Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Why, yes, that does ring a bell

When my son was little some friends of ours gave us the book Go the F*ck to Sleep.

I thought it was funny and charming, and it's got lovely illustrations. But I didn't fully appreciate the genius of it.

Because Jordan slept.

I would read to him, rock him and sing him a little song or two, and then put him in his crib. He would promptly stick his thumb in his mouth, put his little butt up in the air, and fall asleep. And then he slept.

My daughter, on the other hand. She's a sleep-wrecking lunatic.

She's never wanted to go to bed. And now she's gotten clever. It's not just screaming in protest.

No.

Now after stories, after her older brother is fast asleep, it is, "Mama! I'm hungweeee! I'm hungweee!" So I will get her a drinking yogurt and she'll take a couple sips and be all yeah, thanks, great. That was refreshing and now I'm done.

"Now I need another story."

(NO? DID YOU SAY NO?)

"I'm hot! I'm hot! I'M HOOOOOT! I need new pajamas!" We change pajamas.

"I need socks! Socks! Not these socks! I want to choose my own! There's only one pink one!"

(WHERE IS THE OTHER PINK SOCK THESE ARE THE ONLY SOCKS I CAN POSSIBLY WEAR!)

I talk her into one pink and one other color. We get back into bed.

"I'm scared of the dark!"

"Honey, that's why you have a nightlight."

"But it makes shadows and I'm scared of the shadows!"

Sometimes, I tell you, I am pretty sure I myself am not going to make it.

And then sometimes she will get up at night. After stringing bedtime out until 10:00 pm Friday night, she was up at 2:00 am. She had a cough. Then she needed milk. "MILKEEEEE!" Nick got her milk.

She needed...I don't know. Attention. She was just awake. And awake and awake. She wriggled. She hummed. Drummed her feet on me. Shoved her skull against Nick's. Patted my cheeks.

"You are killing me, India." I said this. "Please go to sleep. I love you but you're killing me."

To let Nick sleep, I took her back to her bed and crawled in with her. It was one thing and another. I think we fell asleep around 5:00 am. 

At some point that afternoon India looked at me and said, "Mama, remember last night? When I was killing you?"

Yes, my darling. Yes, I do.

Monday, March 30, 2015

Life is hard you know (oh whey oh) so strike a pose on a Cadillac

You know that now I'm a grownup and I have a house and children and responsibilities and such.

Which is not to say that I didn't have responsibilities before I met Nick, but your bills do not charge in at the crack of dawn regardless of what time you went to sleep all, "It's a STAY HOME day! What are we going to do?!?"

Nick and I do not go out all that often, and when we do it is usually rather civilized and there is no  mischief. In fact, I typically rely on Nick to be the voice of reason, pulling me back when I start doing things like offering young men relationship advice or getting mouthy with the cops.

Which brings me to Jordan's school's annual fundraiser. It's an auction. They encourage you to get drinks and bid. Drink! Bid!

It was a dress-up even and so we dressed up. Nick wore a suit and I wore a nice black dress and a black patent-leather boot.
Cropped to protect strangers who might have actually been wishing they'd run the other direction.
I complimented a woman on her very striking jump suit. It was cool. She was clearly searching for a return compliment and, after looking me up and down said, "Thanks. I like your...get-up!"

Sadly, I didn't think fast enough to whisper, "Thanks! I got it in prison."

I'd anticipated having a grown-up evening eating cheese with other parents without anyone grabbing our clothing and saying things like, "Scuuu-me! I need a snack!"

What I hadn't anticipated was hanging out with Victoria.

We met on the playground the first week of school and she immediately became one of my heart people. We have only once managed to get together without children; we had a couple quiet drinks and intense conversation.

When you first meet her, she's friendly in an understated way. She seems reserved. But she has a sparkle. She's traveled alone plenty and lived in other countries and some of her stories make you say, "Thank God nothing bad happened to you!"

Which is exactly the case with some of my stories. Which is why I am totally implanting little GPS chips in my children when they are old enough to go out on their own.

Anyway.

I saved her and a mutual friend seats at our table. When you checked in you each got a free drink ticket and then you could purchase others.

