12/04/2004
Xanax. One milligram. You would’ve thought he was in a coma. I know we slept as though we were.
Glorious.
Xanax was so successful we thought to reduce the dose by half, and because of Happy Wife’s alarm that she prescribes a whole quarter milligram for her human patients. As expected one half milligram was about one half as effective as one milligram (I’m a pharmacologist — I think I know why!). The following morning Harry was up and bleating at 4:30 am. Better than 2:30 am; less desirable than 6:30 am. So we’re thinking we may go back to one milligram.
Yesterday HW & I celebrated the 10th anniversary of our (re-)introduction ten years ago. Duh, right? We’re both far more squishy around 12/04/04 than our wedding day (6/03/06). I was living elsewhere in Anchorage at the time, 12/04/04, just me and Rufus, anxiously waiting to hear which, if any, of the seven graduate schools I’d applied to would invite me for an interview during their recruitment week. I was at work one day finishing up a project when a friend and colleague (Marty) suddenly appeared in my office wondering if I might be interested in dating someone. I wasn’t. I was hopeful I’d be off to school soon; not a good time to begin a new relationship. I was about to wave Marty off when he said, “Do you know someone named Nancy?”
Full stop. I spun around in my chair and locked on him. “Describe her,” I said.
…
Backtrack to 2001. I’d first met a “Nancy” at a wine tasting and was quite taken with her, and, it turned out, she with me. Unbeknownst to her I followed her home after the tasting. Which was, technically speaking, stalking I suppose, but only because I was curious where she lived. Oh, and I should mention that earlier at the tasting a friend of Nancy’s had invited everyone at the table to his house the following week for Thanksgiving dinner. So it was early the following week that I was at work and couldn’t stop thinking about her. I called the number where she worked, asked to speak to a nurse practitioner named Nancy (I didn’t even know her last name), got her on the phone and asked if she was going to the Thanksgiving dinner. She said she was, and so I went too. We got along swimmingly there. I remember that during a moment of excited gesticulation in the living room she (or was it me?) spilled a glass of wine on her blouse. Off it came (unfortunately in the privacy of the bedroom), replaced by a loaner from a friend. Funny, innit, how we remember these details. Anyway, at evening’s end I drove her home. It was winter, cold outside. But I’d never felt warmer. Or more anxious. What would I do when we got to her house? If she invites me in? At the time I was in another “relationship” — scare quotes says it all — and a hapless victim of misguided loyalty. It didn’t happen, thankfully. Or so I thought at the time. We pulled into her driveway, I thanked her for a fun evening, she me, and then she stepped out of my truck and closed the door. I might have shook her hand. Ooh, daring! I didn’t even walk her to her front door. I know, right, what a schmuck. In my defense, though, I knew I’d be helpless to control my impulses were I to find myself, say, caught up in her arms? So I self-arrested. Like I said, misguided loyalty. After that, for the next three years, we never saw or spoke to each other again. Three years.
…
Marty described Nancy to me.
“A nurse practitioner, right? I said. “Yes, I remember now, we met several years ago. What about her?”
“She wants to know if she can call you.” I stared at Marty a second, thinking back to that night in her driveway, the tasting, the grace and beauty of her smile, the glow of her hair, the ease with which we talked to each other.
“She wants to call me? Now? Like tonight? Yeah, sure, of course, have her call me.”
I need to be honest in my recall here. The implied casualness of that, “yeah, sure, okay” completely belied my inner excitement.
That turned out to be the wisest Of Course I have ever uttered in my entire life. For the record I did have to call her. I waited at home for the phone to ring as I studied for my final biochemistry exam, and eventually it did ring, but when I picked up it was Marty, “Did she call you?”
“No.”
“Crap. She’s too scared is all. Just call her, okay?”
“Okay.”
And so I did. And from that night forward we have never been apart.
You may dry your eyes now.