License to cry....

Sometimes I have to stop and ask myself, when did she grow up to be this beautiful young self-assured young woman who is responsible enough to be driving my vehicle?  Answer to that would probably be....right under your depressive nose you crazy loon!  But that would totally kill the moment.

I'll be seeing ya in 2011....

Every closing of a year is the end of a chapter in ones life.  

Deep breath....now open your eyes

It's the eve of 6 months of the wildest ride of my life.  Cancer.

Here I thought I'd gotten past the madness which was life as a teenage mother, then mother of two girls and the business that is marriage.  No one...not even me the eternal worrier made plans for fighting for my life.

I went from thinking I was sick with mono and having my biggest worry be making sure I was able to get back to work on May 3rd to wondering how I'd make it through my first round of chemotherapy and the life that I intensely prayed would follow.  I really contemplated whether I had the drive to get from behind it and be able to have a life.  Any kind of life.  I was willing to rewrite "normal" as long as it meant me still in the equation.

Balancing act....

I know that it has been awhile since I have posted and although I had lamented in the past that there really is no good reason not to write, this time I think I should get a pass.

On Tuesday, April 27th I was diagnosed with Leukemia and things have been going at a maddening pace since then. 

Maybe it was the lack of Vikings that sealed my fate....

My life is one big ongoing reality show that no one is watching and that I'm not getting paid for.

33 is looking a lot like 32 and 31 and 30....

I spent my 33rd birthday getting shot in the ass by a not so attractive, even if I was into female, nurse.  My doctor exclaimed in semi physician humor that this was the "third...oh wait...2007, 2008, 2009...it is 2010 now...huh...well then scratch third and make that fourth year in a row I have seen you on or within days of your birthday?" 

Thanks for the history lesson Rain Man...that was positively shocking.

So I started my day being pronounced as having bronchitis and in need of two...not one...two, because well it's my Birthday and apparently the universe hates me...and it probably isn't nice of a patient to look at their doctor as if they are speaking a foreign language when they are "attempting" doctor patient humor...so I got two shots in the rear.  The trip wasn't all bad though.  My good friend "Plus2" was kind enough to cart my sick ass to the doctors office because sadly I couldn't turn my neck.  What is that you say?  Did you think you may have read that wrong?  Well, you didn't....by now....even if you have only been reading this blog since I started it on here and don't personally know me, you should know this one true and simple fact...IT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO JUST GET A NORMAL FUCKING ILLNESS!

I'm pretty sure that I had H1N1 before it was actually given a name.  Some people get a cold.  Me I end up with pneumonia, but not just that I end up with a bacterial inflamation that spreads into the joints and muscles in my chest and then begins to attack my heart.  Do you see how this works?

Yep, just a mere 9 hours into my new age and I had become arthritic and contagious.  What a fucking gift?

But my friend...my Driving Mrs. Sick Ass companion...she made me laugh.  Hell, she ALWAYS finds a way to make me laugh.  She offered to get me ice cream since I was a "good patient" but seeing as it was barely 10am I figured ice cream would be hard to come by.  Strangely enough if I had wanted an alcoholic beverage of some sort, like a daquiri per say, I could have gotten that...but ice cream?  Yeah...that wasn't gonna be happening.  I settled instead for a slushy (for my aching throat) and some breakfast so I could choke down the horse pill of an anti-biotic that he prescribed. 

Oh yes...my day was gonna be pure joy...I could just feel it.  I could feel it aching in my ass.  Yep, right there stinging and burning like acid shot into my deriere is where I could feel it.  Man, those shots, while they didn't hurt when she did them, happened to have a delayed release of pain that hit just as we were making our way out of the office and into the car.  I just kept laughing and almost crying saying "God damn....my ass, my ass is killing me".  Then I'd begin to hack because my throat was also in serious pain which would cause some hideous tickle which then led to fits of epileptic coughing. 

I paint such a pretty picture.

After I was able to recompose myself from these fits I would fall into a contstant stream of saying I'm sorry over and over again as I mentally pictured her going home and lysoling the entire interior of her car and possibly giving herself a Silkwood scrub.

