With so many changes happening in our lives we've decided to deal with them head on. Yes, we're heading on into mutual depression. With as much television, take-out food and fantasies of escape as possible. Our changes include selling our house, disability retirement, entering serious middle-age, building another house, two dogs, mandatory pharmaceuticals, dysfunctional families and lots and lots of wine. I do try to handle all this change in a mature way. I started a yoga class. A meditation class. I even went to an aerobics class which was into kick-boxing and I kick-boxed while staring the whole time at the exit doors that said: No Exit: Alarms will sound. Hmmm, I thought. Sounds like the story of my whole life.

My husband created a downstairs bed on the floor for days he just isn't into walking up the stairs of our temporary rental house. So I come home from work to find him ensconced on a blow-up mattress, sleeping bag and 2 dogs on either side like some Pharoh King. He is unwashed, unbrushed and hasn't gone outside all day. He's creating a new version of Agoraphobia. Leave only when necessary. And making sure it's never necessary.

I just experience utter, abject despair. On a daily basis. 

He texts mainland family members during the day.  I'm sure they're like: doesn't this man have anything ELSE to do? Sadly, the answer is yes. Yes he does. But he's too overwhelmed to do it. So he lies on his mattress watching bad T.V., texting and calling me at various intervals during the day to ask: "What's up?" Um. Nothing since the last time you called. 

His eyebrows are out of control as are his toenails but we can't find the toenail clippers and are sucking ennui so badly that every time I go to Longs I forget to buy them. But I manage to pick up Cup-O-Noodles and ketchup to keep us alive so we don't get our faces eaten off by our dogs. The Blue Heeler would watch over our dead bodies. The chihuahua/terrier would eat our faces off in a New York minute.  While my husband turns into Howard Hughes before my eyes I watch myself fall into the abyss of middle-age and weep. Inwardly. When I'm at work.

Weight gain. Bloating. Anxiety. Check. Hot flashes. Memory loss. Irritability. Check. Eyesight going to hell. Check. Which is why when I was brushing my teeth Tuesday morning I had to lean in really close to see...coffee stains ALL over my lower teeth. Gross!! Let's just add insult to injury. I'm sure I'm going to grow a mustache any day now. So I went to Longs and bought hydrogen peroxide and baking powder which is the prescription for taking stains off the teeth, forgetting once more the toenail clippers for Howard back at home.

As I scrubbed teeth this morning with the new paste I wondered to myself: will I have to quit my day job in order to spend 8 hours a day staving off the insults of middle-age? But then the peroxide started burning so badly I thought I was going to die and it took my mind off of my other concerns. Surely Emergency Rooms have seen their share of women in their forties with baking soda stuck to their gums and peroxide poisoning.  

We bicker and argue about everything, for sport. How to use the computer. My job. Errands. Church. Travel arrangements. Airplanes. Dogs. Family. I feel daily as if I'm going to have a heart attack. Every day I wonder why I haven't stroked out from the stress of it all. And now I'm more convinced than ever that cell phones do cause brain cancer so my sons generation, who turned to texting, will be saved. And they'll bury an entire generation  who were too naive to realize holding radiation to their head every day probably wasn't the best idea. But hey. We never claimed to be Einstein!

So we sit on the bed and watch T.V. I read books and magazine. He texts. We discuss our future as if it will finally happen though we don't put too much faith in anything these days. Watching Seinfeld or Cops has become a highlight of our days. We rarely think of the useful, ambitious people we used to be. That might be too painful. Instead we eat from Taco Del Mar, curse the neighbor who owns and uses a drum and fend off despair with burritos and chardonnay.

I should go do laundry now. Yeah, we're laughing about that. As if!