Cliffs of Dover

2008

We had moved into our new house and gotten settled in. For some reason this place really brought out my creative side and I wasted no time in getting it decorated and making it feel like home. After living in a single room studio apartment for fourteen years, this place felt like a palace! Since the walls in the new house are plaster, I couldn't just pound a nail and hang a picture. My Sweetie informed me that pounding a nail would make the plaster crack and fall. So he unpacked his drill and drilled pilot holes and screws for me to hand things on. All I had to do was tell him where I wanted to hang something and he took it from there. I discovered that all the art I had on the walls at our old place didn't take up much space in the new house - I had all of it hanging up and the walls still looked naked. Before the first week was over, I had shelves and art up on the walls, furniture arranged, and everything unpacked. Then I set about shopping for more stuff to create new art to fill the empty space. My Mother in Law gave us some furniture to help fill the place out too.

With so much new space to fill, I told him to go ahead and install some guitar hangers on the walls so he could hang them in the living room instead of taking up floor space with stands. They're still hanging there now. Our old bathroom was tiny and we couldn't both be in there without banging into each other, in contrast our new one is huge and all four of us could be in there at the same time and still have room to spin around! But it was big, white and blank - so I decided to decorate it too. Years earlier, Sweetie had spent some time in Hawaii and he loved it there so I decided on a beach theme and put up pictures of palm trees (gifts from my Mother in Law), scattered some seashells around and got some palm tree shaped candle holders. My Mom had given me a glass clown fish night light and it fit right in in there. Over the next few months I added little things here and there - a ship in a bottle, a silk flower lei...

All of this made the little hallway outside the bathroom look completely naked, and that bothered me. I had an idea for the space though - I wanted to string wire back and forth up by the ceiling and hang a whole bunch of Christmas balls from it. I told my Sweetie about this plan and he thought it sounded cool and offered to help as he always did. I got permission from The Dungeon Master and The Purple Haired Girl before starting. Dungeon Master readily agreed, the Purple Haired Girl was less enthusiastic about it but gave her blessing as well. So Sweetie and I went off to the home improvement store to pick up the materials for me to do it. I picked up some quarter round molding, wire, screws and a package of small eye screws. We got home and Sweetie hopped up on a ladder and installed the molding for me, and then I installed the eye screws and wire. Then I unpacked my Christmas balls and with Sweetie sitting in the living room guiding me so I could distribute the colors evenly, I started hanging them on the wire. In the process, I discovered I didn't have as many Christmas balls as I thought I had - even so, it looked very cool and sparkly. We put the word out among our friends and family that we needed more of them for an art project, and they obliged. People would stop by with a small handful of them and I'd haul the ladder out and hang them up. My Mother in Laws husband, the Retired Priest, gave us a little table and I set it in the hallway with a small lamp on it. The light from the lamp made the ornaments twinkle and shine...

Meanwhile, our old management company was very unhappy with us. Our departure had left them with a nearly empty building and they were trying to say that we didn't give them enough notice and hey threatened us with legal action saying we owed them three months rent. Oh hell no! None of us had an active lease with them when we moved, and since I was the caretaker there - I know none of us was behind on our rent. We gave a month notice (all that was legally required of us) and we cleaned our empty apartments, but they were refusing to give us our damage deposits and threatening to sue us for unpaid rent. *sigh* We contacted a lawyer of our own, who told us they (management) didn't have a legal leg to stand on, and Purple Haired Girl fired off a letter in response. Then they refused to send us our tax forms (illegal). After much back and forth we finally decided to say piss on it. Let them keep the deposits. If they still wanted to take us to court, we'd show up with our info and paperwork and they'd likely lose. Ultimately though, we just wanted to be done with them. In the meantime, I filed a complaint against them with the state for failing to send out our tax forms by the deadline. I hope they got audited. Anyway, the whole thing was causing oodles of stress and we had more important things to worry about, like our housewarming party and the impending wedding in August of my friends The Dungeon Master and The Purple Haired Girl.

