wheezy day 17

I counted because it seems like this backwards quarantine has lasted more than a month but it’s only day 17. It’s backwards because we are quarantined to protect ourselves and not because we have the contagion.

17 itty bitty tiny days.

The last time time seemed to move this slow I was pregnant with Matt. I remember figuring out how long I had left of being pregnant, and I was exactly 6 weeks, or 42 days from my due date, which seemed like beyond an eternity at that point. I can recall with complete accuracy, standing in the little kitchen area of our tiny little apartment and looking towards the dutch door (I loved that door and want one in my future house) into our little dog poop covered back yard and wondering how I was going to live through the eternity of 6 weeks or 42 days. I would still have 3 1/2 weeks to go if I was at that point right now with our quarantine.

I feel like sunny days move faster. Staring at my phone all day makes the time drag. Today I binge watched a vacuous reality show all day. It wasn’t worth it. My IQ might have actually dipped a couple of points. Now I should probably read the new york times to recoup them. I’m not sure that I can come up with a ton of things that are both inside the house and "worth it", but I am going to make more of an effort. I’d really like to get some fresh fruit and vegetables but am absolutely terrified of leaving the house. I can imagine a situation where this becomes a problem for me. I will probably figure out how to get groceries delivered or in the least get them placed inside of my empty trunk. People. This has really rocked me to my core.

I’m checking in on dear friends more often than ever. I’m worried about my kids night and day. Even though Matt has done the worst possible thing my own flesh and blood could have done to me I am still including him in that worrying. I’m trying so hard not to let the anger, hurt and betrayal of Matt’s distancing overwhelm me, but I am losing this battle. I want someone (obviously not me, because apparently I am so rage filled it could swallow a kid whole) to slap some sense into Matt. Just a big whack across the head, a whack that says HEY ASSHOLE, YOU ARE DOING IRREPARABLE DAMAGE TO WHAT USED TO BE THE MOST SUPPORTIVE AND LOVING RELATIONSHIP OF YOUR LIFE so loud and so clear that Matt’s mouth hangs open and his eyes pop out of his head and he immediately starts to figure out how he’s ever going to apologize to me and make this right again. Can it get right again? Some days the grief is so suffocating I don’t honestly think this could be undone. Especially since I don’t think Matt will ever be in a place where he realizes his own responsibility in this. I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to see that he has been gradually distancing himself for years ( I partly blame his fucking awful damned college, where I sent a hard working kid with whom I had a fantastic relationship and they spit out a kid who thinks I can destroy him with my anger for the world) And here is my secret fear. My biological father was mentally ill. Like, very seriously mentally ill and I’m afraid I’m seeing some of that passed down to Matt. And for that, I feel guilty because it passed through me, and guilty because I can’t do anything to stop it. I feel like I’ve been down this road before here, but This is the thing that’s been going on in a loop in my head. I’m really broken over it.

And I really don’t to die with this hanging over me, so thats part of why I desperately need to stay inside until this virus is under control. I have no doubt that I’ll get it eventually but I am hoping for some medicinal breakthrough before I am exposed.

I heard some talk on the news about talking to your family members about if you are willing to accept being intubated or not. In a total surprise declaration the husband told me that he would like to be intubated need be. I know he doesn’t understand that being intubated also means being sedated into a medically induced coma with tons of risks involved. I don’t think he would get the chance to choose to be intubated or not. Especially if he gets it during a peak time. My guess is that the wouldn’t last very long once the virus spread in him. diabetics don’t do well, let alone people who have managed to live with uncontrolled diabetes for over 20 years. It’s a medical miracle that he still with us anyways. Speaking of miracles, the husband is still here. He gets incrementally weaker with each passing day. Today I caught him hanging onto the cabinet shelf searching for something sweet. He spied a box a junk cereal in the back of the cabinet and I warned him it was probably two years old, but honestly, I think it might be much older. Then he did his strange weak, can’t feel his feet is beyond dizzy but pretending to be fine old man walk back to his chair. I gave him some pretzels to snack on. I know it’s bad for him but eating too much unhealthy food is actually the only thing that makes him happy these days.

