That's My Bix!

When Esteban asked me what I wanted to do all weekend, I replied “Get my life back in order.” Which sounds really new agey and inspirational, but honestly, between the holidays and the sickness and then the trip, I have felt as though I was in some kind of weird holding pattern. Also, the Christmas tree kept sending me baleful looks when I’d try to watch television, then would stare meaningfully at the calendar and when I’d ask it what was wrong, it would sigh and say “Oh nothing! It’s fine! I’m fine. We’re fine” and then look outside at the neighbors’ house, which is festooned with lit Christmas lights all year long and know that it just only a matter of time.

It seems very wrong that the Christmas tree, the thing that took me almost all day to put up, took less than an hour to take down. Granted, I had help from Esteban this time, but still, it did not have the appropriate amount of exertion to the ending of a season. There should have been more sweat, I think. Or at least one broken bulb. I’m all about the symbolism.

On Saturday, Esteban went over to Scotty Boom Boom’s to bottle their homebrew, which was supposed to not take very long but actually lasted almost all day, what with their celebratory breakfast and trips back to the beer making store. I don’t know how I feel about this whole enterprise. It seems as though the people who brew their own beer should be wearing flannel and have sketchy facial hair and’ yeah, pretty much Scotty and Esteban, I guess. I wish they weren’t trending so closely to type. I hate the predictable. Which is why this fat girl hides her secret devotion to Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals.

While he was brewing, I was tearing through a metric ton of laundry, and I am not even exaggerating, because I’m pretty sure that if you had weighed it, it would have been a ton. There is no room in our tiny shared closet, which is stuffed to the everloving brim. I swear I’m going to start jacking off to the Ikea catalog. All of those wardrobe systems. Kllaaarken me, baby!

Speaking of which, I have determined that the one thing stopping me from all of my plans is the lack of shelving in my office closet. You see, without shelving, I have nowhere to go with everything in Computer Room #1, which needs to be emptied so that I can stow the furniture from the dining room in there and then rip out the carpeting and baseboards and paint the sucker and then voila, instant den. At some point. For want of some decent shelves. What I really need is Martha Stewart to come over so that I can give her my credit card and let her design something for me, but alas, no Martha.

I did go to the Depot to stand in their aisle and stare sadly at some of their systems. Esteban is weirdly against my installing any permanent shelves in the closet, feeling that future buyers will be turned off since you can’t hang clothes in the closet then. Excuse me, what reasonable buyer is going to look at our house and decide it’s perfect except that the space in the extra bedroom’s closet just has TOO much storage capability? Seriously, how hard are shelves to take out? I mean, we bought the place despite the fact that room had baby blue shag carpeting, cheap wood paneling and yellow and stained ceiling tiles. It now has real walls and ceiling, new windows and glossy cherry floors. Does he really think we would have been stymied by mofo shelves?

June called me, freaking out about the new travel regulations for their impending vacation to Hawaii, so I spent an hour on the phone talking about connecting flights and strategies for the security line and what she could or could not take on the plane with her. During the course of this conversation, I mentioned the need for shelves, which perked her interest. I love my mother-in-law so much. She is the polar opposite of her son. She doesn’t procrastinate one ounce. You want shelves? Let’s put in some damn shelves. Ward, start the car! We’re getting our coats on right now. What? You don’t have the shelves yet? Ward, shut off the car! Want Dad to go and get you some shelves? Ward, start the car! What kind of shelves do you want Dad to get?

But I just couldn’t find anything at the Depot. Nothing was perfect. I then stared at the Ikea website for hours, still deliberating between just buying some bookcases or actually doing what I wanted in there, which was to replicate what Ward had done in our linen closet. Except then Esteban was all antsy about permanent shelves. I declared that we would spend MLK day driving to Ikea to see what they had, and if we couldn’t find anything, we’d just do the Ward approach and then set into motion the whole chain of events that ends with every impending project finished in time and under budget. Or something.

I also made a giant pot of chili, out of a combination of round steak and pork loin. It was pretty tasty, although holy hell, I put so much chipotle in it that it tastes like it was made over a campfire. It’s so hearty that neither of us can finish a bowl before getting overfull. We couldn’t even finish our very good bottle of wine nor the cornbread muffins that I made for dessert (with honey cinnamon butter…take that, New Year Resolutions!) and were left to lie on the couch clutching our stuffed beany tummies and moan while watching a DVD.

