Category Archives: w/r/t love

Dec 11 2011

the down side of disney world

I’ve blogged before about how Ashley and I haven’t spent a great deal of time apart since we got together. Yes, we’re that couple. Annoying close. Remarkably paired. Pathologically joined-at-the-hip. Other couples either want to be like us or they vomit in their mouths a little bit when they see us. We try not to notice.

Not shown: me. Because I'm not there.

So it stands to reason that I would miss her terribly this week while she’s at Disney World with her family. Yet I severely underestimated the degree to which everything would be and feel so different. Instead of thinking, “I’m going to spend a week without my fiancée,” or, “I’m going to spend a week without my best friend,” I should have thought, “I’m going to spend a week without my right hand.” She’s such a part of me and my life it’s exactly like that.

Going to the grocery store yesterday was easily the strangest experience of the last six months. Not only did I navigate the store in a wholly linear fashion – my preferred method as opposed to Ashley’s back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth – and not only did I not talk to a single person, but when I was done the grocery cart had neither chocolate nor milk, two Ashley-staples. This realization, this simple, basic thing, brought home to me how different things were going to be this week. I almost cried right there at check-out-lane seven, which would have been awkward because everyone knows that if you want to cry you go down to check-out-lane nineteen.

I spent yesterday just lost in my own projects: cleaning the house and recording music. I only emerged around 7PM because I was hungry and to run out to her parents’ house to check on their dogs. This is what my life before her was like: me endlessly flitting about, tinkering on this project and that project, wrapped up entirely in my own stuff, only recognizing the outside world when it intruded.

So yes. I miss her. Terribly. Intensely. Perhaps even pathologically. It’s going to be a long, sleepless week.

Oh yeah. Did I mention that? Here’s the most perverse part: I have a huge bed all to myself and I cannot – cannot - get comfortable. Even when I try keeping to my own side I miss the weight of her. The cats’ Occupy Her Side movement is going strong but their collective weight doesn’t equal that of Ashley, even though one could use a bit of a diet and another one is like the Michael Clark Duncan of cats. I’m encouraging them to set up tents and a library, not because I don’t want to be the man here, but also because I’m hoping the weight will be more like Ashley’s. Their #occupy movement, unlike some others, will be fairly successful I think, because it seems all they want is freedom to sleep without being accidentally kicked or squished. If they keep to her side – and I’ve officially designated it as theirs – they’ll be as comfortable as can be. But me…I just can’t find a space I’m comfortable with.

Because the only thing that really comforts me is in Florida.

She took one of my shirts with her, so she could have something near her that smells like me. From this I assume not only that I don’t reek of boiled cabbage and that no one’s ever told me, but that the scent of a loved one can be comforting. Nature – fickle wench that she is – has removed this option from me. For me the sense most closely tied to memory is my hearing, and one of the things Ashley took with her when she left was her voice. And yes she can call…but it’s far different from the almost constant auditory input of Ashley’s prattling on and on and on and on. This makes it sound like a bad thing, but I knew even before she left that I would miss it. Imagine the world without music, especially now, during the holidays. Everything is cold, quiet, still and without memory.

If the Happiest Place on Earth is in Orlando, its polar opposite is right here, without her. I’m glad it’s only for a week.

Oct 19 2011

834

Ashley has a conference to attend tomorrow and to prevent having to wake up at 4AM for the drive she and some of her classmates will head down there tonight and stay in a hotel room. While this does lead me to imagine various lesbian-porn scenarios, it also brings into sharp focus that in the last 834 days we have spent exactly one night apart.

That’s just slightly more than 0.1%.

I’d like to tell you that I’m going to do all sorts of awesome things while I have the night to myself. I’d like to say that I plan on downing every millilitre of alcohol in the house while watching football on three different TVs.(1) I’d like to tell you I plan on watching every version of The Thing that has graced American cinema screens in the last 60 years. I’d like to tell you I plan on eating nothing but potato chips while playing survival-horror video games stark naked, that I’ll plug my guitar in and turn it up to 11 and jam along with the stereo at eye- and ear-popping volumes, that when she comes home tomorrow there will mysterious pieces of clothing strewn throughout the house and even the cats will be hungover.

20111019-144110.jpg

Or she'll walk in on a scene like this.