I said I assumed Nick had gotten a handful, and would she like another beer? And she said she herself had a handful so she was fine, thank you. Our other friend had gotten one. Victoria said, "I think she's judicious and knows her limits."

To which I raised my glass and responded, "Well, let's stick together then!"

I am not entirely clear on the number of glasses of wine. I do know that several is a good ballparkish estimation.

I know that we got and declined and invitation to a hot tub.

I also know that though she and I considered bidding together on a dresser with a million tiny drawers, at some point we realized that if we won it, 1. Only socks and underwear would fit in the drawers; and 2. We do not live together.

We abandoned the tiny-drawer dresser. (In retrospect, it was more like a card catalog.)

Another thing I am not clear on is what I may have said to some newly-met friends at the end of the event, except that I do know that I overshared cringingly and then strongarmed one of them into becoming my Facebook friend.

Where was Nick? I dunno. But I can tell you where Victoria was. Right there next to me, not reigning me in.

What remains strikingly in focus is the salsa dancing we did after midnight. The salsa dancing that Victoria suggested we do even after Nick said he was calling it an evening.

She is a spectacular dancer. And I'm a sketchy one even when I have two usable feet.

Somehow the mojito didn't even serve to improve things.

I have a little video of me trying to take our picture in a mirror. In the frame is of the bottom of our smiles and the tops of our water bottles.

Loud music is playing, and it's not really in focus, and other people probably think we're ridiculous. We are laughing and laughing.

This sums up the evening.

Friday, March 27, 2015

What about you, India?


There are nights that I pour myself a big glass of wine with dinner.

I sip it with my fish sticks/mac and cheese/pasta with butter no sauce! and NOT touching the broccoli. Now, I know that you drink white with fish, but I like red, and really, what doesn't go with fish sticks? 

So if it is one of those glass of wine nights, it accompanies me upstairs to the bath.

In full glamor mode, I sip that wine while sitting on the bathmat next to my kids while they splash around in the tub. Sometimes I sit on the closed toilet seat. This helps me pretend I'm at an outdoor cafe in Paris. The noise from the savages in the bath? Tourists on the Champs-Élysées.

One night a while ago they kept taking big mouthfuls of water and squirting them at each other. I was all, "You guys, the water's all soapy! It's bad for your tummy. Please! Stop!"

Not deterred. Then I had an epiphany.

"India! Jordan! That water is full of butt germs! You're putting all that super yucky butt germ water in your mouths!"

This only served to make it ALL THE MORE AWESOME. "Want some butt germ water, India?" Squirt!

I hesitated to share this, because maybe you will judge my parenting.

Just to be clear: she's drinking butt-germ bathwater, not wine.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

We came, we saw, we stapled

I spent the summer after my sophomore year of college in Rome, living with my friend Kassie's family and working at the American Embassy.

(And here I will mention that Kassie was the instigator of Spring Break in Tunisia, a trip for which we were ill equipped and yet convinced Leigh to join.)

My sophomore year of college had been significantly better than my freshman year, which is not to say it was good for me. It was more in the way that I imagine being waterboarded is more fun than being beaten with a lead pipe.

This is not to say that there weren't people that I really liked. But leaving was a relief.

And then I fell in love with Rome. I felt good for the first time in two years. I wanted to stay forever and never, ever go back "home".

But as I was enrolled and had the obligation of a shared apartment lined up for fall semester, I did go home, determined to return to Rome spring semester. My dad said absolutely not. I spoke French and should go to France. Or, since I'd just taken a year of Japanese, perhaps I should go to Japan. I spoke basically no Italian and it made no sense.

I can now admit he had a point. But I wasn't trying to make sense. I was just trying to be happy again.

And we didn't yet know Leigh. We wouldn't meet her for another eight months. But that's getting ahead of the story.

Kassie's dad had gotten us summer jobs at Immigration and Naturalization Services. We put together refugee files.

We were temporary employees with menial tasks, seated together in a large room with about eight Italian woman who were permanent employees.

