My Husband Looks Like An Electrical Socket

It's been almost a year since the Big B had his spinal fusion surgery.
Just about 4 months since his second surgery in October.

(That's right, he had to go back under the knife to try fixing his back again. Turns out my fears that his bone fusion wouldn't take were unfounded. He went back this time because the leg pain was still there, and when the surgeon took a look, he found that the bone had grown outside the fusion cage and was pinching the sciatic nerve again. My man may be skinnier than a rail, but he's got Superman bones.)

His scars make him look like an electrical socket. They sorta did before, but the latest incision really completes the whole piece.

Hmmm....I see Halloween gag-costume possibilities here!

But wait a minute--

Isn't the girl usually the socket and the guy the plug? I could be wrong here, and please feel free to correct me if I am...


Hmmm.

We're not a conventional couple (certainly we're the only people on our block that argue about prophecy at the top of our lungs out on the porch), so I shouldn't be so surprised.


Plus I got the picture by making a deal where he got to play Call of Duty in exchange for a few snapshots.



I wish I could have gotten the video button pushed in time.
But I didn't.




Otherwise you'd also be treated to a very funny shot of the Big B wiggling his (non-existent) ass.



Wearing his favorite Call of Duty pajama pants at the same time, no less. It was too cute.


Damn my slow hands!

The Green Monster

Everyone has one at some point in their lives, over something or someone.

It rears it's ugly, envious head when you see someone with something you want, when you feel threatened and are vulnerable to its whisperings in your ear.

Mostly they are benign, little things, like lusting after a purse or wishing your hair would do that or you could go somewhere fabulous.

Less pretty are the times when it involves a relationship.

I have never had a serious wrestling match with the monster (I think). Frankly, I don't get it.

Intellectually, I understand the feeling, but I don't think I've ever been deep in its grasp. I suspect that like an orgasm, if you only think you've been gut-wrenchingly jealous, then you really haven't.

Even dating a hyper jealous man-boy for a couple of years didn't make me understand it entirely. I just didn't feel it viscerally, down in the gut where I understand it stabs from. When the man-boy harassed me once for not getting jealous over a girl (supposedly) hitting on him in front of me all night, I tried to go through the motions, but that's exactly what it was--me doing what I thought a jealous girlfriend would do.

For me, it comes down to making sense and my own special brand of people-naivete. In small doses I think a bit of envy can be good. Keep you on your toes, from taking your loved one for granted.

But the kind that makes you check in on your lover every hour, on the hour? or accuse them of cheating? or stalk their Facebook page? or steal their phone to read text messages? or any other aggregious violation of personal privacy and freedom? Makes no sense to me.

A friend of the Big B's was over this past Sunday to watch the football game. Earlier that weekend on Friday I was dropped off by the Big B to go out for a girl's night with the friend's wife and another girl, so the guys talked briefly and set up their man date for two days hence. B's friend said how great it would be to watch a game with a friend instead of alone, but was already temporizing, saying things like "I'll have to talk to the wife" and so forth.

Sounds innocous enough, if you haven't seen their couple dynamic before. I had, so I quickly piped up that she could bring the kids and hang out with me if that would make her say yes.

(In retrospect, the part of the allure of the gameday hang session was probably the absence of said wife & kids, just for a bit.)

What strikes me is that there would be any doubt whatsoever about a "yes" answer to that question. I'm not saying it shouldn't be asked--respect for each other in a committed relationship demands that--but more that the expectation would be a non-approval for something so simple.

For the Big B and I, the question would be expected to be asked, but barring previously made committments, in most cases the question is more of a formality, a quick check to make sure there are no plans and to let the other person know what you plan on doing. Early on, the two of us established a straight-down-the-middle, equal sides partnership that is quasi-sibling like in the fervor to make things exactly equal.

I'm not saying this approach is without pitfalls. No such approach to relationships with other human beings exists, as far as I can tell.

But I can say that if it were the Big B and I, and he was driving me and my girlfriends to the bar and picking our drunken asses up after 2am on a Friday night (and most likely not getting laid because of the state of my over-inebriation), there would be no question that he could go watch the game on Sunday at a friend's.

Granted, a caveat is that we are currently geekling-free, but I strongly suspect that our policy of making room for each of our own "alone time" will continue even after children are born.

(Those of you with actual children, feel free to scoff at this. Please note, however, that in our case we're extremely lucky, in the fact that we have three sets of grandparents prepared to fight tooth and nail for babysitting rights, and one pair is a short car ride away and the other is within walking distance. Hooray grandparents, we thank you already!)

I am profoundly grateful we are this way.

I never want someone to get a call from me, checking up on my husband, demanding to know where he is and berating them because I didn't appreciate that he hadn't answered his phone when I called him (minutes after the game had ended!).

 I never want my behavior to remind them of lyrics from the Limp Bizkit song "Stuck":

Psycho female blowin up the phone line

You need to tighten that screw, it's been loose for a long time

Cliched, I know, but if you love something, set it free!

I heard somewhere (I forget who or where, forgive me) that your loved one should be a part of your life, but not be your life. I am completely on board with this.

If you aren't allowed to have a life apart from each other, how do you keep your relationship growing? By experiencing things on your own and as a couple, you bring more elements to the table to share with each other and gain the space needed to keep it fresh, stop taking-the-other-for-granted syndrome in its tracks.

So I believe. What about you?



Silly Sunday

One picture story is true, the other is false.


Before:

After vigorous ruffling:

Either way, he's a puffball. Just how disorganized depends on how dry & staticky the air is, and whether his human feels like torture that day.


Before: The Big B giving the puppy-eyes look for something he wants.

After: Gloating when I fall for it.

And running away in fear of my righteous wrath.

Kittehs Love When Mama Goes Thrifting

But the Big B dreads when I go shopping.

Why?

