Weekend To Do List

Accomplished Today:

I crossed the finish line of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Cleveland.
I took Jack to the dog park. And let me just say that I am going to begin recommending the dog park as a place to meet eligible bachelors for my single friends. There are generally more men than women there and who doesn't love to strike up a conversation about their dog? Too easy. Of course, I'm married, so I shouldn't even be thinking about this.
I spent two hours blowing leaves out of the front yard and into the street. Leaf pick-up is on Wednesday and I haven't even made a dent.
I threw the frisbee around with Jack (again) in the backyard.
I scrubbed my entire kitchen including the cabinets.
I'm now working on the laundry.

To Be Done Tomorrow:

Stan Hywet with a digital camera.
Borrow my parents digital camera because mine is on the fritz.
Bring some organization back to the laundry room.
Hit up the grocery store for some food.
Febreze.
Scrub bathroom floor. (Ick. I may avoid this one as long as possible.)
Bubble bath.

Things That Shatter in the Night

When I registered for the not so fragile drinking glasses as a wedding gift I was thinking of my ever so clumsy husband and expecting them to last about a year, rather than the six or so months the cheaper sets seemed to limit us to. And you can imagine my surprise when they lasted not only our first year, but also our second, and now three and a half years later, we were standing strong with ten of the original twelve glasses. Truly an amazing record for us.

But last night it wasn't my husband who broke the third glass, taking us down to nine. It was me. And it was the first time that choosing the more solid, not frail, set of glasses backfired on me.

It was one o'clock in the morning and I was half-asleep when I dropped my fleshly dispensed glass of ice water on the kitchen floor, sending cold water and ice in all directions. Shards of glass were sent flying through the darkness (because who needs a light when you've made this same trip a thousand times), and I was surprised to walk away without atleast a minor cut. But while trying to clean up the mess I found that the sturdy glass had severely chipped two of the brick red floor tiles. By chipped I mean good-sized, obvious chunks of red ceramic were missing, leaving behind several white craters, which would not have been so annoying if they hadn't been centered in the room. Multiple speckles of white, right smack in the middle of all that deep reddish brown. It looked like I did not own, or could not operate, a broom.

I went back to bed with fears of new flooring, or having to bring in a professional to repair the two tiles. I tossed and turned through nightmares of Home Depot and new grout that didn't match the old grout. When I woke up this morning I had to double check, just to make sure it wasn't all a bad dream. Unfortunately it wasn't a dream. My floor still looked like I snacked on a sugared donut the night before and didn't bother to clean up after myself.

Jon and I stopped in at both Home Depot and Lowe's tonight where we discovered that, like most tiles over a year old, our tile has been discontinued. I'm still checking a few places around the house to see if perhaps the previous homeowners stashed any of the leftover tiles somewhere. In the meantime I came up with a much more temporary solution. I pulled out a large box of colored pencils, sat myself down on the floor, and colored my little heart out. I found the perfect color combination between three different pencils, and surprisingly, even I have a hard time finding the destruction from a short distance. But like I said, the pencils are definitely temporary. If I can't find something better, I may be putting in a call to my mother-in-law, the artist, and ask her to work her color magic, and hide my hideous spots.

Zombie

I am at that fine line between caring and not caring that I look like a stoner. I feel crappy enough to not care, but just well enough to peer into the restroom mirror at my swollen, bloodshot eyes and Rudolph red nose, and announce to anyone who cares to listen: "Eww! I should have worn mascara!"

Vice Versa

I spent most of Friday evening trying to stave off Jon and his sneezing, sniffling head cold with an abundance of dirty looks and as many nice, wifely variations of BACK OFF as I could think of. He was still in the early stages, free of the migraine headaches and severely clogged nasal passages, so he couldn't see the fault in breathing on me, or nonchalantly leaning in for a kiss. I defended myself by putting a hand on his chest and explaining, "Jon, seriously, I CANNOT get sick! I'm too busy at work and I can't get time off, so please, stay back!" Though he tried, it was not in earnest, and it seems I was destined to catch this cold. And when I woke up Saturday morning with a stinging, prickly feeling in the back of my throat, I would have screamed, if it didn't hurt so much.

My sore throat was tolerable and left me feeling minutely lucky as I watched Jon's version of the cold turn into something much more annoying. He spent most of Saturday hauled up on the sofa, watching ESPN while I drove to the market, walked the dog, and took care of our normal, weekend errands. He barely had the energy to blow his nose, let alone breathe on me, and I sincerely thought I'd escaped the worst of it.

Sunday found me in the same predicament as Jon, but while he was clearly on the road to recovery, I was struggling to see through my blinding headache and breathe through my stuffy nose as I got ready for mass. It took me an additional hour compared to the usual Sunday, but we wandered into church, almost on time, and situated ourselves in a back pew where I thought I was less likely to pass my cold onto an innocent bystander. I successfully fought every urge to cough and/or sneeze and when the time came to shake hands with other parishioners I just smiled, nodded, and greeted them, and when they didn't get the hint that I could not touch their hands I blatantly announced, "I'm diseased." Most people laughed, others still didn't understand, but I continued to smile and nod my way through mass. The homily was about woman being made from man's rib and the two becoming like one person. Jon took this opportunity to whisper to me, "That's why both of us had to get sick; we're like one person." I had to laugh, but quietly began cursing man. I persuaded Jon to leave at the earliest opportunity so that we could dodge the crowd before they became sociable and blocked off the church exits, leaving me to breathe a little too close for comfort.