I didn't speak any Italian in the beginning, and so initially I thought that they were all mad at each other. Later, when I could understand a bit, I realized they were just discussing things like the purchase of new lipstick or what they had done over the weekend.

Kassie and I had grown up in embassies, and we were used to thinking more than was currently required of us, and so we didn't take our jobs of matching pieces of paper and stapling photos and compiling files all that seriously.

Which is not to say we did a bad job. We were both high-quality filers, staplers, and document compilers. It was more that we giggled a lot and didn't behave with appropriate decorum. Eventually it was decided that we were best seated apart.

Anyway, one day Fireman Bob, the man in charge of fire safety for the embassy, came in to inspect our office.

(I'm sure Fireman Bob had a real name. In my recollection he was generally called Fireman Bob, but the truth is, maybe that's just how we referred to him.)

He walked in and said, "Who is in charge here?"

And Kassie stood up and said, "I am! I'm in charge!"

We all looked at her, eyebrows lifted. Except Fireman Bob, who strode towards her to explain his mission.

At which point she had to say, "Ah, I'm just kidding. I'm...really not in charge."

And in the world of random, the following year we were at a stand looking at postcards, and Kassie picked up one of the Spanish steps. There was a single person descending. It was Fireman Bob.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Ready, steady, boot!

This may come as some surprise to you, but I rely on my speed a great deal.

This is chiefly because I do not excel at time management. So to be on time, I tend to wind up running at least part of the way to wherever it is I need to go.

And then I arrive all out of breath and sweaty and immediately need to remove a dramatic amount of clothing.

Nick knows. This is how I showed up for our first date. And he says, hand to God, that he looked at me in the Tabard's low light and said to himself, "Someday I'm going to marry that sweaty orange chick."

But I digress.

Basically, when I am walking, I have two speeds: Very fast. And stopped.

And then of course I run when I am late. That varies from a jog to all-out sprint. I have done this in a variety of footwear. It is not necessarily graceful.

I'm not one of these people who sees three seconds to go on the crosswalk and slows down thinking there's not enough time. No. I think, hey, if I run, I'll definitely make it. Obviously, having children has curbed this habit. (Curbed. Ha!)

Even in the boot, I clomp like the wind.

I wheel my son's scooter and helmet to school with me in the afternoon and I see people look at the scooter and then my boot and I want to be all, "This isn't mine. That's not how I got it."

Yah, so, I just saw my podiatrist. I was on time, like on the minute, but if I didn't have a hurty food I'd have been a few minutes early because I'd have run those last few blocks.

But then I suppose if I didn't have a hurty foot I wouldn't have to see him.

He asked how it was all going and I said my boot foot is doing great but my achilles on my other foot is sore. And that I've been worrying that when this foot is done, I'm going to have to just switch the boot to the other one.

And he said, "You take it easy when you're walking, right?"

The younger me would probably have totally lied, but I confessed that I walk really fast. Like, fast enough that people comment on it. Especially with the boot. They're all impressed.

I'm not saying it's Olympic-level boot walking, but I do think you'd agree.

(Also, if you feel like you need more attention, get a boot. In that regard, it's like having a puppy, but not as cute and nobody's trying to pet it.)

He said to slow it down. Take it easy. Smell the roses. Two or three more weeks.

I will try so very hard.

Also! What do you say? "Ready, steady, go!" or "Ready, set, go!"?

Friday, March 20, 2015

The beginning of a chapter. What do you think?

When I asked my mother about the roadside bodies, she got a funny look on her face and said, “You didn’t see them.”

“I did see them.”

“How?”

“On the way to school. Looking out the bus windows.”

She sighed. “I thought we’d shielded you from them.”

I'd been unsure of this memory, until her confirmation. "So they really were dead?"

She nodded.

“How did they die?”

 “Well, some of them died of starvation. And others from the river flooding.”

We lived in New Delhi when East Pakistan rose up against West Pakistan and fought to gain independence. India, geographically between the two, entered the war in late 1971. For us this mean air raids over Delhi.

