4-5-06
Good Morning My Love –
A bit better today, still feeling fatigued. Sciatic mildly unpleasant, though still enough to undermine sleep somewhat.
Snow showers coming in today. You’d have laughed; we’re just annoyed. I’m worried about the lovely little bulb flower in bloom outside my living room window. Can it survive our perverse weather?
Don’t know if you remember the Terri Schiavo case, one of those awful “pull the plug” cases that lasted years and brought out the worst in everyone. Hubby wanted the plug pulled, parents didn’t, right-to-lifers and the Religious Right got involved….Eventually, the plug was pulled and she died. Lately the hubby’s been talking, not that I entirely trust the man — but he said among the things he misses about her is the back scratches and the way she smelled. To that I can relate. You had a lovely slightly sweet, slightly funky smell when you’d just wakened that I loved and miss. These things are so subtle yet so pervasive; they lodge in crannies behind one’s mind, and it almost takes a replication of the stimulus (Proust’s blithering madeleines) to conjure them up. The little animal things: little touches, little sounds, the sight of you on the balcony loving the air and the sky; hearing you mutter to yourself as you moved around the apartment; the little odd passing caresses we’d share. How your skin felt (wonderful!). How you always seemed happy to see or hear me. So many vital invisible strings that tied us together, each broken, each intact in memory.
Just found out I lost Mel, my Sunday gig. He has an old friend who winters in Florida and is back now, who’ll cover the Sunday hours. Sorry to lose the bucks, but glad to gain the day. Can get to see Freddie more easily. But will try to pick up another client when I can, so my respite is temporary.
Only to you will I make this confession: I had a major brain cramp on ebay. Put a bid in on a Lalique frog without reading the description. Now I’m out $110 for a glass frog with a broken foot. Idiot! I’m so pissed with myself I could spit!
(Happily, the fates took pity on me, and in our P.O. box I found a check from Margery in the consignment shop for $87.)
4-6-06
Good Morning Beloved –
Saw Donna and Bobby yesteday. They’re OK. Their van shit the bed. They say that Brendan’s car is also in trouble, since he never did standard maintenance on it. Fran, apparently, extremely forgetful and contrary — Alzheimer’s? — and Brendan himself is bothered by foot and other maladies. That’s going to end badly, I fear, unless Brendan can accept that she must go into a nursing home. Very very sad. We did it better, baby.
Had worried, as you know, about a teeth flare-up, which didn’t happen. Until today. Biting into a bagel I broke clean off my upper left fang. Whole damn tooth from the gum up. Called the oral surgeon who yanked my last bum tooth two summers ago; I see him Monday at 2:15, with $270 in my pocket. Hope it doesn’t infect by then.
This may be the tooth, or lack of same, that hurries up my slow march toward dentures. Now there’ll be a gap between my incisors and first molar, and I can expect the teeth th shift. Wonder if I can rent it out as a parking space.
As usual, the tongue is going crazy trying to get used to the new feel in the mouth.
4-7-06
Good Morning My Love –
Waiting at Uno’s for salmon; got two more pair of pants at Burlington Coat Factory, for $20.
Lisa asked me what I thought of her long-term plan/notion to leave Vegas — debt-free, if she ever achieves such a state of grace. Inevitably, something unexpected and expensive will pop up….Anyway, I told her since Vegas and its denizens are all about glittering surfaces and what it takes to create same, and its “cultural” life has nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with making money, she — with significant self-esteem issues — can never measure up. Sometimes someone will make a facile comment about her looks, which flatters her a bit and which she almost certainly rejects later. No one is interested in her interior life. I told her I think she’d do best in a medium-sized city with a very good university and an active artiste community with a taste for the avante-garde. She’d find much to respond to in such a place. I think Vegas is empty for her, full of bad ghosts and no real hope.
Just called Freddie. Sounded weak and fatigued, but says he’s no worse except, possibly, for pain. D. and — I think — Je. will go down Saturday; I’ll go down Sunday. Says he’s getting out once in a while, and isn’t vomiting. Not sure I believe that last. Said yesterday was bad, today good. Can’t say he sounded good.
Love you, babe –
4-8-07
Good Afternoon My Love –
Busy morning and early afternoon; lazy evening. Did bill-paying, laundry, P.O., banking, grocery-shopping and home-visiting (Janet) by 3:30; now am playing poker, watching sports, doing email and vegging out.
At Stop & Shop I got some Haagen Dasz eggnog ice cream. You’d love it. Good strong true flavor. And of course the fair was still going on across the road; told you I’d take you there or anywhere if you’d just appear, but you didn’t, so I went about my business with drying tears. Can’t seem to help doing that to myself.
I’ll see Freddie tomorrow afternoon.
4-9-06
Good Morning My Darling –
Bad night. Right sciatic very sore. What sleep I got was on my back.
