Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Wouldn't it be nice to be single?

Well, maybe it would, but I wasn't thinking about that sort of thing this week. This week I was just thinking it would be nice to have the house to myself. This week I was just thinking how it would be nice to not have this other person here so I could do things without having to think about how what I would want to do would inconvenience the other person who lives here. So it would be nice to have the place to myself and not have to consider the other person and the other person's schedule before I did anything.

Yesterday, I was a bit sick. Not really bad sick, but enough to be really annoying while it was still dark outside. One of those things where you get up and go to the bathroom and put water on your face and hope that taking a few pills or drinking a club soda will make you feel better. And then you go back to bed and hope that you don't get sick and try to go back to sleep. But you never quite get back to sleep. You get up again and think that you would probably feel better if you just took a few pills, but once you're in the bathroom you look at the pills and see that some are missing and remember that you already took the pills and it didn't help yet. Maybe a few crackers will help? What did I eat last night?

And you get out a heating pad for your stomach or your back, or you get out something cold to put on your face. And you try to do this without waking up the other person in the house, maybe the person who is even trying to sleep in the same bed with you. And you think that now that you've taken pills, drank club soda, eaten a few crackers, gotten a heating pad, and found something cold to put on your face, now you can go back to bed and hopefully go back to sleep.

You never quite get back to sleep. You just sort of lie there and hope that you don't get sick and wait for it to be morning. You try to be quiet about it.

Since I am not getting back to sleep, there's so much else that I could be doing instead of lying there hoping that I don't get really sick. I could turn on the television and watch some stuff that I recorded the night before, or I could pop in a DVD, or I could turn on a light and read a book. I suppose that I could find somewhere else in the house to turn on a light and read a book, but the idea was to do that in bed and hope that after a chapter or so I would feel like sleeping again, so reading elsewhere wouldn't help that and wouldn't be as comfortable anyway.

In fact the only thing that I feel I can do in this house without disturbing the other person who lives here is to come in this other room and use the computer. And that is probably why I've kept up the blogging this long. I almost always wake up before the other person. I should stop blogging so much and switch to writing fiction, but I never seem to get around to doing that.

So it would have been nice to have the place to myself yesterday. It used to be a relief that someone else was here, that if I really did get sick that there would be someone else here to take me to the hospital. But that never happens. No matter how sick I get, I always wait til morning to see if I feel better and go see a doctor then. And of course, if I really thought something was seriously wrong, that's what 911 is for, and before it got to that there are people nearby I could call.

There's just something really unpleasant about having to sit in the dark and be quiet. If I could just turn on a few lights and have some background noise of the television or radio. Then things would seem more normal, and then maybe I could fall asleep. But if I couldn't fall asleep I could at least have the distraction of the television and not have the only thing I'm thinking about being my sick stomach or headache or whatever.

I did not get really sick yesterday. I did not feel much better until nearly noon, and I took a lot of naps, but didn't feel really bad and I didn't go to the doctor or anything like that. I just felt useless and tired all day. I had stuff to do, but very little of it got done.

6 comments:

Diva's Thoughts said...

I know what you mean. When The Analyst is sleeping and I am restless I can't just lay there in bed, in the dark so I get up and go downstairs to watch a little TV.

That does help me alot. I tend to fall asleep on the couch which is fine with me.

bulletholes said...

When I first got married, it was hard to get used to the fact that someone would be there when I got home, and if they weren't they would eventually be arriving.
After many years alone, I can tell you there is not much comfort in laying there sick, without anyone to complain to, or to fetch you sdome medicine ar to just say
"You look like shit".
There can be times that just to have someone say "You look like shit" can be a comfort.

laughing said...

Diva--going downstairs to watch TV and sleep on the couch would be great, except that we don't have a downstairs, right now we do not have another TV that works, and we have never in almost two decades had a couch.

Having a couch is not something that is in the wedding vows, but one just assumes. Some of that time we didn't have any room, but I thought for sure when we moved here in the summer of 2004, but still no couch. I had a twin bed put in this room in case there was a serious need because of a long illness or one of us having a strange schedule, but right now it has so much junk on it that there is no danger of it actually getting used as a bed.

laughing said...

Steve--he isn't that much fun in that area anymore.

Have you seen the Simpson's episode where it is Thanksgiving or Christmas or something, and Bart wants to help with dinner, so his mom tells him to open the cranberry sauce and put it on a plate. First, he can't find the sauce, and then he can't find a plate, and then he can't find the can opener, and then the can opener doesn't work, etc...and at each step his ends up doing it and then handing the project back to Bart, who can't do that part either and comes back to mom, etc....

So that is what it is often like when I am sick. I once sent him to the store for alka-seltzer, and I told him that I would prefer the lemon-lime flavor. So he came back with a lemon-lime fizzie cold medicine instead of what I asked for. If I send him after something in the kitchen he can't find it and I end up going after it myself.

I used to at least think that he was trying. After all this stuff happened once I had to go to the minor emergency room and he was there with me and I was really sick and really glad to have him with me. Of course, if not for all that happened I probably wouldn't have been sick in the first place. But that day I thought that he was really making an effort and that things would be alright.

Now he doesn't seem to be trying at all. When I am really sick and don't want to get out of bed, he is in here on the computer and doesn't want to be bothered. He's decided that I would be sick no matter what and it wouldn't help anything for him to come and check up on me, so maybe if he ignores the problem I will stop yelling for whatever it is that I need from the kitchen.

dmarks said...

There is something unseemly about not having a couch. I can say that from experience. We got rid of ours 9 or 10 years ago: no room, and it just did not work out. I miss having one, though.

laughing said...

When we moved into the first house, it was really small, except for this backroom that had been added to the house which we later learned wasn't put together very well and had a leaking roof and some problems with the floor. So that backroom just sort of became the junk room.

And then we got the bed from my parents house and a TV from his house and some kitchen stuff from my grandmother that she wasn't using anymore, and we got his old desk and put it in the living room. And it's a big desk and a small living room, so there didn't seem to be room for a couch and the desk, and we didn't have a couch anyway. And then later if we had gotten rid of the desk to add a couch, where would we have put the computer?

We moved to the apartment, and after nine years without a couch, we didn't go out an buy a couch right away. Later I thought that I would buy a twin bed and make it look like a couch, and that would be more comfortable than one of those fold out beds if ever someone had to sleep on it. So we still didn't have a couch. Then we came here, and this room is crowded with both the twin bed and the desk, so for a while the twin bed was in the living room, until we had the money for a couch and regular living room stuff. And there was school to finish, and junk just sort of found it's way into the living room. Now I'm in the serious cleaning and getting rid of junk mood, but after I make room for a couch this time I probably won't have the money for a while.

I don't see getting a couch anytime soon, but I at least want to get back to where it is at least an option if later I have the money to get one.

My brother is doing much better with the keeping the junk under control, and he currently has a couch and loveseat in one room and a loveseat and recliner in the other room.