It's nothing that bad--after all, it's not like he's typically required to *gasp* go with me or anything horrifyingly inhumane like that. I have my own allowance, so it's not like he's going to see a surprise credit card statement in the mail. I don't call or send picture messages of what I'm considering purchasing to get his opinion. In fact, me going out shopping is usually a bonus benefit for him since I'm usually gone for hours and he gets free range of the house.

I should clarify that it's not really me going shopping that he dreads, but me returning from shopping.

Because bargain-shopping and thrifting just isn't as satisfying to me unless I can share my finds when I get home. One at a time. Exclaiming over each one in an almost super sonic squeal or at the very least some excited hopping. While holding it out and extolling the benefits. And then triumphantly telling him the price until he gives some sort of acknowledgement of how great it is that I found a $200 suit for $10.50.

So you can't really blame him if he shudders when he hears the garage door open after I've spent a long day of digging through the racks.


The kittehs, however, are a different story.

I think they greet each new piece just as eagerly as I do.

New smells! Must claim new territory!


They certainly got possessive enough with the new items when I put them the couch. Both cats had laid down on the pile within minutes of each other.

Another favorite part about Mama's retail therapy for Gizmo?

He gets a new posh hiding place for himself.


The clothes I found were awesome (a heaping pile for less than $80!) but a couple of non-clothing finds were a nice touch.

Had to switch out to this purse immediately, it was so cool. It'll serve double-duty in a steampunk outfit no problem, especially if I keep the cell phone pocket out of sight.








An impulse buy I don't regret was this treasure.

You can't beat that for 99 cents, even if it is VHS. It's in such good shape!
I loved that movie. My first memories of it are being scared out of my wits by the Skesis, grossed out and frantic by the draining of the podlings, awed by Kira's ability to fly, and delighted by Fizzgig.

I had no idea, not a single inkling, that they were all puppets.

Mama loves when she goes thrifting too.

Honey! Why Don't You Put On the Eulogy Log?

So you're all probably sick of the holiday posts and whatnot, now that the new year has started already.

Well, too bad!

I'm a procrastinator, which means you're just getting my Christmas-related posts now.

Maybe you can't see it, but I'm sticking my tongue out and giving you a great big raspberry.

*thbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb*

 No, my tongue is not normally that color! I just finished eating a candy cane, if you must know, and apparently some color transference occurred.

Like many people around the world, as December approaches it means digging out all the red, green, silver, gold and white colored decorations and dumping them all about the house. It means untangling all those christmas lights and praying that they still work. It means that your January credit card statements will be horrifying when they arrive.

That's a bit melancholy...I'm sure you're all great budgeters and diligently save up every year well ahead of the holidays in order to buy all your presents in cash. For those who forgo present-buying for whatever reason....you suck. Only because I'm jealous, not because you don't buy into a religious holiday that's been hijacked by the retail industry (or whatever reason you don't do gifting in December).

Personally, my favorite part about this (past) time of year all comes down to trees and lights. I wish we were the kind of family that put up amazing displays of electricity-guzzling lights, but we aren't. Mostly because that would require 1) owning said lights to put up and 2) going outside in Minnesota in the winter on an aluminum ladder to put up the damn things. Luckily for us, we have a great excuse: we only own enough strands to light up our Christmas tree. Being broke is great!

However, there is one thing I don't want to go without, lights or no lights. Christmas requires a tree. A REAL tree! One that will fill the house with the lovely scent of sap and pine, one that requires daily stooping to fill the tree stand which inevitably gets sap in your hair, one that must eventually be placed outside for the garbage man to pick up (or placed ever-so-carefully in the firepit, whereupon it will sit until it turns entirely brown and uber-dry, where it will sit until I get the itch to light it up in one big, brief bonfire).

As a family unit, the Big B and I are small potatoes. Just us two and our two furry four-legged feline children (I don't count the albino, blond and regular ordinary gray squirrels Ghost Face, Blondie or the Godfather as part of our "family" although they do freeload off our property). As such, we don't have much in the way of holiday decorations or traditions yet.

We're slowly accumulating them, however. It's a weird transition to go from the traditions of your parents as you were growing up to meshing them with someone else's traditions. Candy canes on the tree? Not done in my childhood home, but the Big B will steal several from his mom's house to put on our tree (I think he does this more to satisfy his sweet tooth than for the tradition). Candy in the stockings come Christmas morning? Again, something new but not unwelcome, oh no! Not at all.

One of the first traditions we started since moving into the more spacious upstairs of our current home was to get a bona-fide tree from a lot nearby each year. We go with my mom and Bonus Dad each time which has become a new tradition of it's own (plus, they own a nice big Jeep on which to cart our tree safely home).

My mom and I run around the lot, looking for the scraggliest of trees possible. I was taught that short-needled and hole-y trees are the best for ornaments, because the holes in the foliage allow you to place those pesky heavy ones on a stronger part of the bough, ensuring that ornament loss does not occur.

The plus side is that the uglier the tree is, the cheaper! A win-win situation.

This year we ended up going with an F-Fur, and no, I can't remember what the "F" stood for. I want to say Ferngus Fur, but that can't be right...

It doesn't look that Charlie Brown-esque, but this little tree was a great bargain.

Of course, the cats love the tree too. Thank goodness neither tries to climb it, they being primarily indoor cats for most of their lives.

Alabama is a connoisseur of sap-water and will be drinking from the tree stand until this baby comes down. She's got a junk-food disposition, being a lover of popcorn, flaming hot Cheetos and Ritz crackers, so it's excusable that she finds the sweet sap water to her taste.

Gizmo, unfortunately, is, to put it frankly, a little shit. Everything about the tree is tantalizing to him, from the tree-stand water delicacy, to the new ornamental "toys" and finally the fact that he can sharpen his non-existent claws on the corner of the tree stand. He was instantly curious as we set it up and hung around watching intently as we put the lights and ornaments on.

Sharpen those imaginary claws!

I had an adorable picture from last year where he tangled himself up in the lights and just gave up and laid down, but in my impatience I didn't want to hunt for it.