In the summer of  1972, we moved to Dhaka (then Dacca), capital of newly independent Bangladesh and site of my roadside bodies. Bangladesh is low, and floods regularly. Two years prior, the devastating Bhola cyclone had flooded the Bay of Bengal, killing half a million people and leaving unimaginable devastation in its wake.

Even without disasters, there were many easy ways to die: starvation, smallpox, cholera, malaria, to name only a few. You could even just get diarrhea from contaminated water and die of dehydration.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

On how I came to be sitting right there in your living room

Oh, hey! I was an extra on House of Cards!

(Also, spoiler alert, if you haven't watched season three.)

I told just about everyone, but I didn't blog about it because they were all, DO NOT blog, tweet, Facebook, Tumblr, carrier pigeon, etc. this or we will cut you! Really they just said you'd be banned from working on the show forever and ever.

I mean, you were allowed to mention that you were an extra, which I did. But I wasn't like, hey! Senate confirmation hearing! Claire! UN Ambassador! Book signing! Remy Danton! Unclear what he's up to! Heather Dunbar! Union rally! Running for president!

All of those were true but I didn't say any of them because I am a first-born-rule-follower and also for fear of being cut or banned.

But what I did say was that if even one of my elbows or ears makes it onto the screen, I am telling EVERYONE.

So here I am.

Last summer I saw a casting call for extras for the third season. They wanted DC-looking people.

We had just binge-watched every single episode of House of Cards even though I kept saying I was going to stop because each and every one of the characters was so evil and wretched. But I just couldn't quit them.

So I put on my black suit and headed off to the casting.

I ran into my neighbor Tracy who was all, "Oh, they won't pick you with your awesome asymmetrical hair. You're way too hip and fashionable to look like you're from DC."

I was all, "I am NOT hip or fashionable and I look totally DC!"

Apparently they agreed and I wound up in three scenes.

The first one is Claire's Senate confirmation hearing. My cousin and Nick both found my little blonde head in the audience seated way behind Claire.

I turn out to excel at audience-sitting. Basically, if you need an audience sitter, I'm your gal.

In the breaks it was so hard to pass Robin Wright in the hallway and not say things like, "That Vizzini, he can fuss!" They were dying to fall out of my mouth right after petting her arm and telling her how terrific she is.

I did none of those things. I just walked past the chair where she was going through her lines, and down the hall to the bathroom and pretended like it was all normal to pass a famous actor. Even though I so wanted to bow to the Queen of Slime, the Queen of Filth, the Queen of Putrescence...

The scene above was filmed at Red Emma's, a radical bookstore in Baltimore. The sections are entitled things like "Lesbian Anarchy" and "Organizing Atheists." I'm making these up, as I can't remember actual sections, but they're along those lines and I was thinking that the Underwoods would never set foot somewhere like that.

And in fact, they didn't. But I did get to stand in line for quite a while behind Remy Danton, who is a long tall drink of water.

Two of my friends, interestingly enough named Kristen and Kristin, both told me that they were watching HoC the other night with their respective husbands. Kristen, who I know in person but haven't seen in years, and who didn't know I was an extra, said she saw me and started yelling, "There's Lisa Jordan!!!" Her husband thought she was insane.

Kristin, who is one of my invisible Internet friends, saw it and started yelling, "I know her! That's my friend!"And her husband also questioned her sanity.

So I guess what I'm saying is, if your name is some variation of Kristen and you are watching HoC with your husband and you see me and you think it's cool, maybe don't jump up and down and yell, because he will think you are nuts.

Even if your enthusiasm makes me really happy.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

The goat birthday and other bedtime tales

The first time India asked for the goat story, I misheard her. I thought she said "boat story," and said I didn't have a boat story.

"The goat story! When you had birthday cake and candles and a purple bathing suit and a goat!"

Naturally, the most important elements of my Goat Birthday.

Which was actually just a plain old birthday until my little Dutch friend Petra brought me a baby goat as a present. 

Nick started this Story In the Dark business, and he is great at spinning yarns, and the kids love it. But he rarely puts them to bed, and so it's kind of a big treat for them. It's not that I don't like telling stories, but some nights I just want to read a couple books and be done.