Since we moved in January, and January in Minnesota is arctic, we decided to wait until spring to have a housewarming party. That way we could have the doors and windows open and we could cook some burgers out on the grill. The party went off without a hitch and we had a really good turnout for it. Lots of tasty food and many well-wishers. Everyone said the new place was really cute and a huge improvement over our old one. One of my Sweeties cousins came over to see the new place and as he was showing him the house I heard him say to my Sweetie "Chicks really make a place look nice, don't they?" Sweetie grinned and gave me a wink. I was pretty proud - that was high praise from his cousin.

With the housewarming party out of the way, the next thing on our agenda was wedding planning...
Dungeon Master and Purple Haired Girl had a shoestring budget for their wedding and to stretch their money farther everyone was being pressed into service in one way or another. Purple Haired Girl's dad is a pretty good gardener and all the flowers for the wedding came from his garden. A friend of Purple Haired Girl is a florist and volunteered her services arranging all of them. She created the bridal bouquet, boutonnieres, aisle decorations and table centerpieces (all were beautiful). Purple Haired Girl's grandma created a really gorgeous wedding dress for her, as well as the brides' maids dresses (which were also very pretty). Dungeon Master made and decorated their wedding cake, and Purple Haired Girl made the toppers out of fimo clay - a little froggy groom and a little hedgehog bride (their totem animals). They made their own wedding invitations (and I had a very small part in their creation). My sweeties sister used to do make-up for a living and did Purple Haired Girl's hair and make-up on her wedding day (and she looked lovely). The reception music was courtesy of Dungeon Master's ipod and the church hall's speaker system (which was much better than you might think).

The big shocker, for me anyway, was that they asked me to be their photographer. At first I was hugely flattered – and then I was completely freaked out and scared to death. I explained that while I was willing to try, my camera with its pathetic 2.1 mp was not up to the task. It does ok on outdoor shots, but it's old and banged up and a huge battery pig. It is not by any means a camera you would want your wedding photos taken with, and bad wedding pictures can totally ruin a friendship. Excuses, excuses. But they insisted. They had confidence that I would do a good job, and they offered to get me a camera to use that was up to the task. I reluctantly agreed. They told me to research which camera they should buy and get back to them. I knew immediately I wanted a canon digital rebel but they were still pretty expensive. So I went with the next best one I could find – an 8 mp canon powershot sx100. Still spendy, but much more in their price range. Her dad bought it for them as a wedding present and I got it with about a month left to learn how to make the most of it. This thing has more bells and whistles than the Titanic…so for the next month I took tons of pictures. Of anything and everything, inside and outside, day and night. Just trying to learn the ins and outs of this new camera. I took pictures at Purples bridal shower (and endured a slightly traumatizing incident with the stripper her friends hired.) I went to the rehearsal too so I could take some practice shots in the church. I also read up on everything I could find having to do with wedding pictures and how to take good ones.
I thought for sure I was going to have heart failure and die before the wedding.
On the day of the wedding I was (again) a picture taking fool. I took at least two pictures of everything just in case the first one didn't turn out, and I had no clue where the best place to stand was so I could get good pictures and not be in anyone's way, so I kept moving around. My assistant (former roommate Pine City Girl) was late and I was certain that none of my pictures were going to come out. Fortunately she arrived before the service was over so I had her to help me with the portraits afterward. She was invaluable – seriously. Pine City Girl handled all of the 'getting people grouped and shuffled into place' posing stuff and all I really had to do after that was get them all framed up and in focus. The only problem I ran into there was that I couldn't get my tripod to fully extend. But the pictures were beautiful (I had to fix a little red eye here and there because of the tripod height but other than that, they were great) and my friends were happy. It was a beautiful wedding.

Our new place was bursting with creativity and life! My Sweetie turned the garage into his man den and spent days out there playing guitar with his buddies and tinkering with his motorcycle. I still remember sitting on the deck and listening to him play Cliffs of Dover. We filled the front boulevard with tiger lilies from a patch growing wild in the backyard of Sweeties Grandpa. We put a little garden in the back yard, and with my Sweeties help I built a little container garden up on our rear deck. We liked to sit out there on the deck and enjoy a recreational smoke in the evenings as the sun was going down. Sweetie was an early riser and he liked to sit out there and drink his coffee in the mornings while water the plants. It felt like a quiet and secluded place, we both loved it. It was around this time though that his shortness of breath turned into a persistent cough.

