if

fantasizing about illness and marriage

Eric is sick. He’s got something like a bad allergy attack and the flu. He never gets sick, maybe just once a year, so I don’t really know how to make him feel better. He just keeps sleeping. I buy juice.

It’s different around the house with him sick. I get tired. I start feeling sick as well. I felt the same way when Lillith was ill. I stayed home quite a bit with her. I couldn’t stay home today with Eric, but my thoughts are with him.

Hey, did you ever go back and check who added themselves to your high school? There’s a lot more listed now. You have to register and everything.

Nobody posts anything in the Get Real Forum at Mighty Big TV and it makes me feel like all of that work was for nothing. I can’t be the only one getting joy out of mocking that show.

I’m always happy when Evany posts something new.

This is turning into a weblog. I didn’t mean to. Not trying to step on Kim’s turf.

Hmmm…

Have I mentioned that I’m always sick? That’s what Eric says. There’s always something wrong with me. My parents used to say the same thing. Now, it’s not that I’m a hypochondriac or anything. I really do have these bruises or sniffles or whatever. It’s just that they happen so often I no longer get any sympathy. Like right now– my stomach muscles and arm muscles are sore from Sunday’s rehearsal. My knees are bruised from last week’s show. There’s something in my eye. I think because I draw attention to the little things when I say something like, “I’m having chest pains,” people just assume I’m freaking out over something little. But really, what if one day I get a chest pain and no one cares? I think I say all of these things out loud so that someday someone “in the know” will overhear and say, “I recall you saying you had a weird tingling in your elbow two weeks ago and now you say that your head hurts? I’d go have that checked out. It could be emythrosytotosis. It’s very rare, but you seem to have the symptoms.”

For some reason when I was little I thought it was very glamorous to be sick. I thought that you really could find out who loved you by who stood around your hospital bed with teary eyes and balled-up Kleenex and held your hand and tried to make you laugh. The truest loves were the ones who stayed by your bed when you slept. Now I think about hospitals and think, “I don’t have the time to go lie down for a while,” and hope to stay well. But sometimes that little girl fantasy comes back, and I wonder who would stay by my hospital bed.

Eric and I have been talking in “ifs” again lately. This is not because we are planning anything, but I think we warn each other in case one person is thinking something. “If we ever get married…” is usually how this sentence begins. It has been ending lately with, “could we have the two Matt’s be the emcees of the reception?” “Okay, well if your friends are going to host the reception, can I have my friends be the band?” “Yeah, if I can get my friends to do their boy-band song during the ceremony.”

If we did get married, we are going to have one hilarious wedding. I don’t think that if we got married that our ceremony should be so serious. Sure, sure, the “I dos” and everything should be sincere, but the stuff in between should be a bit looser. If my ceremony is going to be filled with comics, then I want the ceremony to reflect the laughter in our lives. I’d like jokes and stories and silly songs. I want people to laugh. I’m having Chuy and his brother play the mouth-trumpet. I want the Monks to perform a Wedding Sketch. I’d love some sort of open mike. Karaoke. Elaborate dance numbers from Jeff and Andy. I want people to walk away saying, “I’ve never had so much fun at a wedding before.”

So, to warn each other, Eric and I have been speaking in “ifs.” I just want to make sure he knows what he’s getting into.

Maybe that’s why he got sick.

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