Monday, January 10, 2005
Sickness, dog-related destruction, and general stupidity
I think Rob’s subconscious might hate me.
I have been noticing a few little things off and on now for the past couple of months that might possibly indicate that Rob’s subconscious might hate me. Oh, just a few little things here or there that you can probably laugh off and say “ha ha, that’s funny, in hindsight…”, but that, at the time, really bug you and make you wonder why someone you care about, who claims to care so much about you, too, would want to torture you so. There are no overt actions against me, no. Nothing obvious. But little sneaking things that suggest that either he has no idea that what he’s doing would bother you, or that it’s a carefully planned strategy to drive you insane and take all your stuff and your pets once you are committed.
For instance, last week, Rob’s subconscious gave me the ‘flu. Oh sure, you say, it might just have been coincidence, and you contracted the ‘flu at around the same time from the same source as Rob, or just accidentally from Rob himself with no malice aforethought. But no, I discount that, and say it was his subconscious that did it, and did it knowingly. I might even think, if I were paranoid (and I am, but only a little), that he contracted the ‘flu on purpose just so he could give it to me.
So last weekend, he was ill and didn’t have to miss much in the way of work. We had already come back from camping, so he wasn’t missing that, either. He recuperated on Monday (which was a holiday here) and Tuesday (which wasn’t), and by Tuesday noon, I was starting to feel unwell and had to leave work. I made it back to my parents’ place just in time to hit the bathroom there, and then collected the NoodleDog and made my way home, chanting to myself “I can make it, I can make it…” After that, it all gets a little hazy, and I vaguely remember lying at various points on my bed, in my bed, on the floor in the bathroom, and on the sofa for a couple of days. I drank some ginger ale, some water, and some soup broth (after I was feeling a bit better). Tuesday afternoon and most of Wednesday were complete write-offs, but by Thursday, I finally felt well enough to lie around listening to the radio.
There was a small blizzard on Thursday, enough to cause snow to accumulate and temperatures to plummet, and to cause the Powers That Be to decide to close the highway after a 60-car pileup occurred a short distance North of where I lived. I say “lived”, because as soon as I heard on the radio that the highway was going to be closed, I decided there was no way in hell I was going to be trapped in Airdrie, and immediately jumped out of bed and into the shower, and then packed up the cats and the dogs and some essential belongings, and headed South into the city. I dropped the cats off at my parents’ place (so they can enjoy their grandcats for a while until Rob’s roommate moves out, which is supposed to be February 1, now) and then headed down to Rob’s place, which will now be referred to as “the house” or “home”.
The weekend then began inauspiciously, when I arrived home on Friday and found complete and utter destruction. We had, again, left the NoodleDog and Cooter in the kitchen, although we penned ‘em in pretty good. We mistakenly thought that we had removed the destructible items from the room. We were very wrong.
When I got into the house, the dogs greeted me cheerfully. They were so happy someone had come to let them out of their prison! After I had petted them and told them how nice it was to have someone greet me with love and furry attention, I looked up into the kitchen. I had to look twice, because I wasn’t sure it was the same kitchen I had left them in earlier that day. It was really covered in a sea of green fluff, which Cooter had expertly extracted from his dog bed, which we had left him for his COMFORT but he had unzippered and then chewed the zipper off, the better to get at the yummy contents inside! The green fluff was everywhere.
In and around and underneath the green fluff were little pieces of paper, and bits of tin can, and other debris. We had (again, mistakenly) left a small case of cat food (12 cans of ocean flavour delights!) on the kitchen floor. It met its demise and the cardboard outside had been shredded and chewed, and the cans had also met a similar fate. The only theory at this point is that Cooter, in a fit of complete and utter boredom, had chewed up the cardboard and had accidentally punctured one of the cans, whereupon the NoodleDog recognized the contents as food and set about destroying all of the other cans (with Cooter’s help). These are the little tins with the pull-top lids, and they were completed decimated. The only survivors were the salmon-flavoured ones, which for some reason, the dogs only chewed up enough so retained their rough shape, but had to be thrown-out due to the numerous punctures.
