60 Frustuck

today is mine and guy's first day in our house (in 22 days) with no plans, no guests and no agenda whatsoever. it is bliss. i wake up at 8am, bummed that i'm awake so early. a quick bit of math tells me it's ok, that i've slept 8 hours exactly, and that's all ya need. i read for two hours, with guy next to me occasionally turning over and saying his favorite sleepytime word, No. his eyes are very small, i can tell this even though they are closed. i know what he is doing. he is enjoying the fact that he does not have to get up for anything. he is relishing his fatigue. he is sleepily thinking about how he is waking up in his lovely, quiet house and it's sunny outside and the birds are talking, and all is well right now. all is perfect right now.

i look at him and know what i must do. i want him awake but i have learned that poking and teasing is the wrong thing to do. i must start breakfast. cooking up delicious aromas, coffee and clanging pots. he can't stand the anticipation. he awakes gently to the sound of pots and the smell of bacon and coffee and maybe some pot if we're lucky. his curiosity is his achilles heel. he has no control over it. he doesn't really try to control it, which is how i know for certain that he cannot. my ruse works. 15 minutes of cooking later and he's up. he says, "What are you doing?" down from the loft. this is a routine i have grown to cherish, and as much, love that i figured out.

guy comes downstairs. i smile. i am so happy. he goes out the front door and i know what he's doing. he's going to get our new subscription for the sunday new york times. i am so stoked to be getting the good paper on the weekend. the paper that puts all others to shame, most notably the SF Chronicle. crap-icle. we sit down. we eat. even though in a total space cadet moment i cracked one of our only two eggs in the house, over the sink, and not in the bowl, we have enough food. our friend D. left us some hash browns in the freezer when she cleaned out her own. we have a delicacy we normally try to live without.

after breakfast, guy cleans all the dishes and i water my garden. i remind myself again how good i've got it. i think about how horrible existence was as a teenager. i can feel the confusion of hatred and love i had for my parents and the torture of not being allowed to do the social things my friends were doing. then, in my mind, i skip ahead to my early 20s when i made only $5 an hour, watched my coworkers lose their minds on crack and heroin withdrawal and lived on 6th street with a mindfucker for a boyfriend. i shutter. i remember the fallout from that mofo, and the nervous breakdown i had a year later, with aftershocks that prevented me from leaving my apartment. ever. i remember when i got married the first time and slowly realized over the next few years that the voice in my head telling me i shouldn't be married to the man i married was not the onset of paranoid schizophrenia, but my subconscious screaming the truth at me. i remember the heartbreak of being in love with guy, and guy not being ready for a serious relationship. i remember the moment that changed. i can feel the crunch of the dirt under my sneakers on the path in Pinnacles National Park at the end of our long silent hike, as he told me otherwise.

and now this. i will believe again that good fortune means i am making the right choices, even though in the past that appeared untrue. i know now that my ideas of the past demand a second look and a second judgement, that even though the outcome was something different than i thought i wanted, it was the right thing all the same. it was exactly what i needed.