!"

David's eyebrows tell me that I'm crazy.

"No, I'm sure that it can work! We can pretend that we're Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr from An Affair to Remember."

The next few minutes are spent doing terrible impersonations of Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.

David leans in for a kiss. 

"Wait! Wait! No passionate kissing! I still have that canker sore!" I push on the canker with my tongue, distending my bottom lip, indicating said canker's location.

"Noted."

My lips twitch. "Maybe tonight isn't..."

"ARGH!" David grabs his leg.

"What? What is it?"

"Charlie horse! Charlie horse!" David massages his calf.

I bite my lips, but can't stop a snort from escaping. "Do you need me to..."

"No. Nope. I'm good."  By this time, he's laughing again.

Our laughter crescendos. We're both wiping at our eyes before we taper off into calming breaths. Our eyes meet. 

And I don't know if it was the Jackie Gleason playlist, or the mood lighting, but we regrouped.

Twenty-four and 10/12 years of marriage - never a dull moment.

And that's what you get from 41 years of sticking fingers in your eyes

In 1981, while conjugating the verb être in French class - my vision blurred. I blinked... blinked again. I then stuck the tips of my middle fingers into my eyes, discovering an abundance of eye guck loitering beneath my eye balls.  

rheum noun

ˈrüm 

: a watery discharge from the mucous membranes especially of the eyes or nose

The path towards my eye guck removal was navigated logically. I had an issue with eye guck. I had fully-functioning fingers that could swipe the lengths of my lower eyelids, gathering said eye guck. This eye guck removal became the standard practice for the elimination of blurred vision. I didn't think anything of it. 

For 41 years. 

Until February of 2023.

While applying stage makeup for a production of Into the Woods, I was taken aback by the discovery of bags under my eyes. Seen in the sun-like brightness of the vanity bulbs at my makeup table, my undereye area suddenly resembled an aged basset hound. (My perspective. David and Rissa keep telling me I'm nuts.)

Problem is, I'm a fixator. I fixate. 

In 2007, when my high school reunion was on the horizon, I became utterly focused on my forehead lines. Four horizontal lines, each a centimeter apart, turning my 38-year-old forehead into a octogenarian's. 

How did I cultivate these forehead lines? In my early 20s, I did a production of A Comedy of Errors... in mask. And I was told by the director that I needed to raise my eyebrows while I smiled, or the audience wasn't going to see my eyes properly. For my art... nay, for my very presentation in life as a whole, I immediately eschewed my natural smile and introduced this eyebrow-raised, lunatic, manga-esque rictus, so that my eyes could be seen. Only to realize, 15 years later, as I contemplated the afore-mentioned high school reunion, that my forehead resembled the bottom four lines on a music staff. 

(I blame you, Mike Brunet. For wanting to see my eyes when I was wearing that fucking mask. And no, don't try to weasel out of your culpability by telling me that I didn't have to smile like that when I wasn't onstage, wearing a mask. Don't fucking attempt logic with me, you rat bastard.)

I, like every other 38-year-old woman attending a high school reunion, wanted to look like I was still 18, only better. But those fucking forehead lines were the only thing I could see. I couldn't un-see them. 

I saved up and had a round of Botox treatment. This treatment completely erased the top two lines on my forehead. The top part of my forehead was marble-like in its smooth perfection. The bottom? Still had the fucking lines. And I was certain that everyone would see those lines. Because there ain't nothing like a high-school reunion to put you back in the head space of a paranoid teenager.

All this to say that a precedent for physical fixation had been set. So, when I noticed my less-than-perfect undereye area this year, and realized that I had spent 41 years of my life actively pulling my undereye skin down to collect eye guck, I went into a vanity tailspin. In the jet wash of this tailspin came the YouTube makeup tutorials, caffeine-infused under eye creams, cold spoons, lymphatic drainage...

blepharoplasty noun 

bleph·​a·​ro·​plas·​ty ˈble-fə-rō-ˌpla-stē 

: plastic surgery on the eyelid especially to remove fatty or excess tissue

I suggested that Rissa and David could take a wee syringe and suck the undereye fat out for me, but they totally shut me down. Not a problem. I am confident that I can squirrel away the $6,000 to get the procedure done in ten years.

For now, I'm practicing undereye exercises. I'm calling it Ocular Casing Micro Tightening. I do teeny, tiny, rapid squints several times a day. I may still have bags, but they will become muscular bags. My goal is to be able to bounce quarters off those suckers.

The Cursed Roof

Driiiiiiiiip.

Driiiiiiiiip.

Driiiiiiiiip.

Fuck.

Nope. No, I am not going to look. I don't need to look, because that problem has been solved. The leaky roof above of our kitchen ceiling has been fixed. 

IT. 

HAS. 

BEEN. 

FIXED.

Driiiiiiiiip.

Driiiiiiiiip.

Driiiiiiiiip.

For the love of... I square my shoulders and stand up. I walk over to the kitchen. The light fixture is filling with water... again.

Cue Heather, mixing her first Dirty Martini. At 10:42 a.m. On the last Saturday in April. 

In 2018, we'd been led to believe that our entire roof had been replaced. This was erroneous. The roofer we'd hired had not, in fact, replaced any of it. He had re-shingled it. We had to call him back six times to deal with our leaky eaves. SIX. 

But... GOOD NEWS!... after only six return trips, it was fixed.

HOORAH!!

Cut to Dec 2022, when our kitchen ceiling begins to leak...into our light fixtures. Through Google, I discover that not only is this phenomenon an electrocution hazard, but a house fire hazard. Who knew? 

This is when I start making Martinis. Because coping with alcohol is a great coping mechanism. (It's NOT, kids.)  

Yes, we could have gone back to the original roofer, but given his track record, we didn't trust his work product.  And frankly, winding up in small claims court with this roofing shyster seemed like it would wind up costing us more money. We get a quote from another roofer, and it will be $13,000.00 to replace the back part of the roof. 

THIRTEEN. 

THOUSAND. 

DOLLARS. 

For 400 square feet of roof.  We shop around, get recommendations and find another roofer. 

And they attempt a repair, with the proviso that if it doesn't work, they will give us a deal on a more extensive roof repair. So, of course, it doesn't work, and they have to do that roof repair, which appears to work... until today... when it doesn't. And we are looking at another complete roof repair.

Which is when I start making Dirty Martinis. Again.

Because that's what I have the ingredients for. I have vodka. I have olives. I have olive juice. (Up until 30 minutes ago, I had a 1/2 oz. of vermouth.) 

