Morning rituals . . .

So we wait some more. Our lives have become one big waiting game, punctuated by bits and pieces of daily routine. Nothing new to report since I last checked in, so it's hard to get motivated to write much. But I know at least a few people are reading this and are keeping Bob in their thoughts and prayers, so I'll try to keep you all in the loop as best I can. Even if it's simply a little report on how he's doing day by day . . . his appointment with the orthopedic oncologist is for this Wednesday, not Thursday, as I'd originally reported. One day closer, that's good, though I'm still hoping and praying he can get in Monday or Tuesday.

Bob often has a hard time sleeping at night; for some reason, the pain kicks around the time he's getting ready for bed, despite the pills, and then takes a while to settle down. Once he's finally asleep, it usually isn't long before he's awake again, to change positions or beds, to try to find a comfortable position, which are limited. I sleep wherever he isn't—if he sleeps in the bedroom, I take the couch. If he sleeps in the basement, I get our bed. I sleep with my phone next to me, in case he needs to get my attention. Then he sends me a text, instead of having to yell through the house at me. Pretty good little system, though, like most things in life, takes me a time or two to figure out. The first time he did it, I kept texting him back, thinking he was just chatting via texts.

Bob (in basement): Hey!

Me (up in kitchen): Straw!

Bob: What are you doing?

Me: Nothing, just making soup.

Bob: I need something.

Me: What, hon? Me? ("winking" emoticon inserted here)

Finally he yelled at me, "Can you come down here please?" When I got downstairs, I found he needed one of his medications that he left upstairs. Oh.

Our mornings are my favorite time. Bob will text something like Coffee ready yet? or Pretty sunrise this a.m., which is my cue to get up, start the coffee and join him downstairs. Bob, me and the dogs, hanging out in the basement, watching the sunrise, him catching a few more winks, me typing away. This time of year, with no leaves on the trees, we have incredible views of sunrises. The colors of the sunrise seem more saturated, in direct proportion to the cold. This is when Bob gets his best sleep, after a fitful night. It finally catches up to him, around 7 a.m., and he cashes out almost as soon as I join him. I type away for a while, and when the intense pinks and oranges of the sunrise give way to clear daylight, and the dogs start bugging me relentlessly to be fed, we head upstairs to leave Bob sleep in peace.

It's hard, to be so close to Bob, in the same house, but not able to do a thing for him. I mean, if I had to help him shower, or get dressed, or get his medications lined up every day, I'd feel more useful, like I'm really a partner in this this crisis with him, but he's able-bodied enough to do those things himself. Besides, trying to assist with those things usually hinders more than helps, as it's too easy to bump his leg or pull too hard on a sock or do something to hurt him. Unintentionally, of course, but hurt him nonetheless.

So, I stay busy, puttering around the house. Made guacamole, roasted cauliflower and carrot soup and a big ol' cabbage-ground beef-rice hotdish yesterday, to have some things ready to eat for whenever the mood strikes. Cleaned out a bunch of stuff in the freezer in the process—used up some frozen veggies from the CSA (community supported agriculture) we'd joined this summer. Bob's been threatening for months now to go to town on the freezer some day when I'm out of the house, just throw stuff out for the woodland animals. I think I was a Depression survivor in a former life; I have our small freezer stocked so full that you have to unpack and repack everything in it, just to get a can of o.j. Now, there's a little more breathing room, thanks to my cooking frenzy yesterday.

And, I'm proud to say I can pad my resumé with "filling bird feeders," "hauling 70 lb. bags of sand and 50 lb. bags of softener salt home from Menard's" and "uncorking bubbly" as newly acquired skills of late. All these little things that were "Bob's Job" around the joint, things that I barely took note of, until now. Now, I get to do them. Not have to, mind you. I get to. Makes me feel useful, when there's nothing I can do to make him feel better. Unfortunately, it all clashes with my natural lazy nature, as I've said it before. I don't jump up with giddy exuberance, all gung-ho to do these things. My personal law of inertia is, "This redhead at rest will stay at rest, until a crisis forces her to move." Maybe it's just the bitter cold . . .

