2016.04.29

Three days ago, MW went for a walk. Her knee buckled and she twisted her ankle. She calls me while I'm at work, desperate panic in her voice: "Is it HT? Is it HT?"

Three days now I've been hemming, equivocating, obfuscating - well, hell- just flat out lying. 

"No, of course not. Not HT. No way."

(recall HT is what she calls HD)

And I'm back in the box, being sweated by Pembleton and Bayliss. The questions come fast, they are demanding, they circle back on themselves:

"Is it HT?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It's just not."

"What is?"

"Well. You can't self diagnose it. The only real diagnosis would be to get tested."

"So there is no way to tell if you have HT?"

"Right. Without testing."

"My mother couldn't walk a straight line. That's how they tested her. If I can't walk a straight line, does that mean I have HT?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because there are many other reasons you might not walk a straight line. Not paying attention, you know. Whatever. Lots of people don't walk straight all the time. I don't walk straight all the time."

"But you don't fall either. Your knees don't buckle."

"My knees buckle all the time. I'm old. It happens."

"It never happened to me."

"Well, you're older too."

"So having your knee buckle isn't a sign of HT?"

"Of course not."

"You're saying there are no signs of HT?"

"Right. Not without, you know, testing. Everybody stumbles some times. Not everybody has HT."

"So what would be a sign of HT?"

"I.... nothing. There are no signs of HT. It can't be self-diagnosed."

On and on and on. Three days straight. And while I'm being grilled like a murderer, I have a flash of sickening insight: I could stop this. I could end all of this confusion and chaos. Just a few words from me and it would all be over.

And MW would be absolutely destroyed. Irredeemably, irreparably destroyed. 

One person should not have that power over another. Certainly not I.

***

Here's one for the drunks - a little slapstick the alcys will appreciated.

Set up: I drink a lot, but on the sly. Also, because of MW's - call them peculiarities - about cleanliness, I'm only allowed to drink out of one cup - a tall, grey plastic tumbler. At night it is usually full with some gutter booze concoction of my own creation, but during the day it will be water (the only thing MW allows in the house to drink). What happens is, when I come home from work, I guzzle whatever water is left in the cup to make room for the booze that I'm going to sneak from the upstairs closet. 

Yesterday I came home, found my cup nearly full of water, gulped it down with two, maybe three breathless swallows and run upstairs for the good stuff. 

Then MW hollered for me to come down. A bunch of chores to do before I can even change: wash dishes, put dog out, get food ready, talk some more about why a knee would just buckle like that.... By the time I make it back to the closet, I notice my cup is near full of (I think) water. Two fast gulps and - 

Ho Shit! I'd actually already poured vodka in there before getting called away. 

Damn near blew the top of my head off.

It was a fun night.

2016.04.03

I made it! I lasted the full 40 without drink. My "spite lent" a success!

Of course that was a couple weeks ago and I've been, yeah, fairly drunk ever since.

Remember when I said I was putting off dealing with buying a new house (this one is dirty) because I thought, assumed, hoped I would be dead before my credit came through? Well, fuck it all, that didn't happen. MW applied for credit last week and, hey hey, I was approved! $350,000 to buy a new home! Hell, yeah, let's go! Let's mess up some place fresh - this dump has too much peanut butter smeared on the walls, too many sections of paint ripped away from so many "reminder" notes taped just everywhere. Too many vitamin pills, popcorn, and clumps of boric acid gathered in the corners.

Whoo Hoo! A shit load of debt on my back! I'm maybe two, three,.... five? One? years away from having to place my wife on disability and finding out some way of managing full time care. But, sure.... The counter tops really are dirty. We should move.

Oh God. What the hell am I doing?

Another drink. That's what.

Do I still need to explain? After all this? Okay, the peanut butter is from MW sloppily smearing it on her toast every morning then setting the plates wherever her erratic hands find to land. Kind of like people who keep chickens wondering how chicken shit gets everywhere - I find a big blob of peanut butter stuck to the wall and foolishly ask "how...?" MW laughs it off. She doesn't know, but hey, shit happens. When I ask if I can clean it - no, of course not. She'll take care of it. I can't clean anything because I'm incompetent. That was weeks ago. The peanut butter is still there.

The bathroom wall looks like modern art. MW writes copious "reminder" notes and sticks them there - where she's sure to see them - on a daily basis. Some of the notes: "Don't turn on the car until the garage door is open." "Park safe". "Renew PO Box" (okay, that one gets a pass). Anyway, these notes are taped/tacked up by whatever is available. I made a few rolls of masking tape available so it isn't as bad as it could be, but still... There's a lot of wear on the paint. Finally, MW has a real tough time navigating the "from hand to mouth" journey. Daily vitamins and her recent addiction to popcorn have caused the floors around here to look like we're living in one of those "pop-stick" toys.

Oh, and the boric acid is an ever-present condition of living in the dirty, cockroach south.

And, again... I'm not allowed to clean anything. I'm not even allowed to pick up the errant vitamin pills because they've touched the floor. If I touch them after they've touched the floor, well, the transitive properties of dirt means I've just as well touched the floor with my bare hand. That would be cause for amputation.

You can see why the easiest solution is a new house. Of course you can.

So every free moment is spent driving around, taking down phone numbers, talking to real estate agents. My only drunken hope is, given MW's inability to make decisions, we'll just keep spinning our wheels like this until.... Until.....

The drinker's hour. Four in the morning. I see it every day now. I push myself off the mattress, mentally tell myself - "steady on, Norway. Steady...." and sit on the toilette until the world stops spinning enough for me to navigate back to the pillow. On those rare nights I'm not sweating the sheets waiting for the alarm clock's warning, I hit a wall of nausea and palpation at around six or seven. Heart attack? Stroke? Worse? So far, no. So far, it passes.

So far.