The Big B moans and groans when it comes time to decorate the tree. The first year he got out of having to do anything but get the tree stand up from the basement. Last year he had to put the lights on (something that was traditionally done by my dad growing up) but got out of putting on the ornaments. This year I was resolute; we would be decorating that tree together, dammit!

After grabbing our little ferngus tree it was still daylight and the Big B convinced me to wait until dark to start decorating. I warned him that I would be finding the Yule Log burning show on cable and we would have it on in the background as we hung the ornaments.

(The yule log fireplace TV program is something of an inside joke in my family, made even funnier by the fact that our TV hangs over an actual fireplace).




The Big B...I love him (duh) but his grasp of language has a few holes in it (who doesn't know the word "posh"? Honestly!). As I started to carefully unpack my box of ornaments he says to me:

"Honey, didn't you want to put the eulogy log show on while we decorate?"

Ah, my sweetie! I knew he wasn't kidding by the straight face he maintained while he said it. Of course, this became a running joke for the rest of the night, as he continued to refer to it as the "eulogy log".

When I found a "psychedelic yule log" On Demand through my cable box I just had to play it because it was so bizarre.

Too bad the picture was blurry, but at least you can see the pretty rainbow colors!



The weird techno/electronica/bad 80's synth music accompanying it wasn't the least bit Christmas-y but it was good for a hoot, leading to some more silliness as we put the lights on.

Sorry some of these are blurry...stupid camera!

 

Ah, doesn't he look (fuzzily) proud?

Eventually the lights were wound exactly right around our little ferngus tree and the ornaments were all placed evenly about the tree, with the favorite ones front and center.

My family was all about the unique ornaments, never the generic-looking Christmas balls, bows or tinsel.

Plus Gizmo would almost certainly eat the tinsel if we had it, and then I'd be cleaning a litterbox full of glittery poop.

There are some ornaments I especially love, and I was willing to fight my mom and sister in a death match to get them when we split up the ornaments between us (not that they fought me over them, me being the one with the weird rainbow/mushroom obsession).

Not a very good picture, but you can see why this is my

absolute FAVORITE ornament, can't you?

The clown ornament on the right is a genuine antique. We had many of these antique ornaments, but lost many when our lopsidedly decorated tree fell over one year. Luckily, the fantastic clown ornament was spared destruction.


Finally I placed the stumps from each of our trees from years past on the tree skirt. Another tradition I had completely good intentions about doing but somehow never got around to actually completing, the plan was to engrave in some fashion the years on each of the stumps to chronicle each new Christmas. I can still tell them apart by their size and shape, but if I don't get to putting the years on soon, that knowledge will eventually be lost.

All of this excitement had gotten to the Gizzy, who retreated to his "safety zone".

Personally, I think it was to disarm us about his closeness to the tree. At the time of this picture, ornaments were spaced evenly around the tree, top to bottom, front to back. As the weeks have passed, the ornaments have slowly been moved higher and higher, in an effort to keep Gizmo from accessing them and using them as new toys.

He's a beast and has broken several ornaments and a musical statue of Tiny Tim and his father, but he gets away with it cuz he's so darn cute and because he has his momma's eyes.

Hot Stuff, Coming Through!

I tease my man about his scrawny-ness often.

"Geez, won't you grow a butt already?!"

"Chicken legs!"

"For a moment there I thought you had grown an ass, but then I realized you were just bent over."

But truthfully, although I give him major shit, I find him incredibly sexy. I've long said that in my dictionary, skinny is synonymous with sexy.

And today is the 2nd anniversary of our marriage. Two whole years! The time flies by.

Our wedding photos all turned

out completely gorgeous*

I'm not overly superstitious but I will admit that at times I can see where things could be considered signs. Both of us are big procrastinators, always underestimating the time it will take to do things and as a result we're often found rushing around like the proverbial headless poultry. Preparing for our wedding was no different...

Amazingly, despite all the last minute things to do, the wedding went off without any problems. I'd been through the wedding deal several times with my friends and knew to expect at least three things to go wrong. Well, three things attempted to go wrong, but all three ended up working out just beautifully and only added a little bit of stress.

The weather was perfect--sunny and blue skies, not overly hot, with a nice cool evening to help the dancers at the reception keep from melting. The entire thing was exactly how we hoped it would be...just perfection. Our dance floor was never empty for more than a few moments from the minute the DJ got started until they kicked us out. We hit a local bar and closed that down afterwards and despite all the drinking and the crazy mix of people, there was no drama and everyone said they had a great time. For weeks afterwards we were hearing that our wedding was the best one they'd ever been to, ever.

It made the Big B feel a lot better to hear this. "If I had known it was going to turn out like this ahead of time, I wouldn't have bitched about all the money we were spending before!" he remarked to me a few weeks afterwards. I smiled because while he theoretically knew how much we were spending, I had kept the details from him after he almost had a coronary when I told him how much the flowers for the bouquets were going to cost...I think he much preferred it that way!

So although I'm not superstitious, I take our completely successful and kick-ass wedding as a sign that our marriage will be the same.

Another sign is the story of the rings...no, not that story (Lord of the Rings), but instead a simple story of two forgetful people who are not used to wearing rings.

The Big B complained during our long engagement that it wasn't fair I got to wear a ring and he didn't until after the wedding. I told him too bad, so sad--I was the one losing my incredibly unique last name, after all!

That being said, I had to get used to wearing my engagement ring at first, not being a girl who normally wears rings. One morning I was carpooling with my mom to work and put on lotion in the car on the way. I removed my ring to keep lotion from gunking up the facets and settings and put in my lap while I moisturized. Mom pulls over to the curb in the middle of downtown Minneapolis; I hop out and walk to work.

Hours later, I leave the bathroom stall and go to wash my hands and that's when I realize something is horribly wrong...MY RING IS MISSING!

I stagger out of the bathroom and run into my boss on the way out. I don't know what my face looked like, but it must have reflected what I was feeling because he immediately asked if something was wrong. I told him I lost my ring and he immediately gave me leave to go look for it.

