your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidante...

it's been so long since i've written i'm guessing i've taken a huge hit in my readership. just in case there are a few of you out there, i'm still here. there is a reason i've been absent for the last few weeks—i'm working on a piece about that reason, which i'm not ready to post yet because it's emotional and delicate and i need to get it right.

but i thought i'd write today nonetheless—about The Golden Girls. last night i was home alone (hubster works Monday nights), sitting in a mostly-dark apartment (we now have two window air conditioners, and if you have both running and then dare to turn on the microwave, hair dryer, iron or the wrong lamp, the fuse goes. i wasn't about to risk having to trek down to the basement on my own so i erred on the side of caution and used as little electricity as possible. thus the dark.) anyway, i was flipping through the channels and for some reason stopped on an episode of Golden Girls. i haven't watched the show in years, literally. maybe a few minutes here and there, but not a full episode since i was in my adolescence. (the show became inexplicably, wildly popular with college kids a year or two after i graduated. i still don't understand that trend, but i digress.)

the point of this is—i flipped to the WE network just as one episode was wrapping up (Dorothy finds out she has chronic fatigue syndrome and rips her doctor a new one in a restaurant since he'd told her she was just old; also, Sophia gets their exorbitant dinner bill paid for by putting salt in the $430 bottle of champagne they ordered and then complaining about it—brilliant!) i watched the end of that episode and i wound up watching the next two. i was transfixed. actually, i was incredibly comforted. i was taken right back to the many Saturday nights i watched the show with my Gram (who i insisted back then and still insist today is adorably similar to Rose). the characters, the banter, the canned laughter, the sets, even the incidental theme music that plays during scene transitions—it was all so wonderfully familiar and soothing.

sometimes i guess you just catch the right thing at the right time. after the last few difficult weeks—and a somewhat uneasy day yesterday—i was more than happy to take a trip down memory lane last night with those crazy Girls. 

even if i can't get that damn theme song out of my head today...

mbm

mrs. terrible

i am sometimes a terrible wife. (because i can admit that, i hope that makes me less terrible. because everyone is terrible sometimes, right?)

anyway. yesterday i had a very long day at work and by the time i got home around 9 o'clock the PMS goblins had majority rule in my brain and i pulled my occasional Fort Knox routine. (in short: no matter what technique is used to gain access, i make it absolutely impossible to get in.) i sat at the kitchen table and ate the pizza i picked up on my way home while reading the latest issue of Women's Health. Michael was on the couch catching up on Modern Family and (understandably) laughing his way through what i think was the season finale. it was hilarious but i refused to 1) let on that i was paying attention to anything other than my magazine or 2) crack a smile.

after it was over, Michael spent a while in the kitchen washing dishes—after putting on the Yankee game for me—and still i sat in silence, half-reading, half-watching the game. any questions he asked me i answered in five words or less. (right now, if my mother is reading this, she's having flashbacks to life with me circa 1992.)

eventually i got up, packed my gym back for the morning, got ready for bed and said a somewhat petulant goodnight to my husband.

i had barely gotten into bed with my book when i heard from the living room, "oh god! oh shit! Megs, you are not gonna like this!" the first thought that went through my head was: he spilled something on the laptop. (he'd been working on it when i'd said goodnight and his outburst had a panicky tinge.) so i was prepared to throw a fit when i walked back into the living room to see what was so wrong.

"it's a waterbug," he told me, standing in the middle of the room peering under the bookcase where the thing, i assumed, was lurking.

without breaking stride i turned right around and went back into the bedroom. "waterbug" is just another word for roach in my opinion. perhaps to an entomologist they're different, but not to me. i hadn't seen one in the apartment since last summer and that was rather traumatic. i was certainly not in the mood to deal with one last night.

i crawled right back into bed like the chicken i am. maybe 30 seconds later Michael yelled, "could i get a shoe maybe? so i can kill this thing?"

for the record, i did glance first at my collection of shoes in the closet. and while, yes, i do have a rather extensive collection of size-8½ Converse, the rest of my footwear is either flimsy or delicate. and god knows i did not want bug guts on the bottom of any of them. meanwhile, right there on the bedroom floor were Michael's blue Converse, the ones he's been talking about replacing anyway. so i grabbed one, chucked it into the living room without looking and hopped back into bed.

a few beats passed and then: "did you have to pick one i wear everyday?" he was, you could say, a bit exasperated.

jerk that i am, i was under the covers and trying my damnedest not to laugh. (what is wrong with me?) i was, in my defense, also feeling so thankful for having a man around to do these things. a year ago, i would've likely been alone when the bug attacked and would have had to frantically call Michael on his cell while running around my apartment shuddering and hopping and shrieking.

anyway, the "waterbug" was successfully eliminated from the planet, the sneaker was cleaned of bug parts and Michael actually laughed at the fact that i threw him his favorite Converse over any other shoe available.

he kissed me goodnight again, told me he hoped i felt better in the morning and went back out to the living room. me? i went to sleep—but not before saying a silent prayer of thanks for the fact that our marriage is legal and binding and, barring something truly drastic, he's stuck with me for life.

i also vowed to not be terrible again for a very, very long time.

mbm

this is my life right now...

every 10 minutes i'm applying cold sore medication to my sun-exposed lips (i mistakenly used store-brand lip balm at the beach yesterday, not realizing it was only SPF 4) in the hopes that i can prevent myself from looking like a Herpes Monster later this week.

i've got a colony of pimples popping up along my jaw line, the likes of which i haven't seen in 10 years. i'm a chronic face-toucher, too—i do it mindlessly and even more often when i'm stressed—so the colony is sure to keep growing.

i'm double- and triple-booked at work, declining meetings to attend other meetings, declining those other meetings at the last minute to work on projects with deadlines five minutes from the time they were assigned.

i keep catching myself hunched over my keyboard, every muscle in my back clenched to the point where i must resemble Quasimodo. every time i catch myself this way, i take a deep breath and relax, shake it out. and it works. for about three minutes.

last week my mother had knee-replacement surgery, Michael's grandfather was admitted to the hospital, and between the two of them (and the two of us) i think we spent at least 50 percent of our time in one hospital or another.

at the end of this week our plan is to finally dive into the deep end of home-buying. well, at least the exploratory stage of home-buying. i can only speak for myself when i say that the prospect is both thrilling and terrifying. but mostly terrifying.

all of this makes me all the more grateful for yesterday. 

yesterday, Michael did not have work—i can't remember the last time he was off on Memorial Day. we woke up (late, for us) to a beautiful sunny day on the east end of Long Island, made a run to Dunkin' Donuts and headed to the beach. we spent the afternoon talking, reading, listening to baseball. before heading home we played a fun (and highly competitive) round of mini golf, hit some balls in the batting cages and consumed approximately three gallons of ice cream at Carvel. 

we lasted one exit on the heaving LIE before Michael said, "Megs, I promise you we'll get home tonight, but it's going to be an adventure."

with that he eased the car onto an exit ramp and we eventually made our way back to Brooklyn via Route 25A, a road that we've meandered along many times before. it's a scenic route, even at night, and as we rode along—with a perfect mix playing on Pandora—the chaos of last week and the stress i knew would work its way into my brain and shoulders and forehead this week were far away.

it was just my husband and me, in the happy bubble that is our scrappy 1996 Ford Explorer, enjoying the last hours of a pretty perfect day.

sure, it would be great if i could feel so peaceful all the time. say, right now, for example. but that's not how real life goes. i get that. and those peaceful times would not be nearly as treasured or appreciated if they weren't so starkly contrasted with the chaos.

at least that's what i'm telling myself. and at least the weekend is only four days away.

mbm