Bird feeders, I've found, are not a big deal to tend to. Unless it's 20 below. Like it was this morning. Then, I have to take my mittens off to get the feeders off their hooks and then the tops off, to fill with seed. Fingers get mighty cold and mighty useless, mighty quickly in sub-zero temps. But the li'l birdies gotta eat, so traipse through the snow I did, to Bob's feeders. I filled all of them, one with black oil sunflower seeds, another with peanuts and the one hanging on the tree with suet. I shook the sunflower feeder, too, like he told me, so seeds would fall onto the ground below, to enticing the birds and squirrels to the bounty. Then, I filled the heated bird bath on the deck that has sat plugged in but empty for who knows how long. Man, I'd hate to be a bird in this weather. I know, I know, Mother nature has equipped them with all they need to deal with this weather—they've been doing it since God was a kid—yet I can't help but feel for our feathered (and furry) friends that gotta eke out a livin' in this weather.

Picking up sand and salt from Menard's isn't an issue, either, when there's a strapping young lad available at the store to toss the bags in the car for me. One bag of salt is for the water softener, the sand and other bag of salt is for the driveway. There's a trash can outside the garage filled with a mix of sand and salt to sprinkle on the driveway when it's icy. It was getting low, thus my trip to Menard's. Bob had mentioned getting more sand and salt after the Christmas storm; I recalled it was getting low, so off to Menard's I went (and to Target, and Petco, and the post office, with Rocco in tow; trying to get him used to the car. He made it almost all the way home, before he threw up all over a bag of salt and his leash).

It's when I got home and had to get load of salt and sand out of the car that presented a challenge. I had visions of me laid up next to Bob, with a hernia, after trying to get those bags out of the car. Just as I was starting to internally fret over this, I recall Bob saying, "Back the car up to the trash can, slide a bag of sand to the edge of the back end and cut it open, so it pours right into the trash can." Funny. It worked just that easily. If we had been members of the Donner party, you can bet I would have been one of the eaten.

After my success with the sand bags, I decided to celebrate with a glass of the cava that I got but didn't open for our NYE night. Yet another obstacle: I've never opened a bottle of bubbly. With a husband in the wine biz, I've no need for such skill. Hell, even stepping into the liquor store to purchase said bubbly is a foreign experience for me. So once again, Bob gave me explicit instructions about how to hold the bottle, to point it at a 45 degree angle away from anyone or anything, and to keep my thumb on the cork as I twist the bottle to ease it open. "Twist the bottle?" I ask. "Don't I just ease the cork off with my hands and let it fly?"

"God no," he said. "People don't realize how much pressure is in those bottles—you could kill someone if you're not careful. Just do what I said: keep your thumb on top of the cork the whole time and slowly twist the bottle. It'll open. You'll see." Maybe I don't want a glass of bubbly that bad. But once again, I did what I was told. And pop! It was that easy, once again. The anticipation was worse than the actual act, like opening a can of Pilsbury croissants (though I'm pretty certain you can't potentially kill anyone with one of those). Cheers.

Last night, I went out with my sisters, Mom, Jade and Amelia for Jill's birthday. We went to Fujiya for sushi. Despite the bitter cold, downtown St. Paul was hopping, a Wild game drawing crowds to the capitol city. The sushi was lovely, I had my first glass of sake (loved it), the company entertaining (thanks Miss Amelia!) and brought some take-home sushi for Bob.

I try to maintain some semblance of a normal life, in the midst of all this. Getting together with friends and family. Walking the dogs, running errands. Bob tells me to do these things, to take care of myself, too, to not just sit around and wait on him hand and foot. At the end of the day, we're still husband and wife, still have our little arguments, still live a subtext of normalcy, in the midst of what is happening to him. I get pissed when I come home and find a pile of dishes on the counter when the dishwasher is empty. Seriously, he can't take a minute to put these in the dishwasher?; I bang kitchen cupboards, sing to the radio, play with the dogs as I'm cooking. Then, I'll hear the bedroom door slam shut, and realize he'd been upstairs the whole time, trying to sleep. Dammit. But sometimes those glimmers of normalcy, the rituals of a day in the life, are what we need. Little reminders that, in spite of the "c" word that's entered our lives and turned things upside down for now, we will get through.