On Sunday, I did more laundry, folded the previous day’s laundry, and then did some more laundry on top of that, until I ran out of all forms of laundry soap (I have special soap for dark loads and other soap for regular loads and still more soap with bleach in it for white loads) and had to stop. I also made it to the twelfth level of Zuma. Which, by the way, I cannot get past. Fricking Zuma. And then I went to bed early, because on Monday, we had our quest for shelves, which involved driving 400 miles, round trip, in the truck, just to shop in a big blue box.

On Monday morning, however, when I woke up, everything was white. I trudged out to the living room and flipped on the weather channel, where the satellite coverage showed a giant blob of snot where the state of Wisconsin was supposed to be. And then the local guys started talking about accidents and how all the roads were slalom courses and how everything was going to start to freeze and get dangerous as the low pressure system kicked in and how trucks were pummeling cars with slush balls the size of boulders and then making jokes about global warming. Fucking shelves.

I got dressed and hauled Esteban out of bed, because if I couldn’t have shelves, at least I could have pancakes. True enough, there was no one on the road, because it was shit out. Not only had they not plowed our street, they hadn’t even plowed the rather major cross street and there was little evidence that the crews had even touched Main Street. We got pancakes, then coffee, then went to Target for more laundry soap, all the while the heavens were scoffing at my hubris for having waited until Monday to make the trek.

We went back home and continued to putter away the snow day, cleaning up the house, doing . After a few hours of fighting with a short story, I got antsy and announced that I was going to wander around St. Vincent de Paul for awhile. That always seems to reset my brain somewhat. I love looking for old school books and ugly 70’s plates from my childhood. I love the combinations of history and also raw potential. I sort of want to buy every one of the millions of hobnail white florist vases that end up there. I want a bucket of “pinchers”, which is what someone has labeled the collection of barbeque tongs. Everyone needs a good bucket of pinchers.

I was looking at the magazine rack when a guy walked past and said “Excuse me.” I moved, figuring that he wanted to get past me. He paused, looking at the magazines, and then said “Excuse me” again. “Oh, sorry” I said, vaguely irritated because man, do you have to look exactly where I am looking? He shook his head and said “Oh, no, I just wanted to tell you that you are a very attractive woman.”

I think I did a weird double take, one where my eyes got big, because honestly, I looked ridiculous. My hair was floopy and I had on only whatever minimal makeup I had applied hours earlier and I was dressed as though I had just come from the gym, with sneakers and track pants and a light pink Old Navy hoodie. Certainly not attractive. Certainly not very attractive.

“Oh… thank you.”

“You are. I suppose you’re married?” He glanced at my bare ring finger. I almost never wear my wedding ring because the thick band exacerbates my eczema. Stupid eczema.

“I am.”

“Well, tell him that he’s a very lucky man, because you? You are a very attractive woman. Very attractive.”

“I will tell him. Thank you.”

He walked away to examine a stack of warped 45’s and I fled, as though I had just been molested or something, which is just ridiculous, but seriously, who picks up women at St. Vincent de Paul? Who does that? Who?

I walked into the house and immediately told Esteban that I had a message for him and that it was that he was very lucky and that I was a very attractive woman, very attractive. He agreed, but whatever, dude. He’s just lucky we didn’t meet at St. Vinnie’s, or I would have made googly eyes and then fled immediately. He then told me about meeting our racist neighbor (no, not the Clampet’s although I do wonder about them) who owns the World’s Shortest Labrador (seriously, it is the best thing ever, imagine a black Lab with dachshund legs. It’s like he’s standing in a hole. He has to wear a little leather guard on his tummy so that it does get scuffed by the sidewalk! It kills me! Absolutely kills me!) and said that his camper was stolen “by da blacks an’dem Mexicans” which just makes me shake my head in wonder. Did the blacks and the Mexicans get together in a joint venture, combining forces to steal the pop-up campers from the rednecks? God, I hope so. The world needs fewer rednecks with recreational vehicles. And if there is a god in heaven, during the heist, they are also singing in unison and performing elaborate Bob Fosse choreography.

I used to have a crazy old teacher in high school, with iron bosoms that hung to her waist and blondish white hair and eye bags that could have doubled as parachutes should she have needed to make a hasty escape from the third floor. Some people hated her, but I loved her, even though she once made me remove my black fedora hat in class and totally threw off my Sassy Magazine approved Sixteen Candles look, complete with black eye liner and white eye shadow and giant Robert Smith bangs. And during a teacher’s conference, she suggested to my mother that she put me on an all liquid diet. It didn’t matter. I still loved her. No matter how kooky and inappropriate she was, she was still the first person who ever made me realize that Shakespeare was accessible and that he wasn’t just a poofy iambie bunch of pentameter mismash but actually made sense in a truly wonderful way. And she would go off on crazy tangents during class about the most random things, stories about the Titanic or about her uncle’s haunted house on Porlier Street or about her great grandniece Briana. She was wonderful, that Mrs. Hoefts. Truly wonderful.

