Let me recap the past several days for you --
Friday: Despite feeling like shit, and knowing that he must have a fever, intrepid Sweet William goes to work. As he is pulling in to the parking lot, one of the corporate bigwigs also drives in and stops to speak to him. He says, "Oh, did So-and-So talk to you yesterday?" Sweet William states that So-and-So had not. Corporate Bigwig then says, "Well, So-and-So had to go out of town earlier than expected, and he was supposed to speak at the conference today, so we were wondering if you could speak on his behalf?" Yeah. So not cool. And while normally Sweet William would be able to come home for lunch and possibly take a nap because he feels like shit, he must instead keep his shit-like-feeling self at work all day due to this conference. It is the longest day ever. Once he returns home at the end of the day and finds that his temperature is 102.8, it is too late to go to the doctor's office.
Saturday: Sweet William's throat is on fire, his temperature keeps spiking, and he is pretty wretched. Since he won't listen to reason and go to the ER, Viva and I abandon him to visit with some friends for a good portion of the day. When we return, Sweet William has not moved from his post on the couch and expresses irritation that I have not brought home a cookie for him. Sweet Fancy Moses!
Sunday: Hey, Sweet William is still sick. This illness -- with the high fever! and the swollen glands! -- does not seem to want to go away on its own. It seems to have moved in and made itself comfy and invited all its germy friends for a sleepover. Sweet William still refuses to go to the ER. Viva and I abandon him and go to the bike store and the toy store. I am cruel and won't buy my child anything (mainly because I am waiting for my next paycheck to buy her birthday presents). This is despite the immense cuteness and joy that emanate from her as she pedals slowly around the bike store on a variety of bikes. I have a heart of stone. When we return, Sweet William is sitting in bed surrounded by piles of paper because he has decided to try and get his taxes* together. The rest of the house is already a wreck, and he has decided to add more crap to the crapdom. He insists he has to go to work tomorrow. I am ready to kill him.
Monday: Sweet William goes to work, despite having a fever of 100. I call the doctor and book a 9:30 appointment for him. The verdict: STREP THROAT. The doctor prescribes penicillin and sends Sweet William home to rest through Wednesday. Please note that at this point, I have not slept well for several days, since I have been sleeping on the couch and/or in Viva's room. Viva tends to kick a lot in her sleep and throw the covers off. Since the temperature dips into the 40s at night, I keep waking up shivering and miserable. But she is is so warm, and smells so nice! I can't bring myself to go back to the couch. But with the lack of sleep, my patience is thin. I end up getting pissed off at my computer and at Sweet William for absolutely no rational reason. I am pretty sure that this does not help Sweet William in his quest for wellness.
Tuesday: As his penance for getting sick and being married to a crazy woman, Sweet William gets up and cleans the kitchen and does two loads of laundry before I wake up. Granted, the laundry is mainly his because his infection makes him sweat so much that he wakes up every 45 minutes to change his T-shirt and the towel he's sleeping on. But still. Later, Sweet William and I end up hanging out and watching my new favorite movie, "Kung Fu Hustle," which is the coolest craziest movie ever. And then I work on Viva's birthday invitations** and actually get them printed and assembled and addressed and, in short, ready to be mailed out, so people might actually get them in time to save the date and show up.
Tuesday night: I go to bed around 10:30 pm. At around midnight, our sweet child wakes up complaining about Guantanamo Bay, the Middle East, and the sad state of the world today. I try to soothe her, but she's having none of it. And really, if something's going to keep you awake at night, it makes sense that it should be that. She finally falls asleep muttering something about Dick Cheney and the NRA. I am lying on top of her comforter with a thin blanket over me, determined to get back in my own bed. I wake up at around 1:30, shivering, and go back to bed. At around 3:00 am, the fire alarm goes off. Sweet William stomps in and out of the bedroom and in and out of the closet, pulling clothes and shoes on, and goes into the hallway to determine if we actually need to get out of the building. He returns in, if anything, an even more pissed-off state than when he left, and says, "Fucking idiots! Somebody pulled the fucking fire alarm! There's broken glass all over the floor by the elevator," and I won't repeat all of what he said except that the f-word was used at great length and with great ardor.
The firefighters come and turn the alarm off and then announce through a bullhorn that it was a false alarm and we can safely "return" to our apartments. Since I did not even get out of bed during this whole episode, I am ahead of the game. I fall back to sleep, only to be awakened at roughly 4:15 am by the fire alarm again. The same fucking idiots (presumably) who pulled it on our floor went down to the next floor, broke the glass, and pulled it again. I hate them with every tendon, sinew, and fiber of my being. I hate them, and I hate anyone who even remotely looks like them, even if I don't know what they look like. I am really tired today.
This morning, Viva and I ran into one of our neighbors on the elevator. She was carrying a huge mug of coffee. "Man, I need that," I said.
"You're not kiddin', " she said, and then we both started talking at once about the geniuses who pulled the fire alarms.
"I was SO mad!" I said.
"I was so mad!" she said.
"Why she so mad?" said Viva, as we got off the elevator and walked to the car.
"Well, because someone pulled the fire alarm last night and it woke us all up, except you," I said. "You slept right through it."
"There was a fire?!" Viva said, and her voice went up an octave. I know she was pissed, because she is crazy for firefighters.
"It wasn't a real fire," I said. "The alarm was going off by mistake."
"But I want to see the FIRE," Viva whined in the irrational whine of the nearly three-year-old.
"But there wasn't a fire, baby," I said.
"But--"
"Hey, what's going on in Guantanamo Bay?" I said. "What's that all about?"
* I know, I know, we should have filed them before the rush. Our taxes are rather complicated because I have my own freelance business and Sweet William also has his own side business (film and video production) and we also bought an investment property last year. Just getting all the paperwork together is a big fucking pain, and even though I am pretty organized and enter all my expenses into a spreadsheet, I still have to sort through the receipts and file them into their little envelopes and check them against the spreadsheet to make sure I didn't miss anything. Since Sweet William is not at all organized -- when I met him, he kept all his tax info for the year in a shoe box -- it takes him much longer. He keeps saying I should take over his taxes, but that would involve me hounding him for all his receipts once a month, and that doesn't sound like much fun to me.
By the way, today we worked on our taxes again. I am finished. Sweet William has given up, for the moment. I regret that I may actually have to get involved.
** For which I used Viva's own artwork, scanned into the computer:
She is quite the artiste, no?
No comments:
Post a Comment