It might seem odd that someone with Meniere's Disease (where you're supposed to limit your sodium intake to avoid the worst of the symptoms that invariably have you falling to the ground when your vestibular system ceases to function) might choose to OD on the sodium found in olives and olive brine... but when the alternative is to run the airport with your Visa and your passport and go somewhere, ANYWHERE else in the world where one doesn't have to contemplate a leaky roof and the thousands of dollars to repair it....

Two Dirty Martinis in, I'm no longer as worried, and strangely, the prospect of tearing down our kitchen ceiling to discover from whence the leak originates, seems no longer so daunting.

* written while under the influence of 2, no... 3... dirty martinis. 

Addendum:

After the initial leaks, we tore down the ceiling. 

During a downpour we discovered where the water was coming in.

 

However, after that downpour, regular rainy days haven't created a single drip. 

With me in the kitchen on the phone looking at all the places the ceiling had leaked during the deluge, our roofer came back and spent an HOUR AND FIVE MINUTES trying to recreate the leak with a hose and couldn't do it. What sort of crazy-ass weather system has to hit us to make it rain inside? 

What is today's coping cocktail??

Irregular Heather

WARNING: Colourful language in this post.

Fact: My internal thermostat is fucked. I've dealt with hot flashes since the age of 36. But the night sweats? The truly disgusting, sleep-annihilating, life-altering, make-you-feel-like-you-have-malaria... 

Wait. 

Maybe it's not night sweats. Maybe it's malaria.

It's January. In Canada. There are no mosquitos.

Maybe it's COVID... again. 

Cue rapid test.

Not COVID.

I haven't slept through the night - in a really, really... REALLY long time. What's the part of your brain that's responsible for logic? The frontal lobe? My frontal lobe is fucking exhausted.

Seven years ago, I thought I'd kicked them - the night sweats. I exercise regularly. I cut out caffeine. I don't have more than one drink at a time. Or, if I do, at least I KNOW to expect the night sweats and I weigh the pleasure from a second spiced whiskey against the waking multiple times during the night drowning in my own secretions. 

But I have NOT been enjoying extra spiced whiskeys. Number 1, because of the night sweats, but also because, Number 2, Health Canada has now told us that we can only have 2 drinks a week or we will all die of cancer.

What kind of cancer? How much of it? How long will it take to get here? And when it's here, how much shorter will I live because of it? What are we talking? Will it take weeks off my life? Years? How many years?

Cue breathing into a paper bag.

Suffice to say that I haven't been drinking a lot. Which is why I'm so confused as to why now, after years of having thought I'd figured this shit out, havoc has been wreaked upon my body... yet again. Or is this what's supposed to be happening? Maybe seven years ago, when the night sweats got bad, and I figured out how to put them on the back burner (HAH!), that was just the dress rehearsal and at the age of 54 and a half, I have reached opening night for EGG-FREE AND INSANE: THE SCREAMOPERA.

With my mis-firing hormones, I get chilled in the evening, lips almost blue, so I throw on a sweater and woolen work socks. But I know, I know, that when I go to bed that I will be too hot if I wear all that shit, and yet...? I can't go naked. Because if I go naked - like I used to be able to do...

Cue montage of Heather basking in her naked sleeping glory...

Cut back to:

I'll wake up in the middle of the night, having thrown off the blankets because I am the temperature of the sun and all that night sweat... SWEAT... will then dry on my body at which point hypothermia kicks in and my teeth literally begin to chatter, and I have woken David up with all the noise. 

So, every night before bed, I strip down to a t-shirt and panties.  But then my feet are blocks of fucking ice and I pull the woolen work socks back on. And I burrow under our flannel sheets, down-alternative duvet and woven blanket topper. My feet, now encased in woolen work socks, are deliciously toasty. Our cats, Steve and Lola immediately bookend my feet, adding supplementary warmth. All is well with the world.

Until 1:37 a.m. when my feet are on fire and my sternum and scalp are soaked and I want to vomit from the heat. I don't, because cleaning up vomit at 1:37 a.m. is not a thing anyone wants to be doing. So I tear off the woolen work socks and jettison the covers, panic-panting as my heart races and both cats,  look at me like I've completely lost it.

Within three minutes, I'm no longer hysterical as my body temperature plummets. I wring out my t-shirt and crawl back under the covers. Except my feet are cold again. So I grab the socks and put them back on.  And go back to sleep. Until 3:53 a.m. when the cycle repeats itself.

This morning, while I research HRT and cancer risks, I'm enjoying a spiced whiskey. 

Ill-timed Aphasia

warning: BIG time bad words in this post.

Aphasia noun
apha·​sia | \ ə-ˈfā-zh(ē-)ə 

    medical : loss or impairment of the power to use or comprehend words

    etymology:  mid 19th century: from Greek, from aphatos ‘speechless’

***

Rissa and I stand in the checkout line at a Craft/Antiques Barn. Neither crafts nor antiques will be purchased. Today it's all about fudge. For David. On account of the fact that it's his first day teaching at a new school.

"I'm going to come back in November," I say.

"Oh?" asks Rissa.

"Yeah, they'll have lots of Christmas merch out then."

Around the expansive perimeter of the main floor there are high shelves showcasing a crap-tonne of Christmas inventory. All of it just waiting for Halloween to pass so that the entire barn can get its Christmas glow-up.

"Although," I say, wrinkling my nose at a 2-foot Santa in Buffalo plaid. "A lot of their stuff is cunt... cunt... cunt... cunnnnnnnt... cunnnnnnnnnnnt..."

Rissa's eyes widen at the first 'cunt.' By the fifth, she's holding her sides and almost falling over.

I'm not sure whether this is a migraine-induced bout of aphasia or if I can now add Tourette's Syndrome to my list of disabilities.

I take a breath. And another. No need to panic. 

"I... was... trying..." I close my mouth and take a breath in through my nose and release it slowly from my mouth. "To say... COUNTRY... Christmas," I explain.

"Ahhhhhh... that checks out."

I glance around. There are a few senior women in line, but none super close to us.

"Did I get louder with each one?"

"You didn't NOT get louder..."

"Can I help you?" asks the cashier.

"I'd like some fu... fu... fu..."

"We'd like some fudge, please," says Rissa.

I'm sweating WHERE now?

I'm at the kitchen table playing word games on my laptop. I have my Google timer set for 6.5 minutes of cool down. Cool down time is vital to surviving a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout. Otherwise, you're still sweating IN the shower. And you continue to sweat AFTER you've finished the shower. Freshly cleansed skin sweat somehow feels much, much worse. 

So here I am, typety-typing as I play Words With Friends, and I notice that my forearms - the UNDERSIDE of my forearms - are SLIDING on the table. Actually sliding. From all the sweat. 🤢

This here? Is why I choose not to exercise with other people. Inevitably, I look like ex-fighter pilot Ted Stryker when my heart rate climbs.  And no one wants to be in proximity to that gal.