Friends will tell you to get better when you are sick.  Good friends will call to check on you.  Great friends will drive you to the doctors and help you get your medicine.  Kick ass friends will do all of the above and smile at you while you hack what is sure to be some kind of bio hazard all over their vehicle.

This friend...she falls squarely in the latter.

I looked and sounded like death warmed over, but with the exception of when I had to breathe deeply, swallow, cough or attempt to move my neck I felt fantastic.


By the time we pulled back into my driveway I was exhausted from the escapade of the morning.  I made my way in to the house, scooped up Penny and then realized what a retarded idea that was seeing as I was holding food and this dog is clearly a fiend of anything that doesn't have the words dog or kibble in it.  It was like a Wimbledon match where I moved food from one hand to the other trying to keep it out of her line of snout grabbing.  Her head would dart from left to right and back in a twisted attempt to get something.  Anything.  Finally when I was down to my last bite I tore off a piece of the toast and fed it to her.  She scarfed it up and then looked at me like, "you bitch...that's ALL...that is ALL I get....oh yeah, yawn...go to sleep.  I am so taking a dump on your head when you reach the REM state".

I mean that might not be a literal translation of what was going on in her little doggy mind but I think it's a pretty good rendering.

I'd like to say that I slept well but truth be told I just kept rolling around opening my eyes every so often to make sure she wasn't positioning her butt just right to take perfect aim.  I mean I know I have been shit on in the past few years, but that was in emotional terms.  This would really stink.  And I meant that pun.

Thankfully she held her bowels.  I think she can sense the cold weather coming and figures she can't be too sure that I won't stick her boney ass out in the cold as punishment for that infraction.  She's shit on me in the past but I let it slide because she was sick or just come off her death bed.  Just deciding to dump on me because I wouldn't share my tots....well that is grounds for emotional torture of the highest degree.

I'm hopeful that with my shots and goody bag full of medicine that I will be back to fighting form in time to go get my belated Birthday drank on with my girlfriends.  I may have hit a hiccup as I turned the page from 32 to 33, but I'm not going to allow it to be a continuing trend. 

Oh and hear me now, if by some cruel twist of fate I end up sick AGAIN next year, at...on...or around my birthday, ummmm, I'm not going to the doctors.  No way.  No how.  The cycle stops here at 33.

~JP

P.S. And to ALL of my wonderful friends, readers and FB friends...thank you sooooo much for the Birthday love and well wishes.  That was one thing that made this year significantly different than the last few.

P.P.S.  To my "T" and my "D"...you are two of the three best friends that anyone could ever have...that anyone could ever have...that anyone could ever have."

The view through my one good eye.....

Life just keeps getting.....harder to see through both eyes.  As if I don't have enough to contend with in the areas of job, love, motherhood...now I have to deal with an incessent problem of over active allergies...in my eyes!  What the shit?

Last week it was a persistent issue of teary eyes that was clouding my view and now it's my left eye that seems to want to swell up at the most inconvenient of moments.  Then as soon as I hit it with some eye drops I am able to buy myself a good hour or so of relief and a two eyed view on how crappy things seem to be going right now.

Funny how the view through only one eye doesn't cut down the troubles to a more manageable number.  Maybe if they both swell shut then at least I can pretend to be invisible and hopefully all the bad stuff will disappear as well. 

Until that becomes a reality, at least the bad stuff disappearing part, I will just have to shut both my eyes...for the night at least and hope that the view of life in my dreams is a lot happier than the reality!

~JP

And the countdown to 10...continues...Part 3

Part 3: This is where you stop mocking me and start doing WHATEVER IT IS I ASK OF YOU!

I really hate hospitals.  But if you had to be laid up in one for a long period of time...this one was pretty damn good.  They had fabulous ice.  I'm a self professed connoisseur of crushed ice.  On my list of "best ice EVER" this place was towards the top trailing only mildly behind The Great American Cookie Company (back in it's heyday at Clearwater Mall).  Another perk was the fact that they would make me grilled cheese with bacon for like every possible meal and they never frowned at Jon for bringing in Chic-fil-A or Marble Slab ice cream.  Even when it was well after visiting hours.