In my head, I knew exactly what had happened. I had failed to put the ring back on after lotioning, and so I had two options, one hopeful and one a snowball's chance in hell. The first option, which I desperately prayed was the case, was that the ring had fallen somewhere in my mom's car and was patiently waiting for me to come get it.

The second option was that it had fallen onto the downtown street when I exited the car. I figured that if it was in the car, it would wait for me, but if it was on the street, the sooner I got there, the better the chance it would still be there.

I walked/limped as quickly as my maiming shoes would let me, and all the while visions are running through my head of what the Big B would say when I told him I lost the incredibly expensive diamond ring he had sweated and saved for to give me as a sign of his devotion. Every time I tried to think of what I would say, my mind blanked and all I could think was "Please....please....please be there!"

I turned the corner and started looking frantically at the sidewalk where I had hopped out. Nothing. My eyes spied a sewer grate and I was almost hoping it would be in there, as at least there it would be safe from casual passers-by, even if it would be a pain to get it out of the grate.

I began to lean over to look down into the sewer when my eyes were inexplicably drawn further up the side of the curb...and there, incredibly, was my ring!

Against all odds, it was there waiting for me! I don't know how I got from where I was at to the ring--it felt like one moment I was standing in shock, and the next moment I was snatching it from the ground. I put it on my finger where it belonged and then had to lean against a light pole for support as my knees went weak.

It was sitting on the little apron of concrete between the sidewalk and the tar of the road. What are the chances that this ring would not be seen by anyone in the 5 hours it had been sitting here, glinting in the light, sparkling its worth to anyone who took a closer look?

I had to tell somebody about this and I was still shaking and my mom worked downtown, so logically I went to her first. She too knew something was wrong immediately. I started my story with the preface "Just so you know, I have my ring" and I held it up to prove it "but I have GOT to tell you what just happened!"

She couldn't believe my good fortune either. We debated on whether I should even tell the Big B. I knew that if I had truly lost the ring, either we wouldn't be getting married (something I had to talk him into in the first place) or at the very least I wouldn't be getting another diamond ring! But since the ring was safe, did he really need to know that I'd almost lost it? On the one hand, ignorance is bliss, but I also didn't want to keep something like this from my future husband. After all, successful marriages require communication and honesty, right?

When I got back to work, my boss asked if I found it and when I told him the story, he said to me, "Buy some lotto tickets! You're obviously on a lucky streak!" I decided not to push my luck.

Eventually I decided to tell Brandon...and after I finished, shaking a little as I told the story, he turns to me and says laughingly, "This is one of the things you could have kept from me."

Go figure!

I chose to take the story and my freaky good luck as a sign that we were destined to be. But then something else happened...

It's our first winter as a married couple and the Big B is happy to be wearing his ring. He was even less used to it at first, not being the kind of man who wears jewelry of any kind (he doesn't have pierced ears and even avoids sunglasses for the most part). By this time he wore it constantly, even to bed, and had developed a habit of twisting it whenever his hands were still and his brain was moving. We pile in his Hyundai to go to Menards for some things when he stops to put lotion on.

Sound familiar?

Apparently, my hubby and I don't learn from each other's mistakes. He did the SAME THING I had done before--took the ring off to put on the lotion. We take off for Menards, come home to put our things away, and suddenly he comes up to me with his face paler than the usual white-boy Minnesota winter complexion.

"I can't find my ring..."

We search his car frantically but come up with nothing. We look at each other and get in the car and drive back to Menards. It's mid-winter and the parking lot is a mess of snow, slush, dirty ice humps fallen from the wheel wells of cars and here and there some pavement peeking through. At least here we can hope that some customer didn't notice it and walk off with it, as the grey of his Tungsten ring would blend in too well unless someone was looking right at it. Unfortunately, this meant it was that much harder for us to find.

We found where we had parked or close to it, and began combing the lot for the little circle of metal. I began to feel hopeless--no way were we going to find this thing! B swore he would come back during his lunch break the next day if we didn't find it that night. I comforted myself with the fact that at least his ring was cheaper to replace than mine!

Just as we were about to give up, he shouts! and strides to a spot nearby, bends over, and triumphantly holds up his wedding band.

*Whew*

Now I don't feel quite as bad about almost losing mine, since he did almost exactly the same thing with his.
And it just reinforced my belief that we are, indeed, meant for each other.

How else? We make the same mistakes...and have the same luck. I like to think it was Someone--the Universe, Fate, Higher Power, call it what you will--that wanted to show us that if we believe in each other and persevere, we can get through the bumpy stuff, even when we think all is lost.

The other day we had another ring scare...I get home and he tells me, "I can't find my ring, but I didn't have it all day at work so I assume it's upstairs in the bed."

He sleeps with his ring on, and while it requires a tug to pull off his finger, it's conceivable that it could have been pulled off while he slept.

But after we tear the bed apart and search every corner of the bedroom area and don't find it, a familiar panic starts to set in. We return to the car and find nothing...I quiz him on whether he remembered having it on during his drive to work. He can't recall and we're getting desperate.

We're ready to head to his work to check the parking lot, store and break rooms just in case when he comes running out of the garage door.

"Found it!"

Turns out that it was hiding in his back brace. It has these neat hand-pouches to help him put it on by himself, and requires him to put his entire hand in the pouch. Apparently, when he put it on that morning and pulled his hands out of the pouch when he was done adjusting it, the tension was enough to pull off his ring.

So for these stories, our without-a-hitch-wedding (except our own, of course!), the way we are both ready to argue at the drop of a hat (and love it), our shared love of geeky things, our passion for the things we love (even if we don't love the same things all the time), and a thousand other small details...

...I truly believe we're a match destined to be.

After all, when I was a little girl, I answered my BFF thus when she asked me, "Who do you think you'll end up marrying?"

"A big-nosed, tall, geeky guy with glasses."

