It was a beautiful sunny Sunday. The kitchen was brightly lit - we soaked up the Vitamin D. We were taking a break from our packing... David and I were enjoying fried eggs on toast and had called up to Rissa to come down for lunch. Eventually she came into the kitchen, grabbed a juice box and turned on the overhead lights.
David and I shared a look. The kitchen has 5 windows - each of them is 18 x 50 inches... It was a sunny day.
"Ummmm.... Riss?"
"Yes?"
"I'm thinking that maybe we don't need the lights on right now."
Rissa looked around. Looked out the windows. Looked at us. Her head slumped as she slowly rose. She slouched over to the light switch and flicked them off petulantly. "Fine. Fine. I'll just turn off the lights and drink my juice in the dark then." She made a show of searching for the juice box straw.
"Do you want to use my knife for your egg?" I held it out. "Can you see it? Careful... I mean, seeing as it's so dark.. Here you go..."
Rissa grabbed for it - deliberately failing several times. "No, I couldn't see it." Rissa denied vehemently. "I almost stabbed my eye out because it's so dark in here."
"I don't really have PMS do I?" I ask as we're driving home.
"Hmmmmm?" David queries.
"I'm more an MS kinda gal. That's when I lose it..." I toss him a look.
David's eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly, but I can still see it. How can he answer this? What WON'T drive me to have a volcanic emotional eruption? "Well..."
"It's not a trick question!!!" I bark. I take a couple of deep, cleansing breaths. "Sorry. Sorry."
"Frankly, when you're having PMS it's a good thing for me," he says.
"It is?"
"Yep. I always know that you're period is coming by how horny you get the week before. PMS is a perk week for me."
"It is?"
"Yep. You're insatiable." Then he tosses me a look. "The first couple of days of your period... you are..." He's thinking so hard about choosing the right words to use here... "You're... angrily fragile."
I roll that phrase around in my mind. Angrily Fragile. I guess that aptly describes my disproportionate response to emotional stimuli. And it's a lot better than calling me a psychotic she wolf - which is how I generally refer to myself during that time.
"Perk Week, huh?"
"Yep."
I waggle my eyebrows. "Well, hold onto you hat, because in another 10-18 days, you'll be getting another one."
I startled awake, feeling tears on my cheeks. I was crying? Why was I crying?
"It's okay... It's okay..."
It all came flooding back.
"Oh David... David I had the most wonderful dream!"
"You did? But if it was wonderful, why are you cyring?"
"Our new house had a split-level basement!" I grabbed him by the shoulders. "We had a second basement!! We had an extra 1/2 bath and a guest room and a whole other storage room! And then you went down another small set of stairs and you got to our real basement. The one with the gravel and dirt floor and leaky walls... where all we'll ever be able to store is things in Rubbermaid containers off the floor on plastic shelves" I hiccuped another sob. "It seemed so real! Our storage problems were non-existent... there was a place for everything... I could keep all my old albums and craft supplies, but it was JUST A DREAM!!!!"
"Why do you never fold underwear?" I yell. I am staring at a pile of unfolded ladies' panties in various colours and materials - bunched up on the top of the laundry pile - a secondary, equally-crumpled pile, is on the floor.
"They can't be folded!!" David yells back from the kitchen.
"Come here!"
He arrives at the door and rolls his eyes.
"Weclome to Ladies' Panty Folding 101..."
"Yes," David says. "But if I do that and try to stack them when they are folded they become this precarious tower of panties that just falls over. If I just lay them flat one on top of the other, then there is no precarious tower and you can stack other clothes on top of them. Like THIS!!!" He shows off his stack of flat panties.
"Yes, but when you put the panties into a drawer like that, you can't see what pair is underneath the top one."
"You are assuming that I need to see what's underneath the top one. Underwear are like Kleenexes - you just pull from the top."
"Boys just pull from the top. Girls decide depending on what we're wearing that day and whether or not we need a thong."
At the mention of a thong - David winces a bit. "You can't fold thongs!!!"
"It's not really about the folding is it?"
"Pardon?"
"You don't like folding them because now you can't tell the difference between my underwear and Rissa's and it freaks you out."
If I were a horse, I'd have been taken out back and shot. Or at least, that's what my parents always threatened to do when I was younger.