Robert Hayes as Ted Stryker in Airplane!

Now that I've cooled down for 6.5 minutes, my forearms are no longer slidey... they're sticky.  

From all the dried sweat. 

Upon this realization, I spend way too much time pushing my forearms against the table and then then listening in horrified fascination as they SQUELLLLLLLLLCH when I unpeel them from the table.

I could use my forearms to lift cat hair from the living room ottoman!!! Which now, of course I have to try...

Surreptitious OCD

David, Rissa and I are in a charming French restaurant in Baldwin Village. 

Red walls. Black baseboards. Brilliant yellow door. Art everywhere.

We choose to sit inside. You know, because of the art. Instead of facing the wall displaying the larger artwork, my vista will be the opposite wall; the unexpected opportunity to gaze upon a gallery of many smaller pieces makes me very happy.

Every piece on the wall is askew. 

I'm doing my best to give my entire focus to the conversation; however, my peripherals are on high alert.

Do the restaurateurs not see that the vintage Asian paintings nearest to the door are both OFF?!? Beside a larger piece - also at least an 1/8 of an inch NOT straight? Next to three paintings arranged over top of each other - all OFF. And the next four paintings directly across from me...

"Ma," says Rissa. "You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," I say, forcing my eyes to my club soda and lime. 

But my peripherals...They know. 

Rissa's talking about work. David's talking about...

The upper right corner of an 8x10 painting is angled towards the ceiling...

"Ma??"

"Huh?"

"Are you having a stroke?"

"No," I say, wishing for a pocket level. I smile broadly at them, my regular response whenever they ask this frequent question. Both sides of my mouth lift reassuringly.

"The artwork... It's... ahhhhhhhh... it's a bit... off."

Rissa takes a look. David turns around.

"Ooooh, yeah," says Rissa. "Wow." She tilts her head this way and that, scanning the entire wall. "I think the larger painting might be straight. Wait. No. I think it's off too."

I swallow. My fingers clutch the edge of the table.

Rissa glances at me. "You want to fix them all, don't you?"

"DON'T YOU?!?"

"No."

David snorts. "Do not do it."

"I'm not going to," I huff.  "I will disregard it."

David and Rissa share a glance before rolling their eyes.

"I will." And I do.

Until my delicious chicken salad is finished and I and no longer have food to distract me. Whereupon, I ever-so-casually rise from the table and saunter over to the first pieces of art on the wall.

"Heather!" David whisper-chastises.

"I'm just admiring them from closer," I say, leaning in to look at the signature, my hand resting delicately against the frame. My back blocks the waiter's view. I adjust the frame.

Rissa smirks. "Uh-huh..."

I move to the next painting, and the next.

"She's actually being quite subtle," begins Rissa.

SLAM! My thigh bangs into the corner of the table. The very pointy corner. Bruising. There will be much bruising. My head spins around to see if the waiter is paying attention. He isn't. I quickly straighten the two painting behind the table. Can I get to the next ones?

"That artist is very famous," calls the cook from behind the kitchen counter. 

Busted. 

"Oh?" I ask. I haven't even been looking at the actual artwork. All I can focus on is the frames. The cook tells me the artist's name, which I immediately forget. 

I calmly walk back to our table.

"Until you whacked the table, you were very inconspicuous," says Rissa.

"Right?!? I can be sneaky when I need to... Oh, for the love of..." In my haste to straighten the last two paintings, I overcorrected one of them.

"Serves you right," says David.

"If I were a super hero, I would be The Leveller."

"You mean instead of being able to fly or have super-human strength, you would straighten artwork?"

"And furniture. It would be multi-purpose. And I could do it just with my mind."

David Malki's WONDERMARK

I am patenting this RIGHT now...

WARNING: SO MUCH FEMALE STUFF

In the summer of 1997, David held my hand as I sat at the triage desk of the local hospital. He looked concerned. I looked like I was going to pass out. The nurse looked wiser than Nicodemus from the Secret of NIMH.

"Are you a new couple?" she asked, after hearing my symptoms.

"Relatively," I replied in a haze of fever and abdominal agony.

"Pee after sex."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I am 99.9% sure that you have a UTI."

"I have a, what now?"

"A urinary tract infection. Sometimes ejaculate can get into the urethra and you get a UTI. Pee after sex."

"Like right after?"

"Right after."

Now, the last thing this woman wanted to do after she'd had a wham-bam-thank-you-man session with her new live-in boyfriend was leave the bed to go pee. When my mind had been blown - along with other parts of my body - I wanted to snuggle. I didn't want to swing my legs over the edge of the bed and totter in the bathroom and then pee away misplaced ejaculate. 

Twenty-five years later? I still don't want to. Nothing wipes the blush of satisfaction away more than having to prophylactically (not be confused with practically) pee. 

But I do it, because my urethra is a prissy little... princess, and I've had enough UTIs over the years to know not to gamble with these particular odds. 

Still though. The post-coital-paranoia that now has me leaping out of bed to flush out my lady bits continues to put a damper on snuggle time.

That's why I will patent the VAGI-VAC. A mini vacuum that one can use while still in bed and just apply to the... area... to eliminate any evasive ejaculate from the UT area. Possibly a keyboard vacuum they're meant to suck up crumbs and dust - maybe they could have a stronger motor... Or... is there such a thing as a Mini Wet-Vac? And instead of sounding like a vacuum, it will sound like wind in the autumn trees, or maybe there can be some sort of musical accompaniment - perhaps Floyd's Comfortably Numb? Oooh, maybe I can just retrofit one of the vaginal sex pumps - there won't be a soundtrack, but then you wouldn't have to worry about cords or batteries!  Lower tech.

I am excited to share this idea with David.

"But then won't you have to leave the bed to clean the vacuum?" he asks. "And how would you even clean it?"

"Both good questions. One - yes, of course you would have to leave the bed to eventually clean the vacuum, but after snuggling. Long after snuggling. And two - the VAGI-VAC would have a special easy-to-clean suction repository that you could just clean it in the bathroom sink."

He looks skeptical and a little grossed out. Note to self: I definitely have to find a new word for "repository."

"Dude, you are not the only one who becomes nearly comatose after a good orgasm. I too, should be able to melt into the bed and be all blissed out. And you know there have been more than a few times when you've had to half walk/half carry me to the bathroom after sex thereby ruining your own bliss time."

He can't help but nod his head. 

I have several shopping tabs open now, I'm sure that I can MacGyver something by the end of the week.

It appears I've been catfished...

 "You've what?" asks Rissa, slightly laggy on her end of the video call. "Who have you been talking to? What did you do?"

"Nothing," I say. "I think it's just my age."

