Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

I’m Sure What He Really Meant To Say Was, “Wow-That’s A Great Idea!”

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The other day my husband and I were discussing The Ice Situation in our house. I love ice. I must have ice. I need so much ice in fact, that it’s frequently difficult to fit any of my beverage in the same glass with all of my ice. So, unsurprisingly, my ice needs frequently outstrip the ice maker’s ability to supply them.

I have come up with what I feel is a brilliant strategy; if the ice is low and I’m finished with my drink, I will rinse my ice cubes off and dump them back in the freezer. (And before you get all skeeved out: it’s just the 2 of us here, we NEVER EVER have any company because we are both the biggest hermits that you will ever meet, and, after 23 years of dating and marriage, if we were going to each others’ get cooties,  it would have happened by now.)

As I was explaining my brilliant recycling strategy my husband looked at me and said, “Is that why sometimes the ice is purple? I cleaned out the entire freezer because I thought we had a fungus.”

“Oh-nope,that was just me,” I replied.

My husband just looked at me for a beat and then shook his head, saying, “You are the strangest woman I have ever known.”

“Um, I prefer to think of it as quirky, eccentric, and entertaining,” I countered.

“Well, you do entertain me,” he said, smiling.

I guess one out of three’s not bad.

Sanctuary

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I’m currently taking this amazing writing class, and since I’m (finally!) generating new material, I thought I’d post some of these  pieces here on my blog. This first piece takes place back when my husband and I were newly engaged.

I stepped into the sanctuary, pausing to dip my finger in the holy water, and breathing in the familiar mix of incense, wood polish, and flowers. Taking a deep breath and exhaling hard through my mouth, I scanned the crowd and then headed toward the pew where my future in-laws were sitting.

I slid easily onto the pew, polished smooth by many years and many backsides, and leaned forward to pull down the kneeler. With the knuckle of my folded hands pressing painfully into my forehead, I only had one prayer in mind: Dear God, please let the bishop say yes.

My prayers were interrupted by the cantor announcing the opening hymn, and as I stood to sing I turned to watch the familiar procession.  Altar servers, deacon, priest, and lector all strode slowly and purposefully down the center aisle, stopping to genuflect before they climbed up onto the altar.

I clenched my jaw tight and tried to control my nervous leg-shaking as those on the altar plodded through the opening rituals. Please, let this just be over, I prayed, knowing full well that this prayer would not be answered. Because not only were we there for mass, but we were also there to watch the bishop administer the Rite of Confirmation to my future sister-in-law’s confirmation class.

I really don’t remember any of that service.  I just remember my surging adrenaline, racing heart, and continuous waves of anxiety as I waited to see if my fiancé and I would be granted an audience with the bishop.

You see, we were engaged to be married, and deep into wedding plans, but we had run into a pretty large snag in that his family is Catholic, and my family is not. Like, in the sense of, “If you get married in a Catholic church, then we’re not coming,” kind of way. So we had jumped through a million official hoops and petitioned the bishop for permission to be married “in the church”, priest and all, just not in a Catholic church. And this was our moment of truth.

I remember a blur of sensations as Father Bill, the head priest of the parish, came to collect us.  I thought I heard him say that the bishop had granted us the permission we sought, but I was afraid I’d just imagined it. We had had to go through so much that I was afraid to believe it was finally over.

Father Bill led us behind the altar into the sacristy, and then suddenly, there we were, in front of the man himself.

As we huddled together in that dark, cramped hallway, the bishop closed his eyes, held his hands over our heads, and gave us a quick blessing.

We bowed our heads and murmured our thanks, quietly soaking in the reverence of the moment. “Congratulations,” the bishop announced, “you are now officially betrothed.”

We smiled gently and turned to leave, but the bishop stopped us, having one last message to impart to me.

“What this means now,” he said, grinning from ear to ear, “is that if he breaks off your engagement, then you can sue him for breach of contract. Just wanted you to know.”

Like A Well-Oiled Machine

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Us, tonight, getting ready for company.

My husband: “OK, I’m gonna go start working on the guest room.”

Me: “Is there anything I could help with?”

My husband: “You could bring me a garbage bag so I can dump the cat boxes.”

Me: “OK. But first let me text them about bringing their own pillows.”

My husband goes and does something outside while I am typing on my phone.

My husband (stepping back into the kitchen): “You know, by the time you send that it will be too late to help me.”

Me (still texting): “No, I can do it. See, I’m coming.”

