Thursday, September 13, 2007

aaah....Justin

Can I just tell you (whoever you might ubiquitously be) how wonderful my fella is? He got home from work a little before midnight after working a 12 hour shift in the E.R. Earlier in the day, I had some trouble with some files on the computer. If you know me, then you know how sadly common an occurrence this is. So he comes home, schleps up the stairs to the apartment, showers, and sits down at the computer to try to figure it out. He finally comes to bed and a few hours later, he wakes up to comfort me after a nasty nightmare that had left me sweating and seriously creeped-out. A few hours after that, I get up and hop in the shower. When I get dressed and emerge, half ready to face the day, I find that he has gotten up and cooked me a hot breakfast. His plan is to go back to bed after I leave for work so he can get a few more hours of sleep. I know I don't deserve to be with someone like him. Being on opposite schedules sucks, as you might well imagine, but he is making it easier than I thought it would be. Here are a few of the crazy things we do to cope:



  • Dry-erase markers on the bathroom mirror. "Can you have lunch with me and mom on Friday? Check one: yes/no/maybe". Gotta love the throw-back to the third grade.


  • Lunchbox notes. Reminders to take vitamins. Encouragement of various persuasions.


  • Coming home to a clean apartment. I can't tell you how many times I've come home to find that before he left for work, he's vacuumed or put away the dishes or some such.


  • God bless the public library! To distract myself from the fact that I'm home alone a lot, I'm reading like crazy. On the nightstand today: Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq war as seen by NPR's correspondent by Anne Garrels.


  • Candles. As silly as it sounds, when I am up and getting ready for work and he has just gone to bed, I use only candlelight to dress, do my hair, etc. No comment on the questionable results. He has done the same when I've already gone to bed and he's just getting home.



Those are just a few of the things we've figured out. We have less time together, but in many ways, it's still sweet.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

uh....yeah

I can't believe it's been a month since I've blogged about anything.*

There's nothing particularly noteworthy going on just now. Since
Flora moved to NY, I've saved a bunch of money on going out and such, but the flipside of that is that I'm not having nearly so many adventures. Justin and I went out the other night and on the way home I said, "We could go out for pancakes, but it's not even 1am yet..." Just not the same. Don't get me wrong, Justin rocks my world (apologies for the cliche) but you just can't beat Flora for pure trouble-making impishness.

Now this!

In other downer news, I fedexed paperwork to an attorney in Maine today to wrap up the closing on the sale of our camp. Ron and I owned it and even before the divorce, we had decided to sell it since we were hardly ever going there anymore. One of these days when I am less depressed about it than I am today, I will write about the camp. It was truly Nirvana, and the halcyon days spent there have been some of the best in my life. But now the little three acres on the bank of the Penobscot River belongs to someone else. No more chopping wood to go in the stove at 2am, no more lantern-lit trips to the privy, no more sunbathing and kayaking in the swirling smooth current of the river. But I said I wasn't going to talk about it! Hearing about someone else's favorite vacation spot is about like being forced to see silent 8mm reels of a pipefitter's convention in Cleveland. So I digress about the camp.

I recently joined this thing called
Book Crossing. The idea is good, but there seems to be a shortage of books I care to read in the greater Jacksonburg area. Still, the idea intrigues me so I'll hang with it for a bit and see if anything good pops up.



*visualize self-flagellating comment here with corresponding excuse/reason for same