Since we were now so close to both Sweeties Grandpa and his Aunt, calls from them to come over and help with this or that were frequent. Sweetie had a green thumb and Grandpa would have him come over and plant flowers for Grandma. His Aunt was one of our smoking buddies, so our trips over there were usually more social. One day though, his Aunt called and Sweetie went completely white, said he'd be right there and raced out the door. When he returned home later, he told me his cousin had died - an anti-depressant overdose - and his Aunt was hysterical. His cousin lived down in Texas and he would drive his Aunt down there for the funeral. He called me every single day while he was gone, and came back with a memorial tattoo in honor of his cousin. He and his cousin had grown up together and were like brothers. It was a sad time. His Aunt turned to one of the buddies of Sweetie and his cousin for support and let him move in over at her place. For a while we thought it was a good thing but eventually it became apparent that the guy was taking advantage of the situation. We all wanted him to find his own place and move out, but he refused and despite problems between the two, Sweeties Aunt wouldn't kick him out. This led to a family fight, and Sweetie washed his hands of it all. She wouldn't stand up for herself, nor would she listen to the rest of her family. Sweetie and his Aunt stopped talking after that.

We took a trip up to our favorite campsite that year, just the two of us this time. We only went for a weekend, and noticed that the place looked like it had barely been used since the last time we were there - but that was one of the reasons we loved the place. I remember that we did the usual stuff, sat by the fire, did a little fishing, climbed the big rock outcrop, looked for Kermit the Gargoyle we left there years before and had a smoke in our favorite smoking spot. When we packed up to leave we sat for a while on one of the picnic tables and had another smoke while watching the river. We spotted a group of friendly Canadians on the other side and waved at them, and they in turn waved back. We talked about the next time we'd come up... But there was a weird air of finality to it, like we'd never make it up there again and I couldn't figure out why.

Back home, life went on with its ups and downs. We discovered one of our kitties had a brain tumor and had to have her put down, leaving us with three cats. One of Dungeon Master and Purple Haired Girls kitties also died unexpectedly. We made friends with a neighborhood stray cat that had the unique habit of climbing our roof and jumping up to our window to ask to be let inside. We figured he might have lived here before we moved in. Sweetie and Former Roommate #2 went to concerts. Friends visited daily.

One day the Greasemonkey came over with some more Christmas balls for my ceiling project. I was up on the ladder hanging them up when I noticed that one of the molding pieces was bowed out from the wall. I mentioned it to Sweetie and he hopped on the ladder to try and fix it and SNAP! The molding broke and Christmas balls rained down to the floor popping like little grenades! He was so apologetic - he thought it was his fault. I wasn't angry at him though. I sent him to grab a box and then I carefully took the remaining balls down and loaded them into it, swept up the glass on the floor and dismantled the network of wire and molding. Then I went and sat on the couch and stared at the now empty ceiling. Sweetie looked at me and said "You're trying to figure out how to redo it, aren't you?"
"Yep."
"It's my fault" he said.
Me: "How's it your fault?"
Him: "I knew that wasn't the right material for the job, but I didn't stop you from buying it."
Me: "Mmmm."
Him: "We should have used dimensional lumber."
Me: "Yeah?"
Him: "Yeah. And if we use square chicken wire mesh, we can distribute the balls more evenly."
Me: "We don't have many balls left...I think I have less of them now than when we started."
Him: "We'll get more."
Me: "Cool!"
And we sat there chatting about how much better it would be when we re-did it. He never told me one of my ideas was stupid, and he always tried to help. I loved him for that.

Drift Away

November...
My Sweetie was home from the hospital and he still had several days of radiation to complete before they would consider another round of chemo. His favorite kitty The Minion was happy to see him return and was constantly laying on him or next to him, determined not to let him out of his sight. Our friend the Greasemonkey had gotten my car running again and I was once again making the daily drive down to the cancer center to get his head zapped. In addition to the radiation, the doctors had prescribed an assortment of new drugs for him to take. So many pills... I now had a new job, counting out pills into his pillbox and making sure he took all of them on schedule. There was both Vicodin and Oxycontin, there was an anti-seizure med and an anti-depressant, an anti-nausea med, an anti-inflammatory med, a stool softener and a steroid. He was taking upwards of 10 pills every 6 hours or so...

