kvetching up

Dear Abby, Dear Abby... Well I never thought That me and my girlfriend would ever get caught We were sitting in the back seat just shooting the breeze With her hair up in curlers and her pants to her knees Signed Just Married --from Dear Abby by John Prine I wrote to an advice column, Dear Wendy.  She, the columnist, responded.  https://dearwendy.com/my-terminally-ill-spouse-refuses-to-stop-cheating/   My spouse of 23 years was diagnosed with terminal cancer last August. In September, after starting chemo, she told me a coworker would shave her head. I said I wanted to do it, and she offered that, because he was bald, he would be best. She brought home an electric razor a few days later. When I saw it, I told her that this was a signal event and I could easily shave her head. I wanted every moment with her. She offered odd excuses. It got my antennae up. He shaved her head. I did something I had never done before: I went through her phone. I found she had been having a to...

How Many More Times Treat Me The Way You Wanna Do? This font is named Bitter, like the taste in my mouth.  I just want the rational side of life to stick around for longer than a minute. A minute.  Jenny is on week 4 of this regimen. This is a bye-week.  This means two weeks of freedom.  That idle hands are the devil's work has never been made more clear than when Jenny has time to burn. Never more clear than today. Never. As per usual for a weekday, I had to work. Distance working is old now.  Quite old. But it's a living.  Jenny, on a year's paid leave, thanks to the generosity of her fellow teachers' sick leave donations, fills her dance card with visits to friends when she has these days of freedom from chemotherapy. But it also gives her time to ruminate.  And that typically leads to her finding problems she needs to solve, and I, her biggest problem is one she views as intractable. She hews, nonetheless,  to the work like Sisyphus.  In ...

You can't write if you can't relate Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate And my time is a piece of wax falling on a termite That's choking on the splinters --from Loser by Beck I wanted to avoid madness.  The days have been so calm.  But it wasn't to be.  Monday evening was nothing special.  Just Jenny, Abby and me doing our evening routines. Jenny surfing Facebook and texting with the pinché motherfucker, Abby writing songs and playing her guitar in her room, and me my head in the clouds, thinking all was quiet on the western front.  It wasn't to be.  Jenny, sitting in a corner of the sectional, said to me, "I just want to warn you I think I'm going to have a breakdown."  I didn't move to comfort her, although she made it clear she was on the knife's edge.  I'm not sure why I didn't move to comfort her. No matter, I just didn't.   She began to cry, a deep inconsolable cry, tired of living with a terminal illne...

" You, my friend, are a victim of disorganized thinking. You are under the unfortunate impression that just because you run away you have no courage; you’re confusing courage with wisdom.”  – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz I don't think the above statement does what The Wizard intends.  He is telling the Cowardly Lion that running away shows lack of wisdom, not that running away is sometimes wise.  Had he said the confusion is between lack of courage and wisdom, then I'd say he nailed it. Abby's opening day for the Wizard of Oz was today. She was the Scarecrow, and nailed it, although she didn't enjoy the show.  Jenny and I sat at home and watched it on the giant screen in surround sound, since live streaming was the only option. It was charming, and we'll done despite the enforced social distancing and required mask wearing. It's Monday, a quiet day.  Jenny's health is remarkable, and her spirits quite logically up.  Many of the things I might have hoped ...

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...

I always enjoyed tall tales. Today, not so much. It's pushing 1:30 a.m.  I can't sleep.  As we approach 9 months of illness and 8 months of me learning of the ongoing and years' long affair, I am tired.  So damn tired that I've buried the lede. Jenny, feeling healthy, was out again tonight at a Big Sisters of King County alum soiree.  I am in monosyllabic mode, given my restoked anger. She plops down on the sectional and prefaces the interaction with the following: "I have something hard to ask you."  Uh-huh is what she got back from me. She asks, "Have you called Kandice?" This question is ridiculous. I called her once, and I told Jenny after I made the call that I had no interest in speaking with her again.  Jenny then tells me that Eric's the pinché motherfucker's wife, Kandice, has claimed I have called her AND moreover, have suggested the two of us hook up.  To. Be. Very. Fucking. Clear.  Whether he is making this shit up or not, she is...

And I might be more a man  If I stopped this in its tracks And said come on, let's go home.  But she's got the wheel, And I've got nothing  Except what I have on --from Drivin' With The Brakes On by Del Amitri 9:40 a.m. Jenny made it clear that she has no intention of stopping her relationship with Eric  the pinché motherfucker, last night in therapy. It came about in an ancillary discussion.  I brought up that Jenny, despite spouting resolve  to fight her disease  over and again last night, has routinely threatened to stop chemo, as recently as last week.  I raised this point not to debunk her claim of resolve, but to tell her that I don't want her to tell me she is going to stop chemotherapy, should she make such a decision, because she can't get the affection she wants "and deserves" from me, or from  Eric  the pinché motherfucker.  I agreed that it is true she can stop chemotherapy for whatever reason she wants, but asked h...

"Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!    Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,--act in the living Present!    Heart within, and God o'erhead!" from A Psalm of Life by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow Sunday is lovely.  Its close to 10 p.m.  Jenny is soaking her aching hip and back in the tub. I just returned from Safeway with Abby, who rested her forehead on my shoulder while we were there.  A banner moment, perhaps not, but such a rare occurrence it has to be acknowledged.  Jenny woke this morning with horrible pain.  Horrible. The pain woke her.  She medicated and then came to see me.   I worked in the back yard all day. Mowed, scooped, edged, pruned, turned over flower beds, added fertilizer.  Planted wildflowers, sunflowers, corn, pumpkin and a sole perennial. It was glorious.  I'm especially happy that the wind chimes hanging from the willow are now making music again.  The yard is a place that Jenny can spend with...

I feel like I live in Sesame Street's,  " One of These Things is Not Like The Others ." Please note, I received the above text on Thursday night, after all the events that occured earlier that day as described in my last journal entry.

"'Cause if you lie like a rug And you don't give a damn You're never gonna be As happy as a clam." --from Big Old Goofy World by John Prine . Yesterday was full of a lot of tomfoolery, but I am starting to feel getting into it here, every day, is a bit like watching Gilligan in syndication.  You know what's going to happen. You've seen Gilligan reruns 1000 times, and maybe this specific episode 70 times.  It doesn't get more interesting with each additional viewing. There are no Easter eggs to discover, Everyone is still shitty to Gilligan, and no one ever explains why everyone brought their baggage on what was only supposed to be a three hour tour. The show, like these stories, might feel like there is a point to them, but ultimately, is there?  Apart from my need to tell, from my perspective, this story? The catharsis is real, but so is the injury. It's like watching two trains colliding over and again, and expecting to feel better because of it...

"The flowers do fade, and  wanton  fields, To wayward winter reckoning yields, A honey tongue, a heart of  gall , Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall." --from The Nymph's Reply by Sir Walter Raleigh Janus, The Two-Faced God The night ended with this communique: Jenny got home last night and sought me out for affection. She knows the drill.  I have walled off that part of my relationship with her. She has been clear she loves someone else, wont give up the relationship, and has determined I am not worth the risk.  This has been de rigeur since September.  Keep in mind this refusal to cuddle has been understood since September.  It was  all good until I told Eric's  el pinché motherfucker's wife of the long term tawdry affair. Last night was no different. Jenny came home, and mind you I hadn't seen her since Sunday, and she sought me out for affection.  I was pissed already and more rigid than I am typically. However, I don't put my arm a...

"We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter."                                                          -- from Allen Ginsberg's Howl It is breathtakingly beautiful outside, the kind of spring day that can only happen in the Pacific Northwest.  The Way back In 1911, N.C. Wyeth captured  me making my way in the world. sun is shining, there isn't a cloud in the sky, a gentle breeze is caressing my jeans as my feet rest on the motherfucking dashboard as I lie in repose in the passenger seat of Abby's car, again at acting with her. You see. I drove Monday. When I asked Jenny yesterday if she would be home from her ski trip to Mt. Hood and brief stay in Portland, and she said yes, one (me) presumed she would be driving Abby tonight.  Nopes.  Nopes.  And Nopes.  To be fair, they didn't get home in time, because ...

Cause childish habits are slow to die You might look up and wonder why Things snowball, things snowball, things snowball In the twinkling of an eye --John Wesley Harding One day without drama. One.  Anybody have that for me? As I sit in the passenger seat of this car, waiting for the student driver to finish her 3 hour class, I ask, is there ever the possibility of a day without cortisol overload? Jenny was walking around the neighborhood with me yesterday looking like Vinnie "The Chin" Gigante back in the 1990s.  That is, back when he was shuffling around in his robe and pajamas all over Little Italy trying to fool the FBI into believing he couldn't be the boss of the Genovese crime family because he was non compos mentis.  The difference, of course, is Jenny was not faking it with the impaired gait. The Sick Child, 1907 Edvard Munch Which brings us to today.  Jenny had a helluva time getting up again this morning, but I was relentless in getting her moving and out ...

Shadows settle on the place, that you left. Our minds are troubled by the emptiness. Destroy the middle, it's a waste of time. From the perfect start to the finish line. Sorrow -- Van Gogh Jenny slept from 9ish Saturday night until 3 p.m. Sunday.  Recovering from chemotherapy and sleeping off the drugs she is taking may explain such extraordinarily long periods of sleep. Cancer itself may be the driver. A combination of all of the above?  All this sleep is scaring the bejesus out of me.  I ,myself, fell asleep early Saturday evening, hiding in the basement to avoid the Glee retrospective being celebrated upstairs by the women of the household.  I woke up at 12:30 a.m. thinking that it was Monday, and set an early alarm accordingly. I realized my error about 6 a.m. , and was quite pleased. I had planned to get out on my own Sunday, but was worried about Jenny.  I waited until 11:30 a.m. to wake her, an an endeavor which was not very successful. When I managed to ...