"It's what? What do you mean it's your age?"

"I think you just get to a certain age and..."

"You think there are people specifically targeting* 50-something women? What did they do? Did you cancel your credit cards?!?"

"Huh?" It takes me a second. "No! Oh, no, I haven't been catfished like that."

"In what way have you been catfished?"

"In the way that I am slowly becoming a catfish."

Now Rissa pauses. And blinks. 

"I am developing jowls." I indicate my jaw line. 

She blinks again. "How does this having anything..."

"I have the jowls and now there are more whiskers here." I point to the corners of my mouth. "And here." I point to my bottom lip line.

"I can see no whiskers, Ma."

"They are there. I can feel them." My tongue touches each side of my mouth, back and forth, feeling for the whiskers. I lick my bottom lip line. I can still feel them, even though I spent a good 15 minutes plucking those suckers earlier in the day.

"There are no visible whiskers, Ma."

"That's because they're mostly white and I pluck them. But they're there, and if I let them grow, between the whiskers and the slight jowls - total catfish."

"You are ridiculous."

"That's as may be, but I'm either going to evolve into a catfish or have a very stylized Fu Mancu moustache."

            *Side note - why does targeting only have one 't' before the 'ing,' but getting has two??

Pardon me while I SHE-HULK out

This week (and it's only Monday - it's only MONDAY?!?), I find myself wondering what caused She-Hulk's transformation from regular woman-about-town, to big green rage monster. 

'Cause I've had three instances today where I found myself fighting to maintain my equilibrium between rationality and absolutely losing my shit.

This morning, I'm moving from the bathroom to the master bedroom, the vacuum's power cord got trapped under the bathroom door, and I find myself lifting the vacuum into the air, prepping to throw it down the stairs. 

I don't. 

But for a good 10 seconds I am sure as shit contemplating it.

Later, I am typing and my fingers are nowhere close to the 'asdf' or 'jkl;' home keys. I have to try nine times to finish a single sentence. I am milliseconds from launching the keyboard through the back window.

And just now, as we begin prepping dinner? I find a rogue hair - my rogue hair - trapped between the fingers on my vegetable-holding-hand as I'm chopping cucumbers for our salad. I visualize myself heaving the chef's knife across the room.

David hears me growling.

"You okay?"

"How old was She-Hulk when she started transforming?"

"I'm not sure."

"By any chance was she in menopause?!?"

His eyes widen slightly.

"Uhhhhh..."

"Never mind," I say. The rage has ebbed. I reach into the refrigerator to take the cherry tomatoes out of the crisper drawer. They fall out of their container. I wonder how heavy the refrigerator is and what the repairs to the second floor will cost when I propel it through the ceiling. I count to 10. Twice. Then I rinse off the tomatoes in the sink.

"I think it might have been menopause," I say, drying off the tomatoes.

"Why do you think that?"

"Because I'm seriously considering heaving appliances because of dropped cherry fucking tomatoes and there was a fucking hair on my hand when I was cutting the fucking cucumber and I wanted to throw the fucking cucumber and the fucking knife..."

David bites his lip.

"What?!?"

"I probably shouldn't even go there. But right now it seems like you might be suffering from a hair trigger..."

"Now?" I ask. "You're choosing to make bad puns... NOW!?!"

"Right, right," he says, glancing around to make sure that the chef's knife is out of my range. 

"I've been so good," I say. "This kind of shit hasn't happened in years." 

When I was younger, maybe 14 years ago, and the rage monster came to visit, I took some herbal pills to keep me from committing felonies. But lately, even during night sweats and hot flashes, I have been way less ragey, and more just... frustrated and apt to burst into heart-wrenching sobs over the injustices of the hormonal impact on the female form. I haven't been this mood-swingy over next-to-nothing in more than a decade.

Inspiration strikes. "What if this is a side effect of COVID?" I ask. 

"Runh?"

"What if there are other middle-aged women who have..." (I make air quotes) "Recovered from COVID, but are now no longer rational beings? Could that be a thing?"

"Possibly?" David responds, obviously trying to keep me calm.

"How do I find all the menopausal women who have Long COVID? The ones who now, weeks or even  months later, are still getting headaches and chills and are as exhausted as fuck, but who are also suffering from bouts of violent mood swings?"

"Ummmm..."

"Why are you backing away from me?"

"I'm not." 

3:30 a.m. Pounce Parade

"Prrrrrrowl?"

"Prrrrrrrowwl??" 

"Prrrrrrrrrowwwl??"

My eyes open.

"Prrrrrrowl?"

Why am I even surprised? Lola had been staring at the bottom of the refrigerator when we went to bed.

"Prrrrrrrrrrrowl?"

That's the sound of a cat with its mouth full of mouse.

Bat. 

Bat-Bat. 

Bat-Bat-Bat-Bat. 

And that is the sound of a cat playing with a mouse. On our bedroom carpet. At 3:30 a.m. I look down beside the bed. She's still batting at      And it just ran under the closet curtain.

Crap. Live mouse. Time to distract a cat. I leave the bed.

"Good girl Lola. Good girl. You are a such a great predator. We are very proud of you, but now it is time to    "

Mouse runs out from under the curtain.

Bat-Bat-Bat-Bat.

Mouse runs under the blanket box. Lola seems stymied. 

I crawl back into bed. 

Please, stay under the blanket box little guy. Wait it out. Hide there and then you can... eventually escape to the basement. I am delusional. It will probably die of heart failure, under that blanket box then two days from now, I will move the blanket box and give it a proper burial.

Bat-Bat. 

Bat-Bat-Bat-Bat. 

Crap. I'm going to have to    

"Prrrrrrrrowl?" Pah.

And that is the sound of a cat spitting out a mouse. I peer over the side of the bed. Even in the middle-of-the-night light I can see Lola gesturing to me. "See? See what I did for you here? I got it! You no longer have to worry about that mouse. I have kept you all safe... from that mouse."

"Good cat Lola." I keep my voice modulated in a sing-song-proud-of-your-accomplishment tone. "I know. I know you are a cat and this in your DNA. I recognize that this is what you do, but you are a serial killer, dude." Easily a dozen mice have been killed in this very room. Because why would she kill them in the living room? Or the kitchen? She has to SHOW us that she's killed them. In the middle of the night. 

I look down at the poor wee little booger. Lola continues to gesture proudly. "Yeah, yeah... You're brilliant."

I grab a tissue. I make the same walk that I do every few weeks down the stairs, through the kitchen to the back door and I deposit the mouse onto the deck. I don't do mouse burials until morning. "Sorry, buddy. I'm sure you were a lovely rodent."

Lola has followed me downstairs. "Prrrrrrrrrowl?"