And during one of those tangents, she was talking about child abuse and about how kids who are abused will be marked by that abuse indelibly, that they become masters of sublimating it and on the surface, they may look as though nothing is the matter, but underneath, they will always be cowering. They will always flinch. I remember sitting there in class, staring into the spiral on my notebook, getting lost in the concentric circles, thinking about the sound it would make if I ran my pencil along the rings, trying to do anything but listen to her talk about what it does psychologically, about how they will forever be broken, forever have had something about them ruined. She kept saying “broken people” and “broken” and I kept imagining china that had been shattered and then glued back together. Broken. She kept saying it again and again. Broken. Ruined. Broken.

I’d like to think I’ve gotten past my past. I don’t talk about it. Or rather, I almost never talk about it. I don’t think it’s something I really need to talk about, quite honestly. I refuse to label myself. It’s something that happened. I lived. It’s over. I certainly don’t define myself by it. Continuing to dwell upon it makes you just as much a victim as you were when you were unable to defend yourself, except this time you’re choosing it. And I certainly don’t want to play the game of My Traumatic Childhood with anyone. No matter what, we all lose, so what’s the point?

Nietzsche said that which does not kill us will make us stronger. Maybe. But I think Mrs. Hoefts was right. No matter what, we are ruined. This morning, I was sitting in a crowded restaurant with Esteban and we were both eavesdropping on the table next to us and I was suddenly sideswiped by the memory of how I got the permanent burst blood vessel in my eye (which is my Dooce mole and I almost always photoshop it out of pictures). Sometimes such things sneak up on you, unprompted, and attack swiftly, like thought ninjas, or maybe winged monkeys. I started to tear up right there, right next to a gaggle of old ladies talking about which Packers coach had the nicest wife. Luckily, I was saved by the delivery of my pancakes and egg whites and could distract myself with delicious apricot syrup and inane breakfast conversation, with none around me the wiser.

We spend sixty years of our life trying to get over the first eighteen.

When last I wrote a real entry (which is just to say that the video editing involves a lot of finessing for a very brief money shot), I mentioned that Esteban was sick and I was terrified of catching it. In retrospect, I’m thankful I had started editing that video a few days early and had it done by New Year’s Eve, because not only did I catch his germy pass, I ran with it and scored the winning touchdown. Sometimes when I get sick, I feel a bit like I failed myself, but in this case, during Esteban’s illness, I had powered through something like 26,000 times the recommended dose of Vitamin C as well as a shitload of water and juice, there was no reasonable escape. My New Year’s Eve excitement involved Ny-Quil and fresh cool sheets. In fact, I went to bed so early that the Ny-Quil had actually worn off and I needed a second round of medication just as the final minutes of 2006 were winding down. I did stop by Esteban’s office to give him a midnight kiss before retreating to a codeine cough syrup haze.

It was seriously a doozy, too. It was all I could do to remain upright most of the time. The mystery bug seemed to morph through four or five mutations, starting with bronchitis, then fever/chills/aches/weltschmerz with no bronchitis to speak of, then a blistering sore throat followed by a stereotypical sinus infection and then the bronchitis came back with a serving of fever on the side. Whuppah! The mystery illness is illusive and defies you to figure out its next move. It was like a ninja, swift and deadly and leaving me completely unable to understand all but the simplest of concepts, which explains my continued fascination with Zuma and also a marathon of Beauty and the Geek.

Before I succumbed to Typhoid Esteban’s wiles, I had made a gigantic pot of what turned out to be the best chicken soup in the entire world. It was so good that Esteban didn’t believe that I had made it, thinking perhaps I had had it flown in from some famous snooty chef or something. I don’t really know what the secret was. It might have been the fresh thyme or the tablespoon of pure powdered tomato that gave the broth just a touch of acidity and balance or maybe it was the fact that I accidentally dumped in half a cup of chopped garlic. It also might have been that I used TJ’s organic chicken broth, which seems much more stout than the blue and white carton’s organic offering. I really think it was the fact that I threw half a bag of cheese tortellini in it (I wanted noodles but wanted to balance the carbs with some protein) and then when those tortellini had finished cooking in the soup, I decided that there weren’t enough, so threw the rest in. The first group of tortellini then got overdone and let loose their delicious contents of cheese and parmesan, which then dissolved into and thickened the broth, while Group B maintained their cheesy integrity. It had a masterful effect and I only wish that I had planned it that way. I suspect that it will never be replicated however. We lived on it for three days solid and when Esteban disappeared into his office with the last half quart and a spoon, I might have hated him just a little bit. It didn’t really seem fair, since not only was he feeling better but he was the disease spreader in the first place.

