2/22/11 Barbaric Meo-awp

The cat screams for a half-hour, starting around 5:30, and waking me up from a rather disturbing dream that involved scary noises (a long time nightmare maker for me) and Battlestar Galactica.

She then quiets down and settles in, and I fall back asleep. I wake at 7:00 (my now usual time after changing my sleep schedule to better hang out with Katie, since she's more of a night person) and do my morning ablutions.

Lying in the kitchen, almost dead, legs slowly kicking, first one then another in dying regularity, is a fairly giant roach, which presumably the cat almost killed and over which I'm guessing she stood earlier to give her triumphant, house-waking screech.

2/16/11 bathroom humor

I come back from the bathroom after a particularly difficult session. I'm shaking a little, a little nauseated, chills.

"Well, that sucked," I say, attempting to be discreet.

She looks at me in horror.

"Why would you *tell* me that?" she yells.

2/14/11 no good reason

wake up, the alarm sounds like church bells, with none of the gravitas.

I woke up 2 hours before, so this is what a full night's sleep feels like.

Emotionally fraught for no good goddamn reason, except maybe too much wine last night.

My beautiful wife sleeps next to me and immediately takes over the bed as soon as I leave.

2/4/11 The smell test

Lying in bed after a long day, she buries her face in my chest and inhales deeply, then sits up with a suspicious look on her face.

"You don't smell like you," she says studying my face, leans in, sniffs my neck, my armpit, then sits back again, with a comical look of disappointment on her face.

When she comes back from long trips, or if I've been away for a few days, this happens, and admittedly, we have been ships passing in the night, with her working doubles and me rehearsing.

But I think it might be something else: "Well, I did eat a lot of garlic tonight...."

2/3/11 what goes around comes around

Kid, wearing headphones, bumps me pretty hard as the crowd surges forward in the tunnel between the trains. There's plenty of room around me, but he keeps on trucking, eyes forward, no expression.

I don't break stride, and I don't stretch; I just keep my exact same pace and see where exactly my foot fits right in front of his next step, and sure enough he trips over my foot, not enough to fall, just enough to put a hitch in his getalong.

After the glow of triumph fades and I'm waiting on the subway platform for my train to arrive (after studiously avoiding getting in at the same door as my victim) I feel a twinge of regret, because, after all, how can I expect kindness and forgiveness from others if I can't give it myself?