"If I started making you write their eulogies would it be any sort of a deterrent?"

"Prrrrrrowl."

"No, yeah... you're right. You're a cat."

David cracks an eye open when I crawl back into bed. "Huh? What?"

"Go back to sleep. Lola gave us another mouse."

"Another one?" 

"Yep." And now all I can see is Lola, piloting a fighter plane with dozen rodents stenciled on the side.

"Prrrrrrrrrowl?"

Oh for the love of   

Do not approach the potentially rabid raccoon, do not approach the potentially rabid raccoon, do not approach the potentially rabid raccoon

Raccoons are mostly nocturnal. So if you're seeing one during the day, something is up. Ie: you might have trapped its kits in your eaves by sealing up the holes in your roof (Bring me your furry...) or... it might possibly be... rabid.

And yet... when a raccoon appears on my deck, my immediate impulse will always be to offer it afternoon tea.

"Hey there buddy! How long do you want your Earl Grey steeped?"

The raccoon today staggered across my deck and then sat on my patio sofa. I opened the door to say hello and the sucker didn't even move. Just looked at me and sort of wheezed. Not normal raccoon behaviour. At least not on our deck. It's not like I go out and feed all the random raccoons every night. They're supposed to be suspicious of humans. Unless... this particular wheezy raccoon is being fed by other people on their decks. 

While keeping one eye focused on the furry masked bandit, I google.

                     

It had staggered onto the deck. It was seemingly oblivious to my offers of Earl Grey tea, which, while polite, had been done in my public speaking voice. It had wandered erratically over the furniture. I wasn't close enough to see whether it had discharge from its eyes or mouth. Its entire body was wet and matted. But then again, it had been raining all morning. The wheezing might be high-pitched vocalization. At present, it didn't seem to be mutilating itself. It was trying to eat a large twig on the sofa, which it could choose to use for self harm.

Our cats, Steve and Lola are very interested in the visiting varmint. Usually, when there's a strange cat in the back yard, they absolutely lose their shit, and start attacking each other, but apparently they know that raccoons aren't cats, so they're just enjoying their viewing of Potentially Rabid Raccoon with Twig.

Even if it is rabid, it's probably hungry, so I offer it some gluten-free Breton crackers. With flax seeds, because it'll probably like the flax oil, for its... mangy, wet coat. 

I toss the crackers towards the raccoon - who is completely oblivious and more than a little intent about holding onto its twig. It's mouth is opening and closing. Is it eating the twig? No, still making the wheezy noise and not chewing, really. It is more spasmodically grimacing... annnnnnnd... it has fallen sideways. This is totally a rabid raccoon.

The raccoon slides off the sofa and staggers to the door and looks at me and the cats. It then staggers off the deck towards the driveway. Steve, Lola and I all run to the side door. The raccoon now staggers across the road. So much staggering. Once it's across the road, I open the door and watch it offer a matinee performance of Stagger and Fall.

First thing that comes up when I google who to call in our town, is a suggestion that I contact Natural Resources Canada. Seriously? I can't imagine that they have a branch close enough to deal with this in a timely manner. None of the Ontario Wildlife Rescues are close by either.

According to the provincial website they say to contact the... local police force or OPP (in case of emergency). This is not an emergency... yet. When kids start walking home from school it could turn into something emergency-like. In my head, I now have an animated raccoon attacking random children. 

The animal control line is busy. I call the non-emergency police line. They want my details in case they need to contact me. And my birth date. Why they need my birth date has me wondering how many times they get prank calls about potentially rabid animals and how quickly a prank caller can come up with a mature sounding birthdate. 

In the midst of my extrapolation, Police Services say that they'll call it in and a car will be around soon. Might be time to put on a bra. I poke my head out the door again. Rocky Raccoon is now making its way towards another neighbour's house. I will grab popcorn late afternoon showing of Stagger and Fall: The Sequel

Pizza, popcorn and falling up the stairs

I clutch the handrail, lifting one foot in front of the other. David follows me, really close - my personal border collie - ensuring that I don't fall. 

"I'm good," I say. I'd give a sloshy thumbs-up, but my left hand is presently holding the other wall. My feet mostly feel the stair treads beneath them. I'm only a little pukey.

I'm not generally a moron, but I overdid it. Again. 53 frickin' years old, I should know better.

I had pepperoni pizza for dinner, and then, I had popcorn with butter salt on it.

NOT drunk. Disabled.

It's almost four years since my diagnosis with Secondary Endolymphatic Hydrops... which is kinda sorta Meniere's Disease affecting your ear's vestibular system, though technically it's not Meniere's Disease because that is Primary Endolymph... and I can already see your eyes glazing over. Medical, medical medical... blah, blah, blah...

I tip over. I'm on medication to stop me from tipping over. 

Most of the time it works, but every now and again, like if I have pepperoni pizza and popcorn on the same night, my ears are in the middle of the North Atlantic and my extremities either stop working or I look like I'm having mini seizures. Salt is my Kryptonite.

But... Popcorn.

So it is no shock to find myself staggering into the bathroom with David and Rissa close behind. I plunk down on the toilet, desperately needing to pee because we've discovered the protocol for an attack is getting me to drink three or four glasses of water along with an extra pill to equalize the fluid in my... medical blah, blah, blah. Eye roll.

"Oh man, I'm so sorry," I say. "Really stinky pee." 

"Thank you!" says Rissa, brushing her teeth.

"Noted," says David, around his own toothbrush.

They've both turned their heads away.

"So stinky," I say, flushing the toilet as I'm sitting. "Must be the vitamins. Vitamin B can really mess with urine." 

A side effect of looking like you're drunk is that your body also thinks you're drunk. My brain is foggy. It's going to be at least a half hour before I'm fully coherent. 

I have a horrible thought. What's if it's not the vitamins making my pee smell like that? What if it's not the pee? What if it's just me? What if this is what I smell like now? What if this emanates from ME?

"David," I yell. He's already left the bathroom.

"Yes?" he yells back.

"David you may have to smell my vagina."

"No," he says. "I don't think that I do. I promised a lot of things when I married you, but that was not one of them."

"What if this were less smelling and more just breathing near it?"

"Nope."

He may not have my front, but he always has my back.

Harrison Ford in my peripherals

As I'm taking off my coat and boots, Harrison Ford is in my peripherals. He's wearing a suit. He's on an airplane.

"Are you guys watching Air Force One?" I ask, stashing my wet boots next to the heating vent. 

"We are!" says David.

This proves that if there was ever a Name That Movie game show, I could rock the shit out of it.  "I can name that movie in one frame, Tom!"

