I'm two weeks from my breast reduction and still dealing with a nasty wound infection. This is my exhausted husband, about to drench that gauze in antibiotic juju and shove it into an infected flesh tunnel inside my right boob. About an hour later, I severely cut my foot in the kitchen, so he also spent some time mopping up my fresh foot blood. Ladies, find yourself a man who will do the non-sex related disgusting things of life. This should be a no-brainer, because so much of living with human bodies and raising human children involves blood, puss, poo, vomit, all the gross and stinky things- but I hear tell of A LOT of men who still won't even buy tampons for their women's bloody holes, or adequately care for their splattering newborns while their wives recover from birthing them, and that's all straight-up malarkey.
So, anyway, he's also been working full-time the two weeks since my surgery, plus he's been on the hook for almost all the parenting and household stuff. So, you'd think I'd be being really grateful and nice to him, right? Hahahaha, no. We've been married for a long time. He is my whipping gentleman. I've been feeling like shit, so HE, too, must feel like shit. It's the only way to maintain balance. I don't make the rules. I've been trying to pick fights with him for days, but he was calm and accountable and INFURIATING, but yesterday on our drive into San Francisco to see my surgeon, I finally won and he called me "insufferable." But he didn't even say it with any real energy. His heart isn't into it. I'll have to keep trying.
In truth, he's been incredible, and is juggling a lot, but some things are, of course, falling through the cracks- he's keeping us in food and clean laundry and the kids have made it to school most days with most of their required backpack items. There's screaming, but not like 'the neighbors will call the people in suits' level of screaming, just regular amounts of WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU LOST ANOTHER WATER BOTTLE screaming.
The house should probably be condemned from filth, that is something "we" will have to work on this weekend when there's more time. The reason I cut my foot last night was that I picked up something that just felt like one of many pieces of grit on the kitchen floor, but when I went to brush it off on the top of my other foot without looking at it, I found that it was in fact a shard of glass, leaving me with ANOTHER bloody wound.
You know when mean parents say, "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about?" I'm here to say that it doesn't work. I have the capacity to cry about BOTH my wounds, thank you very much. I am in pain and dramatically fearful of bleeding to death from my foot, AND I am focusing on the festering fat sack jutting off of my chest. Both.
Just yesterday I told someone that instead of packing my boob wound, I might just have them remove the whole thing and replace it with a hook. That would be kind of bad-ass, right?
So, I'm not handling all of this especially well. Now that I'm smelly and swearing and limping from my foot and my boobs, I especially feel like a pirate. I told Robb this morning that I'd just like to step out of my body for a while and into someone else's. He asked me, "Like demon possession?" but I was already googling what essential oils it might take to accomplish, and he ran out of the room.
So....that's where we are today. Almost nineteen years married and somehow, despite all judgement and against all odds, we're eking by, through thick and thin, sickness and health, smelly wound holes and snark. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to ask him to make me a soup using only ingredients I know we don't have.
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