My secret suspiscion is that he bribed them in the hallway with treats but as long as I got what I was craving in the end I could give a rats ass if he was actually performing sexual favors out there.  When you're pregnant pure rational flies out the window in the face of meeting the demonic voice of satisfying whatever it is that your body wants at that precise moment only to be dissappointed 3 seconds later because now you have what you thought you wanted but your mood has changed, thus perpetuating the vicious hormonal cycle.  

Before having to be whisked off to the hospital for being in a "beautiful contracting pattern...shamefully at the completely wrong time" I was plagued by horrible cravings.  The only thing worse than my cravings was the unbelievable sickness I had.  It wasn't morning sickness.  It was 24/7 sickness.  This was NOT how I was when I was pregnant with Olivia.  I had the textbook first trimester morning sickness that would shut off at exactly 12p on the dot and once I hit the second trimester I never had issue with it again.

Not the case this time.  I would wake up nauseated and start vomitting once my feet hit the floor.  I slept with a bowl by the bed.  It was horrid.  And it didn't let up throughout the day and into the night.  Usually the last thing I did before going to bed at night was throw up.  It was magical.  Jon thought he had impregnated the exorcist.  Minus the spinning head...it was kinda true.

I would be throwing up and crying.  Then 10 seconds later I would be begging him to get me whatever it was that I was demonically craving.  It wasn't ever anything unusual.  The biggest thing was Chic-fil-A nuggets with boat loads of pollynesian sauce.  So much so that the people at our local Chic-fil-A knew him by face and would just put it into a separate bag.  Sheepishly asking, "is this enough" as if for some reason if he returned with an improper amount he may be harmed and it would be ALL their fault.  Let it never be said that those people aren't smart.

Every once in awhile he would get some zit faced punk of a teenager that would try to give him a hard time and he would be forced to say, "my wife is pregnant and if you don't give me a shit load of that sauce she may infact kill me for putting her in this state of utter misery therefore you will have blood on your hands you little fuck"...or at least that is how I imagined the speech going.  He always came home with the sauce.  Thank god.  I was too tired from throwing up to actually have to physically harm him for forgetting it.

As soon as I would start to eat I would begin to feel sick.  Again.  And then I would spend the next 30 minutes negotiating with my body in something reminiscent of the movie "The Negotiator" to just keep the food down.  I was all Kevin Spacey to my body's Samuel L. Jackson.  Finally Jon got so tired of this routine... me crying for something...getting it and taking a few bits...then crying because I was now throwing up the very thing that I had craved and begged for.  His suggestion to end this problem was instead of continuing the madness he should just take money out of his wallet and flush it down the toilet.  He said that way he wouldn't have to leave the house, drive to wherever, pick up the food, bring it home, watch me take a few bites and then have to listen to me throw it all up.  He felt it was only logic.  I did not find this funny.  He however thought it was downright brilliant and somewhat hysterical.  I punished him by making him go and get me ice cream because that is what I wanted right then.  Stupid man.

I was well into my seventh month and "morning" sickness was still a very active participant in my day.  While in the hospital the nurses tried to make me feel better saying that every pregnancy was different.  I took little comfort in that while I was heaving my guts.

Every day spent in the hospital was a roller coaster of emotions.  I felt helpless because I had another child that needed her mother.  You begin to feel torn between doing everything in your power to get the child in your belly to full term and also not neglecting the one that is already here.  I did a lot of crying.

Jon on the other hand...did a lot of juggling.  He was having his first taste of full time parenthood without someone else there to break up the stress.  He was running on all cylinders.  He'd wake up at the crack of dawn get Olivia up and off to pre-school...call and check on me see if there was any news from the night before that had occured since we talked before he had gone to sleep...then head to work...sometimes he'd sneak in to see me before he went to work...if he could break away at lunch he'd come to the hospital usually bringing me whatever I had been craving when he placed the call that he could make a stop by...then back to work...pick Olivia up from school if it wasn't a day that her father picked her up or if my mom couldn't grab her...then swing by the hospital...if Olivia was with him we would try to eat together so at least she had that interaction of family dinner, although it's not the same when monitors are going off every 5 minutes...then home for the bathtime, bedtime routine...he'd get Oliva in bed then do laundry, make lunches and call me to see how things were going since he left the hospital...if it was a night when he didn't have Olivia because whe was with her dad or staying the evening at my parents he would come back up to the hospital and stay with me for as long as the nurses would allow.  Then he'd sleep, get up and do it all over again.