I’d like to tell you I’m going to man-it-up so hardcore that Chuck Norris himself would nod to me…from the other side of the street.

But the truth is I’m going to miss her terribly. And I probably won’t sleep all that well.

It’s a good thing I turned in my Man Card years ago.(2) I’d be forced to surrender it tonight as I cry myself to sleep.

  1. My brother really does this on Saturdays during college football season.
  2. Traded it for season tickets to the opera and three boxes of Tic-Tacs. Wasn’t using it much anyway.
Oct 8 2011

soup de vivre

She said this: “I wonder if there’s anyone else out there. Lucky, like me. Who is more amazed by her fiancée every day and is glad they’re getting married.”

We made a joke of it, or, really, of my response. But all kidding aside, when someone says this about you – and ostensibly merely because you made some good soup – it makes you a bit more honest.

And it makes you smile.

Jul 28 2011

Transplant check-up day

image

A few months ago I live-blogged Ashley’s and my trip to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.  We do this once every four months and while it is sort of like a short vacation, it’s also a short vacation during which we could potentially receive really bad news.

Not that either of us expects that. Ashley’s doing just about as well as any post-transplant cystic-fibrosis patient and her doctors could hope for.

This blog is as much about Ashley,  CF, and transplant-issues as it is about me and my rambling concerns re: Batman. So today I’ll be talking about our trip, hospitals, doctors, prognoses and Pittsburgh.

Right now we’re on our way,  having awoken earlier than we would have for a regular workday.  So so much for the vacation feeling…

More later.

10:30a. Made it to Pittsburgh. Up next: blood-work and x-rays.

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12:00p. Two encounters over lunch.

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The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Parrot was wandering around the cafeteria at lunchtime. It’s just cool how much this city loves its sports teams.

After Pirate Parrot left, Ashley saw her pre-transplant coordinator and ran over to talk to him right away. He recognized her and was excited to see her and catch up. He congratulated us on our engagement and then had to get back to work. But Ashley was really happy to see him.

Next up: the appointment.

1:15p. Pulmonary Function Test

PFT results are pretty much the metric for how well Ashley’s doing. They measure several different aspects of lung-function which you can read about on my spirometry page. The results are expressed as both a quantity (such liters) and a percentage (based upon the expected quantity for her height, weight and age).

Today’s results:

FVC: 4.58 liters. 116%.
FEV1: 3.15 liters. 134%. (!!!!)
FEV1/FVC: 92%
FEF 25%-75%: 7.99 liters/second. 221%
PEF: 14.63 liters. 220%

In short, these results are freaking AMAZING!

2 – 3:00p.

The appointment went as well as possible. There’s some concern that the PFTs are high due to a mechanical/calibration error. But as far as Ashley’s health everything seems: stellar.

What gets me is how astoundingly lucky we are. Everyday I interact with CFers and post-transplant peeps who continue to struggle with medication and medical issues. Who have even after transplant a rather tough time.

But for Ashley, and by extension me and her family, this hasn’t really been too tough after her transplant. Not that we don’t all put a far amount of work into keeping her healthy. But over all I think we’re incredibly fortunate.

May 15 2011

hawaiian weddings and the fat-man stigma

Perhaps we’re dreaming big, but Ashley and I are hoping to have our wedding in Hawai’i.[1] Like many women, she’s been planning her wedding for a long, long time; but, unlike many women[2] she’s aware that the wedding she’s been dreaming of since like age eight is probably financially prohibitive. So if you’re paying attention you realize this means that one of my first acts as a betrothed man has been to deny my future wife the wedding of her dreams. Please don’t judge me too much.

But she likes the idea of a beach wedding and she likes Hawai’i, having been there years ago when the Make-A-Wish Foundation[3] granted her wish.[4] Her parents are members of the Disney Vacation Club, which is opening a resort in Hawai’i very soon, and this will somewhat mediate the expense of the whole thing.

Earlier this week, while we were on the phone with one of the resort’s reps, Ashley asked about the availability of certain activities. Things like surfing, snorkeling, hiking, wind-surfing[5], and parasailing. Never mind that when she’s talking about hiking she means hiking up a volcano and that I’ve long run under the assumption that my own personal life-expectancy would be greatly enhanced if I remain safely distant from any and all volcanoes,[6] my idea of enjoying Hawai’i is more like sitting on a beach and reading on my Kindle.[7] Even swimming in the ocean is questionable for me due to a similar belief re: life-expectancy and shark-infested waters.[8] Not one of those other activities had crossed my mind until she mentioned them.