We've decided to shake it up a bit and take turns picking movies. Up until recently, it was a crunchy-granola process where we would hem and haw and ask what we were all feeling 'in the mood' for and we'd find something middle of the road and all sit back and enjoy something that we had probably all seen before.  (Ocean's 11 and Red have frequent viewings in our home.) 

This week, we've moved to a movie dictatorship.  One of us decides which movie we're watching and the other two of us? Watch it. It's been working pretty well.  We've seen award winning comedies and dramas and rip-your-heart-out-of-your-chest sentimental films. All great. Until Air Force One.  This 1997 box office hit had us dumbfounded at the ham-fisted characters, dialogue and implausibility.  It totally misses kissing the corner of camp, so you can't even revel in its true awfulness.

"I just feel bad for Glenn Close," says Rissa. "This dialogue is utter crap."

"I don't remember it being this bad," says David. "I'm so sorry."

"I'm just waiting until we get to 'Get off my plane!' " I say.

"When is that? Can we just fast forward to that?" asks Rissa.

And yet, in spite of our supreme dissatisfaction with the movie, we find ourselves compelled to finish it - our eyebrows touching the bridges of our noses - as we react to generally great actors (Paul Guilfoyle, Wendy Crewson, William H. Macy, Dean Stockwell, Bill Smitrovich, Philip Baker Hall) slog their way through a script that whacks you over the head. Every... Frickin'... Sentence. Gary Oldman, miraculously, manages to escape mostly unscathed as the Russian dissident and Harrison Ford doesn't have to say a lot of lines, and rocks out on the actiony bits, plus? He's Harrison Ford. Our favourite character? Future Postmaster General - played by Messiri Freeman who, we reckon, is the smartest person on the plane.

"She is a QUEEN," says Rissa. "I want more of her please."

When the Future Postmaster General parachutes to safety - we all applaud.

Rissa's take on it: Only upon reflection can you truly identify it as a terrible, terrible mistake.

ps. Seconds after the credits begin to roll, we cleanse our movie palates and put on the last 15 minutes of Airplane! (Which avoids the dated racist, sexist parts of THAT script.)

What do you call it?

We're sitting at the kitchen table. Rissa is watching Sex and the City on her phone while she enjoys her cinnamon raisin toast. It's the episode where Charlotte and Trey are having a frank discussion about their nonexistent sex life. 

After all this time, I can't really remember all the plot points of the series very well, but something strikes me. "Hey," I say. "Has Trey never done anything just for Charlotte? I mean, FOR her?  Sure, he can't get it up around her, but there are a whole lot of other options. Did he not buy toys? There are so many toys. Mutual masturbation? What about cunnilingus?"

Rissa looks up at me from her toast. "Do you know you are literally the only person who uses that word?"

"What? Cunnilingus?" That cannot be an accurate statement. Plenty of people say cunnilingus.

"I have never heard that word except when you say it," says Rissa.

"What do you call it?" Maybe there's new-fangled slang that I don't know about because I'm over 50.

Rissa's eyebrows are horrified. "I don't want to call it anything with my mother."

I'm perplexed. "But why? Do you say going down on her? South of Front Street? Lady BJs?

"Okay, that may actually be worse," she says. She gets up from the table and grabs her plate. "This is what happens when I eat breakfast near you. It's like on The Big Bang Theory when Sheldon says 'intercourse' or 'coitus.' " She shudders.

"Henceforth," I proclaim. "I shall only call it Lady BJs."

"Please don't."

I am now THAT old.

This is the week. It's the week that I bought a high-end bird feeder so that I can watch the birds from my kitchen window and I discovered that, from the side, I have jowls. 

And then, as I headed to Shoppers Drug Mart to replace my bottle of Women 50+ multi-vitamins, I realized that my level of frugality rivals that of an octogenarian. 

Recently, when I had to stay at a small pharmacy for 15 minutes after my flu shot,  I was pretty psyched to discover Canada Style at Home magazine's Christmas issue - for $6.99! It's been easily a decade since I've bought a magazine. It's a blast from the past to my early days as a stay-at-home mom when I would open a magazine and be completely transported. 

Christmas is my jam. I'm that person who, in the dead of summer, if I find a Christmas store? Frickin' ECSTATIC! If I had the start up funds to RUN a Christmas store? Done. And not one of those crappy add-your-name-to-an-ornament stores. I'm talking high end - Patience Brewster Krinkles, Kurt Adler Nutcrackers, glass-ornaments-shipped-from-Germany shit. If you want to see me in a near-constant state of animated joy, catch me anywhere between November 12 and when David and Rissa go back to school after the holiday break. 

So, my trip to Shoppers for the vitamins, that literally list me as being middle aged, is just that little bit easier because I figure that I can grab maybe four or five holiday magazines and distribute them around my home so that if I ever feel the need? I can get a quick hit of Holiday Heroin. This will be great and economical, because I'd recently been on Amazon sourcing retro decorating coffee table books which were upwards of $35 a piece. Which, I'm sure that we can all agree, is too much.

I look at the magazine rack and I'm very happy to discover that there are tonnes of Christmas magazines. Hooray!! I will just grab up... this one... to start... and... 

When, may I ask, did magazines start costing $15.99? Or $17.99? I go from magazine to magazine and the cheapest Christmas magazine on the rack was $12.99. For a magazine?!? I mean, it's just a magazine right? Printed on paper? From a large organization like Better Homes and Gardens? Or House Beautiful or Oprah? Oprah's was $17.99. What the actual fuck? It's a MAGAZINE!!!

And then I start to doubt myself. Had I completely confabulated the $6.99 price from before?? From when I was waiting to see if I'd go into anaphylaxis from my flu shot? I don't think so, because I distinctly remember thinking that $6.99 was a perfectly reasonable price to pay for that magazine. 

And then I recognize that this it one of those 'unmet expectations' moments. Where you have an idea in your head and then reality doesn't match up with it and you freak the fuck out. So, I breathe in. And breathe out. It's all good. They're double or almost triple the anticipated price, but that's okay, because I'll just buy... two... magazines then.

Except I can't. I just can't spend almost THIRTEEN DOLLARS on a magazine! I have the magazine in my fully-sanitized hands - because we're still in the midst of a PANDEMIC -  and then I put it back and then I pick it up again and replace it. I just can't!

I look like a crazy person for the entire 8 minute walk back home. Gesticulating wildly - talking to myself. "Grumble, grumble, grumble... THIRTEEN DOLLARS?!? Grumble, grumble, grumble SEVENTEEN-NINETY-NINE?!?!?" 