I spent just over two weeks in the hospital.  Everyday I would hope this would be the day I'd get to go home.  I stopped asking after day 5.

I spent most of the time hooked up to what I have now deemed to be the 2nd most heinous drug in the child carrying and bearing experience...magnesium sulfate.  A step down from the horror that is pitocin, is this drug.  While I appreciate how it, combined with the efforts of terbutaline, stopped my contractions and kept our little peanut in the womb it brought with it horrid side effects and I felt worse being released from the hospital than I did going in to it.

The day that they released me I thought they were joking.  My day nurse came in and asked me the same question she did every day.  I had begun to hate her for taunting me.  She'd walk in, take my vitals and say, "wouldn't today be a beautiful day to go home"...I'd be all like..."yeah, that would be great"...to which she would say, "but I bet tomorrow would be even better".  What kind of fucked up mind game are you playing here sister??

But on this day when I solemnly said, "yeah that would be great" she said, "yeah I thought so too so I'll help you pack".  I was like...huh...what???  I thought I had won the lottery.  The doctor came in and declared that I had been contraction free for 3 whole days which I knew just from watching the monitors and said that I was good to be released albeit with strict precautions.  Bedrest.  I could get up to pee and could walk around a total of 30 minutes every 24 hours and no more than 10 minutes at one given time.

On the day I was discharged I was 29 weeks and 1 day.  I had to stay on bedrest until I was at least 35 weeks.  This was gonna be the longest 6 weeks of my life.  And on top of that it wouldn't be like being at the hospital.  I mean who would bring me yummy crushed ice or make me grilled cheese with bacon at the drop of a hat??

Jon tried to assure me that things would be fine.  He could handle it.  He would make sure that everything was taken care of.  There was only one small four legged problem.  And her name was Max (this is what happens when you assume the dog is a boy and let your child name it only to be advised it really is a girl and said child REFUSES to change the dogs name).

We had adopted a puppy for Olivia for her 5th birthday in June.  We had wanted a dog for awhile and now that we were in a bigger place it seemed perfect.  Knowing that a baby would be coming in the next few months we figured get the dog now, get it trained and comfortable in the house and it's surroundings so that there would be no issues when the baby arrived.

No one ever imagined that a little over a month after getting her I would be put on bedrest and although at home, I would not be able to care for her.  When I was in the hospital we had her staying at my parents house.  It was only gonna be a short term thing.  Or so we thought.

After finding out that this was gonna be a long term situation there was no way to expect my parents to keep the dog.  Foolishly I thought, they will stop the contractions and things will go back to normal.  I will go back to work and regular routine.  This was not part of the plan.  None of what was happening was part of how I had imagined things to go.

We attempted to have the dog stay with friends and family.  The only one willing to take her on such short notice was my grandmother who had a huge yard.  After transporting her down to St. Pete, about 30 minutes from us, we were called 2 days later to come and pick her up.  "She's too rowdy" was the chief complaint.  I didn't have it in me to argue that she was a puppy and didn't exactly prescribe to having to go to bed at 7pm.  It was a pointless argument.

I had only been home from the hospital 4 days before Jon declared we would have to find her a new home.  Another 4 days went by with no bites and me sneaking to take her out for pee breaks...Jon caught on and called me out.  It was the baby or the dog.  Olivia was heartbroken. Years later she would tell us that she blamed the baby for the fact that she lost her pet.

I bawled, partly because I felt like I had let the dog down and partly because I was a tightly wound ball of emotions.  A day later we took Max back to the shelter.  The lady who had handled the adoption was a complete bitch and made me feel like a speck of dirt on the sole of her shoe for returning the dog in order to preserve the health of my unborn child.

The baby wasn't here yet and it had already pissed off it's sister and offended the ASPCA.  Great.  Just fuckin great!  What next?

