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.
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