February 4th, 2011
When the Dork Lord asked me what I thought of Tom Brady – did I think he was hot? – I just shrugged my shoulders.
“Eh, I guess. I mean, he’s good looking, but the All American Athlete thing doesn’t really do it for me.”
“What does? Besides me, of course.”
“Ha! Well, an angsty, gun-slinging US Marshall or a certain bald headed, rage-filled detective on Law & Order SVU – I’d take that in a second over Lady Hair Brady.”
“Even though he’s got an anger problem and is always smashing people up?”
“Especially since he’s got an anger problem. All that rage and testosterone? Yowza. It’s not like I have to deal with it in real life.”
“Like fake boobs.”
“Huh?”
“Okay, so you see a hot woman with big breasts and yeah, fine, might be fake, but you’re never going to actually find out that they’re inferior to real ones, so who cares? They’re still hot.”
“Yeeeeah. Just like that.” I rolled my eyes and we continued walking hand in hand. “You know how I know you love me?”
“How?”
“Because I just realized that you’re so totally a boob guy. And you chose me. I’m not exactly gifted in that area.”
“I did,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Why’d you choose me? I’m not angry and I don’t carry a gun.”
“I saw potential in the hair line.”
“Uh huh.”
I grinned and kissed his growing forehead. He smacked me on the rump.
“You’re a butt.”
“I know. That’s why you chose me.”
“I know.”
January 21st, 2011
My name is Heather and I’m a video game widow.
Ever since school got out for Christmas break and the Dork Lord brought home Call of Duty: Black Ops, the agenda in our home has been set by a couple of dead presidents, Fidel Castro and a host of the undead. If he’s not lounging on the couch with a PS3 controller and a Bluetooth headset, he’s at his friend’s house – staying up until the wee hours in the morning mainlining snack foods and shooting zombies. And I freaking hate it.
Lately, I’ve been overwhelmed by the feeling that outside of grocery shopping together on Sunday afternoon, we live entirely separate lives. So instead of holing up in my office when I hear the PS3 come on, I try to engage – curl up on the couch with my Nook and read, even help with strategy or “there’s a zombie behind you” – but there’s really only so much I can take. It’s loud and violent. Holy cow. And it’s a stupid video game, for Nintendo’s sake. But mostly, its complete saturation of my household makes me wonder what happened to the man I got engaged to, because this 17-year-old convenience store clerk who’s living on my couch? Not a suitable replacement.
The thing is, I can’t decide if my expectations for grown-up man behavior are justified or old fashioned and out of line, because when he’s on his third consecutive hour of killing zombies with pre-teen trash-talkers who repeatedly refer to each other as “bitch” or “n-” and I’m watching our precious weekend pissing slowly away, silently screaming, THIS CANNOT BE MY LIFE, the Boy seems to think nothing of it. His friends spend hours playing video games. This is normal.
“You’re a grown ass man. Doesn’t it tell you something that most of your teammates are rednecks whose testicles are still located on the INSIDE of their bodies?”
He remains nonplussed.
Maybe it is becoming the norm. Watch an hour or two of house hunting shows on HGTV and the words, “man cave” will be uttered now fewer than six times. Man cave. Really? My dad did not have a man cave. He didn’t have a TV that cost as much as a small foreign car or multiple gaming systems, either. He had a workbench and thick Clive Cussler novels from the public library. His game was cribbage. I don’t think I’d be too far off in assuming that your dads didn’t have special rooms for avoiding their families and watching the Knicks or playing what, Duck Hunt? If anything, he might have had a special recliner, off limits to the kids, and that was that.
Take the TV dads from that era – Cliff Huxtable couldn’t get five minutes alone to watch a Saturday afternoon football game and, if memory serves, it didn’t once occur to him that he was entitled to. Yeah, sometimes, he’d sneak down to his doctor’s office in the basement and huddle up with a hoagie and a portable black and white TV, but eventually, he’d have to give that up because he promised to take Rudy to ballet or rake leaves or someshit – because that’s what grown ups do.
Oh, I get it – times have changed (and, fine, Doctor Huxtable wasn’t real) but this man cave having, video game playing version of adult male doesn’t sit all that well with me. Maybe I’m just unfun. Then again, I also seem to remember a scene in that Jennifer Aniston/Vince Vaughn flick where she bailed on him for the very same behavior, which makes me think I’m not the only one who thinks that line between boy and man is just a wee bit too fuzzy for her comfort.
By the way, this is one of those posts where you’re supposed to tell me I’m not alone. So, uh, I’ll leave you to it.
January 14th, 2011
Ta-da! New, improved navigation!
