Prisoner In My Own Home

Day: Three Hundred and Thirty Nine

Photo taken on Wednesday, July 6, 2011 on our stairs at 631pm.

I envy Steve. He is one of those people who can fall asleep the second their head hits the pillow. Last night is one of those nights; he is in such a deep sleep that he doesn't even notice when I unwrap my limbs from his and sneak off downstairs. I turn the Manga Dining Room lights very low-a little mood lighting-and set to work on the writing drawer of my desk. As I am flipping through my Creative Writing journal from sophomore year of college I see a slowly moving shadow from my periph.

I squint down at my foot to watch this two inch shadow creep along the rug as my stomach bottoms out. This thing just came from Sergei's bag, a bag that I had taken with me to the Surge today. One of my fears is that I accidently bring home a water bug from the city and now I am witnessing my fear come true at 1230 in the morning. I spring out of the Commander's Chair and put on the lights full blast but it scampers behind the filing cabinet.

No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no! This can't be happening! Not when I am so careful! I'm going to have to move!

I call out to Steve but he doesn't answer. There's no way he's going to hear me over the pounding of my own heart as well as the fan upstairs. I gulp and move closer to the black cabinet. I crane my neck to see the back corner and as I do, the bug in question comes crawling out of its hiding spot.

I blink.

Okay, not a water bug. Good, but what the hell is that thing?!

Upon closer inspection...it's a giant mutated centipede! Like I'm talking as big as one of those crazy insects in the Temple of Doom BIG. I watch this thing make its way into the kitchen and I try to trap it with a plastic cup but it knocks it over and escapes quickly, making me squeal like a little girl and run away. I finally have no choice but to smash it when it heads for underneath the stove. I close my eyes and whack it with Steve's flip flop causing twitching legs to scatter all over the floor. It's a total mess but I clean it up somehow and slide back into bed at 1 am.

I spend the next hour thinking its friends are wriggling around my pj bottoms, jumping up to rummage through the sheets, and unsuccessfully waking up Steve to save me from this creepy crawler madness!

Pain Scale

Day: Three Hundred and Twenty Three

These series of photos taken today represent my pain scale. I'd like to think my tolerance to pain is pretty high but I am sure if you punched me in the face I would proceed to cry like a baby. However, I have made a pain scale that only goes from 1 to 7 because I have yet to experience pain that goes past a 7 since there are many things I have not-and hope to never-feel.

PAIN is at 0:

Obviously I am not in pain. See how the smile reaches my eyes? Today is a good day for skipping rope and playing hopscotch.

PAIN is at a 1 or 2:

The smile faded from the eyes but I'm still in a good mood. I might have a paper cut or an annoying gas bubble in my chest.

PAIN is at a 3:

I'm most likely sore but a good sore because I must have worked a muscle group that hasn't been worked in awhile. Today sneezing induces sharp pains in my torso or I might be unusually stiff in my bad joints due to the weather. Regardless of the weakness I feel, I'll still go about my day as normal.

PAIN is at a 4:

Okay, I'm uncomfortable. I'm probably starting my period and my boobs feel like watermelons and every step I take is like a knife in my heart (though a knife in the heart will be higher on the pain scale for stuff I don't know about). My cramping is irritating so I go and run a few miles and although it hurts the boobies, it stops the cramps.

PAIN is at a 5:

Okay, today officially sucks. I'm in a lot of pain. I fell down the stairs and have a huge bruise on my tailbone so when I sit it hurts, when I talk it hurts, when I pooh it hurts. I might also have eaten buffalo wings that were a tad too hot for me too. I think I may have strep and a fever and what is that sound? Oh that's me whining.

PAIN is at a 6:

Holy shit I've just been shot! Oh wait a minute...the pain is gone...oh right that's just my sciatica from the herniated disc in my back that is laying on the nerve to my left leg. Though short lived, the pain takes your breath away for a few seconds. But also at a 6 includes pouring hydrogen peroxide in a cut, being pushed through a glass door, falling off my bike, getting hit with a man's slap shot, crashing into a boulder while skiing in the woods, and anything else that is stupid that I have done that landed me in the hospital, like slamming my thumb in the car door.

PAIN is at a 7:

This is unbearable. I need to go home. I want to die.

This is pain that has not gone away all day or daySSSS, or weeks or for a year. My GI issues can get to this point. When I'm crying, I'm at a 7.

PAIN is at an 8:

I've broken a foot and toes before but never anything significant like an arm or a leg or a rib. 8 is definitely for bones that can be clearly seen sticking out of the skin. 8 is also reserved for anything that is shown on Tosh.0 that the audience says, "OOOOOHHHHHH!" for.

