Happy three, baby.

“I know when you’re blogging stuff. I bet no one believes this is what I actually say. They’re just like, ’she’s making this up. Like usual.’”

Also:

After which he informed me, “this still doesn’t mean you can get a dog. Keep watching videos. Of other people’s dogs.”

“More like a domestic werewolf,” he replied. “Every full moon you clean like a beast.”

So at 3 am, I wake up and realize I have a bladder infection. While peeing, I call my doctor, get a prescription called in to a 24-hour pharmacy, and my superhero boyfriend gets on his bike and rides over to pick it up. For the first time ever, I also get this stuff called phenazopyridine, (google it), that does little else except turn my pee dayglo orange. It’s a dye that’s supposed to limit the effects of a bladder infection, the burning, the constant need to pee, all of that, while the antibiotics do their thing.

In my case, this doesn’t really happen. I just start to notice that my pee is changing color from clear (all that water) to bright, dayglo. I mean, you turn the lights off and the toilet glows in the dark. I guess that’s how I know it’s working. But the real point of this story is that my boyfriend got up, after being ready to fall asleep, and got on a bike and went out into the cold, dark night to get me drugs. He did this if not cheerfully, then without any complaints at all. Not even a grumble.

My theory is that it was the pathetic sobbing from the bathroom punctuated by the pathetic little tinkling of a few drops of pee that really won him over. It was go now, or listen to that shit for another 6 hours. He knew, in his heart, it would escalate to horrible primal howling, which is unsettling at the best of times, but in the middle of the night from a bathroom? The acoustics would be terrifying. What’s great is I didn’t have to make that threat, he just knew.

“Is that the fire alarm?” I ask.
“The food court fire alarm doesn’t sound like that,” she replies.
“So that must mean this is all a dream. And there’s a fire in my apartment building.”
“You really thought this was the new Burger King uniform? Really.”

4. Slippers are not good for walking through several feet of snow. In fact, they’re terrible. Though surprisingly, if you manage to avoid getting any snow in them, which is next to impossible, they are very warm.
5. When at the corner store getting coffee, a neighbor may recognize you:

“Oh, you must be from the apartment building. I had a little more time to get ready, but I live in there too.”
“You mean, you don’t get coffee in a blizzard wearing only slippers and pjs?”
“Not regularly, no.”

6. Even the morning after a blizzard, six or seven fire trucks plus an ambulance and various support vehicles will still manage to converge on one city block. That hasn’t really been plowed much yet.
7. Firemen are the same, throughout time. They have a good sense of humor, but you get the sense you would not want to be on the other side of a fight with them. It might have been the snow and the crazy amount of stuff they were carrying, but they certainly seem to have a swagger.

“Thank you for everything!” Said a neighbor, enthusiastically.
“Any time, ma’am.” Replied a fireman. “Well, not any time, but, you know, it was my pleasure.”

8. You can still get a shitload of water up to an apartment in close-to-freezing temperatures. I feel bad for whoever lives under that apartment.
9. Manfriend will sleep through the fire alarm and have to be woken up. Repeatedly.
10. Snow’s great when you don’t have to shovel it.

BONUS:

11. The last thing you want to hear while you’re in the bathroom is the fire alarm going off for the second time. On the bright side, it does put a few things in perspective. And we responded a lot faster than we did when we were woken up by it. Fuck. Today is going to be awesome.

p.s. I did NOT set the fire. In fact, I’m beginning to think there’s a competition between my neighbors to see how many firetrucks they can get on any given day. I imagine they’re two angry little old men from opposite sides of the building. And they mutter under their breath, things like: “Four alarm fire? That ain’t nothin. I’ll show him. I’ll spill some kerosene around and make everyone go outside in the snow at 7 am. Show them. I’ll show them all!”

Nothing, and I mean nothing, upsets him like the threat of stuff. Yes, stuff. I realize it sounds terribly vague, but he walks through our home at times, as if expecting all of the things we have accumulated over the years to spontaneously rise up in a furious whirlwind and seize him, ripping him out of time and space and casting him into some unknowable and awful place.

I also dislike clutter, and I spend hours carefully planning how to better go about organizing and arranging our home. The concept of buying something to hold something else strikes him as morally offensive, and nothing exasperates him faster than a discussion concerning purchasing something. Never mind if by purchasing that thing we will ultimately use fewer dishes, or spend less time washing dishes, or make more room in our apartment or be able to put ALL of our clothes away at once, instead of having to perform a remarkable and challenging clothing balancing act (things in the laundry basket, things in the closet, things in the tiny little chest of drawers I bought years and years ago as something of a joke).

Never mind all that, because that makes far too much sense. The reason I’m writing this entry is not to go on about how exasperating all of this is, but rather because it presents a challenge. I like challenges. I’m the sort of person who relishes being right and proving my rightness. It is a personality flaw, I recognize that, but he somehow manages to take all the wind out of my sails.

For instance, I recently made some purchases he informed me he disliked and was quite upset about. Specifically, I bought a rice cooker/steamer and a salad spinner. He was at a complete loss as to what these things would do or be useful for, despite the somewhat obviousness of their names.