You guys, I’m such a hack at this stuff. I figured I could get away with half-assed fixes and interweb MacGyverism but it turns out, notsomuch. Anyway, please feel free to let me know if you run into any problems with navigation or searching or anything (searching not available yet on the blog; waiting for archives) and please update your RSS subscription as I believe that’s changed in the last week as well.
I’ve been awake since about 3:30 this morning, finally giving up on the whole, “if I fall asleep now I can get x hours/minutes of sleep” horse puckey at a quarter to five and then drank a whole bunch of coffee. That’s going to play out well, I think.
We’re picking up Sariic’s ashes this afternoon. Part of me hopes that once we have them, we’ll also have some element of closure. The rest of me knows that’s not likely. Time will help, I know, and so, I wait. I wait to stop picturing him lying there on that metal table, still so incongruously warm. I wait for the Boy to start being comfortable in our home – the apartment, he says, that doesn’t feel like a home anymore. It’s lost its feeling of purpose without his dog there. I know I’m not supposed to take his grieving personally, but I do. I’m there. I’m your family.
Home is a larger issue, though, and most definitely not a new one. I’m content to be there; he cannot seem to stand it. It makes me unhappy, he knows. But how unhappy, he can’t possibly. Or. Or, I don’t know. Or he’d do something. I don’t like feeling as though I live alone. I recognize that some of his avoidance over the last few months has been related to the hurt of watching his dog fall to pieces. But not all of it. And so, hoping to reach a some understanding or a compromise on this incompatibility, I suggested that we figure out what’s at the root of it and fix it – before it’s unfixable. But in true sitcom fashion, my heartfelt attempt at resolution was met with nothing more than a “yep,” and a yawn. And then we went to bed.
Yep.
January 10th, 2011
 I’d been sitting on the lowest step of the apartment building staircase, waiting for the Dork Lord to return from his early morning errand, when they happened by. The man was speaking Spanish to his nervous looking dog, wondering, no doubt, if my own leashed beast was friendly.
“Dile hola,” I said, relaxing the leash so equally-nervous Sariic could get nose-to-nose with the quivering Chihuahua. Say hello.
“You speak Spanish! How nice,” the man said and gesturing to my dog. “He’s a German Shepherd, yes?”
Not knowing how to express his breed mix in Spanish, I answered “Si,”.
“¿Cuántos años tiene?” How old is he?
“Thirteen and a half.”
“Viejecito!” Old man, he said, reaching out to rub the soft, white fur around Sariic’s nose. “How much longer can he live?“
I stopped. Swallowed. Checked myself before answering. My insides felt cold and numb.
“Hoy.” Today.
The change in his expression as he understood my full meaning sent me to tears.
“Pobrecita. Ah, pobrecita.” You poor thing.
I apologized for crying and he waved it off. We talked for a few minutes longer before he took his leave, patting the dog once more and wishing him well.
Two hours later, it was done.
“I just killed my dog,” the Boy said, his voice full of despair. What bits of my heart that were left intact after what I’d just witnessed broke completely apart.
“No,” his mom said, reaching out for his arm. “You didn’t. You gave him peace.”
As much as I wanted it to, it didn’t feel that way to me. I’m not entirely sure that I will ever make my own peace with it – or even if I am supposed to. Not that it wasn’t the just and humane thing to do. His body, the vet told us, could not do what he needed it to do. He had grown confused, deaf and exhausted, unable to manage the stairs or even eat his breakfast. The decline was difficult to watch. Yet ending it was the most excruciating experience of my life. Unprepared for how quickly the injection would take effect, I felt my entire self erupt in panic when the vet pronounced him gone. No! The hand I’d placed on his chest no longer rose and fell. All was still. I clung to the Boy and buried my face in the fur of Sariic’s cheek. My brain said, “right” and my heart screamed, “wrong.”
I cannot remember a time in my life when I was filled with more grief and remorse than I have been the last couple of days. My own grief is surpassed tenfold by my love’s. His hurt is palpable and I am powerless to help. He feels alone and regretful, burdened by a devastating certainty that he gave up on his friend – the empty spaces and quiet of coming home are particularly poignant reminders.
I wallow in my own guilt, for having had such a difficult time with the inconveniences of the last eighteen months. For being impatient and frustrated. But the truth is that I loved him well and, at the end of all this hurt, that’s what I will remember. The night I spent sleeping in his dog bed, the two of us wrapped in my down comforter after a hard night at the emergency animal clinic. Chopping vegetables with him at my feet waiting for an errant carrot or broccoli stem. The thick crease of his eyebrows, a muppet-like face, making a sucker of me time and again. When this mass of sadness lifts, that is what I hope will remain. In the meantime, there is a Sariic-shaped hole in my heart and lump in my throat that I cannot swallow.
Rest in peace, sweet friend. You will always be with us.
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