1.
I miss Yuri.
Our New York City days have been so good. When he comes in the door in the evening, I leap up and run to him. I always like to look pretty when he arrives. Dinner will be almost ready or I’ll have been baking cinnamon rolls, his new favorite treat. He calls them “cinni-minis.” I jotted down the recipe and taped it to the cabinet above the stove and it says, “Yuri’s Cinni-Mini’s” and there are hearts and frosting smears all over the paper.
We have a mouse in the apartment. Naturally, we named him Mickey. Neither of us are really okay with Mickey being there but neither one of us wants to buy a trap. Maybe if Mickey started paying rent we could get comfortable with him running past on the parquet floor every once in awhile, at night, when I’m reading and Yuri is finishing up work for the day.
2.
All this rigmarole. The fears. Atlanta. Taping the TV show. New medicine that has freaking nitroglycerine in it. I made an appointment with my surgeon in Chicago because she has operated on me a lot. New York is full of smart doctors but I think it’s wise at this juncture to speak to the lady who has had her hands in my abdomen on three separate occasions.
The worst case scenario is that I was misdiagnosed in 2008 and I actually have Crohn’s disease. (That would mean an already colon-less me would begin small-intestine re-sectionings.) The best case scenario is that I am how I am now, which appears problematic.
3.
Last night, I let my mom’s dog Scrabble sleep with me in the bed. I’m mostly against animals in my bed (unless you take me to dinner first — hey-o!) but Scrabble is squeaky clean and very soft, with short, white curly fur. She looks and feels like a lamb. Scrabble is a miniature Golden Doodle and she can shake, roll over, and fetch three different toys by name, but she still jumps up on people when she sees them because she is so excited to have friends.
When she was a puppy, I would lay her on her back and give her a puppy massage. She was very hyperactive, being a happy puppy, but I would flip her on her back and use my fingers to do a puppy version of a deep tissue massage and she would just totally conk out. She loved it. It got so I would say, “Scrabble? You wan’na puppy massage?” and she would get this look like, “Is this seriously going to happen right now?” And I’d massage her little chicken wings and that’s how I fell in love with her, down on the floor of the living room, smiling at her happy puppy face, burying my face in her fur.
Taylor
Animals are an amazing comfort in our time of need. I had a cat that was a 20 lb female Maine coon (read: big cat that thought her soul purpose in life was to eradicate any creature that dared move in front of her- these are paws that gouge instead of scratch). I played tennis in college and had to have pretty serious surgery on my foot (everything was so twisted they literally cut from the skin to the bone to relieve the pressure- side note living with a chronic illness now, I would take that horrible surgery everyday– there was a definitive fix and a linear understanding of the expected outcome- you know what I mean). Anyway, I came home in this large boot contraption and as soon as I say down, my cat came over and sat guard for hours– anyone who dared to come near me got a warning growl and then a bite if they didn’t heed her warning. She knew I wasn’t well and took it upon herself to protect me. Animals know far more then a lot of people give them credit for, plus they’re amazing listeners (they never interrupt, er, well, most of the time). They know when you need a hug…. Perhaps it’s time to rethink the no animals in bed, you get much more with it then without it…. You don’t have to tell anyone, Scrabble will keep your secret….. Shhhhhhh. 🙂
Valerie fons
Get Well Quilts Get Ready Quilts. Get Even Quilts. ……I see many more quilt books in your future with or without intestine.
List: 10 Things I’m Going To Do When I Get Back To New York City | Mary Fons
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