PAIN is at a 9:

Dismemberment. I can't imagine the pain one must feel upon losing a limb. I am sure the aftereffects of losing an appendage is also hard to come to terms with as well as the phantom pain they experience.

Some types of torture would be here as well. You may use your imagination to think of the gruesome details but I do not have the stomach for it.

PAIN is at a 10:

I'm on fire. This has to be the worst pain imaginable. Nothing can be worse than any kind of burn. I never want to be on fire or have acid thrown on me either. I never want anyone to be on fire. Even when stuntmen are on fire I don't like it. Fire is just scary.

The Midnight Society

Day: Two Hundred and Sixty One

Photo taken on Tuesday, April 19, 2011 in my hotel room of Homewood Suites in Wallingford, CT at 11pm.

Not a fan of "the dark". Most of my childhood, night is pierced by a little light shining from the wall socket at the foot of my bed. My defense for undead intruders in the witching hour is pulling up my bed sheet so it covers my ear (also effective for keeping creepy crawlers from going in there). Closets are left open therefore nothing can materialize in there if it is empty before lights out. Squeezing my eyes shut is a great method for hiding from the night as well; if you can't see it then it's not really happening is it?

But I don't have to worry about these things anymore. I have Steve. He keeps the ghosts from haunting me, the spiders away from my ear, and the bloody man inside the closet inside the closet. Even though he's sleeping next to me like a rock, he's protecting me from my fears.

But tonight Steve is a state away and I have to face the darkness on my own. I have gotten used to sleeping next to him, feeling so unbelievably safe and comfortable, being able to reach out at any moment and feel him lying next to me that nights like this leave me edgy and restless. So to create the facade of Steve, I stack extra pillows to my right and cuddle up to them the minute I hit the lights. They're not grumpy in the morning and they definitely don't roll on top of me in the middle of the night but they do for now. And I'm sure back in our home, Steve has a barricade of extra pillows by him too. Whether he admits it or not, I bet he misses my nighttime verbal diarrhea and my Charley Horses that scare him out of a sound sleep and my pee breaks at 2 in the morning and one of my appendages touching him at all times and the dreams that make me jolt awake and my alarm that I forget to turn off when I get up at 5.

Yeah, there is no way Steve is getting a good night's sleep right now.

I've already told him once...

Day: Two Hundred and Twenty Seven

Photo taken on Wednesday, March 16, 2011 in the living room at 252pm.

You can't really see it but Steve has a black eye. Steve has actually given himself this black eye. He has done this by the sheer force of throwing up this morning.

It starts at 437 and continues until almost 9 o'clock. I feel awful he is this sick and each time I dutifully get up with him to rub his back. I then give him fresh water so he can throw it up an hour later. It is on the third trip to the bathroom that I finally flick on the light when he is in there. Steve looks up from the bowl, all pathetic like, and I exclaim, "what did you do to your face?!" He says he felt a pop in his eye and expected it to be bloodshot but he has successfully broken a ton of blood vessels surrounding the eye. I thought he might have slipped before I got in there and smashed his face on the porcelain. I'm relieved to know he's not hurt and we trudge back to bed.

I vaguely feel him get out of bed again and I slowly drag my eyes open. I stare off into the distance, willing myself to get up but instead I listen to him wretch in the connecting bathroom. He then appears at the foot of my bed looking a little too jovial to just have tossed his cookies. I ask him how he's feeling but all I hear is a grunt escape my lips. He throws a thumb over his shoulder and smiles back at me. "Oh he's not done yet," Steve says and at that moment I hear the real Steve yakking his guts up and I jolt into a sitting position, the other Steve disappearing. Damn open eyed dreams.

I then go get Steve some ginger ale (yeah we keep ginger ale on hand and not for upset stomachs, more for mixing with alcohol) and I meet him back in the bedroom. He feels bad he's keeping me up on my day off but I honestly don't mind at all. I feel it's my job to be there for him, try to make it a little less painful for him if I can. I love Steve and I know he would do this for me.

Though if this turns out to be the 24 hour virus and I get it later, he'll have a matching black eye tomorrow.

What would I do without you, Steve?

Day: One Hundred and Sixty Six

Photo taken on Friday, January 14, 2011 on the A platform of the Farmingdale train station at 609am.

Why on earth would I be back standing in the same spot I stood for three years when now I have an entirely different spot to stand in on a different line?