Lisa wrote that she’s having bad dreams and thoughts. Told her they reflected the levels of her underlying anxieties. Told her that she’s proven her strength; now she must prove her wisdom by committing herself to mental health as she committed herself to physical health. And I raised the issue of whether or not she is really committed to mental health, about which I have my doubts, though in true psychiatric circular reasoning I assume a weak commitment to mental health is proof of mental unhealth.
I also asked her if it was possible that she’s lost sufficient weight from her body’s health point of view, and might she consider her present exercise program a maintenance diet? So she could treat herself once a year? But I fear she sees it as the only thing in her life to be proud of, and couldn’t let it go even if she agrees with me.
Saw Freddie. Hurting with stomach pain. Acid reflux. Fixed him tea, two soft-boiled eggs, some ice cream. Would rather have given him bread, milk, a little fish. Otherwise much the same — oh, the swelling is down, almost normal. But he’s pretty miserable. I’ll try to get down next Sunday.
Love you, babe. Tomorrow I get the base of the lost fang pulled. Joy.
4-10-06
Good Morning My Love –
Rested a little better by doubling the pillows under my knees and putting pillows on either side of my head so I can turn it some without turning over and putting pressure on the sciatic.
Had the tooth, or what was left of it, pulled. Wasn’t easy. Came out in chunks, took twenty to thirty minutes. Happily the novacaine didn’t wear off too soon. Once it did, I’d just filled the percocet scrip, and have just had to take another one. But all in all it’s not too bad. Simply a matter of riding it out.
Not that it’s relevant, but I love you. Hey, you knew that….
Nina’s been writing. Bryan is no better. When he rages she has to bring the kids in the bedroom and lock the door. So she’s thinking maybe she should leave or kick him out. What is wrong with that woman? If she was FDR when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, she’d still be trying to decide what to do (and if it was Bush, he’d respond promptly by attacking New Zealand). I don’t even think she has any hope left for Bryan or the marriage, but she seems almost incapable of making and executing a decision.
She says she misses you soooooo much (a quote) and is no doubt sincere, but all she’d do was cry on your shoulder and ignore your advice.
4-11-06
Good Morning My Love –
Got through the night with Percocets. Might be mildly allergic to them, as I’m itchy across the upper back and down the arms. The area is swollen, as might be expected. Decided that heavy exertion might not help it, so cancelled PT tonight. Will have to pick up the exercises tomorrow, since it’s now five days since I did any.
It’s occurred to me that I’m writing less about us. I very much needed to earlier, to record as much as I could the special things we had together, to celebrate them before they began to fade. And when your life is almost completely wrapped up in someone else and suddenly that’s over, you don’t have much else on your mind. Now I’ve functioned and for myself for over half a year, and though you’re still woven into my life, mind, heart, soul and psyche inextricably, it’s in a passive way. You observe my life, not participate in it any more. Damn it.
I’m hoping that more time will bring different perspectives, and that I’ll see things I hadn’t necessarily seen before, and write about it.
You are still the single most important person in my life, the most important factor. And unless I find someone else — which is most doubtful — you’ll continue to be for the foreseeable future. That may sound odd, but it feels appropriate. You dead are still essential to me, more than anyone living, though Lisa’s a fairly close second.
It’s the Sox’ Opening Day, which you never gave two hoots about, not to mention how the crowds would freak you out. But residing inside me as you do, the crowds are no threat and you can enjoy the spectacle: the smells of Italian sausage and popcorn; the hawkers selling everything and even giving stuff away: schedules, signs, and cloth-flower leis, given by a whiteface clown in a Sox uniform, on stilts. Just hope he doesn’t end up as our relief pitcher in the 8th; the people carrying signs for, and asking everybody who passes by if they have a ticket to sell — and a block away, the scalpers selling tickets; the booming loudspeaker from inside the Park, competing with the brass band at the newly refaced Cask & Flagon or, further away, the bands hired by banks in the Square; the incredible number of cops, attendants and security guards, most of ‘em doing absoluthely nothing; the copters and jets flying over; the diners at the bars and clubs on the north side of Lansdowne St., while across on the south side, all the people who slept on the sidewalk overnight, now lined up hoping to score a bleacher ticket; all the people, so many in Sox shirts and hats, taking on the characteristics of moving water, with a current, eddies, flowing around obstacles, making miserable anyone trying to move upstream, all inexorably moving toward the ballpark; the kids, all sizes, but intimidated for the most part by the crowd, wanting to run and scream but fearing, as their parents do, being swallowed up and swept away by the human river; all the men talking wisely about baseball; even more men talking wisely about business; and, finally, the sounds of the game: the music, the sonorous P.A. droning on; the pause and swell of the crowd noise, sounding at first like the wind, then building to a roar as the play unfolds, then dying down again; and, if they win (they did, today) the psychic glow that settles over the fans and the area.
Just talked to J., who’s happy about the Sox’ 6-1 win, and unhappy with her neighbors. (What’s new?) Seems in good shape. When her bitching gets a frantic note, I might worry. But this is run-of-the-mill bitching, so I infer she’s OK.
