I’m REALLY looking forward to lunch.  It’s eight o’clock and I’ve been here for an hour already, and all I can think about is lunch.  Steph and PJ are taking me to lunch.  Sushi.  I’m very excited.  Really looking forward to it.

So.  Well.  You know, I thought being sick with your significant other was fun and cute and all that.  For the first few days, it is.  But then, after a week of sleepless nights, you start to get REALLY cranky.  And God bless him, Bryan is EXHAUSTED.  It’s easy for me to forget that he’s now stretching himself between not two jobs, but two DEPARTMENTS.  And yesterday was a BAAAAAD day for me, in many vast and sundry ways (and believe it or not, they were bad enough to the point that I don’t want to talk about them on here.. and that’s probably saying something), so when I got home, I really wanted an easy, simple night.  Well, I got it.

I cooked a pretty nice meal of italian sausages and shells-n-cheese.  Gourmet, I know.  Don’t be jealous of my Emeril abilities.  He came home and ate about an hour later than I did, because he had rehearsal (for the umpteenth night this week).  Then we popped in Bill Cosby, watched about half an hour of it, and he looked at me and said, “Are you ready to go to bed yet?”

It was ten till eight, people.  As in, 7:50 p.m.  Central Standard.  I asked if he was joking.

He was not.

So he napped on my lap while I perused a magazine of fashion I will never own, and finally, at eight-thirty, I consented to heading to bed.  I sat there, furious.  After the day I’d had, I DESERVED a little help.  I deserved someone to talk to me about my day.  I deserved someone to rub my back while I cried.  I was freaking 25 — nay, not even that yet — and we were going to bed.  AT EIGHT THIRTY.  Only after I’d denied him an earlier bedtime.

He was asleep the minute his head hit the pillow.

I stewed for another hour.  Silently.

Around eleven o’clock, the coughing fit started.  I woke up to find him perched on the couch, in the living room, coughing up a lung.  “I didn’t want to wake you,” he said, in between spasms.  “I’m so sorry you’re up.”  And I melted.  This man was working his ass off, in a program that I had pressed him to support, and his body was just giving up on him.  I was mad at myself for being mad earlier. (It was a theme for yesterday.. just being mad.  At anything.)

I got him some medicine and he came back to bed.  These fits hit him every three hours.  I’d get up with him, we’d remedicate, he’d sit and hawk up what he could until he could breathe unincumbered again, then we’d lay back down.  I’d rub Vicks on his chest, in honor of MaMa, who believes Vicks can cure anything. (Similar to Windex in the Big Fat Greek Wedding.  She suggested it for my rib pain, people.) Around three, I woke up to stress myself out over the unspoken part of my bad day and couldn’t make myself sleep until I’d sat down and written everything out, as if emptying my head was the only way there’d be room enough to let sleep in.  I laid back down around 4:30.

My alarm went off reliably at 5:40 am.  I didn’t hear it.  Bryan rolled over, agitated, and said, “Would you shut that thing off already?  It’s keeping me up.”  And I was mad.  At him.  Again.  Keeping HIM up?

… I’m REALLY looking forward to lunch.  I promise to be in a better mood by then.