Sleep is Good

When I got to Brenda's last night she was upset that I was still sick. She said that it was getting old. I thought to myself that this was great. Here we were going to argue about me being sick. I really felt like shouting that if she would let me get some sleep I would get better. She thinks the reason that I am still sick is that I stopped taking the medicine. Her reasoning is that doctors prescribe medicine longer than it is needed or why else would it say take until gone on a prescription. I was shocked to learn that she was certified by the American Medical Association.

My opinion which I believe is more widely held by the medical profession is that rest and fluids will cure a cold faster than any medication. Medicine can only alleviate the symptoms and not the actual virus. Then what do I know, I'm just a dumb guy who has to be mothered by his girlfriend.

Sure when I took some more medicine last night, the symptoms were less severe, but the alcohol in the syrup makes me edgy not sleepy. Brenda fell asleep before I did last night and she didn't take any medicine.

Oh, if someone has a cold would you open a window in the bedroom when the temperature falls to forty degrees Fahrenheit at night?

All that I need is some sleep. She asked me didn't I get some sleep on the weekend. I said no more than usual because she woke me every day when she went to work. Sigh.

I also think the fact that Brenda has worked the past ten days in a row has something to do with her recent attitude. Oh, excuse me. She does not have an attitude. She is merely someone who likes to voice her opinion.

I have managed to have Brenda take it easy on cooking every other night. She makes more than we can eat and I have a hard time eating all of the leftovers by myself. She refuses to eat leftovers. Now that I have been sick for the past week, some food has been wasted due to my lack of appetite.

Rather than getting more sleep on Sunday, I fixed the telephone jack in the spare bedroom. When I move in with her, this is where my computer would go. She has a nice computer desk and I do not. At the moment, my computer resides on my kitchen table at my place. My only objection to the computer being in the spare bedroom is that the kitty litter box is in that room as well.

What is the definition of a litter box? It is a place for piss and shit from a cat. I will admit that Brenda is good about changing the litter, but smelling cat crap is not what I want to smell when I am on the computer.

After we have lived together for a time, we will move somewhere else. Her place will only be temporary, while we save some money and look for a bigger and better place. There has to be a better balance of what is her area and what is mine. Unfortunately I have the feeling that most of my stuff will have to go in storage for a time.

Now when I describe these arguments, I just want to say that neither of us is shouting. People can and do disagree at times. Most of what we do has a sitcom feel to it. Brenda even said that in a few years we would be just like Paul and Jaimie on Mad About You.

The girl that I was seeing my final year in college would pick on me all of the time and it really didn't bother me. We would bicker at a certain level most of the time. It was more of a Hollywood screwball comedy kind of thing rather than anything else. We would antagonize one another not out of malice, but just to see how far we could push one another.

We had kept in contact after school and I heard about her troubles of moving back home and then moving out again on her own. I heard about the first real job after college. I heard about the bad boyfriends and how all of her old roommates were getting married. At one time she was very important to me and I thought that I was important to her.

Years later I told the college girlfriend the reason that she can never find a man was because she kept up too many defenses. I may not have minded the barrage of comments, but it is not for everyone and it does grow old after a while. People want more than someone to spar with on a verbal level. I knew her very well and this was not what she wanted to hear from me. This was the last time that we ever spoke, but she didn't say that I was wrong.

There are times when I see that sparring between Brenda and I, but she isn't as good at reading me as the girl from my senior year. Sometimes my barbs are taken a little too close to the heart. I gave her the nickname Princess a few weeks back, because her ass is so precious. Her brother and sister nearly died, when I called her that at the bar. Brenda knows that she is spoiled and this is my way of reminding her. I do have to be careful, because sarcasm can be damaging if misunderstood.

Most people find me very hard to read. A prime example would be my recent week long cold. Today when I am feeling the best that I have felt in a week, I sound the worse. Last week when I was in pain, people could not understand what was bothering me.

I realize that yesterday I couldn't decide between hot and cold imagery for my sinus problem. At first it does feel like a dry cracked desert, but when my nose starts to drip it starts to feel like ice breaking up on a lake. It goes from being parched to being drenched in a matter of a day or two.

The cold has moved into the final stage for me. It has gone into my throat and I now have more of a gravel like voice. Today was also the first day where my nose was plugged and was not dripping either. I could breathe just everyone else.

Tonight I am to come over later, because the ex-husband is coming to sign some papers. This is fine with me, because I have no real desire to meet him.

Brenda is fairly certain that I shouldn't have any problems getting out of my lease. Mark and Vicki are about the same age as us and were probably in our same situation not too long ago. I have yet to talk with them though.

A sure sign that I am myself again was the fact that I was aware of work today. Most of yesterday was a blur.

Crash by the Dave Matthews Band got me through the day. Brenda had bought it for me on Sunday and I listened to it once that night, but some albums sound better through headphones and this is one of those albums. Very seldom is louder better when it comes to music. Louder usually becomes a mixture of distortion and pain.

Music swimming in my mind is much better than feeling my jeans get blown back against my legs by the bass of the speakers.

I'll be the first to admit that I stopped knowing what was cutting edge in music years ago and there are times that I doubt that I ever knew. I've also stopped arguing about who is selling out and what makes a band good. What I do know is that the bands that I liked when I was younger are now the relics of the nineteen eighties. Michael Stipe, Paul Hewson (Bono), and Morrissey are all probably nearing forty and part of me hopes that they move on to something else, because fifty something "rockers" like Michael Jagger and Neil Young are pathetic and I don't want my music to become pathetic even though I know it will.

At least REM isn't doing car shows or county fairs yet.

I can hardly wait for the day when my children ask me if I was into breakdancing or if I knew how to rap. I'll just tell them that their mother was a valley girl. The media shapes history for the youth of tomorrow.