Oh, don’t judge. Tell me you don’t retreat into the mind of a four-year-old when you’re feeling subhuman.

I did make it into work for a whopping two hours before collapsing into a sweat-ridden exhausted heap. I should have known better when the very act of showering almost made me faint. Then I had super guilt because I had vacation later in the week and on Tuesday night, it was pretty clear that I was no better. I ended up taking an extra vacation day on Wednesday, so that I could be sick at home without guilt. That’s messed up, I know, but it made me feel better. Besides, I now have the old timer’s allotment of vacation days and am feeling a bit free to squander them. I spent the day doing a million loads of (fucking) laundry and then throwing myself across the bed panting after every trip up the stairs with a heavy basket. I managed to compile clear thoughts around mid-day so made a run to the nail salon for a quick manicure (I didn’t trust myself with sharp objects yet) and then made the mistake of stopping at TJ Maxx to see if they had anything that would work as a replacement for my battered and broken suitcases. The lesson to be learned there is that shopping with a 102 temperature will result in a pair of bright pink suitcases that will piss off your husband for mysterious reasons and when pressed, he’ll finally admit it’s because the color prevents him from borrowing them. And then he will call you selfish. Well, it’s not like I ate the last of the delicious soup or anything, is it? I also almost bought a full length faux mink coat, but managed to shake my head clear. And also, it made me look a bit hippy.

The sort of nice side effect to being delirious for days preceding a trip is that I had no energy for panic attacks, not about the reading nor the trip itself. No packing anxiety. No obsessive planning, no schedule plotting or map studying. I didn’t even know how I was going to get from the airport to the hotel and when asked, I just shrugged and said that I’d figure something out. It was really really strange. Eight hours before I had to leave for the airport and I was just throwing things into open suitcases. I didn’t even make my normal travel spreadsheet! Is this how regular people do it? Because seriously, when your mind isn’t envisioning the mushroom cloud of doom because you might forget your phone charger or your travel magnifying mirror, it is SO much easier to pack.

Trip report to come. Or maybe several entries, because damn. Damn.

Esteban is officially sick and has spent the last two nights in a codeine haze on the sofa, as he’s coughing so hard that he figured at least one of us should get some sleep and that way at least he can watch television in between naps. He accuses me of being glad that he’s sleeping on the couch and I dutifully reply that I miss him and the bed is empty without him, but, um, hell yeah I’m glad that he’s sleeping on the couch. It’s no secret that I sleep much better without him tossing and turning every fifteen minutes. I’m a very light sleeper and I suspect that I go months between REM cycles. I doubt that I rarely if ever get into that restful Stage 4 of dreamless sleep.

An added bonus was Esteban cursing our redneck neighbor for having removed the mufflers on his big yellow pick up truck so that it sounds like a semi. Esteban has always defended the neighbor whenever I grumble about him, but finally, a chink in his armor. The Clampet goes to work at 4:30 am. Esteban thought he could only hear the rumble of his truck because Esteban was in the living room, which is in the front of the house, but honestly, our bedroom is five feet off their driveway and that truck wakes me up almost every day. The worst is during the coldest winter months when he warms it up for fifteen minutes before leaving. That’s fifteen minutes of a Harley Davidson rally, right outside my bedroom window.

God, we totally have to move.

The doctor said that Esteban has a virus. I had a touch of a cough when Esteban returned from the doctor, so between his tuberculin hacks, he prophesized doom on my little throat tickle. Doom! He would wag a finger at me and then there would be a dramatic death rattle from his chest. I’m not sure if he was feeling guilty about being Typhoid Esteban or was feeling slightly vindicated. Maybe if he was sick, I should be too. It should be a togetherness thing or something? I just shrugged it off, acting tough, but in reality, man, I really am afraid of respiratory issues. While I’m at work, I’ve been pounding orange juice and Emergen-C like it’s crack. I sort of like the Emergen-C stuff, though. It hides the taste of the Aquafina in the vending machines at work.