I sent the dogs outside immediately, in spite of the absolute frickin’ cold, and started to clean the kitchen in a hurry, lest Rob come home and see the destruction. I went to the corner of the kitchen to get a better look at the disaster area so I could try to figure out where to begin, and then noticed the 10kg bag of sugar that had once been on the kitchen table, and was now on the floor, with a large hole chewed right out of the middle of it, and started to laugh. I laughed and laughed at the absurdity. I called Rob and advised him of the situation, since now there was no way he couldn’t find out. I called my mother to detail the hilarity, so that at least SOMEone would appreciate the funniness of the scene. I also took digital pictures, so I could show Rob after I cleaned it up and it wasn’t quite so overwhelming, but funny in hindsight. And then I cleaned it all up.
However, the kitchen smelled strongly of cat food. Cat food isn’t a smell you want lingering around, and if you have a cat, you know what I’m talking about. Especially when the cat food is the Ocean Flavours Delights! variety pack. Presumably, during the Hurricane Cooter, the cat food cans, being pierced by sharp little doggie teeth, spilled their yummy juices all over the floor (and, by the by, the dogs, getting stuck in all their fur), which is where they dried and became intractable. The kitchen had to be washed that evening, which was the highlight of Friday.
Saturday was a brighter day. A colder day, mind you, but a brighter one. We got up, ate breakfast and lounged around a bit. We mapped out our weekend, making lists of things to do and accomplish. It looked fairly favourable. We set out to my old place to pack stuff up in the truck and haul it down to the house. And the roads completely sucked and were icy, and Rob had to drive slowly in the truck so it wouldn’t go off the road. I did see a poor lone bald eagle near the river, and wished him well, and wondered what the hell he was still doing up here since it was obviously so fricking cold out that nothing he could want to eat would be out roaming around ready to get picked-off.
And when we got to my old place, we packed and carried (well, mostly Rob carried, but I helped occasionally), and we accomplished a lot more than I thought we would that day. We hauled all the stuff down to Rob’s place and got it into his house. It was good. I was pleased with the amount of stuff that had been done. Sure, it’s not exactly where I had planned to be by now (I thought I would have had more time over Christmas to get this stuff done so I could be cleaning the place by now and listing it this week, which is definitely not the case at all), but taking the day into consideration, and the weather, and the sicknesses we had endured, we’re not too far behind schedule.
Saturday late afternoon/early evening, we ran errands. We visited the cats and left my parents with the NoodleDog and Cooter for their entertainment, a purely selfless gesture on our part. We ran our errands in the area and picked up our dogs, wished the cats and my parents a good evening, and went out for dinner. We ate a fantastic dinner! It was great. I was pleased with the day. But the day was not at all pleased with me, and my dinner did not agree with me, and by the time we had returned home, my stomach was starting to rumble with discontent, and I spent another evening hanging around the bathroom, making sure it was accessible when I needed it. I have to say, with the Crohn’s thing I have going on, I should probably be used to this sort of thing, but after being sick last week and this recent dinner-related activity, that is just about enough of that for the rest of the year. I do not want to be sick at all any more. Ever.
By Sunday, though, both Rob and I were a little tired-out. All that activity the day before had taken its toll. Weekends are supposed to be for frivolity and fun, people, not moving stuff around endlessly. But, there we were, faced with a whole house’s worth of stuff to get moved, and no movers hired for the job. So we drove BACK up to Airdrie, and packed MORE stuff into the truck, and lifted MORE heavy things, and it was even COLDER than the day before. I mean, it was stupidly cold. It was so cold that your lungs started to freeze because the air failed to warm up in your nose on the way down. There are these little bones in your nose, over which blood-enriched skin is stretched, the aim of which is to warm air coming into your body. It was too cold for that system to function adequately, and the air that was being sucked into my lungs was so cold that my lungs rejected it in favour of suffocation.
