Thursday, February 16, 2012

Sixteen Breaths


Today at the grocery store, my husband barked at me for picking up a bag of candy off of the belt in the self-check line and making the automated voice lady all cranky-pants (“if you wish to purchase the item, please place the item on the belt.”)  I spun on my heel to face him and said, “don’t talk to me that way.”  I thought I was going to actually shoot lasers out of my eyes, but it turns out I just shot spittle out of my mouth.  He put the candy down and said, “you’re right, I’m sorry.”  It caught me so off guard.  I had all this anger all stockpiled by the entrance of my mouth and all of the sudden he’s just saying “I’m sorry.”  Like, that’s great, but what am I going to do with all this venom?  I looked around for someone else to yell at, but I didn’t see any republicans.  I felt like I had a mouth full of gristle at a fancy party and had to wait till no one was looking so I could spit it discretely into my cloth napkin.  I’m not good at changing gears this fast.  Last time we had a fight and I was wrong, I had to sit with my eyes closed and take sixteen deep breaths without saying anything before I could apologize.  It took sixteen deep breaths for me to rearrange my whole idea of myself into someone who could sometimes be wrong.  My pride was limping around giving me pitiful looks for days.

We did our taxes tonight and it was actually sort of fun.  Married life is weird.  We had stockpiled all these medical receipts and I read them out to Benjamin while he entered them into a spreadsheet on the computer.  It feels so nice and ordered to know that basket of scraps of paper is now a nice organized spreadsheet.  I’m not type A enough to do that sort of thing on my own, but I am type A enough to appreciate it when it is done.  My brain feels like it has good feng shui now. 

I went to the coffee shop today to work on my thesis and this nice young woman asked if she could sit down with me.  We talked for almost two hours.  I didn’t get much of my thesis done, but this is why I don’t work at home; it’s harder for the universe to tell you about something more important you should be doing.

The baby is either practicing her Olympic tumbling routine or I am about to have explosive diarrhea.  I really cannot tell which.  This is the weirdest thing my body has ever done.  Way weirder than the time I was twelve and realized I was growing little dark hairs in my armpits.  Puberty was rough; I feel like I just got used to that body and now here it goes changing on me again.  I have stretch marks on my breasts.  When I complained about this to Rosemary she arched one eyebrow so high it threatened to give up and join forces with her hair, “didn’t you have those already?”  I guess I am not going to get a lot of sympathy for the boob stretch mark thing. 

Yesterday was a terrible day.  Halfway through my third bout of sobbing I thought, “Oh yeah, depression, I remember you.”  Remembering that this was called depression did not really help me feel any better, but at least I had a name for it.  If I hadn’t remembered that it was called depression, I was going to christen it “Frederick.”  Today was much better.  Hopefully tomorrow will be bearable.  

2 comments:

  1. I just found your blog through bakers dozen, and this is a perfect night for it. I like your honesty and will continue reading. I am up all night with another UTI (sorry you dont even know me) and cant got o ER till morning bc dont want to wake the kiddos. I am glad to have found a new read!

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  2. Sorry to be MIA for so long! I'm glad you're enjoying reading, and I hope you feel better!

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