I know that it’s supposedly nothing, but I can’t stand the taste of Aquafina. Esteban thinks I’m a water snob, but man, Evian, Aquafina and Dannon waters taste gross. My favorites are Glaceau Smart Water, Volvic, Fiji and Dasani. Actually, I love MacGregor too, but I’ve never seen it in this country.

So far, no death rattle. I have a little bit of an asthmatic wheeze, but I’ve had it ever since I kicked up a ton of dust putting up the Christmas tree. I may have escaped the Doom. Which is good, because Esteban sick means that he ceases to function like an adult and pick up after himself. A tornado has hit the living room and it may be weeks before we can dig our way out of the shoes, dirty bowls and empty juice bottles.

I was acting all tough about this upcoming reading in New York, but yesterday, I was hit with the first whiff of panic. I had just come really close to asking a coworker in NYC about a good restaurant for post-theatre and then realized that I don’t want to ever see any of my NY clients or coworkers, but if I mention it, then I’ll be obligated to meet with them and holy fucking shit, no thank you. I’m already unsure how I’m going to fit everything in and still have time for the mandated water drinking and sleep requirements. No work! None! Because I’m already freaking out about what I’m going to wear and holy crap, I totally need to go shopping this weekend and buy new everything. And also lose a hundred pounds.

And also, there’s the event thing. Reading! In front of people! Reading my silly silly story in New York City (whenever I write that out, I always hear the salsa commercial guy say “New York CITAY?” in my head) in front of people and also other writers, writers who didn’t write silly bios and who have been in McSweeneys and Ploughshares and Best American Poetry 2006 and also lit journals I’ve never heard of but assume they are important. Fuck! I have to read either before or after a guy who wrote Ed Asner love poetry.

I am screwed.

Well, now that that’s all done, I am so ready to start kicking some ass on projects. Last night, while I was working on some writing, Esteban came in and plopped down on the leather recliner in my office, which is his version of Tilly’s plaintive mews and prodding with a fur paw. Both need attention.

I’ve been negatively reinforcing the behavior with Tilly, usually grabbing her to hug and kiss her (which she despises) or scooping her up and giving her some asthma medication (which she despises a million times over but enjoys the treats that she gets after a successful pill swallow).

Esteban was just making excuses for something to talk about, feeling lonely and devoid of human contact, and made the mistake of talking about our plans to turn the dining room into a den (prompted by my mother suggesting that I replace the fugly hanging light fixture in there with a crystal chandelier and I threw up in my mouth at the suggestion and quickly said “No, I’m doing something different in there.” Not only am I NOT a crystal chandelier type person, but our bungalow only has seven foot ceilings, so my mother is smoking crack.) I don’t know why he brings up the subject with me, because I am immediately anxious to start new projects and he just wants to drag his feet and make sure that nothing ever changes, so it was probably more negative reinforcement.

We discussed about what to do with the two hutches in the dining room. I figured that we could sell both of them. Both were handed down from Ward and June and neither is our style. They are sort of huge and hulking and not appropriate for the house whatsoever (but probably more appropriate than a crystal chandelier). He balked because we have a ton of heirloom etched crystal glassware in storage and where would we go with that? I suggested buying something new, which brought about objections. Why sell a perfectly good piece of furniture just to buy something else to do the same job?

Meh. Logic.

However, by the end of the conversation, we had decided to sell one hutch, maybe sell the better of the two hutches (leaving the crystal in storage until we move), and also sell the dining room table, then rip out the carpeting in the dining room and put in new stuff. And also put shelves in my closet in my office, which Esteban had been objecting to earlier. And I agreed to maybe not paint the dining room/new den the rather tawdry shade of scarlet that I’ve been eyeing for a year. Which is fine, because I understand his worry that the room will seem too small if we paint it a dark color, despite a white ceiling.

I’ll just paint one of the walls in the kitchen red instead. Ha! Compromise!

I’m not sure when all of this is supposed to happen. That’s for Future Weetabix to contend with, not Now Weetabix. Life’s sure going to suck for Future Weetabix.

On the day after Christmas, I took a vacation day, continuing to work my way through the remainder of my unused vacation. If we don’t use it, we lose it and I’ve never had a problem using them before, but when I took fall semester off, I suddenly no longer had a use for all of those comp hours earned by working late, so started using them as travel days, which pushed my remaining vacation days to the end of the year. Bah.