I was too exhausted to think what could possibly happen.  I began to stop planning anything and just looked at my life in a moment by moment turn of events.  My only goal became getting to the 35 week mark.  My only plan was what I would watch on television to pass the time and what list I would make for Jon to stock the fridge for my few precious moments of time moving about to forge for food.

35 became my new favorite number.  I had it locked in my sites and the countdown was anything but exciting...

~JP

Stabby boob pain...(part deux) & Penny's Thought of the Day...

It's baaaaaacccck! 

I was mid laundry folding (so I'm totally blaming domestic servitude for this mishap) when I literally was taken breathless by immense pain.  I thought maybe I had moved in some bizarre way but as time went on...folding shirt after boxers after bra after socks after underwear after pants after bathing suit and placing in owner specific piles...it became increasingly worse.  It finally got to the point where I couldn't move without feeling like not only my left boob but the whole upper left side of my chest was engulfed in this hot seering pain. 

It feels more like the return of the stabby boob pain than it does the costochondritis that cost me my last job and possibly my grasp on mental stability.  I am literally willing myself to believe that it cannot possibly be a reinfection of that. 

I think my boobs are striking back against the 27 months of life sustaining breast feeding I did when the girls were babies.  I wonder if I take all the money saved from buying formula during that time and put it towards reconstructive surgery for these puppies if that would make them stop acting like under arm rest and go back to being the fun bags that they once used to be.

The pain is too severe to really contemplate cutting on them at this moment but the idea of anesthesia is appealing to me at this very painful moment. 

It came on so sudden but is getting progressively worse as the minutes turn to hours. 

I thought Penny would remain supportive of how crappy I began to feel as the day came to a close yesterday but as I sit here writing this and trying to switch from cold to heat on the afflicted area I can see she is more and more turned off by my constant whimpering.

What happened to solidarity between women??  Oh, wait..I think she's trying to tell me something....

Ahhhh...crap.  She has a point.  If Jon's mom comes over and there's "Mount Laundry" prominently displayed on our sofa then I'm sure it will just scream, "my daughter-in-law is a FAILURE".  It's one thing to drain your family financially by eliminating one entire income and being sick all the time...then there is the whole deficiency in the motherhood department...but putting everyone's knickers on display because your having stabby boob pain is pretty much the final straw in the eyes of the extended family. 

Or at least I think it's written somewhere like that.  Maybe in the Bible after "don't covet thy neighbor" and "never allow someone to sleep past 8a on a Sunday so that they can worship" but before the chapter about "spare the rod, spoil the child".  It's been awhile since I read the Bible but I am pretty sure I saw it in there once.

It's now been 6 full hours of excruciating, non stop pain.  I am down to typing with just my right hand and Penny has gone from sitting faithfully by my side to just getting comfy and leaving me to cry while Jon snores and HGTV plays in the background.  It's the symphany of my life.

I've now consumed enough Sleepy Time tea and a fair amount of ibuprofen in order to allow me to try and get a bit of rest.  Sun up will bring more laundry and hopefully less pain. 

~JP

He just called me the smelly kid...pretty lame as terms of endearment go.

So I'm sick.  Yeah, big whoop di do.  The "illness" has been going on for over a week now.  Add that crappy feeling on top of the lingering depression and you find yourself with a pretty stinky sticky situation.

Okay...I'll just put it out there.  I haven't showered.  There I said it.  Go ahead with the thunderous, in unision, mock disbelief/disgust...WHAT??  EW??  SERIOUSLY??  No shower??  AT ALL??

In all my snotted up nose and Vicks crusted ailment I really, honestly, didn't think anyone noticed my failure to remain hygienic.  I have brushed teeth, hair...washed hands and face, but when it came to showering per say...ummm, yeah...it's been a few couple days.  Okay...fine...it's been exactly 3 1/2 days since my ass has met with a shower on an intimate one on one basis.

I've just been so sick.  All I've wanted to do is sleep.  Drink water.  Pee.  Sleep.  Eat.  Sleep.  Drink hot tea.  Pee.  Pee.  Pee.  Sleep.  Ok...I'm pretty sure you get the point.