And I started to get frustrated because I was still not feeling good, and my stomach was again making rumbly noises and I was sad that I hadn’t just hired another set of movers and packed up all my stuff in December like I had originally planned. So I started to get a little snappy, and as soon as I said anything snappy, I felt terrible, because Rob is so patient and good and he never gets snappy with me. Why is that? Because his subconscious hates me and wants to make me feel guilty, that’s why.
We did not get as much accomplished on Sunday. We got some things accomplished, which is good, but not as much as Saturday, so the glaring difference between the two days glared at me and made me feel even worse, and by the time we got home on Sunday, I was in quite a state. I felt sick all the time, I was tired, and fed up with the idea of moving, since it’s been over a month now that we’ve been contemplating it and the idea is pretty oppressive, really, when you think about it for that long. Sunday evening, we just organized stuff. We set up television to watch (presumably, Rob now understands that when the TV is on, my brain shuts mostly off, which is probably a good thing sometimes) and moved stuff around during the commercials. It was much better that way. By the time we actually went to bed (we stayed up to watch “Changing Lanes”, which has a totally stupid ending, by the way, if, like me, you haven’t seen it yet because it looked alright, but not good enough to run out and rent), I was pretty tired.
This week, the goal is to get as much finished with the moving as possible. Sure, there will have to be at least one more big load with the truck, but I think that, for the most part, I can move stuff around with the use of my parents’ minivan, in spite of this damn cold snap. And I heard someone say last week that “January is supposed to be unseasonably cold”. What season, exactly, is colder than January? How is cold, in January, “unseasonable”? When it is even colder than you realized it could get. So let this be a lesson to you all: NEVER, EVER PLAN TO MOVE IN THE WINTER TIME unless you are stupid. I have never claimed to be brilliant. I have never really even claimed to be all that clever, although I sometimes try to be. However, I have never pictured myself as someone truly stupid, but apparently, I am. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
And cold. Stay warm out there, everyone.
I have been noticing a few little things off and on now for the past couple of months that might possibly indicate that Rob’s subconscious might hate me. Oh, just a few little things here or there that you can probably laugh off and say “ha ha, that’s funny, in hindsight…”, but that, at the time, really bug you and make you wonder why someone you care about, who claims to care so much about you, too, would want to torture you so. There are no overt actions against me, no. Nothing obvious. But little sneaking things that suggest that either he has no idea that what he’s doing would bother you, or that it’s a carefully planned strategy to drive you insane and take all your stuff and your pets once you are committed.
For instance, last week, Rob’s subconscious gave me the ‘flu. Oh sure, you say, it might just have been coincidence, and you contracted the ‘flu at around the same time from the same source as Rob, or just accidentally from Rob himself with no malice aforethought. But no, I discount that, and say it was his subconscious that did it, and did it knowingly. I might even think, if I were paranoid (and I am, but only a little), that he contracted the ‘flu on purpose just so he could give it to me.
So last weekend, he was ill and didn’t have to miss much in the way of work. We had already come back from camping, so he wasn’t missing that, either. He recuperated on Monday (which was a holiday here) and Tuesday (which wasn’t), and by Tuesday noon, I was starting to feel unwell and had to leave work. I made it back to my parents’ place just in time to hit the bathroom there, and then collected the NoodleDog and made my way home, chanting to myself “I can make it, I can make it…” After that, it all gets a little hazy, and I vaguely remember lying at various points on my bed, in my bed, on the floor in the bathroom, and on the sofa for a couple of days. I drank some ginger ale, some water, and some soup broth (after I was feeling a bit better). Tuesday afternoon and most of Wednesday were complete write-offs, but by Thursday, I finally felt well enough to lie around listening to the radio.