Yet, this is our wedding we’re talking about here. And the honeymoon. I feel it incumbent upon me to indulge her desire for these activities. And, for good or ill, Ashley’s enjoyment of pretty much activity is enhanced greatly if I join her in said activity.[9]

My biggest public inhibitions don’t revolve around a fear of failure or of looking like a fool. I don’t care terribly much about either, nor do I care enough about other people’s (especially strangers’) opinions of me. What I do care about is looking like a really fat failure and/or fool.

There’s a stigma about fat men: we tend to be unclean, we tend to sweat, we tend to kidnap children and do things that no one wants to talk about except for the folks over at the Today show. And plus also: we have rolls. And man-boobs. We are something to laugh at when we fall, when we fail, when we look like fools. I am intensely aware of this stigma every time I begin to sweat because there’s nothing more disgusting than a sweaty fat guy.[10]

Although this guy attains a high level of creeper status with no visible perspiration.

In everyday life I dress and maintain myself in such a way as to avoid the notice of these things. I wear 4X shirts not because I need to but because they hide certain shall we call them contourous features of my own personal anatomy. I wear hats and sometimes bandanas to absorb the sweat. I never look at anyone’s kid longer than two seconds unless that kid is talking to me and the parent is someone I know. And I never take my shirt of in public.[11] So yes, earlier when I talked about reading on the beach, I meant while wearing a shirt – probably a really large Hawaiian shirt, which I usually avoid because there’s also a big-dude-in-Hawaiian-shirt cliché/stigma, but well, when in Rome…

That’s all well and good when you’re just sitting on a beach. But snorkeling I’m pretty sure requires shirtlessness. And surfing not just shirtlessness but a certain Matthew-McConaughey build that I’ll never attain anyway but still.

More to the point, though: I’m pretty sure things like wind-surfing[12] and parasailing are next to impossible for a dude over 300 lbs.[13] There’s simply no way to generate enough lift without at least a category three hurricane or a speed boat with a V-12 Ferrari engine in it plus also a Batmobile-type rear-jet-propulsion thing that somehow never melts the macadam or sets litter ablaze not to mention homeless vagrants gawking.

So but anyway: it seems the best part about planning a wedding for October 2012[14] is that yours truly has what one would think is plenty of time to shed some serious poundage. And also ideally rolls and man-boobs, but I’m not going to expect too much.

[1] No date is set as of yet, just FYI. Because that’s like the first question everyone asks when we talk about the engagement and/or wedding planning, I thought I’d just get that right out of the way. But thanks for your enthusiasm!
[2] Especially those on WE TV.
[3] Hyphens appear as placed in the foundation’s name and, it’s worth noting, are impressively not sic.
[4] Well, sort-of. Like her future husband, one of their first acts was to tell a young woman that she could have the wish she’d been dreaming of. Their second act was a repeat of the first. The third one they granted, making them a very specific and perhaps rare type of genie.
[5] Unsure about the hyphen here but I’m going with it on the assumption that the sport hasn’t been around long enough to make this fully a compound word.
[6] Not to mention pretty much anything in liquid form that comes from far below Earth’s surface. And probably anything of same of solid form.
[7] Which every Kindle commercial ever should have you aware by now that I can read in direct sunlight, of which I’m assuming there will be lots.
[8] The Huffington Post reports that shark attacks were up 25% in 2010. I cite this merely in support of my claim. Otherwise it’s best for me to stay away from these types of articles. And no way am I clicking on that ‘World’s 10 worst shark attacks’ link that shows up in my Google search.
[9] Which is really honestly very sweet and no small factor in why I think our eventual marriage will rock. But it is also why once a year I find myself walking around at the fair, wholly thrilled that I was born with no sense of smell I might add, trying not to recoil or just flat-out run away from the what must be millions of gallons of grease being used on all the food. These people will literally fry every comestible known to man.
[10] At least in my assessment of what other people are thinking at the moment, which of course only makes me sweat more and anything I try in an attempt to head-off the sweating causes more stress and hence more sweat. Surely you can see where this is going.
[11] This causes its own paradox when Ashley and I go over to her aunt-and-uncle’s place to swim during the summer. Because my choices are: a) being the guy her family makes fun of because of my rolls and man-boobs and 2) being the guy her family makes fun of because I keep my shirt on the pool. The only plus-side to this is that being in the pool masks the sweat that this other-perceptive stress inevitably causes.
[12] See note 5 supra.
[13] That’s 136kg for those of you across the pond.
[14] And that’s a rough estimate, but still see note 1 supra.
Feb 22 2011