For a while Jordan was requesting Lego Jordan stories, in which Lego Jordan and Lego India and another friend or two would walk through a door in the back of Jordan's closet, down a long rainbow Lego hallway, and into the kingdom of the Lego Giant. Where they would immediately proceed to eat Lego ice cream, Lego donuts, and Lego pizza.

I will tell you that it gets as tiresome repeating Lego before every word out loud as it does typing or reading it. "So then Jordan..." "No, Mama! Lego Jordan!"

Right.

Anyway, this stopped with a change in our bedtime ritual. For a while I'd give them a bath and get them in jammies, and then I'd leave India in her room screaming bloody murder while I told Jordan a story and then kissed him goodnight and then went to put down my rage queen.

Putting her to sleep is a lot more involved and drawn out than with my boy. My son can be hard to get to the jammies point, but once he is calm and listening to a story, he's headed to sleep. You put him in bed and kiss him goodnight and that's it.

India, on the other hand.

So there was this period of time where if you didn't let her scream for a bit before putting her to bed, you'd spend like 54 hours trying to do so. But if I left her to shriek her displeasure for a bit, she'd be ready to settle in.

Now we read books in her room and sometimes she walks into Jordan's room with me, and sometimes she yells in her room, but it is brief.

And then we focus on her.

She needs water. I'm prepared. Here. I'm handing it to you. She needs socks. No, not those socks. She wants to do it. Hmm, which socks should she choose? She finally picks the damn socks. Oh! She forgot Softly Giraffe downstairs!

(I bought a backup giraffe, exactly the same, but she wasn't fooled. For a while backup giraffe was the less preferred giraffe, and it was still a crisis if we couldn't find Softly Giraffe. So we have Softly Giraffe and Spicy Giraffe.)

ANYway, we get all of this bullshit out of the way and then she wants a story in the dark.

Which is how the goat story got back into circulation. Because I am old and I am tired.

Now I regularly tell my children my birthday stories.

There is always cake, and it is purple, because that was my favorite color for years. These things go over well. There is usually swimming, because that is true and also a popular detail. I also have to list the snacks we had at the pool.

If it's India, there is my purple bathing suit, a detail she loves as she has one as well. But I don't mention that it was a velveteen bikini and basically my favorite item of clothing for years, because then India will have to have one and our lives will be tragic if it doesn't happen.

Sometimes there is the goat, and sometimes it is the Wizard of Oz birthday, when my dad got a reel-to-reel movie projector and the movie from the Marines. And then, when the Wicked Witch's green face was large on the screen, BOOM! Thunder and lightening! The power went out, because it was monsoon season. And everyone screamed!

"You were scared, Mama?"

(Hell, yeah!)

"Only a little. Because my mama and daddy ran around and lit candles and then we at MORE CAKE AND LOLLYPOPS by candlelight!"

"Ohhhh!" Nods of approval.

When I say I can't think of a story, sometimes Jordan says, "Well...did you maybe have any other birthdays ever? Like with cake and candles?"

Yeah, yeah, I probably did.

Monday, March 16, 2015

My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on a limb. And all I remember is thinking, I want to be like them.


I know a lot of you have already seen this, but I also know that we are not all connected on Facebook, and so I wanted to put it on the blog to share.

This Is My Brave asked each of us to make an a short video introducing ourselves. I was first on the schedule, and here I am.

This was really scary to do, and I feel proud of it.

It's insecurity-provoking to share your own words, but then when you're sharing your heart words and  saying them out loud into a camera where everyone can see your regular eye rolls and the funny little faces you make, and hear your high little voice, well, that's a whole nother level of yikes.

And yet I think it's extremely important to talk, talk, talk until we are blue in the face about how mental illness is just plain old normal.

Eventually, if we talk enough, if enough people come forth and share their stories, mental illnesses will move into the realm of common everyday boring illnesses like high cholesterol and allergies. They'll be so prosaic that we'll talk about them on the bus and share contact info for doctors and swap medication stories.

Because they are that common.

Once this happens, people will not feel ashamed to seek the care they need. They will no longer go without help because they're too afraid to admit that they need it.