The radiation left him feeling tired and he spent a lot of time napping on the couch, but when he was awake he was in pretty good spirits. Then one day a few days into the radiation his hair started coming out. It was just like you see in the movies. He was sitting there and he ran his hand through his hair and it just came out in a big clump. He sat there for a moment looking at the handful of hair and then he got an idea. He got up and went out onto our deck and tossed it into the air. Then he pulled another clump, and another...he figured maybe the birds would use it to build their nests. When there wasn't anymore coming out that way, he came back inside and called his sister and asked her to come over with a hair clipper to take off the rest. He didn't want to be walking around shedding hair everywhere, might as well go all the way and just shave it off. I thought I'd be sad to see him bald, but I really wasn't that broke up about it. As far as I was concerned, he was still a good looking guy even without his hair - besides, we were expecting it to fall out anyway. We just thought it would be the chemo that did it, not the radiation. Both his sister and I took it in stride. If he wasn't upset about it, why should we be? We swept up the pile of ginger hair and put it in a bag. The news of his hair loss had his mother whipped into a hand wringing frenzy though, and she requested a few locks as a keepsake. No problem. We put some of it into a baggy and sent it off with his sister. Now that he was bald, his head was cold so he started wearing the cap that the Purple Haired Girl had crocheted for him. He requested a matching neck scarf and she obliged. Because of his bald head and goatee, I jokingly started calling him Heisenberg because of his sudden resemblance to the character in Breaking Bad.

When his radiation treatments were over the staff gave him the cancer mask they made to hold his head in place. He gave it to the Purple Haired Girl with the idea that she could use it to make a new 'monster' for our friend The Gamer's haunted yard using it and paper mache. He also gave her the bag of hair to go with it. We liked the idea that he could keep scaring people during Halloween for years to come.

After the radiation, he had another scan done along with a follow up appointment at the cancer center. We were surprised to discover that he had gained some weight, a side effect of the steroids he was on. They increased his appetite - he was eating good for the first time in a long time and the extra weight looked good on him, he was less gaunt and looking healthier. The doctor gave the green light for the chemo and he was scheduled for his first dose a few weeks later. He was looking forward to it since it was so helpful the last time.

One day when his Dad was coming over, Sweetie gave me the heads up that I'd probably want to go out for a while. It wasn't just his Dad that was coming over, but some hospice people were coming too. They were going to work out his end of life plans - what he wanted done and how he wanted to be treated when the time came that he could no longer speak for himself. He knew if I was home while this was going on I'd be a blubbering mess by the time they left, and he was probably right. So I went out and got some bubble tea, and went over to my friend RottieMama's house to wait it out. When I got home I asked him to fill me in. He said his Dad had power of attorney, that they did the paperwork for when he would go into hospice and that there would be no life extending measures taken. As far as he was concerned, when it was time to go - it was time to go. He was adamant that he did not want IV's or tubes of any kind whatsoever. He had noted my discomfort when I woke up with a catheter after surgery a few years earlier and didn't want to experience that himself. "Good call" I said, "Because that thing sucked. It was uncomfortable and I was pretty pissed off about it." "Exactly" he replied. The hospice people had tried to talk him into moving into the first bed that came available and he'd said no. He told them that at the moment he still felt fine and wanted to stay home with me as long as he could. They warned him there might not be a bed available when he needed it and he said he'd take that chance.

Then his chemo appointment came around and it was back down to the cancer center. Our Keep Calm and Carry On shirts had arrived and we decided to wear them - the cancer center staff asked about them and thought they were pretty cool. His dosage was much bigger this time - instead of the two and a half hours per appointment that we had last time, it would take six hours of sitting in the chair waiting for the stuff to drip into him. And it wasn't just that there was more of it, but this time the dose was stronger as well. When he was done, I got his next appointment set up - it would be the day before Christmas. After we got home he felt sick and just wanted to lay down, a far cry from the first time we'd done this when he came home and played his guitar for an hour. The next day he felt worse and didn't want to eat. He was thirsty though and wanted gatorade, so I ran up to the store and got him some. The Minion wanted to cuddle up with him and he felt so bad that he grumbled and shoved him away. "No dude, I hurt." So the Minion compromised by curling up on the back of the couch instead and dangled a paw down, just barely touching Sweetie with it.