While the Big B doesn't have glasses (and his nose isn't all that big), I'm confident that at some point in our lives he'll require corrective lenses and then my prophecy will be completely fulfilled.

Happy Anniversary Hot Stuff.

I Love You.


*Photos courtesy of Erin Johnson Photography. You can (and should!) check her out here or here at her blog. She did a wonderful job on our engagement photos and her associates did a perfect job at our wedding.

Instant Gratification

I'm American, and I love instant gratification.

Here in the U.S. of A the pace of life is fast with little time to stop & smell those flowers.

Our professionals work 40-hour workweeks in general, and in some cases, quite a bit more.

1. We don't take mid-day siestas (We should! I subscribe to the school of thought that a nap in the middle of the day helps you be more productive. Plus then we'd get pillows, and I love pillows).
2. We don't have 32 hour work weeks with wonderful 3-day weekends (damn you Europe!).
3. Everything must be bigger/better/stronger/smaller/faster/cheaper/sexier/racier/newer/MORE

So whenever I find myself having to do something where the results will be seen well in the future, I have a problem getting started.

Exercise is my best example. Do I want a nice toned body sleek with muscles and berefit of any jiggling except in acceptable areas? Of course!

But after diligently exercising for an entire SIX WEEKS (years ago) what did I get for all of my sweaty, hard, and expensive work?

Nada. Oh sure, maybe the Big B said my arse was growing firmer but that wasn't enough for me. I wanted VISIBLE results! Results I could see, feel, admire. So I stopped going to the gym, which is sad because clearly I was close to obtaining those results, but my instant-demanding self wasn't satisfied.

I continued paying the "fat tax" aka Gym Dues for several months, with occasional visits whenever I was inspired to actually use the facilities I was paying for.

Luckily, life is full of things you can do that provide that instant gratification of a job well done. Activities like ironing, dusting, vacuuming a very hairy carpet, shaving your legs, raking leaves, and mowing the lawn.

Ahh......mowing the lawn!

This past weekend was the first time I got the pleasure of mowing the entire lawn All By Myself. Previously, this duty was relegated to the Big B by dint of his manliness and the fact that I have no problem playing the male card when it suits me. However, we both realized that while our self-propelled push lawnmower is excellent as far as lawn-mowers go, the Big B would not be able to do this yard duty for some time yet.

Thus. I ended up pushing that wonderful machine around our little corner lot. Previously I had always scoffed at the Big B's insistance that we have a big lawn. I grew up on a lot that was a couple of acres, and my BFF down the road lived on 40 more, so to me these little postage stamp-sized lawns were hardly worth of the title "yard".

I was a bit daunted as the Big B showed me how to prime the motor, then pull the cord to start the engine. I was happily surprised when it started after only a few pulls, because my puny arm strength in the past had been no match for appliances requiring a pull-start.

But as I pushed the whirling blades around the yard while dodging the tulips that survived last year's mowing massacre I found that while this was definitely WORK, I was enjoying it.

I liked placing the wheels precisely in the rut of the previously mowed row so that no errant blade of grass would escape uncut. I enjoyed seeing how neat the cut grass looked and how easy it was to see where I hadn't mowed yet and where I had.

I delighted in the fact that although last year when this was his job he callously mowed down our pretty flowers, since I'm the one doing it this year, I could make sure that the tulips, peonies and other perennials would survive with leaves intact throughout the summer.

I may have been a bit overzealous initially as I weaved and dodged around the haphazardly placed flowers, as a blister soon developed from my frenetic wheeling and turning.

That was okay, however, as I found a way to avoid adding additional punishment on to the tenderized skin when I moved to the front yard. There, I got to delight in mowing around and around the yard in a big wiggly circle until I was finally done.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Sweet satisfaction.

Until I realized that the Big B had been overzealous with the weed wacker and had attacked some tulips near the fence that I had made a point of sparing in my earlier sweeps.

WTF? How does this man not recognize tulip plants when he sees them?!?

I grabbed the poor, broken and dismembered leaves from their grave by the neighbor's fence and held them up accusingly between us. He tries to tell me he thought they were weeds. I drag him to another part of the yard where other plants had been spared and tried to point out how the leaves were THE SAME.

"How do you know they're tulips?" he says, an impish grin threatening to break out on his face and a mischievious glint in his eyes telling me he's messing with me deliberately to push my buttons.

I throw my hands up, exasperated, and stalk off after it becomes clear that the man is hopeless when it comes to plants. This had been shown to me earlier when we were halfheartedly weeding one of the many small gardens littering our backyard, but I guess I didn't want to admit that my hubby has chloro-phobia. I was earnestly pulling up weeds while he watched and when I went to grab a particularly large one, he stops me to say, "Are you sure that's a weed?!" all concerned-like.

I had to stop in disbelief, as the weed I was pulling was the same as the ones I had already pulled, just larger. "You really can't tell the difference?" I asked, incredulous. Apparently, he couldn't.

My man is color-blind when it comes to living, green things.

*sigh*

Apparently, he's excellent at telling a gray squirrel chitter from a red squirrel chitter. Maybe he was trying to prove that his city-boy upbringing wasn't as derelict when it came to flora and fauna as I thought.

I can't believe it, not even for a second, especially coming from a man who didn't know that this was a canadian goose.

"What do you call it then?" I ask, dreading the answer.

"A goose, what else!"

I give up. He's hopeless, but it's part of his charm.

Just Call Me Florence...

...as in Nightingale.

Things are starting to get back to mostly normal here at home. It will be six weeks to the day this coming Monday since the Big B had his back sliced open and metal screws and plates grafted onto his spine.

He's fairly self-sufficient now, unless whatever he needs is below his knees. Doc's orders--no bending, twisting, or lifting more than five pounds, but I've caught him lifting one of our cats, and I'm pretty sure our humongous laptop weighs well over his restriction.

My man is extremely stubborn (only way he'd survive me!) and I've been both fascinated and horrified with the way I've turned into a mother hen since he was released back home from the hospital.