Starting next week, however, I will be in my unbelievable tenth years at this company and will get another week of vacation. It’s just funny because when I got hired two days after receiving my diploma, I figured that I’d work here for six months to a year, just so that I could make the house payment and my student loans, and then I’d figure something else out. Bah! So na’ve. I should have looked around at my coworkers. The average tenure in this office is something like 25 years. I work for the corporate equivalent of the Hotel California. They make it too easy to keep coming to work.

I spent the day doing not much of anything. I ran out to Target, because I wanted to check out the post holiday clearance stuff. I bought some MORE holiday cards and gift wrap, which is just silly because I didn’t even touch the stuff I had leftover from previous years, plus I bought more this year while at Broadway Paper, after I had already addressed 90% of my holiday cards. So, in essence, I have eight million boxes of really super cute cards, and yet, more cards were apparently needed. Go figure. I am such a sucker for sparse snowflakes on heavy card stock.

I can’t really hate myself on the wrapping paper, though. It was the very cool but overpriced stuff where you only get 12.5 square feet a roll. It’s such a rip off, and the only way I’ll buy it is if I can get it for 50% off, which means that instead of getting screwed by the man, I’m heavy petted by the man.

I am justifying this purchase in that they are all not really holiday-esque and I can, in theory, use them all year. Well, if I remember they exist.

The real reason I went out was to find those ornament storage box thingies with the cardboard inserts. Last year, I looked for them two days after Christmas but they were all gone. This year, when I got there at noon, there were four remaining on the shelf. I took two. I sort of want to just take down the tree now, just because it needs to come down and because I have appropriate boxes to put things into. That’s just so grinchy, so it’s staying up until after I get home from New York. Also, organizing for the sake of organizing is a bit scary. I don’t really know myself anymore.

We pottered around the house, picking up the Christmas that had apparently exploded all over our domicile and then did very little else late into the evening. I got so distracted playing Zuma that I forgot that I had to get up the next morning and went to bed too late.

However, this morning, I managed to get up on time, get showered and my hair dried and left for work early. I don’t know what that was about, but I was rewarded with an absolutely breathtaking sunrise, full of corals and aquas and filling the sky in a way you don’t often see this at this latitude. The sunrise has been happening after I am already pointed west over the last month, so it was awesome to see it while I was still driving east to catch the highway (and the Sbux).

Esteban started coughing midway through the day yesterday and demanded that I go out and procure Ny-Quil, Day-Quil and any other Quil I could find. He was still coughing this morning and I warned him that he should call and make an appointment to get some antibiotics, because with that aggressive barking cough, it was a lot like his last bout with pneumonia which knocked him on his ass for a month.

He pshawed and got defensive and claimed that they guard antibiotics more closely than medical marijuana these days. He called me at work a few hours later and left a craggy voice mail. When I called him back, the only reason he called was so that he could tell me that he was getting worse. I told him to drink juice and he said that he was but he couldn’t stop coughing. I told him to call the doctor, but he refused. Adamantly refused.

I said “OK” and was prepared to drop it again, because damn it, if you’re 36 years old, you should make these decisions for yourself. I am a pretty codependent person but man, when I give up, you’ve made your point. He immediately countered with “Oh fine, if it will make you happy, if you want to make an appointment for me, I’ll go in.”

I almost started laughing out loud. Clearly he just didn’t want to admit a weakness, but if it will make me feel better, he’ll give in. Whatever dude. I hung up and called the doctor, the entire time musing about how he called me to have me call the doctor for him and then I’d have to call him back? I don’t get men. I made the appointment for tomorrow and sent him an e-mail with the time and location. He called back an hour later, sounding a bit more grave and said “You’re right. I do need a doctor. When’s the appointment?” I explained that I had sent him an e-mail, to which he responded that he was too sick to go into his office and he couldn’t stop coughing and my god, how did I think he could last until the next morning? Clearly I was killing him, with my 9 am appointments!

I sighed, told him that I’d call him back, called the doctor back and explained the situation to the receptionist, who jockeyed some appointments around and got him in to see a different doctor at a different clinic across town in an hour. I called Esteban back, gave him the information and explained where the other clinic was. Would you believe that the man had the nerve to make an exasperated sigh? As though I was seriously putting a damper on his day, with my foolish womanly flibberty gibbeting about silly antibiotics.

The hell?

I may have come a long way, baby, but holy shit, some days I’m still the feminist equivalent of my great grandmother.

Maybe I need to lighten up. After all, if, say, a fucking bat were to fly into our house and terrorize us, my feminist high horse would cease to exist. Sometimes I think the only reason I got married was to have a muscular barrier between me and potential bats.