Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Out In The Heat

Entry 1    3:30 PM

 El Regreso Del Pinché

Happy Tuesday. Fresh from solving the cooling station mask crisis, don't ask, I am here to announce that the reports of the demise of El Pinché Motherfucker were greatly exaggerated. Okay, so no one reported demise, but they could have. But more on that in a bit.

Puppy went to the bathroom 3x, maybe 4x in the middle of the night.  I'd complain, but I am tired, and grateful. Our hotbox house kept the heat in. When we went out at 3:15 a.m., neither of us wanted to go back in.  We must have stood in the cool gusty winds for 15 minutes before returning inside.  The light socket that the fan that keeps the air moving, and sometimes cool, is wired to the light switch, so now knowing that the air was cool outside, I flipped the switch on, and fell asleep under electric lights.  How nice.

Leiney spent yesterday downstairs in the basement, where it was probably only 100 degrees.  The upstairs must have been 120.  I kept her hydrated, she kept herself hydrated.  But she is extremely heat sensitive. California was brutal in that respect. This morning she woke up around 8, came upstairs and announced she was sick and not going to work.  She is a camp counselor at the Seattle Children's Playgarden 4x a week, and works the other 3 days for Amnesty.  That child has one helluva work ethic.  

She was clearly sick.  I reported it to Jenny, and suggested Leiney may need to go in to urgent care.  At 9, I went downstairs to find her curled into a ball on the floor.  I walked her upstairs to Jenny who took her in and got her two boluses of saline solution. Leiney is home now, sleeping down at the other end of the sectional. This heat really is a pain in the ass.

Jenny posted about how hot the house is and that Leiney had heat exhaustion, and a friend of a friend brought her brand new window unit air conditioner over to our house and just gave it to us.  She got it yesterday.  I need such skills.

When I was a teenager, and wanted to run a con on my mom, so I could go out and engage in bad behavior, I had a particular ploy.  I would remember that I needed to go do something, curse the fact that I had to do it, and voila, I would be at a friend's house with a bong in my hands five minutes later.  The naivete of my mother was willful.  Having played the game, I know the routine.  This afternoon, about 2:45, Jenny lamented that she had to go get her meds.  Damn it.  Also, she always calls first, so she doesn't have tSheo wait for them.  And I mean ALWAYS.  I asked her if she had called, and she said she hadn't.  So, I suggested she do so, and she declined, saying she was already on her way out the door--which she wasn't and could have ceased.  So, she left.  A few minutes later I get a call.  The pharmacy had to order a drug and it wouldn't be ready for an hour.  So, Jenny decided to go get her car washed.  I said, are you going to Lake City Brown Bear?  "Oh, shoot, I'm on the freeway heading to the one on 145th, I totally forgot about the Lake City car wash."  Oh, you forgot about the carwash a mile from home.  Weird.  Who lives near the 145th Brown Bear?  Who?  Ese puto cerdo pinché, ese es quien. ¡Que una gran sopresa!  Also, fuck my life.

Entry 2    2:34 a.m.

Couples therapy. The therapist, who is generally useless, actually said to Jenny, who said she is scared, that, "It is scary when you are going to die."  Jenny, in a different conversation with me today, she said she may only have 3-5 years. I feel like she is bargaining with some unseen force.  It's as if she is saying, "I realize I can't change what is coming, but please give me 3-5 years more."  Back at therapy, Jenny lamented my refusal to sleep in the marital bed, which immediately followed her stating she refused to stop contact with him, however limited it may be.  She needs human touch.  She wants someone to cuddle with at night.  Because I told the wife of el pinché mother fucker, she asserts, she is now starved for human touch, and complained I only give her affection when she is suffering from the effects of the disease, chemotherapy or when she is crying and bereft. She said deserves affection, craves human contact. She went on and on, explaining that time was short, now for the first time conceding she may be dead in six months, these claims receiving a sympathetic ear from the therapist. For her part, the therapist was her usual dense self. She was sympathetic, which I am too.  I feel bad for Jenny, but seriously? These lamentations went on minutes.  At no time did the therapist suggest that I might be suffering from the same malady. She finally, after Jenny had finished asked me what I thought.

Short of exasperated, but baffled that we landed here again, I explained that this is where we are. Frankly, I'm here because I would be here, with her dying, no matter what. But I have a firm line, a fixed boundary I won't cross, because she is still having the affair. I am not able to ignore that, perhaps a better person could.

I find it striking that Jenny suggested she could pass in six months, the first time she offered such a limited time horizon. I can't decide whether that is manipulation--that she doesn't actually believe what quite possibly be true--or if she is thinking more clearly when she talks about this specific issue.  She uniformly, unequivocally, and unabashedly took the position she won't cease contact with him.  She said that her option was to be honest or lie, meaning she has no intention of ceasing the relationship.  Meanwhile, like sand through the hour glass so go the days of our lives.