Twenty-five days and counting until we embark on our first international adventure medical vacation. The Adequate Caregiver is madly preparing to go global. We have decided that our lives aren’t real. We are living on the sound stage of a sitcom broadcast on a station in the 400’s, somewhere between the do-it-yourself surgery channel and the hunting channel. We don’t qualify for network TV – too unbelievable. Thursday was a normal-ish day until I gave a 90 minute talk at a very large local software company that shall remain nameless, with a friend and colleague who is much nicer and more patient than me. The audience demonstrated to me why said really big unnamed software company is able to keep creating new products and not stop at the first sign of defeat. Really big relentlessly applied brainpower might be able to solve electronic problems by tweaking code. Unfortunately, the same doesn’t always apply to the tax code, which we have to live with or lobby Congress to change it. This distinction seemed to befuddle the audience. Thank God for David, my savior, who finally cut off a line of questioning essentially about “how could the IRS find out I was cheating” with something along the lines of: "you can file your tax return any way you want but check on the visitation schedules in the various federal penal institutions in our area before you do." I could have hugged him. I still hopefully await my thank-you tweet. Oops, wrong company.
During my 90 minute, 5 mile per hour drive home in pelting rain and horrific traffic my password on the firm’s network was inactivated for various internal reasons that were necessary but unfortunately timed. Worse, it needed to be reset from the office, not from my laptop in the living room in the company of Ms. Kitty. For a split second I even considered (in admittedly, completely irrational desperation) calling the person who had been terminated, necessitating the password change, to see if he could help me re-set it from home. I didn’t. Instead, this is where the script just goes off the rails on the believability scale.
My lovely husband took pity on me and ordered groceries from Amazon Fresh so that I wouldn’t have to serve Cheerios to the 15 - 3rd grade moms (and one very pleasant dad) I had invited for coffee at 8:30 a.m. on Friday morning. He probably also did it out of pity for himself, because nobody can remember the last time I had time to go to a grocery store. Then he left for his book club. Yes, a men’s book club. The fact that he not only belongs to a book club, but that they read the book and discuss it, mostly free of gossip divergences, may be the most implausible part of this post. They do, however, drink good wine and scotch.
Instead of working from home on Friday as I had planned to do for many weeks, I got to the office around 5 a.m. to change my password and delete as many of the 84 emails I had received since 3 p.m. on Thursday when I left. I stopped by Top Pot just as they opened to pick up still warm donuts on my way back home, as Scott was unloading the 5 bins of groceries delivered to our porch by the grocery gods. Living in a zip code that Amazon delivers to is definitely one of the top 10 reasons I love my house.
Just as the last mom was leaving – by the way, it was a very lovely get together and I feel so fortunate that Maya is in a class with such wonderful, funny, intelligent, generous and accomplished parents - Scott called to say that he didn’t want to worry me but his periocarditis was flaring up. What more can one say but “that’s nice, I will talk to you later.” The Adequate Caregiver opted for the less than adequate approach to caregiving, spent a delicious hour with the cat on her lap, returned to the office to deal with a bunch of stuff that is too hard to do on tiny laptop, left at 4 to pick up Maya and her friend who spent the night and now I am drinking coffee peacefully with a man-somewhat-in-pain curled up with his happy kitty. We are hoping that if there is a god, then little girls who giggle until midnight will sleep until noon. The Adequate Caregiver’s faith is challenged, but the fact that Amazon Fresh exists and Ms. Kitty is purring provides hope that there is some order in the universe.
VERY BELATED HAPPY VALENTINES DAY (from Feb. 13, 2011)
Today is Sunday, the day before Valentines Day, and our day to divide and conquer household tasks. Valentines Day reminds me that early on, Scott and I attempted an egalitarian marriage and had to quickly admit that it wasn't working. He is a disaster in the kitchen and I have made a point of never acquiring an iron or ironing board. Over 20 years things have gradually pretty much shaken out along traditional gender lines. First, we discovered that just about any household task falls into one of two categories: kitchen or excrement. I am assigned “kitchen” and he is assigned “excrement.” If neither of us is willing to claim the task, the one who would otherwise be assigned that task (according to traditional gender assignment – which always falls to Scott by default) is responsible for hiring it out.
When we really can't agree on the category we call my dad. We once had a very long (as in a couple of days in the middle of a warm patch of summer) discussion as to who would dispose of the dead bird on our porch, until my dad brought 2 Hefty bags and as a one-time-only favor, disposed of it for us.
Dad also gave Scott his Lovanox shots for a while until he announced that anything involving seeing my husband's ass was my responsibility and precipitously but not surprisingly, quit.
The one deviation is laundry. He doesn't like the way I do it and is very particular about how it is done. I subscribe to the stuff it all in until the machine at once method. So, he does laundry and I am not allowed to touch it, which works well for me. It has become a litmus test for us as to how sick he is. If I announce that I am going to do laundry and he doesn't panic, I know he is not well.
Right now we are all well. In preparation for his possible trip to Berlin, Scott test drove a mini, decided he had gotten German cars out of his system (and with that we have plans in place to go be in London on April 1st for a Gallium-68 scan at the Institute of Nuclear Medicine at University College Hospital), Maya is at a swim lesson, I am in my office, and we all wish all of our family and friends a Happy Valentines Day.
