claws out

Today I am a blond with pointy gold boobs and a hangover from a poor night's sleep.

four weeks in

Dryer humming on a load of towels, four inches of snow on the deck, in October, in Virginia. Clean kitchen. Warm, fuzzy blanket on my lap, dark chocolate Reese's cups, green tea, hard-working husband. Long nails (it's weird) painted a dark gunmetal gray, plans for an evening of mac and cheese and inside jokes with my sibs, despite the snow. This feels like home and normal and contentment.

better because

I am thankful for communal tea and gorilla tape and friends who can borrow my things.

mercy

I usually only call in sick to work when something other than me needs my attention, like a motorcycle on some winding mountain roads. It's preferable. Today I called off, though, because of a sore throat and seal bark cough and a fever that's kept me prone since yesterday evening. It sucks, because man-voiced, hacking women aren't sexy, and because my body is adding insult to injury, and because I would have rather been at work, almost always. But this sickness doesn't suck, and the timing of it doesn't suck, because S is working the late shift today so was home this morning to brew me tea and listen to my chest as I breathed and tuck the three blankets in around my shoulders as I slept the morning away. And he had chicken noodle soup ready at lunch time, and DayQuil, and the kind of cuddly affection I have craved for a lifetime and finally have, all the time. I have been asleep for probably five of the past ten daytime hours, and have been carefully dosed and doted on the whole time. And though S has left for work, I'm safe and warm and there's more soup ready to heat up, and I am realizing it's ok to just do NOTHING but lounge around and recoup when you're feeling poorly instead of trying to push through. It's ok that I'm behind at work now--I'll catch up tomorrow and Friday--and that the dishes won't get washed yet this evening--they'll keep--and it's ok that the backing up laundry backs up further--we are far from strapped--and the milk might run out before I get to the store, and that's ok, we'll be fine. We still have orange juice. S will be back sometime after midnight to slide into bed beside me and I'll sleep soundly and I'll feel better in the morning. 

new normal

Um, why have I not always made my own hummus with jalapenos and a bit of cheese and eaten it liberally with carrots for lunch? Why?

---ler

These days when it's late at night and S is out working the late shift, or at a gig, or with his buddies pretending he's an elf, I try to figure out what I would do if he never came home. About my last name, I mean. I am, I'd say, 45% done changing it from mine to his. What would happen if I were made a widow after three weeks of marriage, with my name change only partially official? The horror of having to continue on with the process without the a man to match. The horror of having to backtrack, erase him. I think about this and before I get to a solution, he's home and I'm asleep.

hit on armor

So nice to be able to say, 'thanks for the offer, but that guy up on stage is my husband.' 

Thursday evening

Curtains pulled, clean face, no pants, belly full of spaghetti squash.

crime

The spilled coffee in stairwell E looks like a crime scene. Sticky brown caffeine blood spatter. I can tell you tripped. I'm hoping it wasn't something delicious and hazelnutty, because that would make the accident more of a tragedy. I'm thinking too hard about this. I'm not even going to clean it up.

{}

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you,
Not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

~Maulana Jalalu'ddin Rumi

no title

I have been ignoring being behind and accepting my blind, cheerful laziness as just. Sometimes, though, I think of things I could say, like the 95 year old man who just wishes someone would shoot Obama already, and the gnat that flew up my nose and itched in my nasal cavity for ten minutes, and the husband--the HUSBAND--that I have all of a sudden (well, it's been going to be this way for all of my life). This guy, he works so hard to make me happy and comfortable. He puts away dishes and assembles cabinets and hangs pictures for me and in the mornings when I'm up he is suddenly at the kitchen table to join me. 'It's early! Go back to bed!' 'But I'm awake. And I want to be with you.' I could write these things, and I could mention the wedding, the drum beats in his head and the buzzing in mine, the forest of mums and ferns covering the altar, the brilliant copper color of his vest, the way the gold band looks on my ring finger, just under the one with the diamond. I tried to count the number of hugs, but there was no number, it was infinity and it was just so vast, and so was the honeymoon afterward, a trip down to sundresses and bra-less-ness and FINALLY a chance to be in the sand at the beach and feel the sun on our married faces. Snorkeling was hell on my manicure. I could just say that I'm happy, that S and I are making a home and making mistakes and moving on and getting better and there is NOTHING like pulling his head to me in the dark and listening to the rumbling of his voice from his chest as he unburies himself and as we fall asleep together intertwined.