Today has honestly been the first day where I have been in the right frame of mind and not all looped out on cold medicine to trust myself alone in a shower and not require one of those bathing chairs that old people use.  I was going to venture out to soccer tonight for Han's practice.  But as the time edged closer I could feel the fever coming back, my chest was hurting and the cough.  UGH...that fucking cough!

So I took a pass and decided to stay at home.  As it is we got an email from one of the coaches that her kid (that she brought to the last practice on Monday and that a bunch of people held) has been diagnosed with hand, foot and mouth disease.  Thank god I didn't hold the child or seriously I would be in an ER with that on top of this flu-y cold'ish thingy that I've managed to catch while sequestered in my house.

As Jon was getting ready to leave with Hannah I made mention that maybe I will take a bath or shower.  Jon was ALL over that.  Of course instead of just brushing it off and walking away I have to know why it is that Jon seems so happy over the fact that I am going to bath.

His response?

"Well babe...your kind of like the smelly kid", he says with a mild chuckle.

What?  The smelly kid?? Me???

I tried to be hurt about it and then I got a whiff of myself.  DAMN...how the hell did I miss that??

Apparently having a barrier of snot between your sense of smell and the odor that is well...yourself...can really gloss over the stench that one can create just from sleeping and being sick.

I had to concede that for once Jon was correct and now I am off to delouse myself.

~JP

You have your version of sexy...and clearly we have ours.

We are now entering day #5 of "the illness". 

It has been mainly uneventful.  No doctor's visits or hospitalization (mainly because we can't afford health care).

I didn't really start feeling the full effects of the germies until Thursday when my ability to swallow and breath magically disappeared.  Jon is in the same hellish boat as me so it's basically a free for all for the kids.  The last time Jon and I were both sick like this at the same time our kids were 10 & 5 and we allowed them to eat whatever they wanted for dinner one night. 

It was one of those moments when we were both burning up with fevers and so delirious with illness that we felt sure that our 10 year old would make a completely logical choice for dinner.  She chose brownie sundae's.  We were ill equipped to disagree or even care.  The next day when they came home from school they both asked if they could have a "real dinner".  Honestly the two of them were acting as if we hadn't fed them in days instead of the one missed meal that they had actually suffered.  And in truth it wasn't even that because they had eaten.

I was was like what the hell is that supposed to mean.  They seriously were acting as if we had tortured them and forced them to eat dessert for dinner. 

I think that was one of the moments when I realized my children were definitely one of a kind.

But back to this current sick fest. 

Hannah was the carrier monkey that exposed us to the illness.  Damn kid. 

How many times do I have to tell her to wash her hands, use sanitizer, don't share drinks, stay away from that one boy who's been in her class since Pre-k that ALWAYS seems to have strep throat and who infected her 7 times in one year???  Seriously people, if your kid is burning up with a fever and can't swallow without crying DO NOT...I REPEAT...DO NOT SEND HIM TO SCHOOL!

Pisses me off.  I may be lax on ALOT of stuff, but when it comes to illness...I believe that is something you should keep at home. 

The year of the "7 times of strep throat" I was pretty sure that our family physician was contemplating profiling me for Munchausen Syndrome.  I swear it was the illness that wouldn't go away. 

But this time around we are not in strep hell.  No we are in flu hell.  Or at least that is what I have self diagnosed us with.  Thank you WebMD.

By Thursday I was overly tired (more so than usual), chilled, unable to breath and hacking up a storm.  I was hitting the NyQuil like it was hard liquor.  If I could have put a straw in that bottle and carried it around like a juice box I would have.  At one point in a foggy haze of exhaustion and...well...NyQuil, I actually contemplated if I could make it into a cocktail.  Turns out it was the 1/2% alchohol by volume talking and when I finally came to my senses, kind of, I figured it not to be such a great idea. 

I mean, truth be told, we refer to the cherry NyQuil as "red death" in our house.  Jon will gather the kids to come and watch me take it because I have a severe aversion to liquid medication.  I'm a consistency girl...and liquid medicine is not something I can handle.  I will throw tantrums that could rival a 2 yr olds when it is deemed that I am sick enough to choke down that crap.