Me: “Oh, wait. There’s no “f” in shortage.”

Laughter from my husband.

My husband (walking over to the cabinet and pulling out a trash bag): “Nope, it’s too late.”

Me (still frantically texting): “No, see, I’m coming. Right now,” I reply, still trying to pretend like I can be any help at all by trailing after him through the house.

Me: “DAMMIT. THERE IS NO “Y” IN SHORTAGE.”

Hysterical, snorting laughter from my husband.

Finally, FINALLY!, the stupid freaking text is sent.

Me: “OK, I’m done. Is there anything I can help you with now?”

My husband (doubtfully): “Well, do you think you could bring me the vacuum cleaner?”

Me: “Um, actually, I think that if I am entrusted with anything more powerful than a pencil and a piece of paper right now, I will probably break the world. “

And This Is Why No One Wants To Be A Fly On Our Wall

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So the other day I was stupid (SHOCKER!).

After about 10 days of actually being able to get out of the house and go to actual, live events and interact with actual, live human beings, my fibro reared up and said, “ENOUGH!”

And so I planned a day of rest.

Which to me, of course meant, “Don’t take your pain medicine in the morning, because you will be driving yourself to the bookstore-the one that involves driving up the highway to get to-so that you can finally buy that book you’ve been thinking about for the past week. And then, five hours later, be crying and in excruciating pain. Without even having made it to the bookstore.”

Because unfortunately, as Lynne frequently reminds me, “Pain makes you stupid.” Meaning that, after your pain gets to a certain level, you truly do become unable to access your higher brain functions. And then you forget how to take care of yourself and do really stupid things like suffer for five hours with excruciating pain instead of taking your pain medicine.

And the really sad thing was that I knew that I was going to do exactly the same thing the next day, and the day after that, if I didn’t stage some sort of intervention for myself.

So I called my husband and explained the situation to him, and after he reminded me to TAKE YOUR DAMN PAIN MEDICINE ALREADY, WOMAN!, he agreed to take me to the bookstore that evening in order to preempt further stupidity on my part. Because he’s nice like that.

As he’d never been with me to this particular bookstore before, I did my best to provide him with directions, part of which included the fact that, “it’s in the same shopping center as the Best Buy.”

And while he has been to that particular shopping center before, he’d never been to that store before. So he didn’t believe me. Even though I have been to that bookstore, on multiple occasions, and so I clearly knew what I was talking about.

Finally we got close enough to see the store from where we were, but even then, when I pointed out the actual, physical building to him, he still didn’t believe me.

“Look,” I finally said in frustration, “I know what I’m talking about. They’re in the same shopping center.”

“All right,” my husband grudgingly granted me, “but when we get there, I’D BETTER SEE CONTIGUOUS PARKING LOT.”

“YES,” I declared, “YOU WILL. THERE WILL BE CONTIGUOUS PARKING LOT THERE FOR YOU TO SEE, I PROMISE.”

We are such dorks, I know. But I’m also pretty sure that no one else ever has as much fun as we do.

Free At Last

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I think one of my favorite things about being in my thirties is the fact that I no longer feel like I have to pretend about who I really am (or am not) in order to get people to like me. This was not always the case.

Back during our first year of marriage my husband, who is himself an Eagle Scout, worked as a volunteer with a Boy Scout troop and I, caught up in the flush of wanting to impress my new husband, agreed to go along on one of his troop’s camping trips.

Important Side Note: If you have never been camping before, I would HIGHLY recommend that your first trip not be with a troop of scouts, because any points you feel you have gained by being “a really cool wife” will quickly fade when you realize that, compared to everyone else on the trip including elementary school students, trail dogs, etc., you feel like a giant, incompetent wuss.

I really should have known that I was in over my head when my husband and I went to the outdoor store to buy me some gear. We did not go there to buy a cool backpack, or a kicky bandanna, or a nifty trail tool. No,we went so that I could buy my very own, neon orange, plastic poo shovel.

Things kind of took a turn for the worse once we had hiked up the trail to the spot where we were going to camp that night. We had foolishly drunk all the water we’d packed, so my husband went down to the river, filled our two plastic bottles with water, ran some iodine through the bottles, and handed one to me. I looked at the bottle, looked at him, and said, “It’s brown, And. There. Are. Bugs. In. It!” He looked at me and said, (and please bear in mind that he had only been a husband for a little under a year and hadn’t yet developed the sensitivity that he has now after nine years of marriage), “Well, the bugs are dead. And we have this lemonade mix to add to it!”