Oh. And speaking of the husband. Are you ready for this? Well, people with FTD often get promiscuous as their dementia advances. Guess who has a dating website profile and is looking at singles in our area? Yes, my demented husband. I do feel like dementia or not it is the thing that crosses the line of how much I am willing to put up with and I will be finding out after this pandemic dies down what the deal is with full time nursing home care and his insurance. I do fantasize about everything I want to keep in storage and just roaming around aimlessly for a while so maybe that will be my next step plan. A friend put his mother into a nursing home in Mexico because the care was superior and the cost was a fraction and I am tempted. The only bad part of dumping him in a foreign country would be for the kids who aren’t going to go to Mexico to see him and also I have donated his post mortem brain to a study in order to understand this disease- or even what disease he has, because they never can really tell outside of an autopsy. I don’t think we can do that if he passes away in Mexico. He definitely needs to be local to participate in the study.

So, back to the dating website. The husband doesn’t think he is cheating if he hasn’t made his profile (which I found on his tablet and he bizarrely lied about his height by 9 inches. What?!?! ) Also, I didn’t notice we were currently separated and that one of us was living away from home. (soon to be him) I made a fake profile for the husband since his was lacking in details.

MY DEMENTED HUSBAND’S DATING PROFILE. (IF HE WAS HONEST)

Are you into long romantic emergency room visits? Wanna cook for me and watch me try to sneak the vegetables in the trash like a toddler? How do you like the sound of burps? I manage to burp after every sip. Oh yeah, hope you like the thrill of watching someone choke, because choking is one of my specialties.

Jewish, 58 (going on 98)married (to the kitchen slave), male. I’m super tall (but claim to be 5”10”) when I’m not lying prone on the ground denying that I passed out and fell again. Don’t look at my bruises!

If your idea of a good time is reading the closed captioning out loud and explaining plot twists then I’m your guy! I still bathe most weeks, I’m about 95% on time with the bathrooming and sleep 12-16 hours a day, just like a dog! I have the back hair of a dog too. You can pet me.

And I know how to keep myself busy, so if you like staring at the back of a tablet we are a match made in heaven! I pretend to play sudoku, which I can’t solve anymore, because dementia, and I can’t read a newspaper or a legal brief but I do love me some incest porn. Maybe you’re a frustrated writer? Run that step daughter disaster by me!

Good qualities:
I won’t touch you, so I’m a great deal for people who are on the fence about becoming nuns, or asexual or just straight up frigid. I get all the physical contact I need from the World Wide Web and my right arm, which hurts BTW. I tore something falling, which I completely deny happened, but if you’ve got the free time, Can you give me a lift to PT?

I won’t ever toss a compliment your way. So no need to worry about me being insincere that way. But I’m quick with the insults. Everyone will think I’m a funny guy, because what’s funnier than undermining someone’s self esteem? Nothing, right? Dark humor! Woot woot. Hahahaha. I’m hilarious.

I’m sexist AF. I don’t think women in the workplace should be promoted because they might put their children over their jobs, I don’t respect a single human being (including myself, my wife or my own kids) and basically the rules don’t apply to me, unless I want them to because they’re working in my favor.

Denial. I’m the king in this department. Heart disease, kidney disease, every diabetic complication in the book, including but not limited to wide spread neuropathy, orthostatic hypotension, and either a rare form of dementia or the deepening of a life long battle with mental illness. I’m healthy as a horse (wink wink) and will tell you every day who on television I could probably “take” in a fight or competition. Because I’m fine thanks. Doing great.

Odds and ends: I suck with money, it runs through my fingers like a sieve, The smell of death lingers in the air around me as I stumble from room to room, but only on one floor because the chance of me falling down stairs is so great I don’t do stairs, I won’t run away because I can’t even walk around the block, I have a large frame so it’s not blatantly obvious that I have lost all of my muscle tone, and when I burp it smells like sewage but I’ve finally got the hang of not blowing that out into someone’s face.

Soooooo………. What do you think? Too long?