That first week after he returned home was insane. I had taken that entire week off and the following Monday & Tuesday with the caution that I may either be back sooner or need more time, depending on how things went.

It went both as I expected and not as I expected.

The surgery was Monday 2/28. The Big B got the all-clear to go home on Wednesday. While I was out of work for the time being, I still had classes to attend so I zipped over to the hospital after my lunchtime class and prepared to get him home.

The car ride just about killed him. If you don't have the pleasure of living in a climate that has a fairly drastic change in seasons, you may not understand imtimately how your driving experience is affected by potholes. Here in lovely Minnesota, springtime driving is hazardous to you, your car, and your pocketbook, if you are unfortunate enough to hit a nasty pothole that bites back.

The hospital where he had been staying for the past 3 days is in South Minneapolis, not the greatest of neighborhoods, and I swear, the roads over there are just one big crater. I tried to drive ever-so-carefully, knowing that every bump, twist, and turn was skewering him with pain.

Thankfully, the entrance to the (relatively) smoother freeway wasn't that far away, and we don't live too far outside Minneaplis proper so we were home in 15 short minutes. I did my best--I'm sure I've never shifted gears so smoothly in my entire life before. Nevertheless, by the time we got home he was pale and definitely hurting. It took us 20 minutes just to get him out of the car and into the house. I felt helpless--I couldn't really do much besides watch him struggle to move the tiniest bit.

The hospital staff told him the more he could move on his own, the less painful it would be. My role over the next few days became that of a mobile, walking, talking handrail support. Instead of me trying to lift him, I simply provided an arm or two that he could grab and use as leverage to move himself the smallest fractions left or right.

Great workout though. I could really feel it in my thighs and forearms, everytime I helped lower him to a sitting position or to stand up. We had some trial and error until we got a really good system worked out on how to get him around with minimum of pain on his part.

I was determined to be the best wife nursemaid in the history of wifey nursemaids. That first day home, after he was settled in the spare bedroom downstairs (no way was he making it up the stairs to our 2nd floor bedroom), cradled on every conceivable side with pillows, it was about 4:30pm. We had people coming over to play D&D (our bi-weekly group who plays pre-built modules). B had said D&D could go on despite his return, so I didn't cancel. He had fallen asleep and I started cooking, running in to check on him every 10 min or so in case he needed me since I can't hear anything from the rest of the house if I'm in the kitchen.

About 6:30 I realized I had already gotten off to a bad start as Most-Excellent-Nursemaid-Ever. The hospital had warned us to stay ahead of the pain with his medication. He was supposed to have gotten two pills at 5:00, but in my misguided helpfulness I thought he would need the sleep after his ordeal.

Wrong!

That was a bad night for the Big B. Eventually we got on a schedule (helped along by keeping a record of when each type of pill was taken and when). We didn't let the pain get ahead of the meds so severely again.

The next few days were a whirlwind. Every 2-3 hours we were awake, making sure he took his pills, did his breather exercise to ensure pneumonia hadn't set in, took his temp to check for signs of infection, and took a look at his incisions to make sure they weren't swelling or looking nastier than they should. A girlfriend of mine came over Friday after she got off work and I was still feeling very disheveled and whacked out. My friend K who came over that Friday laughed after visiting our bathroom and says, "Do you know that you have a box of Glad Press N Seal next to your bathroom sink?"

She laughed for several seconds straight when I told her it was for showering the Big B.

"When you said you had to put press and seal on him before he showered, I didn't realize you actually meant it!" she cries between tears of mirth.

Don't knock it--the doctor said cling wrap but I know that stuff doesn't work one bit. I love my Press N Seal and now you all know that if you need to keep a wound dry, that's the first place you should turn to.

This is pretty gross but it was a lot worse earlier.

Unfortunately (fortunately?) I didn't think to get a picture of what it looked like right after he got home. Take my word for it, they were gross. You can't tell from here, but his back has a huge bump right where the incisions are.

They seem so little for so much pain, and so much potential healing. Big things in small packages!

I tried very hard to remember what he could & couldn't do, so that I could make things as easy as possible for us both. One night however, I forgot to leave the toilet seat up for him. I had finally gone to bed upstairs and he told me later he felt so bad and knew how tired I was from not getting any solid sleep, that rather than call me to come down and lift the seat for him, he hunted around downstairs for the proper "seat-lifting implements". Finally he spotted a roll of Christmas wrapping paper and got very creative with it and was able to get the lids up so he could pee.

We left the roll in the bathroom, just in case.


One thing I worried about was how this would affect us, as a couple.

Would we break under the stress? or would we pull together and come out strong on the other side?

Turns out, we're pretty solid. Perhaps it was because we were both hyper-aware of what the other was going through. Me, knowing how painful this was for him and ready to make allowances for any crabbiness he showed. He, knowing how m uch I would have to do while he was laid up, making tremendous efforts not to snap and take the pain out on me.

Whatever the reason, I ended up having some of the best times of our marriage so far during that 2-week period I stayed home to care for my healing hubby.
 I know have at least some idea of what to expect once we have littles, but at least in that case there will be the two of us working together.

This is about 4 weeks after the surgery. Looking good!

Things are almost completely normalized now. His follow up appointment is just before tax day, and the pax Doll-house has ended and we're back to our usual bickering and heated discussions about whether he said it first or I did. I can leave the lid on the toilet down now, and he can shower himself except for his lower legs, at which point he calls me in and I go to work soaping his barely-there calves (his chicken legs are something I tease him often about, since my own calves are muscular and round-ish).

I'm going to miss playing Florence Nightingale to his wounded soldier. We tested our mettle and did not find our relationship wanting.

My confidence that we can survive anything, even kidlets, is now boundless.

My Other Half's Non-Nerd Half

I'm sitting on a gold mine.

 

I hadn't seen the implications of the Big B's sports obsession in a positive light before the NCAA Championships.

 

Before that it was by turns annoying, frustrating, wince-inducing and in many ways, impossible to understand.