dfw

Yeah. Me too. If he would just.1

  1. I found this on PostSecret yesterday. It’s funny and perplexing that sometimes just out of nowhere I’ll remember that he’s gone – and it’s not just that he’s gone but that he took his own life – and I become so sad all over again. Analyzing it has gotten me nowhere. I’m left simply to feel, and what I feel is
Feb 14 2011

valentine’s day mix-tape 2011 (sic)

The hardest part of Valentine’s Day is in the writing. The explaining. Love is like water: try to examine it and it just runs through your hands.

This is why people make mix-tapes.1 It is easier for me to put together a pastiche of other people’s words to create a mosaic-like image of why I love you.

Of how I feel about you.

I’ve been considering how to write this post for a few weeks now. I have no idea how to say what I feel. So today, my love, you get a mix-tape – blog style.

Now, before we get started I need to tell you something about me that you have no reason to already know. Back in the day when I would spend a week hunting down just the right songs and get them in just the right order and press buttons labels ‘record’ and ‘play’ and ‘pause’ all in the name of someone with whom I was exceptionally fascinated2, I was never merely content to let other people’s words speak for me.3 I always included a custom-made sleeve or booklet in which I would explain why each song was included in the mix.

I’ve done the same thing here, again blog-style.

So…here is it, your Valentine’s Day Mix-Tape 2011 (sic)

When I hear or try to sing this I almost always choke up with tears. The chorus – every word of it – is exactly what I could never have written for you.

This. This is what you do for me. I am Bo, the Great Worrier. You help me remember that, as they say, everything will turn out all right. Thank you for that.

This seems like a silly choice, but honestly I feel like we’re more Kermit-and-Fozzy than anything else. This song captures the silliness and the joy I feel when you and I go places, even just for a drive.4

This song is here to remind you that you’re awesome. All on your own.

Of everything else, I am most proud and pleased to call you my friend.

And, finally:

I don’t know if we have something we call ‘our’ song. But in my head, it’s this one. I will always remember how you started crying that one time in your class. Whenever I am wrecked with doubt and my own terminal loneliness, I take myself back to that moment.

So…there you go. That’s the best way I know how to say what I want to say on this day.

I love you Ashley.

  1. Well, okay. These days people burn CDs and/or make playlists. I tell you that despite the superior audio quality, making a mix-tape is more fun, more artistic, and more honest.
  2. As I am with you.
  3. Big surprise, right?
  4. That lands us in the middle of a fireworks festival in Indiana. How weird was that?
Feb 5 2011

saturday things, vol. 4

This is the blanket that kept Nermal warm as he died.

He was wrapped in it as his breathing became troubled. He was wrapped in it when we brought him to the bed.

He was wrapped in it when Ashley left for a minute and he called out for her. He was wrapped in it as Ashley combed his fur.

He was wrapped in it as I held his paw.

This is the blanket that kept Nermal warm as he died.

I was born without a sense of smell. They say that it’s the sense most closely linked to memory.

For me, when someone’s gone – they’re gone. I don’t encounter lingering scents on pillows. On clothes. On cushions and blankets.

I have nothing physically to remind me that Nermal once lived here. That he died here too, just a few short months after he was born.

I have nothing but an empty food dish and my memory.

It’s been suggested that my anosmia – for it’s called – precludes me from developing attachments – real, tried-and-true attachments.

But this blanket…

I slept with this blanket in the morning hours after he died. I cuddled with it, a proxy for the warm living being I couldn’t.

It pained me to wash it the next day.

But wash it I did. Because I knew.

I knew that I’d keep the blanket by me every night.

I knew I’d use it when I fell asleep on the couch.

I knew it would bring Nermal closer to me again and again.

And it has.

I can’t smell him. But I can feel him.

This is the blanket that kept Nermal warm as he died.

And this is the blanket that keeps me warm as I live on, missing him.