You know the answer to this one. You know it's been a tough morning already and you're not even up yet!

For some reason, Smithtown chose to be very secretive about shutting down Main Street this morning and any road that gets my ass to the train station on time. Luckily Steve is with me because he's taking Sai again today until the roads are completely ice-free, so he's there to try and cut off my panic of not making my train. I start losing it because the person in front of me is craaawwwling. CRAWLING! Because of this douchebag, I don't make my train but I try anyway. I bail out of the car and haul ass through a parking lot that leads to a dead end because I didn't see the tiny pathway they carved out to get to the other platform. But it doesn't matter, the train is too far down for me to sprint to anyway.

I start bawling.

I call Steve to tell him to come back and get me but so many roads are blocked he can't find his way back.

The panic starts setting in. There isn't a soul around, not even a taxi. The silence is deafening and the next train isn't coming through for another hour.

I'm hysterical. And scared.

Steve tries to coach me through my breathing so it doesn't turn into hyperventilating but I'm too angry for a panic attack. If Smithtown needed to do snow removal so bad that should have been announced to commuters last night on the LIRR. I would have allotted for more time this morning, especially since I jolted awake 14 minutes before my alarm went off anyway.

I keep turning in circles, checking my surroundings since I know only skells are out this hour, especially around train stations. I see a car pull up and I start darting the other way until Steve screams into the phone that it's him. I climb in and look away since I have tears streaming down my face and I'm blubbering like a fool. I feel completely out of control. I think of the work on my desk and my morning routine at the Surge. I start crying even harder and he just rubs my hand, telling me it will all be alright.

I start in that it's because I didn't finish my acne steps last night, that's why this happened. Steve says that's not true and that he is going to drop me off in Farmingdale on his way to work so I can catch the train I took for three years. It's familiar. It's safe. I know all the other commuters on "my car" and where they all sit. But I then think about the fact that now I have to go to Penn and come up on the C train and I start to worry that something bad is going to happen. While the obsessional thoughts creep in, Steve stops in Hess to fill up the tank I wanted to fill last night. I hop out to tell him I won't make the 6am from Farmingdale.

And we don't make it. We pull down the road that leads to the parking lot and I wave to the train as it pulls away. Now I'm petrified the day is going to turn ugly.

I get on the 609. I read a novel for most of the way there, in an aisle seat *shudder* in part of a six seater *shudder* but luckily no one sits in front or next to me.

Then the C train is there when I reach the platform.

Then the M86 is there when I come out of the subway.

I'm only 15 minutes later than normal.

Huh. Maybe it won't be so bad after all.

He sees you when you're sleeping...

Day: One Hundred and Forty Four

Photo taken on Thursday, December 23, 2010 in the living room at 1120pm.

A few years back, Moma gives Steve and I a bunch of Christmas decorations and serving platters to help make our annual Wing Party more festive (don't worry, the Wing Party has just been pushed later this winter that's all, it's still happening...eventually). The only decoration Steve doesn't "get" is the large decapitated Santa head. To me this is normal since we had one on our family tree since I was a kid but Steve is kind of frightened by it (kind of like me and Birthday Bear).

Sweeney Kate

Day: One Hundred and Thirty Nine

Photo taken on Saturday, December 18, 2010 in the Time Out Room at 1149pm.

I am pointing to where the scissors were located just a second ago but now they have vanished courtesy of Steve. I know he hates this behavior of mine but in order to get me to go to sleep at night he'll do what he has to.

I'm not sure when this fear of leaving scissors out started but I have a feeling it stems back to a disturbing dream I must have had in college. As long as the scissors are in the spot they are supposed to be, I'm fine. But if they are out in plain sight, I have to ask him to hide them. I have this fear that when I am asleep, I will wake up and stab someone with them unknowingly. Never mind the fact I can always take them out of the drawer or I don't know, grab one of the hundred kitchen knives I have to do the job. It is totally ridiculous but it brings peace of mind to both of us knowing the scissors are hidden.

Actually, this might not have been a good idea to write this entry. If Steve ever gets stabbed with scissors I'm going to be the prime suspect.

GO SPIDEY!

Day: Eighty Three

Photo taken on Saturday, October 23, 2010 outside our door at 945pm (looking sickly and puffy-eyed).

You can't see him but our apartment guard is out and about in his giant web that spans across our door frame and our neighbor's. Steve named him Walter and he's been living there all summer. We left him there because A) we don't have the guts to knock him down since he's as big as my hand and B) he eats all the other annoying insects that buzz around outdoor lights. Right now he's part of our Halloween decorations.