Sunday was a big day for us with a lot on the schedule. The wife's father has recently retired (involuntarily due to some crappy health problems, but happily not due to any morbid health problems), and so there was a surprise party being thrown for him. Kind of a big deal. Also kind of a big deal was later that day the funeral for an old friend of the wife's who had finally succumbed after a long and fairly gruesome battle with cancer.

I was getting dressed after showering when the wife materialized before me. "I'm sick, my boy!" she wailed, and then dissolved into huge sobs.

Now, I am not a strong man under normal circumstances. I am exponentially less strong when my wife is in tears; it completely hollows out my heart to see her cry. I know this was not about me, at the time--I'm just saying. I will put on an Insane Clown Posse CD and fuck a monkey in a tutu if I think it will cheer her out of tears. (So maybe I'm not always weak and ineffectual. Just mostly. Good to know!) But there was nothing to be done here, really--she was sick.

"I almost passed out in the shower," she snuffled into my shoulder. "And then I threw up! I threw up twice!" Then she pulled herself away from me to go throw up. I couldn't help but notice that she was fully dressed, and also that she was throwing up, since the bathroom door was still open. "I'm sorry," she said miserably. "I could have shut the door."

There's a lot going on here, so let's take a moment to consider a few things. First of all, she nearly passed out in the shower. (She had showered first; when I got out of bed, she was sitting on the floor of our bedroom, rooting around in the closet. I didn't know then that she was sick, and dimly dismissed the kind of weird fact that she was sitting on the floor. Because she was dizzy.) (In fact, she later told me that she had basically crawled to get to the shower for fear of falling down.) After that, she threw up a couple times. Most people would be calling the fight at this point--God knows I would be. However, after nearly passing out a couple times, heaving a few times, she then--after rooting around in the closet (on the floor), managed to go ahead and get completely dressed for the day. Then--then!--she apologized to me, her husband for inconsiderately forgetting to shut the bathroom door.

It wasn't until she realized that she possibly couldn't walk without falling down--and, you know, the uncontrollable vomiting--that maybe she didn't have it in her to go anywhere that day, and she cried, because not only did she feel bad, now she felt really bad.

So I did my part: I held her and said meaningless things. "What can you do?" I said. "It's not your fault!" I cried. I'll cut off my arm with a chopsaw if you want! I thought. "I have the baclava!" she sobbed into my shirt. (Explanation: she was bringing the baclava.) "Fuck the baclava!" I declared.

I still think this was the right thing to say, but I can't really be sure, since that's when she vomited again. I ran around in circles for a while, babbling things like "call!" and "your mother!" and "your brother!" and "Insane Clown Posse!" and "baclava!" while she reclined grayly on our bathroom floor, looking truly horrible and spent. I did finally manage to get her brother on the phone to explain the situation. "I've got this baclava!" I screamed frantically. (I don't know why this became such a focus.) But he was already miles away. I hooted like an insensate asshole for a while longer before hanging up, figuring that once again, I had sounded kind of like a dipshit in a conversation with her family members. (This is not about me, I thought again.)

I took care of her the rest of the day, if you can define "taking care of" as "fetching 7-Up and avoiding making loud noises." She returned to bed and slept until 3:00, finally emerging with a noticeably ginger step. I piled blankets on her so that she looked like a miserable fungus.

At 5:00 she sent me off to my favorite bar that I mention too often--I think she wanted to moan plangently to herself for a while and maybe catch some more sleep. I vowed to also procure chicken soup.

I think we can agree that I am a hero.

At the bar, the regulars all greeted me and asked about the wife. "She has a stomach virus," I said. "Or maybe food poisoning." (It's not food poisoning.) "Or a Gypsy curse. I don't fucking know."

"Does she need pot?" asked O., one of the regulars. I blinked at him. "For the nausea. It helps me when I'm sick. I can go home and get some!"

W., the wonderful bartender, offered to send me home with a "to-go cup" of Fernet Blanca, a noted digestif (it is also notably fucking disgusting, but his heart was certainly in the right place; Fernet Blanca tastes like Azazel's filthy choad). Note that this is terrifically illegal.

O. was still pressing. "Do you want my phone number? I'll bring you some pot." He thought for another moment. "By the way, we should go out to dinner together." I declined the pot, but said we'd love to go to dinner sometime, probably when the wife wasn't vomiting. There's nothing the wife and I enjoy more than going out to dinner with gay interracial couples we don't know that well, but seem harmless, and hey, they are moving anyway. And really--he was offering to deliver some antiemetic pot to us.

This is why I talk about this bar so much.

I procured the soup. The wife is feeling much better today.

I assume this is due to my not playing any Insane Clown Posse.

(This is not about me.)