 

I can understand obsession over something you really love. Reading is my drug of choice and the flavor has been sci-fi and fantasy for a very long time now. I read other genres occasionally but always veer back into swords & sorcery geekdom.

 

The Big B's love for sports? It goes beyond. Simply beyond.

 

I tried comparing it with my own obsession.

 

• Football would be his fantasy genre, the place where his deepest love and passion resides.
• Baseball would take on the mantle of sci-fi as next to the heart, that different but also wonderful thing.
• Golf would be like a good mystery...if done well it can be very fun.
• Hockey falls into the classic genre space--not read often but the good ones never leave your heart.
• Basketball would be his equivalent of regular fiction, something Jodi Picoult-esque. Very "meh" and can take it or leave it, but if nothing better's around it will do.
• College basketball would be like...reading a non-racy romance novel (what's the point? I only read romances for the naughty parts and without those, most leave a lot to be desired in the way of plot).

 

Wait a minute. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even like basketball that much, let alone college basketball. I can't even think of a time when he was watching college basketball, let alone enthused about it.

 

But it's still enough to get him cursing, pleading, crying, shouting and gesturing violently at the TV while one of his teams play. From whence does this passion come?

 

Perhaps it's because football season has been over for awhile, and baseball season is just starting. Or maybe because this championship only comes once a year.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's because he gets to bet on the outcome and fill out these puzzling things referred to as "boards" or maybe it was "brackets"?

Whatever the reason, the past few weeks I've had to endure his shouted imprecations at the TV while he alternately moans and groans in despair, or shouts and gasps with glee.

I know he can't care about the teams that much as evidenced from last night's conversation between the three of us (me, him, and the flatscreen):

The Big B: Come on! You're killin' me here!
Me: Who's killing you?
Him: The refs! They're trying to ruin my life!
Me: Surely they're just doing their job honey.
Him: NO! They're trying to screw me, they're doing this to keep the score close to make it a close game.
TV: *sounds of sneakers squeaking, crowd cheering, whistles blowing*
Me: Wouldn't they actually be trying to screw over the team, not you?
Him: *glares* No! This is Vegas messin' with the refs to shave points for their betting spreads. Argh!

At which point I exited because it was clear that the TV was getting more of his ire than me, and that's fine by me!

This man has never heard of an indoor voice, let alone possessed one. That's okay, because I'm loud too and can keep up decibel for decibel, most of the time. That and I've learned to tune him out (shhhh, don't give away my secrets. He reads my blog very infrequently).

Then something he was saying last night finally penetrated through my anti-sports-rant wall.

There's money riding on the outcome? This is the last game to decide it? There's almost $400 on the line if this game is won by the team in white?

Back up...money that could buy me new boots, or a nice dinner at Benihanas, or BOOKS?

Who knew? Certainly I never thought sports would be useful to me in this way, ever.

So that's why last night, as I was in the office contemplating my homework for my Quality Management class (statistics! Statistics are the basis of quality, the more woe is me!) I found myself keeping an ear open for B's shouting, and actually found myself shouting right along with him, "Go U-Conn!"

Well okay, maybe when I said "Go U-Conn" I was half expecting to be cheering the wrong team. That happens often, which is why I usually resort to cheering the team whose colors go better together.

Who knows? Maybe it was my half-hearted cheer that roused the Connecticut team. Maybe it was karma finally paying the Big B back for all the rotten poker hands he's been dealt in the past two years. Whatever the reason, U-Conn won that all-important game.

I'm sure they're very happy.

But more importantly, the Big B WON. Apparently if you do this right, you can make MONEY off of sports.

Well push me over with a phoenix feather, I have no idea how he did it (seeing as how he doesn't actually follow college b-ball) but he did.

Perhaps this is the answer to the puzzle.

 

It's the money. That's why this sudden love of college b-ball, when college sports anything was never that big a deal.

See what I mean? Diversity is good!

Even if that means you married a half-geek, half-jock. After all, jocks are people too. And sometimes they can come in handy.

He's Always Grumpy When He Wakes Up

Forgive my absence...playing nursemaid was a much more involved job than I realized!

Waiting is hard.

The last day of February was the big day. Surgery Day. SPINAL surgery day.

The Big B was nervous. I think that morning was the first time I've ever seen him get up the first time the alarm went off. Neither of us are morning people but when that alarm went off he was out of bed quicker than you can say "Skittles".

We are people that are habitually late--whether it's a family event, a party, appointment or something we just want to do. I can't remember the last time we made it to a movie early enough to catch the previews.

Not this day however. B's anxiety had him way too keyed up to allow for any lateness.

"I don't want to add being rushed and late to my anxiety today," he explains to me as I'm frantically readying myself in the morning. Perfectly understandable, but it was funny how at the same time he was ready to let little things delay us a bit before heading out. The catbox hadn't been done; he offered to do it right before we left but I told him it was fine that I do it when I got home. I think that although he didn't want to be late and rushing on this day of all days, he wasn't that unhappy at the prospect of having some more time before the surgery would lay him low.

Surprisingly, I felt pretty good about the surgery all day. We parked; we got his back brace fitting, we checked in at the surgery desk and waited. His parents arrived and joined us in the waiting room. They called him back to get ready for the surgery (I followed until a nurse chastened me and told me I could see him later on after they called me).

Waiting. Waiting for the surgeon and his team to be ready, waiting for B to be stripped, IV'd, and hospital-gowned.

Waiting for the surgery to be over; waiting for the surgeon to consult and tell us how it went, waiting to see Brandon after he leaves the recovery room.

Waiting to see whether the surgery fixed his leg pain, his back pain, and whether he'll get full mobility back.

Waiting to see if it worked. Waiting for him to wake up. Waiting for the nurse to come with more meds.
Waiting for the day he could go back home. Waiting for him to move himself in that slow and careful way people have when they are in great pain.

Now some of the waiting is over. The surgery went well, the leg pain at least is gone and the Big B is stylin' in his new back brace. He's goofy as hell from all the pain medication. I've gotten numerous impromptu serenades from him in the days since he returned home from the hospital.

