saturday entry, I present to you:
10 Things I Learned Last Week
1. Tape never stays where you stick it – in fact, it moves from where you originally put it to the place from which it will be most painful to remove.
2. A lot of gross boogery-looking stuff can fit through the tiny tubes leading from an incision to a drain.
3. Fred doesn’t like to be babied unless he’s in pain, and prefers to do most things himself (see: washing nether regions the day after surgery).
4. When you’re feeling grumpy, a stir-crazy person laughing his ass off for no apparent reason will cause you to laugh as well, whether you feel like doing so or not.
5. The answering machine can effectively record 45,000 messages from a worried mother-in-law (see: "Hi Robyn… I’m just calling to see if Fred’s out of surgery…", with a time stamp of ten minutes BEFORE Fred went into surgery).
6. I’m more bothered by the idea of accidentally hurting Fred than by the looks of his healing incisions (see: practically crying and running around in circles when realizing that the tape attached itself across an incision and needed to be pulled off).
7. Just because someone is recovering from surgery and isn’t moving around much does NOT mean he doesn’t need to use deodorant and lots of it.
8. A stir-crazy man is an annoying man.
9. I’d be a good nurse because I’m good at identifying needs and meeting them.
10. I’d be a bad nurse, because I’m a hover-er (see: "Want something to drink? Are you hungry? Want me to change the channel? Are you hurting? Want a pill?") and never want to let the patient do anything for himself.
And in response to his Sunday entry about fallling down the stairs (calm down, he’s fine), I have to defend myself, ’cause doesn’t he make me sound like a TWIT.
I was standing in front of the closet, AFTER OFFERING TO GO DOWN AND GET COFFEE FOR HIM, WHICH HE REFUSED TO LET ME DO, and you can’t see down the stairs from the closet, so all I heard was a loud, scary THUMP. I gasped loudly, WHICH IS SOMETHING I DO WHEN I’M STARTLED OR SCARED. It’s a reaction I cannot contain, no matter HOW MANY TIMES A HEARTLESS RAT BASTARD GIVES ME A HARD TIME ABOUT IT. With a bottle of cleaning spray in my hand (NOT bleach, as was erroneously reported), I turned and started toward the stairs, which is when a LOUD series of THUMPTHUMPTHUMPs began, and I screamed and ran to the top of the stairs. Again, SCREAMING WAS A REACTION I COULD NOT HELP. The thought of his stupid ass Fred falling down the stairs scared the shit out of me, causing me to scream. AN INVOLUNTARY REACTION.
When I reached the top of the stairs, there he sat about halfway down, laughing. In fact, he laughed so hard for so long that I was afraid he was going to pop open a few staples, and his guts would spill all over the stairs.
Miz Poo, having heard me scream – she always comes running when I scream or speak loudly; more on that in a moment – headed up the stairs to comfort me, NOT to try to save Fred from his own slipping and sliding journey down the stairs.
Now you know the whole truth.
As for Miz Poo coming when I scream or speak loudly, it’s something I recently realized. If Fred and I are laying in bed talking and he gets me excited (uh, not in a sexual way, you pervs), and I raise my voice, she comes running to rub up against me and purr wildly. She’ll even do it if I’m fake-yelling. I sat on the bed this weekend, Miz Poo asleep on the floor, and said at the top of my lungs, "God! I HATE THAT FANCYPANTS!" just to see what she’d do, and in a flash she was up and on the bed, rubbing and purring.
What can I say? She loves me.
If someone opens the door between the garage and the house while I’m in the garage lifting weights, she’ll do the same thing, rub against me and purr wildly. Fred has suggested that she can sense I’m worked up, since lifting weights really gets my heart pumping, which sends her running to soothe me.
Oh, and one last story before I end this entry. If you don’t read Fred’s journal regularly, you don’t know that Tubby has an infected anal gland (gah) and was prescribed antibiotics to cure it. The first day, Fred gave Tubby both his pills. The second day was Wednesday, which is the day Fred had his surgery. He gave Tubby his pill in the morning before we left the house, but as you can imagine, he was in no shape to do that in the evening. It took me THREE tries to get that damn pill in Tubby’s mouth and get him to swallow it. I had him wrapped in a towel, with the spud helping to hold him, with a large amount of my considerable weight helping me hold him down, and it still took three tries to get it down his throat. The next morning, Thursday, although I had Tubby cornered and could get the fucking pill in his mouth, and covered his mouth and stroked his throat, he managed to spit it out four different times.
FOUR TIMES.
Eventually I gave up, muttering something like "Spit out that fucking pill, you little bastard, that’s JUST FINE. HAVE an infected anal gland, see if I care!" Ten minutes later, Fred took the pill off the dresser where I’d left it before I stalked off in a huff, walked over to Tubby, patted him on the head, and two seconds later the little bastard (Tubby, not Fred) was swallowing the damn pill.
Damn him.
And every day since then, Fred has given Tubby his pill without incident.
That’s right – the man is recovering from major surgery, and I have him chasing Tubby down and shoving a pill down his throat.
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04/15/2002