At this point Sweetie wasn't up to doing much of anything, so I took over. I made frequent trips to the store for bags of ice, more gatorade, more soda, more bottled water - he was constantly thirsty, jello, soup, and these little microwave dinners that he wanted. I ran the laundry up and down from the basement every other day so he'd have clean dry clothes because he would wake up soaking wet from sweating. I ran to the pharmacy to get his prescriptions and fielded phone calls from his friends and relatives - 'No, he's really not up for company today - check back in a day or two. I'll tell him you called.' I sorted meds into the pillbox and when the mystery man came, I'd turn off the alarm and make sure he got whichever ones he was supposed to get at that time and log them in a little notebook.

A few days later he was feeling a little better and actually sitting up on the couch, snuggling his favorite cat and receiving visitors again. When we didn't have visitors, he entertained himself texting his friends and we sat around watching TV together - Top Gear, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, South Park.

To keep my sanity, I started making a little fairy cottage out of clay. Sweeties Mom was driving me somewhat insane with her emails and phone calls and apparently she was starting to get to the Purple Haired Girl too. One evening while she was sitting upstairs with us, she received a text from Sweeties Mom asking her (yet again) to sing a certain song at his wake. Purple Haired Girl read it and gave a heavy sigh - Sweetie had already said he didn't care for that song...she'd said she'd rather not, so why the hell was she pushing this? It was maddening, but I was somewhat relieved to learn that it wasn't 'just me' feeling irritated by her behavior and requests.

One evening around this time, the Purple Haired Girl came running excitedly upstairs and showed us a positive pregnancy test. We wanted to be happy for her, we really did - but with our current situation we just couldn't muster much excitement. And then a few days later, when Sweeties sister was over for a visit we committed the unpardonable sin of still not being excited when we told her about it. We did say that we were happy for Purple and wished her the best, but we also said we thought the timing felt horrible. Sweeties sister said nothing about this to us, but as soon as she got home she texted Purple and said she heard the good news - too bad the 'grumpy people' upstairs hate kids. I guess she said a few other things too, but that was the gist of it: 'We hate babies and wouldn't want to be her friend anymore.' After receiving this text, a hormonal and visibly upset Purple Haired Girl came upstairs to ask me if we were not going to be friends anymore just because she was pregnant. "Wait, what?! Where would you get that idea?" I asked. And she sobbingly told me about the text that Sweeties sister had sent. The way I heard it, 'Sis' made it sound like it was all me and that Sweetie hadn't said anything - in any case Purple addressed me about it alone. I did my best to reassure her that, yes, she would still be my friend and I didn't harbor any ill will toward her or the baby. I explained that 'Sis' had it in for me because she thought I 'hated' her (I didn't). To prove my point, I gave Purple the Christmas gift I bought for her the day before - nearly a month early. It was a glittery green fairy ornament that caused her to squeal happily. "There" I said. "Would I buy you a fairy if I hated you? Do you believe me now?" She said she did.

Later, I filled her in on all the Sister drama we'd had and said she was probably trying to stir up trouble for me. She'd been in a bit of a twist because I opted out of too many family gatherings over the years, I never made an effort to meet her kid (She's overly permissive. Sweetie had said he was allowed to run amok and if he wasn't his nephew he wouldn't want to hang out with him either) and then when her brother got sick and she wanted him to come live with her - he chose me. To this day, I suspect that she was hoping Purple would be so angry that she'd kick us out and then Sweetie would of course come live with her and "finally have a real family." (She actually said that back when he got his diagnosis! He told her he did have a 'real family' over here and me, Purple and the Dungeon master were it.) For his part, my Sweetie actually called her up and went to my defense. He pointedly told her that the only thing she should have said to Purple was "I heard the good news, congratulations!" and that she had no business repeating anything else we said - we had both had a bad day and were simply venting our frustration even if it was misdirected. Sis completely denied saying anything at all. Really?! Then why would Purple come upstairs and say she said it? And Purple still had the text to prove it. And still she denied saying a thing. Ah the drama in that family. Is it any wonder that I opted to skip their gatherings?