Not surprisingly, I spent the rest of Sunday on the sofa, watching IFC movies and CSI reruns. I tried to sleep as much as possible, convinced that I could sleep the sickness away, and be mended by morning. And, of course, I was wrong. The soreness moved from my throat, to my ears, to my head, and back to my throat again. Breathing became more and more difficult as the evening progressed. I can remember Jon waking me a few times, telling me "I don't think you're getting enough air in that position. You should turn over," but he didn't know that, amidst all other positions, flat on my back seemed to provide me with the most air. While it was far from quality, I did manage a little sleep last night.

Today I am at work as the annoying girl that everyone uses the forefinger cross to ward off, and exclaim that I shouldn't be here, or had better not get them sick. I smile, and nod, and try not to breathe on them. I only speak from a distance and I have washed my hands so many times that the skin on my knuckles is beginning to chap. I have officially gone through two travel-sized packages of Kleenex and had to use part of my lunch hour to stop at CVS for another jumbo box (the other part of the lunch hour being used to write this journal entry). I'm caught in the catch-22 of trying to keep the boss happy or my co-workers safe. Obviously, I sided with the boss and made face at work, and in turn, took on the glares and disapproval of my co-workers, even though I've made every attempt to keep them as healthy as possible. Luckily, I haven't received too many comments and I actually gave Jon more grief on Friday while he was in the comfort of his own home.

I'm hoping that, after tonight's dose of Claritin, this cold will be a distant memory by tomorrow morning; that I can stop acting like the world is ending, like I will never be a healthy, vibrant 24-year-old again. And then I'm going to scheme and make ready for the next horrendous thing that I can pass onto Jon, seeing as we are one and we should share everything and all.

An Ex-Diet Cokehead Wannabe

I recently discovered the convenience mart down the road from my office building bought a new fountain drink machine. They now have caffeine-free Diet Coke on tap, and I keep catching myself heading in that direction, and I ask myself the same question each time: What is it about Diet Coke that I cannot give up? It's obviously not the sugar, because, well, it's diet. And apparently it isn't the jolt of caffeine, because I no longer need the caffeine to stay awake or keep my body functioning. I am past the point of shaky hands and migraine headaches from caffeine withdraw. That leaves me to ask: Is carbonation addictive? Or maybe I am subconsciously defying the numerous changes I have put upon my body in the past three months.

Perhaps part of me is rebelling against my new smoke-free, caffeine-free, water guzzling, 3-miles-a-day, fruit-eating self. And if that is the case, I say to her: Tough luck! I love the new me. I haven't felt this good in a long time, and I only intend to improve upon myself for the next three months.

My defense against Diet Coke has been to not keep it in the house. And I'm fine with that. I drink only water or juice while at home, but mostly water. I made it a point after I quit smoking to begin drinking the recommended 64 oz. of water daily. Something about it made me feel like I was flushing all of the ugly, blackness from my body, and giving myself a new start.

Now if I could only come up with something like that for while I'm at work...

As It Should Be

Jon did eventually make it home on Monday night/Tuesday morning, after his direct flight to Cleveland was canceled. He was put on a flight to Miami, where he had a three hour layover, and then a flight home that was frustratingly delayed, but touched down at Cleveland Hopkins Airport around midnight. And probably not so surprising was that his luggage was nowhere to be found, even though he was told it would be waiting for him. He spent an additional hour arguing with the airline only to find that even they were unable to locate his baggage. It was 1:00am before I watched him cross the bridge from the terminal to the parking deck, where I had been waiting for an hour in the 30 Minute Only parking slot, to finally take him home with me. After the long and hectic day of wondering if he would make it home or not, and the baggage gone MIA, our first encounter in nearly a week was far from ideal. It was a quick "Hi. Hello. I'm driving," and we were off on the 40 minute drive home. I could only imagine the stress he had gone through during the day so I didn't press it, but I gladly accepted an apology and kiss when we finally made it back to Akron.

I called work the next morning and informed them that I would be taking a vacation day. I was exhausted after our airport rendezvous, and it just felt too good to be lying in bed, next to his warm body, our arms wrapped around each other, and the dog at our feet. Everything was as it should be again and I wanted an entire day to live in the perfection of it all.

Around 3:30pm the doorbell rang and it was American Airlines with his suitcases. His luggage smelled like Texas. I was glad that he didn't.

Delayed

Ugh! Jon's flight to Cleveland was cancelled and instead of getting home at 4:20PM as anticipated, we will be lucky if he is here by 11:00PM! He is now coming home by way of Miami.

Oh, and his luggage is somewhere in Chicago on stand-by for a flight back to Cleveland. That makes no sense to me.