I'd Like to Walk Around in Your Mind Someday

My sleep hygiene is worse than my dental hygiene, and that says alot.  I went to sleep this morning after 4 a.m. , yesterday, about 3:30.  I got up, thanks to Buddy's insistent coaxing, just after 9.  After I had brewed coffee, Jenny came out of the bedroom and into the the living room, just around 10 am. She was in pain, so I comforted her. We snuggled on the couch for hours, watching first Seinfeld and then 2.5 hours of Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein.  The modem went on the  fritz after the first two episodes but t it just needed a reboot.  

At 1:22 p.m. Abby was finally ready for our drive to Renton originally scheduled for 10 a.m.  I had let her sleep. Given her sleep patterns are as fucked up as mine, and the reaction one gets from a teenager when they are disturbed, I opted not to bother her.  Oh, also, given my ADD addled mind, I also forgot that I had promised to wake her.

Abby drove via 25th until it turns into Montlake and then into 23rd, until turning left at Rainier.  She followed that road for miles, turning right onto 84th, taking us through the old stomping grounds.  I had Abby turn left on 117th Street, drove past the family hkme and then she turned right on 87th.  We continued on until we reached Fred Meyer in Renton.

Once inside, I called Jenny.  I could hear the dog barking incessently.  When I asked who was there Jenny responded, the dog is just barking.  I repeated my question at which point she disclosed Cam was at our house to go on a walk.  That evasiveness was weird, and my suspicions about their odd relationship are certainly peaked, given the nature of her now understood long disloyalty. I won't bother asking.

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y, Alright!

Yesterday was busy.  I got up around 8, after sleeping a few hours.  I beckoned Leiney--who was downstairs watching TV (I could hear it on)-- and asked her to get me coffee from the coffee stand.  She brough back my usual, a 24 oz cafe con leche sin azucar, and a 2x tall almond latte.  We then watched Buffy, switching to podcasts after one episode--Behind the Bastards or Some More News, I can't remember which.  

Around 10:30, Jenny texts me to come see her, and I go to the bedroom.  She tells me she is depressed and that her back hurts. She is having a terrible time motivating herself to rise. I coax her out of bed and get her in the bath, where she soaks until 11ish. I clean the kitchen, meanwhile. Jenny then gets back in bed.  I go see her again, bringing her pain meds, and offer to make her eggs.  She agrees, and I go to the kitchen, where I make French toast instead, as a surprise.  

After feeding everyone, including taking Abby her breakfast in bed, because I couldn't coax her out of her room, I join Leiney and Jenny on the living room sectional and eat.  After eating, Leiney and I head downstairs where we clean and organize the living space in the main basement.  Jenny had mentioned recently her desire to do this, but given the pain and lack of energy she is exhibiting, I insisted on doing it with L.  

We got the basement  ship shape.  Jenny went to look and was pleased.  She had retreated to her bedroom after breakfast and was working on the weekly report she sends Marissa, her cancer coach, a task she returned to after looking at the basement.  I finished cleaning the post-breakfast messy kitchen, and cleaned out the refrigerator, both with Leiney's help.

At 1:30 Jenny got on the call with her coach/therapist and began telling the story of me snapping at her on Monday evening when she was giving me the business about not noticing a window in the living room had been cracked since the summer.  It is true, I snapped.  But as soon as Leiney told us to calm down, it stopped, it lasted two minutes.  (I must say, my anger at that time was based on the realization that she and Eric are an ongoing concern, that his wife's knowledge changed nothing.  I was pissed, but did not and have not expressed my discomfort with this fact.) 

I know Jenny was talking to her coach/therapist about this because I could hear her clearly from the couch.  She was not quiet.  I was in the living room, she in the bedroom, door closed. I surmise the coach/therapist shifted gears and asked how today was going, because Jenny began straying from the ogre narrative, only to catch herself and attempt to recover.  She said she had a hard time getting out of bed this morning (omitting the fact that I had gently both emotionally and physically moved her to the bathroom to take a bath in order to get her up) but then said, and "Geoff made me French toast." She caught herself most instantly, saying dismissively, "Well, he made French toast for everyone," as if cooking for everyone made me less caring for her--the same person who routinely has lamentations of failed parenthood caused by the cancer.

I don't know what to do with this portrayal.  Its been suggested that I counter it by posting the lovely days we have on fb, which I guess I could. I just don't know.






























 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life, A Cascading Series of Disappointment

Image
Jenny has cancer.  Terminal cancer.  We learned that in late July. Jenny had  dropped 25 lbs. in the spring without trying.  She had been having vague stomach complaints since October.  As a balm for her concerns, her doctor agreed to do a CT scan for her, but told her they would find nothing.  Jenny wanted to rule out pancreatic cancer, which had recently killed her dad-in the spring of 2019.  Her mother had been sick with lymphoma since February 2020.  The day of the scan, the doctor told Jenny they would get results back in a few days. When Jenny's phone rang that same afternoon, I was in the living room with Abby, where I was torturing her by playing the Rapping Duke on Youtube. Jenny shouted from the room, "Geoff, get in here, the doctor's on the phone." "You have a four cm. mass on your pancreas,"  he said. Jenny made a sound like someone had punched her in the stomach.  "There is a spot on your liver. You have a necrotic lymph nod...
Read more

Still Muddling Through Somehow

Image
At the park, I walked my dog through the rain this morning— not really proper rain— more like air that has decided to shrug water at you out of habit. It suited my mood well enough. As I walked, my thoughts kept returning to the same small universe they often do. They are not new thoughts. They orbit the same losses. They consider the same betrayals, the same questions that never resolve. They have been captured, these thoughts, never to escape, never to be forgotten, never to burn up in the atmosphere. It is simply the gravitational field of my life now. What might seem or feel like self-pity is more like muscle memory, which tells me I need more exercise. The holidays are here, and Christmas has always been central to my life, atheist that I am. It was stitched into Jenny’s life — the love of Christmas — at least as strongly as it was stitched into mine. We carried that love forward with the kids, year after year, without ever needing to talk about why it mattered; it just did. I...
Read more

Don't Do It, Don't Do It, Oh, Lord

Image
It Hurts, It Hurts So Bad.  .  . 3:44 a.m. I walked in the door last night at just before 10 to find Jenny in a ball on the floor--between the giant ottoman and sectional--agonizing pain in her hip. I had ridden to acting with the student driver.  But, let's back up. Jenny had chemo yesterday.  Her friend Jennifer took her.  It was uneventful and she received chemo.  I, as always, prepared the house for her arrival to make sure she wanted for nothing and would be comfortable as she endures the aftermath of all that poison.  Sometime before she came home, she texted, saying the doctor suggested she try Aleve for her hip pain.  Aleve.   She asked me to pick some up for her while Abby was at acting.   During the text exchange I realized she would be alone after Abby and I left for acting.  Leiney was elsewhere and had therapy at 5 and kickboxing later, and her sister Moni had bailed on chemo because she had so much to do (Wit...
Read more