I will flail around stomping my feet on the ground with fist balled up at my sides and lips pursed tightly shut.  I know that this isn't a good example for my children, but so far all it has done is send them into hysteric fits of laughter to the point of almost peeing themselves.  Even at a younger age they would put up less of a fight then I would when it was time for them to take any medication in liquid form.  I am still baffled by the fact that Hannah, who can swallow a piece of candy whole, while opt for liquid over pill form medication any day of the week.

My mom says by 7 she forced me to take pills over liquid because she was tired of the sheer madness that ensued from trying to pin me to the floor and get me to swallow and not spit up the medicine that she was cramming down my unwilling throat.

When I turn to the Nyquil, my family knows that I AM SICK!

With all the coughing, snorting, achiness and chills it seemed the only thing that I couldn't seem to do was sneeze.  I have the tingle in my nose constantly though but alas...no sneeze.  I finally got one out on Friday after 2 days of waiting for it to happen. 

One. 

Singular. 

Pathetic. 

Sneeze.

Even now I NEED to sneeze. 

God, I really do need to sneeze.  My nose is being a sneeze tease.

As I sit writing this Jon is out in the living room sneezing 1..2..3..4..5..wait for it...6 times!  His norm is anywhere from 2 to 4 sneezes at one time.  In the 12 years we have been together he has never sneezed just once. 

Right now...I hate him.  That lucky able to sneeze bastard!

God he is such a show off.  I would yell that over the t.v., through the closed door in hopes of it traveling down the hallway to make it to his semi-deaf (even when he's not sick) ears...but alas I am too tired and that would hurt the hell out of my throat and then I'd be pissed and still unable to sneeze.

Kind of off the subject, but kind of related too..Thank God Jon got lasik surgery because now we almost make one normal human being.  Me, with supersonic ears but so-so sight and him partially deaf (he says from repeated ear infections as a child, which he blames on the fact that he was NOT breastfed as a baby...let it go man it's been 33 years) but with superior store bought sight.

We are both so fucking miserable.  The only highlights so far have been the delicious soup (Mmmmmm....baked potato) that he brought me and being rubbed down with Vick's vapo rub. 

The rub down with Vick's was actually pretty funny because if you would have thrown in some cheesy instrumental music in the background it could have been mistaken for one of those low budget adult movies.  I was moaning and Jon was totally getting turned on.  Then I snorted back the snot that was starting to dribble out of my nose and shabam...the moment was lost.

Not that we would have acted on any of the sexual rumblings that began to well up during the rub down because A) both of us are to fucking tired from being sick and B) ok..well there is no B.

Apparently it doesn't matter how sick we are because Jon, like any man, is always in "please I want nookey" mode. 

Perfect example: This morning I made my way from the bedroom out to the kitchen bleary eyed.  I had barely slept between hacking and snorting.  I had tried to wear ear plugs so that I would only have to listen to my bodily fluids being sucked back up into my head and not Jon's futile attempt to achieve air passage through both nostrils but the arrival of an ear infection (or what I have self diagnosed as an ear infection due to extreme pain and a red inner ear) made using those completely impossible. 

So it sounded like a lame version of dueling banjo's only with our coughs and snorts as the instrumentals.  How either of us slept more than 15 minutes at a time is COMPLETELY beyond me.

Anyways, I make my way into the kitchen and immediately set to making some tea.  I ask Jon if he would like some tea.  He agrees which is a sure fire sign that he is feeling just as shitty as I am.  Or so he would have me believe. 

I set about rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and trying to brush down my unruly and unshowered (for 2 days) hair.  Then I pick a wedge...I know...HOT!  I try to clear my throat and curse the pain that arises. 

I turn to whine to Jon and say, "I feel miserable.  I can't even swallow". 

"Great, there goes our evening", he retorts smiling.

I stand there for a second trying to compute the meaning in my foggy head.  And then it hits me...even with all this hot mess of a sicko wife who has become a mouth breather due to the overwhelming surplus of snot in her nasal passages he is making a sexual innuendo.  Gotta love that man of mine.

I smile.  He smiles.  We both hack and then snort back the flem.  If that isn't romantic and sexy...well I just don't know what is.

~JP