Sunday, November 28, 2010

Starting with a piece of open correspondence
from the
Rat's Nest
to
my new neighbor,
who gives new meaning to the word, garçonnière
or, rather, revives its true meaning with a feminist twist.

Dear Princess of the fake orgasm,
In case you care, the wall that separates my slumbering head from your ear-splitting cries is exactly one brick, two licks of plaster and two layers of paint thick. Actually, I think you might have just a touch of the exhibitionist in you, so you probably don't care. What about this: despite his ugly, ill-fitting-jeans swagger, loverboy (I won't say boyfriend because when the two of you aren't having the loudest sex in the neighborhood, you're fighting at top volume) must be a tad inexperienced, because he thinks he's actually bringing on your repeated, bad-porn-flic-inspired, perfectly-synchronized-with-his orgasms.

I do not care what you do in the privacy of your own home, but waking up a poor, pitiful sickie 4 times a night is RUDE. I will not complain about what you do during the day, which seems to be fun or funny, because your cross-between-Janice-from-Friends-and-Nanny-Fine laugh (this is absolutely NO exaggeration or misrepresentation) echoes through your flat and bounces over the balcony divider to make my ears ring. But party on with that.
Yours truly.

Friends, I hope you know that I am not a prude. The young woman who lived in that flat previously was in a committed relationship the whole time she lived there, and I only overheard intimacy a handful of times. This is understandable in an apartment building with the kind of walls I described above. The new chick is out of control. Last night I slept with a big wooden spoon next to me so I could bang on the wall if they woke me up again. Luckily, I didn't have to use it. Loverboy also smokes in the hallway and the elevator, which really bites.

I told my mom they're going to have to tell me their safe word, too. I'm not really joking about this because the first time they woke me up the other night, she was screaming, I don't want to, I don't want to. In my slumberly confusion, I imagined myself going over there and offering to take her to the hospital to get her rape kit done and then to the police station to file the complaint. The follow-up sounds convinced me that this would not be necessary, but I did have a little scare.

[Confidential to Zo if you're out there: I should send her to your place for a couple of days to really blow that ground-floor witch's mind. The old bat would seriously end up in the loony bin και θα ησυχάζατε εσείς επιτέλους.]

In other news, I had my first outing in months and months yesterday, when Jiora came in the big black SUV to rescue me from the confines of the rat's nest and take me for a cup of coffee on the beach. Brilliant waves, bright sun! Don't be jealous, Chicagoans-- at one point I did need to put on my cotton cardigan to keep warm because it was a little windy. I should have taken some pics but totally forgot. Anyway, they would have been on my old mobile, which doesn't have good resolution, nor do I know where the cord is to upload them to my computer, so it's all moot, I guess, or mute, as Dappy's favorite coworker used to say.

Sickie update is that although they have put me on the 28- rather than the 21-day program for the new mustardy chemo, doing my next dose on time would put my tanking, bad-blood days right in the Christmas holidays. Since I am planning on being on the perch and, even if I were in the city, staffing in the ospedale will not be up to its full complement, we are scooting me up to this Wednesday (rather than the following Monday) as long as my blood work is good on Tuesday.

The biggest things I have to complain about these days are, in order of annoyingness:
* jelly legs/no power
* bad cough
* hoarseness/no voice
The latter two are probably because of the pressure of the tumor on various internal organs and workings. The top one is probably left over from the summer's Vincristine, not helped by the cortizone.

I struggle a lot with the ideas of optimism and hope and positive attitude. Everyone says that it helps to be positive and believe you're going to get well. I was like this the first time, before my relapse. But I have been disappointed so many times that now I wonder if it's worse to be hopeful and get let down than it is to be realistic and objective until I get some hard facts and results. On Friday I asked one of the residents on my team if they had seen anything on my previous (4 days before) x-ray to explain the cough, or if there was fluid in the lung or anything like that, because the cough really is annoying. He said there was nothing worrisome (cough-related, because obviously my big-ass tumor is front and center on all my chest x-rays), but added with great caution and reserve (and admonitions of "don't get your hopes up") that the film seemed to show that the tumor seemed to be stable and maybe just a bit gathered-up since the last x-ray. Of course, the impression docs get from an x-ray in my situation is about a hundred times less clear and measurable than a CT, but still...what do I do with this info? Do I let myself cheer up a bit or do I say, hold on, the higher you rise, the harder you fall?

[MAUVIE GUILT TRIP ALERT:] I haven't seen the Spaz in ages (since Thursday), which is probably why I'm settling into a bit of a funk, despite happy pills. If you're friends with K on fb, you will see a brilliant new pic of Kazzie, as joey, featuring my forearms. If not, wait till my next post, when I will hopefully have fresh material.

Speaking of K, she did me a steady (Is that an expression? I think it might be.) on Saturday morning! She and B took Kazzie down to the modern-day agora (as they do every Saturday morning), and, along with their shopping, picked me up some sausage! From a reliable butcher! (Don't ask too many questions.) Apparently the kind with the orange peel, but without the orange peel, if that makes any sense. Now we await barby access to make, perhaps, sausage sandwiches piled high with grilled peppers. You know what I miss from the States? A nice, fresh kaiser roll, lightly toasted. It would be perfect for my sausage sandwich.

I also miss the fact that I know the exact pair of g.d. jeans I want but they are not available in Europe and ordering them from the US (for only 40 bucks--they are tried and true, style, fit, etc, I'll wear them every other day so totally worth it), even if I have them mailed to a friend's house in the States and ask them to ship them to me here, risks customs and I am never taking this chance again. Besides port customs (LIVING NIGHTMARE), airport customs is one of the worst bureaucratic experiences you can have here. Last time somebody sent us something and it got caught up in customs, we almost told them to keep it to spare us the trouble, but it was too good so we couldn't!

Not much else going on around the rat's nest. Happy birthday to Nick who's never going to read this all the way from the perch but I'll sign off and call him now before I forget!

3 comments:

FSM said...

Guilt trips are not fair.

We'll be there tomorrow.

Sir Louris W. Badderson said...

Very well! I await you with baited breath!! Make sure you don't do anything to upset Precious P before you get here because I need her to be perfectly pleasant so we can discuss her bathing costume!!! Hot pink or fuschia?

Rachel said...

Mail your pants to me! Or tell me what to order and I will! I have stuff accumulating for you anyway, courtesy of N's artistic efforts.

Are you going to try knocking on your neighbor's door? I hate doing that but the direct approach might get you some peace. Our downstairs neighbor filled our apartment with smoke for much of my pregnancy with N before I finally got the guts to ask him to cut down (turns out smoking wasn't even allowed in our building!) He was so kind about it, I wish I had done it sooner (before I spent a couple nights sleeping on our dining room floor because our bedroom was too smokey!)

I wonder if... if there is somehow a third option, other than optimistic and pessimistic. Because I understand it's good to be optimistic but I am sure that'd be hard having been disappointed a lot. Maybe the third option is just to get distracted until the mustard gas has more time to do its thing. I know how dumb that sounds. I wish I I had some wiser advice than that (or that at least I could be there sometimes to be a good distraction.) Want me to learn to juggle puppies? Or I could train my kids to juggle puppies, that appeals to my laziness. We will all juggle puppies for you, that's how much we care!