I said it in the video and I will say it again forever until it is no longer true. I believe that the shame associated with mental illness kills people. And I believe talking breaks the stigma.

Also, sorry for only being a semi-reasonable wife, Nick.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

The kind of naked I do not like to be so could you please help?

I have the honor of being part of the 2015 This Is My Brave cast.

What does this mean?

It means that a group of us will each be sharing a 5-minute story of our own experiences with mental illness. It means standing up on stage in front of an audience of strangers and speaking from our hearts and lives on a topic that is still highly stigmatized. It means talking to break the stigma.

I'm proud of my audition piece. Crafting it was extremely difficult, and I learned a tremendous amount about myself in doing so. It was surprisingly healing.

And now, now I need a 2-4 sentence bio.

I'm comfortable telling stories about what's in my heart. I'm very not comfortable defining who I am. I mean, who am I? In 2-4 sentences?

Honestly, getting physically naked makes me more comfortable than getting this kind of naked in public.

But I can't just submit a naked picture of myself. I mean, one, that would be weird. Particularly in the boot. Two, I'm certain it would get me kicked off the cast. So I need a brief bio.

I asked for help on Facebook, and a number of friends very kindly did so. I took their suggestions, removed the extremely complimentary adjectives (oh, thank you, friends!) and the references to merkins, penii, my House of Cards extra-ness and the like (thank you again, friends!), and crafted this:

Lisa Jordan is a writer, wife, daughter, and mother to two young kids. Lisa documents her life journey on her blog, Lemon Gloria, sharing her stories of marriage, depression, suicide, motherhood, and life’s stranger moments and everyday pleasures with equal gravity and humor. She is working on a book about growing up with suicide.

What do you think?

I need to know by tomorrow. But preferably right now, like, this minute.

Thank you.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

I was on the outside when you said you said you needed me...


Last week Jordan told me that when they have recess in the gym, nobody plays with him.

I always ask if they were outside at recess, because this winter has been cold and snowy and they've had a lot of inside days. Some days they watch videos, and some days they run around in the gym. The latter is by far my preference. They already sit too much.

So on this particular day last week he said they ran around in the gym and I so asked who he had played with.

And he said, "Nobody. Nobody wants to play with me. Why doesn't anyone want to play with me, Mama?"

He looked so sad, with his sweet little face turned up to me, asking for an answer. It hurt my heart.

I doubt the veracity of it, because Jordan has friends, and plenty of kids say hi and bye to him when we're in the lobby of the school. And there's one little girl in particular in his class who just loves him. She has a developmental delay, and she seems utterly guileless. She sees him and beams and gets so close to him that she's practically standing on his feet. They are pals.

When we hang out after school, he has friends to play with. And if his friends aren't there, he sometimes joins in with other kids.

But he is also very much in his head. He will go off by himself on the playground and keep himself entertained digging snow or climbing or some such.

Anyway, what he said was that all the other kids were playing with other kids and nobody ever picks him for anything.

I got it. Oh, I got it.

Whether it's real or not, he feels it. So it's real to him.

I spent most of my life feeling like I was outside. I was standing on the edge looking in, even though I was there, and I was participating. I was hanging out with friends at school, I was in plays, I was a cheerleader. I was in a sorority, I was at the parties, I was drinking, I was laughing, I was dancing.

But to me, I wasn't really inside, not the way everyone else was.

Even in high school, where there weren't cliques. Where nobody was ever excluded, and nobody was in or out.

I felt this way well into my 30s. I don't know precisely when it stopped, but at some point I realized that I wasn't actually different from everyone else. Or anyway, from the everyone elses that I chose to hang out with.

I picked them for a reason. And they chose me right back, the whole me.

So now I can look back and believe that I wasn't really on the outside looking in; I was inside. Hell, there wasn't an inside and an outside. We were all in it together.

I was just too scared and insecure to recognize it.

And so my boy, oh my boy. He's so much like me in ways that infuriate me.

I strive not to do the things my father did when my shyness and insecurity frustrated him. I try to see my son and accept him as his own whole person, and not get annoyed when he asks me to talk to another kid for him, to ask them if he can share toys or have a turn.