Even now, eight years later, I can’t think of this story without experiencing total incredulity at his response.  And even now, eight years later, my husband insists that we would not have even had this problem, if only he had packed a darker colored drink mix.

Happily I did recover enough from this trip to start going out on day hikes with my husband and our friends. As a matter of fact I was pretty impressed with myself on our last trip, because not only was I wearing my very own pair of official hiking boots, but they were so well used that we had to patch them together with duct tape.

(Yes of course we had duct tape-I was hiking with three engineers! As a matter of fact, the only reason that I didn’t have to sleep suspended in between two trees in some kind of jury-rigged duct tape shelter was the fact that the other spouse who came on this trip was five months pregnant.)

However, there are still some hurdles to overcome before I can consider going on another camping trip, as is clearly illustrated by the following conversation I had with my husband the last time he went camping.

10:00 pm. The phone rings.
Me: “Hello?”
My husband: “Hey, Jenny. I need your help.”
Me: (panicking at all the possible emergencies that could befall campers, and wondering just exactly where I can rent an emergency extraction helicopter at 10 pm on a Saturday night) “Oh my gosh, are you all right?!”
My husband: “What? Oh, yeah, we’re fine. I just need you to get the Almanac so you can tell us the geographical size of Liechtenstein in square miles.”

Silly me-what was I thinking?! These were highly trained, highly capable, highly intelligent men. Clearly the only emergency situation in which they could possibly have found themselves would be to be without immediate access to the geographical data of tiny, landlocked, central European countries.

So anyway, the jury is still out on the whole camping thing, but between you and me I wouldn’t hold my breath.

A Tale of Two Spouses

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In honor of today being my 9th wedding anniversary, I thought I’d write a little about how my husband and I have worked out our own particular division of marital labor in order to ensure a smooth, well-running relationship. Because there are certain things they just don’t cover in premarital counseling, such as how to adjust to the fact that each of you deals with stress differently.

When it comes to handling stressful situations, my husband is in charge of Being Calm, which is best illustrated through the following story.

After we’d been married for three years we bought our first house, and after we’d lived in our house for six months we had a really bad ice storm. We thought the worst that happened was that we lost power, but we soon discovered just how wrong we were when I walked into our bedroom and saw a GI-NORMOUS tree sticking through the roof.

Naturally I called for my husband, and he responded by saying, “What?” Now I’m sure you can picture this situation, so you know the tone I was using. It was not, “Could you please come in here when you get a minute, hon?” It was, “COME! NOW! BAD!” Fortunately he decided to amble in and see what was going on. That was good because I only had the one yell in me, and then I lost all ability to speak and was reduced to quiet whimpering.

So he came into the room while talking on the cell phone to his dad, saw the giant hole in our roof, and… started describing it in precise, rational, scientific terms to his father. Like, “Hm, the hole is about the size of a dinner plate, and the tree is protruding approximately eighteen inches down from the ceiling.”

And I’m standing there looking at him, the love of my life, the man I waited seven years to marry, and I’m thinking, “Who are you, and what is the MATTER with you?! Why are you not freaking out when CLEARLY that is the response called for in this situation?!”

But this is where the whole division of labor thing came in handy, because he calmly organized some roof triage, and I got to come up with a funny story to tell people.

However there are some times when being calm can backfire on you, and that is where I come in. So in addition to Getting To Do All Of The Freaking Out, in stressful situations I am also in charge of Reasonable Expectations. And I have a story for that too.

About a month after moving into our house, things were going well. I was enjoying unpacking and decorating, and I had just gotten a new job working at a bookstore, which is something I always wanted to try.

One day my husband came home from work and announced that there was a position open at his job for someone to go to Denmark for a year. And he thought we should go. And…he was serious. He honestly believed that this was absolutely the best, most rational, most logical next step for the direction of our lives. And he was upset when I responded by bursting into tears and crying for like, an entire day. He said, “I don’t understand why we can’t discuss this rationally.”

So here we are six years later (still living in America), and we’ve gotten our routine down pretty well. He is in charge of Things That Sting, Time, Calling People On The Phone, and Knowing How To Get Around In Any Given Location, and I am in charge of Funny Smells, Sneaking In Decluttering So He Doesn’t Notice It, Knowing Things About People, and Holding His Drink When We Go Out Somewhere.

It works for us.