The limping started about a week and a half ago. I blame 'Art.' See, I'm in a show. I needed to get used to my costume before we moved to theatre. It's the shoes' fault. The shoes are kick-ass red. They zip up at the back with these snazzy make-you-want-to-do-unmentionable-things-to-me straps that go around my ankles. I am fierce in these shoes. The only thing I remember before the injury was that I zipped them up. Yes folks - injury by zipping. (How many men just winced?) I had to convince my Achilles Tendons to fit into these fabulous shoes - you know, on account of the fact that I have such... well-defined... tendons. I think maybe I convinced my right foot too hard - now it hurts to go downstairs. And when I point my foot. And when I flex it. Strangely enough it doesn't hurt to just WALK on it. But I do have quite a hitch in my get-along when I'm descending a staircase.
The incomparable Marty Feldman as Igor and Gene Wilder as Dr. Frankenstein in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein
Last night... Injury by tucking in. Bed time with the kid. Me, exhausted, from packing up our office. I flopped down on top of Rissa - not unlike a dolphin out of water. Then, as I prepare to hug her, I moved my right arm along the top of the quilt - and something 'popped'. Rissa didn't hear the pop - all she heard was the screaming the accompanied the pop.
"OH NO!!! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO NOOOOOOOO!!!! Oh CRAP! CRAP!!!!"
"What?!? What did you DO?!?"
"I think I just separated my shoulder."
"AGAIN?!? Mummy!"
"I didn't do it on purpose! I was just trying to hug you!" I tentatively try the movements that usually hurt when I've injured my rotator cuff. To the side - not terrible... To the front - a little more ouchy.
"Daddy! You better come in here! Mummy just hurt herself."
"AGAIN?!?"
"I am not as clumsy as... Would you help me up please?... as you think I am."
"Un-huh..."
"I'm NOT!"
David, enters with the Traumeel. "Where does it hurt?"
"From my shoulder to my elbow..."
"Pardon me?"
"FROM MY STUPID SHOULDER TO MY STUPID ELBOW!!!" I'm already starting to favour my right side. The hunching has begun.
"How? How do you do this to yourself?"
"My ligaments are weird. I'm a dork."
"Yep."
"This is a different pain though, so I don't think that it's the rotator cuff this time. That's good, right?"
David kisses me. "I'm so glad that you're a glass half-full person."
It was one of the worst days of my life. My friend Shannon had died. It was about 2 weeks after she'd had a successful stem cell transplant - her prognosis had been good. Except now she was dead. I almost threw up when her partner John told me, my knees threatened to buckle, white-knuckled fingers held the top of our kitchen island so that I wouldn't crumble. The rest of my day was bi-polar. I'd be okay for a few minutes, but then I'd choke on sobs - I couldn't breathe. The pit of my stomach was roiling - my own internal hurricane - I kept swallowing bile.
We watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - a really bad choice when one of your best friends has just died. Life and death are so skewed in that film. I collapsed in bed at the end of the night - another crying jag - David smoothing his hands across my back - me trying to catch my breath - clutching for calm before the emotions slammed me again.
Our cat, Minuit, leapt onto the bed. She dropped a soft toy on my chest. It was part of a monster doll set - little plush pieces that velcroed together - you could add an arm or an extra eye, a tail or horns - like making your very own tribe of Wild Things.
"Honey," I said to her. "I can't. I can't play right now." Minuit liked you to throw the toy and she'd fetch it for you - it was one of her favourite games. I took the toy away and stashed it in my bedside table. David held me as I started to cry once more.
A few minutes later, Minuit dropped another piece on me.
"Minuit. No. I can't." That piece, too, ended up in the bedside table.
A few minutes later - another piece, and then, when I refused the throw that one, another... and another... and another...
She didn't want to play. She was bringing me gifts. We were on the second floor, and every time I took a toy, she'd tromp two floors down to the basement - jump into the toy box to find a piece and she'd offer it to me.
I guess she didn't know what else to do, given my bouts of hysterical sobbing. She was giving me the equivalent of dead mice - she wanted me to feel better. It went on for about half and hour. I found myself laughing and crying, with 23 monster toy pieces in the bedside table by the time she was done. Then, she lay beside me, pressed to my side - pumping her paws against my ribs to let me know that she was there.
So go ahead, try and tell me that cats are anti-social. You're wrong.
