Sick, Selfish Ash

It's almost seven, and I'm still here, through with my coffee and now chewing on ice-cold spaghetti.

God, my tooth hurts. I'm starving, and it just kills me to eat this. I should have made soup instead, but day-old spaghetti sounded better. I made it yesterday for lunch during a good hour when I wasn't lying on the couch in pain. Poor Baby Girl at my makeshift-bedside. Every time I cried, she cried and rubbed her little hand on my cheek, which hurts like hell, but I let her do it for the thought that she was comforting me. I feel guilty for spending so much time on the couch. It's becoming my new home. I can't work. Just watch TV with her, and halfway play with the toys she piles on top of me.

I haven't been online much either...off for days, and then on too long at one time.

Saturday night, I couldn't sleep. I got scared while taking my shower. Kept hearing noises. I didn't want to go to bed 'til I was sure I would fall asleep almost immediately. I came in here to pass the time, and stayed until sunrise. Silly me.

Sunday: After a short nap, I spent the day with Baby Girl. Watched part of two movies. Wrote a piece of fiction by hand.

After that, I went into the kitchen to fix lunch. Was cutting up some cheddar cheese when the blade flew into the upside of my left hand. I hit the floor, threw the knife, dropped my pen. Screaming, crying, bleeding. Baby Girl rushed in and laughed at me. I had to laugh too, for her sake, and doctored myself while nearly throwing up and passing out.

I spent most of that day on the couch too. I took her for a walk though. We ran about the front yard barefoot...until I stepped into an anthill and was bit at least twenty times.

I slept all night that (Sunday) night, and Monday, I spent the whole day working. Went to Wal-Mart. Took Baby Girl for another walk, though avoided the front yard entirely.

Visited the neighbors: Baby Girl's Aunt and her daughter. The Uncle's now living in Texas, going to college. The daughter's a sophomore in high school. The wife is a blonde thirty-something who is thin, pretty, tan, but all wrinkled from smoking. We sat in the kitchen floor and talked about men. Baby Girl played and ate Cheetos. I don't buy Cheetos, or any chips of any kind, so you can imagine how happy she was to inhale them.

The Aunt gave me a bottle of rum. I told her how I had finished mine off Friday night while watching the Jimmy Stewart Marathon Day on TCM.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington...

I love it! Jimmy Stewart: Good Lord, he's amazing. Hot! Love his voice, and his height and his hair. At the end I cried like a baby when he hit that floor. Such honesty and conviction in his beliefs. The mixture of innocence and madness in his eyes.

That night, Monday night, I couldn't sleep again. I was too angry, too sad, and nervous, and upset altogether over what, I'm not sure. Just not well. And restless. I came here till Tuesday began, and that's when I apologized for the lack of writing I now feel well (or sick and medicated) enough to remedy.

About that: let's get to that, so I can go get dressed and find a dentist who will be so kind as to see me today, for God knows I can't take pain killers all day, everyday, straight to October.

Tuesday: I took a nap, and spent the day doing what? I don't remember. I was hungover and sad.

Went to bed that night and woke up Wednesday morning in the God awful pain. The same pain I awoke to months ago once my tooth was broken and had become infected.

It's obviously infected again. I'm lucky I made it this long without a relapse.

Remember, I'm waiting till my insurance kicks in before having the operation, and everything's been fine up until Wednesday...the dentist said if it became infected again, he'd just put me back on those antibiotics that made me a human zombie for two weeks. Then I'll be cured, and back on my way to waiting.

So yes. I'll call him shortly. Probably have to go in and have him look me over. He'll tell me it's infected, and I'll say, Yes I'm aware of that. Then spend the rest of the day in a drugged out haze.

I'm here now because I suffered through Wednesday, like an idiot, never calling the dentist. I went to bed around ten-thirty, and woke up at twelve fifteen, crying into my pillow on account of the throbbing pain in my head, my eye, my ear. All sound is amplified, bright lights leave me aching, my mind feels heavy, and my tooth: it's killing me.

I got up and took some pills and a shower. Went to the couch, ate cereal, drank coffee. Watched Futurama, then Funny Face. I absolutely love it too. Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire, dancing, climbing stairs to balconies, singing...

You fill the air with smiles, for miles and miles and miles. I love your sunny, funny face.

Dancing in the kitchen, my eyes filled with happy tears, my mind finally ready to write, I couldn't help but hope that's how real love will feel...two people dancing near a river in France on green grass, near trees, beneath blue skies with swans and ducks and white birds of all kinds with a little stone chapel in the background, all soft and out of focus, like a water-color painting in a silent museum.