11 June 2001
Friday evening, Kris and I drove down to the mall to meet K.T. and Ashby and do some shopping. On our way down, Kris told me what is possibly one of the most beautiful and sad stories I've ever heard:
Kris works as a nurse for a hospice program, which is to say she provides care and comfort to homebound patients with less than six months to live. One of her patients found out about his terminal condition shortly after becoming engaged. As of this past Saturday, he'd been married for nine months.
Something he'd learned was that it is only after you've been married for nine months that your spouse is entitled to Social Security benefits if you die. And so this man has been hanging on, struggling with terrible pain, hoping to live long enough to at least give his poor wife that much.
Kris told me that for most of Thursday and Friday, he was unconscious, waking up every so often only to tell his wife that he loved her, and to ask if it was Saturday yet.
I know that was a little heavy for first thing Monday morning, but I wanted to start my day with this knowledge: Love is a wonderful, wondrous, and powerful thing.
Once I got over crying about Kris' patient, I had a wonderful evening Friday. We shopped for baby clothes for Emma (Kris and Braz's baby) - I seem, for some reason I don't fully understand, to be obsessed with frogs for this baby. I told Kris that until the child is old enough to tell me to knock it off, at least half its presents from me are likely to be frog-related. I almost made Kris buy half a dozen little baby outfits covered with frogs. I did make her buy one jumper with an enormous frog face on the jumper's butt. It was too adorable to leave on the rack. Braz was extremely dubious when he saw it.
After that, we pretty much roamed around randomly. K.T. bought a charm bracelet to put her Harry Potter charms on, and Kris and I dove into Bath and Body Works. All of us talked nonstop. Poor Ashby... Surrounded by three women, all of whom where married, one of whom had an unfortunate tendency to talk quite freely about bodily functions before she was pregnant... He spent a lot of time blushing.
After we finished our shopping, K.T. and Ashby left to pick Kevin up from work, while Kris and I drove over to T.G.I. Friday's to get our party on the waiting list. Matt and Braz called to say they'd be coming to dinner, so we signed up for a party of seven, with wheelchair access.
It took a good forty-five minutes for us all to assemble, but that was all right, because we weren't going to get a table for another half hour or so. But for some reason I didn't mind. I was in the rarest of rare good moods. Once we were seated, I literally bounced right up until the food arrived.
There was some concern when K.T.'s leg slipped off the wheelchair's elevated leg-rest and fell a foot and a half to bounce against the unused foot-rest, causing her a rather severe amount of pain and worry. There was some mild panic when we were afraid Braz's Jeep might have been stolen, but that faded when we realized it had only been towed. (They really ought to display those "Restricted Parking" signs more prominently.)
But for the most part, I was deliriously happy for no particular reason, aside from the joy of spending an evening in good company.
The good mood was with me still for most of Saturday. I noticed while we were walking to the Subway for lunch that I feel taller when I'm happy. Matt thinks it's because my posture straightens - not that I slouch the rest of the time, but that when I'm happy, I stand even straighter than usual. Whatever the reason, it felt good.
A conversation I had with Matt when we picked up our Chinese food for dinner on Saturday:
Me: "I didn't want mustard, just duck sauce."
Matt: "The mustard is for me."
Me: "Mustard? But you got sweet-and-sour pork. You didn't even get an egg roll. What are you going to put the mustard on?"
Matt: "The pork"
Me: "Mustard? On sweet-and-sour???"
Matt: "Look, don't start with that. You mix everything with your mashed potatoes, I put mustard on breaded, fried chicken."
Me: "You're weird."
Matt: "I'm not as weird as you."
Me, incredulous: "I'm weirder than you??? I don't think so."
Matt: "I'm a cute, benign weird. You're just insanely whacko."
Sunday, I slept in late - almost to noon. (Why yes, I am still staying up until the wee hours of morning every night. Thanks for asking.) When I came down the stairs, Matt looked at me and laughed evilly. "MUA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!"
I was prepared for a, "Good morning, sweetie." I was prepared for a, "I hope I didn't wake you up." I was even prepared for some gentle teasing about the lateness of the hour. I was not prepared for, "MUA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!" I looked at him with confusion.
"It's too late!" he intoned in his best over-the-top-villain voice. I stayed on the stairs, anxiously awaiting the unfolding of his diabolical scheme, wondering if I should just have stayed in bed. "I have combined the sugar and cinnamon to make... a cinnamon-sugar shaker!!! MUA-HA-HAAAAA!"
And he'd peeled the label off the ex-cinnamon shaker so I couldn't tell what it was. Except for the fact that it was the only label-less bottle in the cabinet.
All that evil before noon, even.
I wanted to visit my parents on Sunday, so we decided to put off starting the laundry until after we'd visited with them. We got back from the visit around 5:30, put in a load, and then Matt called Braz and went over to the Brandts' to help him move a couch into their storage unit.
While he was gone, the first load of laundry finished, so I moved it to the dryer and started the next load. Matt came home after a bit and told me that Kris was interested in having dinner with us. We worked out a time and location, and just before leaving, Matt thought he'd check on the laundry, to see if it was ready to be shuffled again. He opened the door to the garage. The dryer had stopped. He opened its door and reached in... The clothes were cold and wet.
"Sweetie," he called to me, "Did you, perhaps... Forget to run the dryer?"
As soon as he said it, I realized that I had, indeed, put the clothes in the dryer and forgotten to actually turn it on. Feeling sheepish, I confessed, and we turned the dryer on before heading out to dinner.
Dinner was fun. Much teasing all around, good food, better dessert.
We went home, and turned on Six Feet Under, which is an HBO series about a family-owned funeral parlor. (Well, about the family more than the funeral parlor itself, of course.) Kris had recommended it as being very good, and it stars Peter Krause, who Matt and I both liked very much in Sports Night.
I'm not sure that it's going to grab me the way HBO's other original series have, but it definitely had some interesting things. One brother is involved in an interracial, homosexual relationship - and they actually showed the couple in bed, kissing. I was impressed. I'm sure that's generating a lot of hate-mail. The mother is continuing a relationship she'd been having from before the father's death - which also impressed me. It's not often that older people are portrayed as being sexually active.
Unfortunately, it felt like the show was leaning a little too heavily on its shock value, and not enough on writing or plot. Maybe I'd have to watch a few episodes in a row to really get it, but... Oz had fantastic writing and plot. (Still has, I guess, but I haven't watched it for a while.) The Sopranos has fantastic writing and plot. The plot on Sex and the City is a little shallow, but the writing is superb. So I don't know that I'm going to keep watching Six Feet Under. But we'll see.
Anyway, about halfway through the show, I realized: We hadn't started the laundry back up when we got home!
It definitely just wasn't our day for laundry. I had honestly intended to try to get to bed before midnight last night. But I wound up staying up until 1:30 to finish the laundry. Bah.
Not that I feel bad for it this morning. My eyes are a little itchy, but that could be allergies as much as exhaustion. I don't even think I need coffee.
And why should I? I got more than four hours of sleep!
Word of the Day:
supererogation - the act of performing more than is required by duty, obligation, or need
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