We must endure more waiting, no matter how sick we may be of it. Waiting for the next time he can take his pain pills, waiting for the next exercise time, waiting for his post-op follow up appointment to find out when he can return to work (and whether we'll be eating Ramen for the next month or not), waiting for the full and complete recovery so he can go back to all the things he's been missing--like discgolf and Texas Hold 'Em poker, and things he hasn't been missing like mowing the lawn, doing the dishes and cleaning the catbox.

I'd be willing to wait a long time if it would mean he would be fully recovered with complete elimination of his back pain.

I'd even be willing to wait without a book.

Scary Times Ahead

There are some scary times ahead in the Doll-House (this name is a play on my new last name and how I affectionately refer to my residence).

My hubby jokes that I married a broken man. He & his father are both accident-prone and have a tendency to be clumsy. My father-in-law has fallen off of a ladder, twice, and broken ribs and during the subsequent hospital stays ended up with pneumonia. He also narrowly avoided death by e.coli when consuming some bad Dole lettuce a few years back (but boy, was he excited about the Dateline spot he got after an investigation was done). My hubby regularly has scrapes and dings from adventures at work or disc golfing and has broken several bones in his childhood. He's had two hernia surgeries before he was 25 and had a cyst develop on his tailbone (which were caused by his unfailing work ethic & desire to do things at 110%).

But despite all this, I sometimes forget just how broken my man is.

It's not all my fault! I swear. Yes, I'm forgetful and scatterbrained, but some of the blame can be laid at the foot of my husband's tolerance for pain. He has a high pain tolerance. I'm pretty sure I have a low one, but other than a small tattoo and some teeth pain once, I haven't had much opportunity to test my limits.

His tolerance for pain is directly linked to his addiction for things he likes. If he likes something, he's going to do it, pain schmain. So it's easy for me to forget just how much pain he lives with on a daily basis.

About five years ago, he was managing an auto parts store and they were increasing their inventory by a large margin. My hubby is not one to sit back & let the underlings do things while he sits cozy in an office, so of course he was helping to unload all of this freight. Much of which was heavy pallets of oil, batteries, brake cores, and various other things that require heavy lifting.

Around that time his lower back started to hurt. At first he brushed it off, thinking it would go away on its own. When it didn't, he saw various doctors. All of whom told him, "Pfffaw. You're too young to have back pain. Do some exercises." He diligently attended physical therapy, but his enthusiasm waned when nothing got better. Chiropractic visits either had him feeling nothing or he felt better for a minute, and then later on was worse off.

Fast forward to last August, when we went on our fateful annual camping trip to the Barrens (it's in Wisconsin. Enough said.). We aren't cool enough (old enough? No, rich enough!) to own a camper yet, so we do the tent-thing. I had a humongous 3-room tent that we stuffed with a queen-size air mattress and ourselves. The first night after sleeping on the air mattress, B was in serious pain. After the second night, I think he was ready to kill me and steal the car and go back home.

Shortly after our camping trip, the back pain became severe enough where complaints from him became more frequent. I'm not saying he never complained before, but the frequency definitely went up after we got back. Then his leg started going numb and alternating with shooting pains.

Mulishly stubborn Russian/Irish/German mutt that he is, it took a little bit before he went to see a doctor about it. This time, however, the doctors believed him. We figured that in previous visits, he didn't act like he was in pain at all. So it was probably hard for the docs to take him seriously. Now the pain was definitely showing. He was walking like an old man and stumbling on his numb leg like a drunken pirate. After an x-ray showed that something was up with his L5-S1 disc in his spine, the doc finally referred him for an MRI.

The results? My hubby's been living with a ruptured/herniated/degenerative disc for the past several years. The leg pain comes from the nerves in his spine being pinched between the L5 and S1 vertabrae.

This picture of fusion surgery doesn't show a fusion of the same bones the Big B

will need fused but does point out his vertabrae so you can see where it hurts.

After several months of trying this (both injected & oral cortizone treatments) or telling the doctors that he had already tried that, he finally got recommended for spinal surgery. Specifically, fusion of his L5-S1 vertabrae. My dad's lived with similar back pain all of his life, from issues in the same spot. He had the cutting surgery, where instead of fusing the bones they went in and cut out the scar tissue from the ruptured disc. He still has the back pain, but the shooting pains in his legs and numbness from the nerve pinching did go away.

But in my poor broken husband's case, fusion is the best chance at eliminating the pain or reducing to an amount that he can live with. We finally got the ok from our medical provider and in less than 2 weeks he will be going under the knife and hopefully making a big change for the better.

He's nervous; I'm nervous. He's stressed; I'm stressed. This has led to the bickering level to rise a bit around the Doll-House lately (see my previous post here about our "discussions"). We're both trying to be better about it--he to be less grouchy no matter how cranky his pain is making him, and me to remember that he is dealing with constant pain that never goes away so I should cut him some slack in the crabbiness department.

Of course, me being the eternally hopeful optimist that I am, I can see the silver lining in all this. His degenerative disc is a good spot for fusion--he shouldn't lose much mobility (and hopefully will lose no distance off of his disc golf drives!)

Here's what it'll look like after the surgery.



Also, B will be off work for several weeks at a minimum while his healing happens (it won't be fully fused for 6 months). While we're both a little apprehensive at what this means for our financial budget, there is a bright side:

We both get extended periods of time off of work!

Granted, he'll be mostly physically incapacitated the entire time and I'll still have school to attend, homework to complete, and all of the household chores. But still! More than a week off from work for me is a treat, no matter what's going on. And we get to spend it together.

My hopes are that we'll gain a newfound appreciation for each other during this time. I'll realize just how much stuff he does around the house that I don't give him credit for, and he'll see that I'm practically Florence Nightingale in the flesh.

Or we'll end up killing each other. My money's on moi, not just because it's me, but because how fast can a man in a back brace run, really?