So I get back home and I hop onto Amazon. My logic has me believing that spending $35+ on a hardcover coffee table book is now more than reasonable. (It's not.) I start sourcing coffee table books, because if I'm spending a ridiculous amount of money - it's at least going to be a hardcovered something. But all I can find are Country Christmas Crafts and Southern Living Christmas and Christmas Baking. I don't want to do crafts, nor do I want to decorate my plantation!! And I sure as shit do not need any more holiday baking recipes. And now I can't even find that Mid-Century Christmas book that had me all fired up to get the magazines in the first place! 

But then I get a brainwave! Maybe there are discounted magazines somewhere from the clearing houses!! 

Nope. 

Not for anything related to Christmas decorating. 2021's issues are still all $12.99 or more. Except for Style at Home, which seems to be the only... Except for STYLE AT HOME!! I google their publisher TVA Publications, and am thrilled to discover, that they offer back issues of actual, physical, hold-it-in-your-hand, magazines!!! I also discover that Style at Home does holiday issues for both November and December!! At a crazy discount from the original cover price! Seriously, the lowest priced issues are from Nov and Dec of 2018 and they are only $1.80 per issue!!! I put 7 holiday issues (one from 2021 at the completely reasonable full price of $6.99 and then two from 2020, 2019 and 2018) into my online basket. HAH! I have foiled the magazine robber barons and their exorbitant prices!!! And then I look at the shipping. It will cost $17.07. 🤦

But you know what? Even with that shipping charge? Totally worth it. I will get 7 magazines shipped to my door in 2 days' time and if I average out the cost of everything?  $7.83 a magazine. And that I am more than willing to pay. And I will be able to peruse those festive magazines as I watch the birds from my kitchen window while doing my jowl-reducing exercises.

***

ps.  Did you know that they make 'decorative' books? Which aren't books at all - they just look like books? You can stack them so that they make you look either well-travelled or festive.  Guess how much they cost in Canada? Go ahead. Take a stab.  $26.77 FOR A FAKE BOOK. You can't open these books. They have no pictures of Christmas or pictures of anything at all in them!! Plus, I just looked at the dimensions, and they're not even coffee table book size. They are 7.5" x 9.25" And they charge $26.77 for a single one. You'd have to spend over $100.00 to achieve the look below!!

The brain, she don't work like she used to...

As I'm writing, I know exactly the word I want to use. It means getting up, but in a sexy, Regency romance kind of way. Sort of like unbending, something akin to having a sexy lap. The word itself? Not a fucking clue.

Any of you know what the word is? Wordhippo did not immediately find it for me. And now, I'm on the cusp of a brain aneurysm trying to find the word as it hides in my hippocampus. Yes, I can make a pun, referencing the thesaurus site that I use, but I can't remember the fucking word.

I used to have a brain that held onto the minutiae of almost every topic. Who was the female lead in Arrival? Amy Adams! Have I seen the movie? NO! But I remember her face from the movie trailers. 

UNFOLDED! I think the word might be unfolded. "Sebastian unfolded his legs and rose." Maybe. Maybe not. It's on the tip of my brain and I can neither confirm nor deny that that is the word I've been searching for.

I have incorrectly purchased shampoo. Three times. THREE. With my crazy-ass curly, brittle hair, I infrequently use shampoo. I'm a big proponent of rinsing the crap out of my scalp and then slathering on the conditioner. As a result, I go through conditioner like... hotcakes? (That phrase isn't even appropriate for this particularly analogy. If my brain was working properly, I would know the exact analogy for my conditioner usage.) 

I recently began to slather on my conditioner and I realized that it was NOT conditioner, but rather shampoo. I went to look at my XL bottle of conditioner and it wasn't conditioner, it was, in fact, shampoo. I'd just purchased the wrong bottle when I went to Shoppers. So I went back and bought the correct bottle of conditioner, except that when I got home, I had purchased the large bottle of shampoo - AGAIN. So I got a refund for the bottle and went to get the proper bottle and, turns out, I purchased ANOTHER bottle of shampoo, which I then had to immediately exchange for conditioner. This means two things: not only is my brain collapsing like a black hole, I have apparently lost my ability to read.

I was searching for my red Pixie pants a while back. The new red pixie pants that I had bought from Old Navy to replace the red Pixie pants that were old enough to look a little faded and worn at the seams. I remember wearing the new pants. I knew I had bought them, but had no clue what had happened to them. The only thing I could think of was that the new red Pixie pants had wound up in a batch of to-be-donated clothes that had gone to charity. So I ordered another pair of red Pixie pants. 

On the day that the new red Pixie pants arrived, I was looking for something in the bathroom closet, and, lo and behold! At the back of the bathroom closet - which is deep, like we-have-pull-out-drawers into-the-eaves-to-utilize-all-the-space-in-the-closet deep - I find my original red Pixie pants. Not in the front. Behind baskets. In the back, back, back of the frickin' bathroom closet! How did they get there? Did I put them there? And if so, WHY?!? Are my family members trying to gaslight me?

There was another thing that makes me certain that I'm descending into early Alzheimer's and I. CAN'T. REMEMBER. WHAT. IT. IS!! But I do know that earlier today I had identified that other thing! Because I remember thinking, HOLY CRAP! Four things are a whole fucking lot! And yeah, I joke, and many other people joke about this, but when I've lost the plot... of my own existence? It scares the crap out of me. 

Also, I just started watching Young Wallander which has a Swedish actor (Adam Gustav Justus Pålsson) who looks remarkably like a taller version of another actor, a musical theatre actor, who also does TV and film. He played King George in the original cast of Hamilton. He's in Mindhunter. He was in the original cast of Spring Awakening and had guest spots on Glee - as Lea Michelle's potential boyfriend, I think?? He's in the new Matrix movie?!? All of which... I KNOW!! I remember all of these things! But I cannot remember the dude's name. And it has me balancing on the edge of madness.

So I just looked him up. It's Jonathan frickin' Groff. Sweet merciful Moses. 

Well, at least I'll be able to sleep tonight. And who knows? Tomorrow may well come and I might have forgotten all of this. Bright side!!

All caulk, all the time...

When we moved into our house 7 years ago, there wasn't a master bedroom closet. Oh, there had been a closet, but it'd been situated in the room such that it blocked all the light from one of the two existing windows. So we'd ripped out that illumination obliterating monstrosity. In its place...? There was nothing. Ergo, there was no way to hide things behind a door, or a curtain or even a frickin' blue tarp. That was when our entire family recognized that I had an affliction. 

As I lay on the floor sobbing, my arms and legs desperately trying to absorb any emotionally grounding properties from the carpet fibres, it became immediately apparent that visual chaos makes me crazy(er).

So it shouldn't have surprised me, that in similar circumstances, I lose all critical reasoning.