I used the rice cooker to make instant rice one night, as a trial run. Dump a box of rice in, add water, a tablespoon of olive oil, and ding! Rice is done. There was no skill, no art involved. The steamer was not used. It was plain old, out of a box rice. And do you know what this man said to me as he ate it? Do you know what he did after we finished?

He reverently caressed the rice maker, eyes wide in awe and appreciation, as if I’d never made stupid bloody rice out of a box before, he touched that rice maker tenderly, as if it were an impressive and somewhat terrifying lover. And he said, he said, “this was a really excellent purchase, you were right.”

I WAS RIGHT!? For some stupid instant rice! That’s all it took! I suppose I should buy him a bedside table and then put something on it. I expect I’ll set a lamp down, and he’ll act as though I were God, saying, “let there be light!”

And do you want to know what he said about the salad spinner? Did it require any salad at all to convince him? No. No, he spun it. He was familiar with salad spinners and what they do, and he decided it was useless and stupid. Then we got it, and he spun it. He spun the salad spinner, sans salad, and you know what he said?

He said, “Wow, that’s really cool! Look, it spins!”

And he was fine with it! He was absolutely pleased with the stupid salad spinner! It could languish unused in cabinets and never see a leaf in its entire life, and its got his seal of approval because it spins. It spins! Hallelujah!

I don’t post blog entries about people, especially people I sleep next to at night, vulnerable, soft and unsuspecting, without their explicit permission. Manfriend read this article and informed me that several points were incredibly embellished:

“I wasn’t upset about these purchases.”
“You said they were stupid and we didn’t need them.”
“I did not stroke the ricemaker. That didn’t happen.”
“Yeah, okay, that part isn’t obviously exaggerated.”
“I wasn’t familiar with what a salad spinner does!”
“It spins salad! You take some salad, and you spin it around.”
“Well, whatever, I didn’t know it was so cool.”
“No, in fact you said it sounded dumb and we shouldn’t get one.”
“Look, whatever, post your stupid article.”
“Should I post a disclaimer?”
“Tell them, tell them I read it and I gave this blog entry a 6.8.”

“Go to monoprice.com,” says manfriend. “That’s where we’re buying all our cables from now on.” Really, he said that verbatim, just like that. Suggesting two things, one, that we’re going to be buying a shitload of cables and we need an exclusive retailer, and two, that he’s going to lay down the cable law here and now. I had previously been looking on Amazon.com, where I found the cable we need for $1.40. Being the thrifty shopper I am, I point out that monocable can’t really compare to that price.

“Alright, fine, get it from that other place, then,” replies manfriend.
“You mean Amazon, right? You have heard of Amazon, haven’t you?”
“Whatever, is Amazon even selling this cable or is it some shady third party retailer?”
“What does it matter? It’s $1.40.”
“You never know.”
“It’s a really risky proposition, I know, but I’m willing to take the chance.”
“Look, whatever, buy the damn cable.”
“IT’S A GAMBLE!”

I said this, because for a fleeting moment, I had had a really good idea for a short story anthology. Of course, this morning, I only have the faintest thread of what that is, and I’m afraid if I pull on it too hard, that thread will snap. After settling into a dark funk over the past few days, weeks, possibly months, I feel like I’m finally coming out of it. Slowly rising out of icy water, the kind that makes it hard to move or feel your own fingers, like trying to punch someone in a dream – suddenly your body remembers that you’re lying in a bed covered in blankets, but your mind doesn’t.

Admittedly, it’s a weird time to suddenly be hopeful and happy. We’re in the midst of a national depression, and the grim reality is that people everywhere are losing their jobs, or have been out of work and can’t find new work. We’re repeatedly told that it’s getting better, but plenty of people only know that better’s a word and not a whole lot more.

That’s not to say that I feel guilty about my new found joi de vive. It’s important to have and I’m grateful for it. In many ways, I’ve lost my creativity over the past few years. It’s gone away and hasn’t come back since. I stopped writing, I stopped drawing. I stopped painting. I stopped doing anything that was creative at all. I’ve only just started reading again. How did this happen and why did it happen?

I don’t really have the answers for why I suddenly stopped being entirely me, or why that part of myself got cut off and squashed, but I do know that those days are over. I will start writing stories again. I will start blurring the line between cold reality and the fantastic. You know why?

Because I recently read a piece about Alison Uttley, a children’s author who’s diaries have recently been published. In this article, the following passage:

They show the reality of the author who, despite becoming the second woman ever to graduate from Manchester University – and in physics – believed in fairies all her life. “It’s an amazing paradox,” said Judd. “She believed in fairies and in time travel – that people can move in between different worlds. She was both a completely practical, scientific person, and would also talk about ghosts.”

I realized that while I’m not a physicist, or even in any scientific fields, that certainly describes me, right down to the time travel bit. Most of all, though, I want to be that kind of mean old lady who’s full of rage about other children’s authors and illustrators. If there’s one thing to get snobby about, it absolutely should be children’s books. There are way too many crap ones out there, and only a few handfuls of truly awesome ones.

I’m really not being sarcastic. The children are our future, and when we give them shit books, it just means that the return on our investment will be very, very low.