There was a small blizzard on Thursday, enough to cause snow to accumulate and temperatures to plummet, and to cause the Powers That Be to decide to close the highway after a 60-car pileup occurred a short distance North of where I lived. I say “lived”, because as soon as I heard on the radio that the highway was going to be closed, I decided there was no way in hell I was going to be trapped in Airdrie, and immediately jumped out of bed and into the shower, and then packed up the cats and the dogs and some essential belongings, and headed South into the city. I dropped the cats off at my parents’ place (so they can enjoy their grandcats for a while until Rob’s roommate moves out, which is supposed to be February 1, now) and then headed down to Rob’s place, which will now be referred to as “the house” or “home”.
The weekend then began inauspiciously, when I arrived home on Friday and found complete and utter destruction. We had, again, left the NoodleDog and Cooter in the kitchen, although we penned ‘em in pretty good. We mistakenly thought that we had removed the destructible items from the room. We were very wrong.
When I got into the house, the dogs greeted me cheerfully. They were so happy someone had come to let them out of their prison! After I had petted them and told them how nice it was to have someone greet me with love and furry attention, I looked up into the kitchen. I had to look twice, because I wasn’t sure it was the same kitchen I had left them in earlier that day. It was really covered in a sea of green fluff, which Cooter had expertly extracted from his dog bed, which we had left him for his COMFORT but he had unzippered and then chewed the zipper off, the better to get at the yummy contents inside! The green fluff was everywhere.
In and around and underneath the green fluff were little pieces of paper, and bits of tin can, and other debris. We had (again, mistakenly) left a small case of cat food (12 cans of ocean flavour delights!) on the kitchen floor. It met its demise and the cardboard outside had been shredded and chewed, and the cans had also met a similar fate. The only theory at this point is that Cooter, in a fit of complete and utter boredom, had chewed up the cardboard and had accidentally punctured one of the cans, whereupon the NoodleDog recognized the contents as food and set about destroying all of the other cans (with Cooter’s help). These are the little tins with the pull-top lids, and they were completed decimated. The only survivors were the salmon-flavoured ones, which for some reason, the dogs only chewed up enough so retained their rough shape, but had to be thrown-out due to the numerous punctures.
I sent the dogs outside immediately, in spite of the absolute frickin’ cold, and started to clean the kitchen in a hurry, lest Rob come home and see the destruction. I went to the corner of the kitchen to get a better look at the disaster area so I could try to figure out where to begin, and then noticed the 10kg bag of sugar that had once been on the kitchen table, and was now on the floor, with a large hole chewed right out of the middle of it, and started to laugh. I laughed and laughed at the absurdity. I called Rob and advised him of the situation, since now there was no way he couldn’t find out. I called my mother to detail the hilarity, so that at least SOMEone would appreciate the funniness of the scene. I also took digital pictures, so I could show Rob after I cleaned it up and it wasn’t quite so overwhelming, but funny in hindsight. And then I cleaned it all up.
However, the kitchen smelled strongly of cat food. Cat food isn’t a smell you want lingering around, and if you have a cat, you know what I’m talking about. Especially when the cat food is the Ocean Flavours Delights! variety pack. Presumably, during the Hurricane Cooter, the cat food cans, being pierced by sharp little doggie teeth, spilled their yummy juices all over the floor (and, by the by, the dogs, getting stuck in all their fur), which is where they dried and became intractable. The kitchen had to be washed that evening, which was the highlight of Friday.
Saturday was a brighter day. A colder day, mind you, but a brighter one. We got up, ate breakfast and lounged around a bit. We mapped out our weekend, making lists of things to do and accomplish. It looked fairly favourable. We set out to my old place to pack stuff up in the truck and haul it down to the house. And the roads completely sucked and were icy, and Rob had to drive slowly in the truck so it wouldn’t go off the road. I did see a poor lone bald eagle near the river, and wished him well, and wondered what the hell he was still doing up here since it was obviously so fricking cold out that nothing he could want to eat would be out roaming around ready to get picked-off.