This past weekend, we emptied our basement/cellar/dungeon so that we could take a long, hard look at what needs to be done, should we ever want to sell the house. Our house was built over 150 years ago. There isn't a foundation per se. There's rubble, some concrete blocks, dirt and gravel on the... let's call it a floor. At one point, in several places, the floor used to be about a foot higher. Someone had dug down, maybe for added head room? And then they never repoured a basement floor. 

This is the before:

This is the after:

Seeing this empty version of the basement? Joy.

Seeing the deck, which now houses all the crap from within the basement? Panic attack.

I should have known. I should have known by now, that THIS👆? This breaks my brain. 

David was downstairs, raking gravel and I found myself immobilized in the middle of this, unable to start purging because there is too much of EVERYTHING and IT IS EVERYWHERE. We have easily, eight different caulking guns. EIGHT OF THEM. Because why? Because in our dungeon of a basement, things have never been properly organized and categorized, so we just kept buying shit. 

There might be only two people living in our house, but we had 10 paint trays. There were bins WITHOUT LIDS full of electrical bits and plumbing bits and painting and dry walling and hardware bits. There were small appliances (that give no indication from their exteriors what their purposes are), tossed in with random trim scraps and steel wool pads, next to work gloves and twine. There were cardboard boxes that had been left to mold and rot. 

And here I was, standing in the midst of these mis-matched, unlidded, chaotic boxes of crap, unable to reach for anything on account of the fact that I was hyper-fucking-ventilating. And though all that stuff had been down there for seven fucking years and it had literally not been touched since we had moved in (apart from tools and Christmas decorations which have been used at least once a year), I couldn't just toss everything, because why? Because I was paralyzed.  

David came out to throw some stuff into the dumpster.

"How's it going up here?" he asked.

I shook my head. I suspected that if I tried to speak, I'd just burst into tears. I hate doing that.

An instant of impatience crossed his face, before he looked around the deck. And then he looked back at me. Really looked at me. 

"Hey," he said. "Hey. It's okay."

I swallowed and shook my head again. "I can't. I washed the shelves because they're just shelves. But these..." I indicated the dozens of boxes and totes. "These... They... THEY. AREN'T. ORGANIZED!"

"I know," he said, walking slowly towards me. I must have looked like a rabid coyote.

My hands came up, warding him off. If he hugged me now I'd need to be medicated.

"I can't," I said. "I know that it's ludicrous! It's fucking ridiculous! There are people in the world who have problems that are real fucking problems and I should just shut the fuck up and start tossing shit! I know that. But there are boxes that have electrical and plumbing and hardware in them and I don't know what we need to keep and what should be thrown out... because I can see it ALL!! If it was one drawer that I had to sort, I could do that. Fuck, I would LOVE doing one drawer! I excel at sorting drawers!! But this..." I gesticulated wildly with my arms. "This... This is... EVERYTHING!! And I know that ALL the tools and hardware and painting and Christmas decorations are going to have to GO. BACK. DOWN. Into that fucking basement and, and, and... by throwing out this ONE FUCKING LAVA LAMP, it's not even going to make a dent in all of our shit!!" 

"It's okay," he said. "What we're going to do is, we're going to take a break and have some breakfast." He held up a hand to stop me from arguing. "We're going to go in and eat. And we're going to have mimosas with breakfast."

"Mimosas?" I asked.

"Ish. We've got white wine, orange juice and sparkling water. After we eat, we'll go out again and you're going to sort through these three small boxes." He indicated boxes that had solvents and stain in them. "Only these boxes. You're not going to look at any other boxes."

"I'm not?"

"No, you're not. Because it makes you crazy. And we know this. And me leaving you up here to deal with all of this on your own was a bad thing..."

"But I should be able to adult on shit like this..."

"Hey." He held my face in his hands and kissed me softly. "We both know that you become unhinged when confronted with visual chaos. We both know it, but we forget - until we wind up in a situation like this and you lose your ability to cope as a human." He kissed me again. "Okay?"

"Okay," I sniffled. 

When your spouse gets you? Really gets you? Life becomes a lot easier. David's brain exists in a state of near constant logic. He reminds me to press pause so that I can see the order amidst the chaos. My brain exists in a state of near constant emotion.  I remind him to press pause so that he can see human emotion amidst the logic. Thank the Gods that we found each other.

Like wet dog and old towels...

I come down this morning - all ready to bite into the meat of the day. Wait. That sounds revolting. All revved up and ready to go?? Bright eyed and bushy tailed? Better? Worse? Or just more like a lemur?

While heading into the kitchen to make myself some breakfast, I notice that we did not put the cover on our patio furniture last night. There were violent thunder storms and torrential downpours last night. The sofa cushions now look like toddlers who went into the pool in their diapers.

"Crap."

We'd been good all summer. Every night, we'd covered the sofa with extra outdoor fabric that I had fashioned into water-resistant origami, something more upscale than a blue tarp. 

"Why can't we just use the blue tarp?" David had asked.

My eyes had gone very wide - the result of a near stroke. My mouth had opened and closed - I was a big-mouthed bass, ripped from the depths of a fresh water lake.

He'd held up a calming hand. "It's okay. It's okay. We won't use a blue tarp. It's okay my love... Just out of curiosity though, did a blue tarp ever hurt you in anyway?" He had then ducked when I swung at him.

And now, all my well-laid plans have been completely rogered. And not in that "Hey-it's-Wednesday-night-and-the-kid-is-back-at-university" way.  

Standing at the back door, gazing upon the now-amphibious cushions, I drag my hand over my face. I could just ignore them. I could ignore them and my day can go on as originally scheduled. I'd exercise, write a couple of chapters, do some web design, read a play for the character discussion I'm having tonight...  sigh. 

They'll get all mildewy and smell like wet dog and old towels. I look at the sky. Not actively raining at present, but still very cloudy. However, this could all be moot if I check The Weather Network and it forecasts...  Light Rain. Four inch foam cushions cannot dry in light fucking rain. And you can't put foam in the dryer, because Google says that it will either melt or start a dryer fire - not that our massive cushions would even fit in our dryer. For the love of...

3 HOURS LATER...

The cushions, now denuded of their covers and extra ass-squooshing batting, stand on end, draining upon the outdoor wicker sofa. I squeeze the cushions every 10 minutes, forcefully lobbying the liquid to leave its water-logged haven. The batting has been placed in the dryer on delicate, twice for each piece of batting.

And now? Now, the sun is out. And, according to the Weather Network, will be for the rest of day. And although I may never be able to open my hands again from the repetitive strain of deep foam squeezing, and I had to dictate this post, I'm sure that my newfound hand strength will come in handy. My super power will be grabbing villains by their lycra suits and shaking them until they surrender. The authorities will have to help with releasing said villains from my claw-like grasp - but I think I have a solid starting point for a new, and certainly lucrative, career.