I know what Jordan does, because it's what I did for so long.

He waits for people to come to him. I can picture him in the gym, waiting for other people to pick him. Scared to walk over and ask if they'll play, in case they say no. Terrified of rejection. Feeling like he doesn't really belong. Not really.

Why isn't he like Nick, who is the opposite, and acts like he belongs everywhere he goes?

Even if he has nothing overly interesting to say, he'll walk up to a stranger at a party and say it to them. And they'll respond. And suddenly they'll be having a conversation about umbrellas.

Here I must of course add that I do hang on his every word and the bulk of them are riveting. It's the rare instance I'm spotlighting.

But back to Jordan.

I tell him that people like him, that he has friends. I give names of people I know like him. I gently suggest that maybe, in the gym, maybe he could walk over to another kid and ask them if they want to play.

He says they're all busy playing with others.

I know how he feels. I know his little heart. I've lived his fears.

And it makes me want to scoop him up, to wrap him in Langston Hughes's blue-cloud cloth, away from the too-rough fingers of the world.

Monday, March 09, 2015

Boot is the new black

You know how you learn a new word or hear of something for the first time and then suddenly you see this word or thing 54 times in the next few days?

I have seen so many booted people lately. Every third person on the street is wearing a boot.

OK, I exaggerate. But there are a lot!

It's like suddenly I became hyper-aware of boots, and lo, there they already were, all around me.

Nick has stopped wearing his, even though he hasn't yet gone back to the doctor. Our doctor.

And I can understand it. The boot is a hassle. Not just clomping around in it, but finding a shoe that matches it in height. It makes your hips and back hurt to be off-balance like that. Most importantly, his achilles is no longer achillin' him. (No, I will never let that go.)

Now, on the one hand I was thinking maybe he should wait until the doctor deems him healed. But on the other, I was relieved.

The other day we walked over to our friends' house together. They live about six or seven blocks away. Not far, but far enough when you're booting.

We were both in our respective boots, when we saw people walking towards us on the sidewalk, I put a little distance between us and pretended Nick and I didn't know each other.

I'm not proud of this fact, but it's true. (Also, Nick didn't know I was doing this. Until now.)

Anyway, I figured that if anyone looked at our boots and laughed at us, I'd go ahead and be all, "What? We met at a boot support group!"








Wednesday, March 04, 2015

In bootness and in health

As you can see, there are a number of things afoot at our house.

Oh, hahahahahahahaha!

So I woke up yesterday with the ball of my foot all hurty and swollen, and then I hobbled on it all day, because as it turns out you need the ball of your foot for many things like walking and standing and such.

I sent pictures of my normal foot and my swollen foot to Nick at work and he said it looked like I needed some sex and he'd help me with it when he got home.

I told him I was looking for constructive feedback and this was seeming very much like him not being super helpful when I wanted to warm my icy little feet on the warmest place on his body.

Upon actually seeing my foot, he suggested I had gout, and when I asked how one gets gout he said, "Lots of rich, fatty foods." And then he laughed really hard.

And then I said if I have gout and he does not there is no justice in the world. To which he said that sex cures gout as well.

I've been saying things like, "Hey there, bootie!" and "You might want to hobble upstairs and get changed before you get too tired." Not unkindly. More like descriptively. But Nick didn't take it well. So this is payback, I think.

Anyway, this morning I called Nick's podiatrist—you know, the one who recently gave him The Boot—and asked if they could please squeeze me in even though they'd never seen me before. They did and as it turns out; 1. The podiatrist is extremely interesting, 2. The foot, a replica of which I held in my hand, is kind of creepy, and 3. I have fractured one of the wee little bones under the ball of my foot.

So I said, "What does one do about this? I mean, beside The Dread Boot."

The answer? The Dread Boot.

We have the same boot now, my love and I. On the same foot. Just in vastly different sizes.

I'd told Nick that he was going to have to stop wearing his if I had to get one, and when I called him he once again laughed really hard.

And then he said he can't wait to clomp down the street together, hand in hand.