And when we got to my old place, we packed and carried (well, mostly Rob carried, but I helped occasionally), and we accomplished a lot more than I thought we would that day. We hauled all the stuff down to Rob’s place and got it into his house. It was good. I was pleased with the amount of stuff that had been done. Sure, it’s not exactly where I had planned to be by now (I thought I would have had more time over Christmas to get this stuff done so I could be cleaning the place by now and listing it this week, which is definitely not the case at all), but taking the day into consideration, and the weather, and the sicknesses we had endured, we’re not too far behind schedule.
Saturday late afternoon/early evening, we ran errands. We visited the cats and left my parents with the NoodleDog and Cooter for their entertainment, a purely selfless gesture on our part. We ran our errands in the area and picked up our dogs, wished the cats and my parents a good evening, and went out for dinner. We ate a fantastic dinner! It was great. I was pleased with the day. But the day was not at all pleased with me, and my dinner did not agree with me, and by the time we had returned home, my stomach was starting to rumble with discontent, and I spent another evening hanging around the bathroom, making sure it was accessible when I needed it. I have to say, with the Crohn’s thing I have going on, I should probably be used to this sort of thing, but after being sick last week and this recent dinner-related activity, that is just about enough of that for the rest of the year. I do not want to be sick at all any more. Ever.
By Sunday, though, both Rob and I were a little tired-out. All that activity the day before had taken its toll. Weekends are supposed to be for frivolity and fun, people, not moving stuff around endlessly. But, there we were, faced with a whole house’s worth of stuff to get moved, and no movers hired for the job. So we drove BACK up to Airdrie, and packed MORE stuff into the truck, and lifted MORE heavy things, and it was even COLDER than the day before. I mean, it was stupidly cold. It was so cold that your lungs started to freeze because the air failed to warm up in your nose on the way down. There are these little bones in your nose, over which blood-enriched skin is stretched, the aim of which is to warm air coming into your body. It was too cold for that system to function adequately, and the air that was being sucked into my lungs was so cold that my lungs rejected it in favour of suffocation.
And I started to get frustrated because I was still not feeling good, and my stomach was again making rumbly noises and I was sad that I hadn’t just hired another set of movers and packed up all my stuff in December like I had originally planned. So I started to get a little snappy, and as soon as I said anything snappy, I felt terrible, because Rob is so patient and good and he never gets snappy with me. Why is that? Because his subconscious hates me and wants to make me feel guilty, that’s why.
We did not get as much accomplished on Sunday. We got some things accomplished, which is good, but not as much as Saturday, so the glaring difference between the two days glared at me and made me feel even worse, and by the time we got home on Sunday, I was in quite a state. I felt sick all the time, I was tired, and fed up with the idea of moving, since it’s been over a month now that we’ve been contemplating it and the idea is pretty oppressive, really, when you think about it for that long. Sunday evening, we just organized stuff. We set up television to watch (presumably, Rob now understands that when the TV is on, my brain shuts mostly off, which is probably a good thing sometimes) and moved stuff around during the commercials. It was much better that way. By the time we actually went to bed (we stayed up to watch “Changing Lanes”, which has a totally stupid ending, by the way, if, like me, you haven’t seen it yet because it looked alright, but not good enough to run out and rent), I was pretty tired.
This week, the goal is to get as much finished with the moving as possible. Sure, there will have to be at least one more big load with the truck, but I think that, for the most part, I can move stuff around with the use of my parents’ minivan, in spite of this damn cold snap. And I heard someone say last week that “January is supposed to be unseasonably cold”. What season, exactly, is colder than January? How is cold, in January, “unseasonable”? When it is even colder than you realized it could get. So let this be a lesson to you all: NEVER, EVER PLAN TO MOVE IN THE WINTER TIME unless you are stupid. I have never claimed to be brilliant. I have never really even claimed to be all that clever, although I sometimes try to be. However, I have never pictured myself as someone truly stupid, but apparently, I am. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
And cold. Stay warm out there, everyone.
