My experience, all these years in the ad business, is that work comes to a screeching halt after Thanksgiving and the period from mid-December to mid-January is a dead zone. It's just one of those things you prepare for as best you can. Last year was particularly brutal as work didn't really start ramping up again until mid-February.
So imagine my surprise when we passed Thanksgiving and not only did the work not slow down, it actually kind of picked up. Partially it was the result of diversifying over the past year, but part of it was just plain dumb luck. Either way, I'm not complaining. This week, however, things have pretty much come to a dead stop. It isn't surprising since a lot of ad related businesses actually shutter for the week. And to be honest, I'm a little relieved.
Because I'm sick.
I never get sick. In the 2+ years we've lived here I've never been sick. And before that I can't even remember the last time. But there's evidently a bug going around and it seems as if half the town has the flu and it hit me last week.
It started last Monday with a sore throat and by Wednesday had morphed into a pretty nasty cough. Afraid of keeping the boyfriend awake and disturbing his beauty sleep, I graciously offered to sleep in the Guest Room.
He shot me a withering look.
Oh...riiiight..... how could I forget.
The Guest Room is for show only.
Why we even have a guest room is beyond me. In all my adult years I've only ever had one overnight guest. Not counting one night stands, of course. In the ten years we've been together we've never had one. If people wouldn't visit us when we lived in Bel Air, what are the chances someone will visit us in Bakersfield? Zero.
But that didn't matter, it was a prerequisite for buying a house. And once we moved in, decorating it became a priority. The boyfriend did a fabulous job and did the whole room in a "Hollywood Regency" style, all black and gold and crystal.
And it will never be used.
"But what if your parents want to come up and visit?" he said.
That's fucking unlikely. They did come visit us for a weekend shortly after we moved here, out of pity more than anything else. On that visit they stayed in a nearby Comfort Suites. When we were in escrow on the house, I mentioned to my mother that we'd now have a guest room for them if they came up again.
"Now why on earth would we do that, dear?" my mom replied. At their age why waste a weekend in Bako. That's two days you'll never get back again. As much as they love the both of us, they will never come back here.
The boyfriend then prattled off a list of potential visitors, people who've never visited us in ten years and many we don't even speak to anymore. It was all beside the point. The Guest Room is really nothing more than a display.
So back to my sleeping arrangements...
With the Guest Room taken out of contention, I offered to sleep on the couch in the family room.
What I was expecting the boyfriend to say was something along the lines of...
"Oh Honey, you can't do that! The couch is right under the huge gaping hole in the ceiling. There's a constant draft and that side of the house is a good 10 degrees colder. If you sleep there you'll get pneumonia. No, you sleep here, with me. We'll be OK."
Instead, what he said was "There are extra blankets in the linen closet."
Needless to say, the next day my cold was infinitely worse.
But now, it appears I'm finally getting over it. But paradoxically, I've now entered the most frightening and dangerous phase of the disease. The phase where I've given it to the boyfriend.
He's been insufferable since he first got a sore throat on Monday. When he isn't acting out various deathbed scenes, he's just downright angry and nasty. You would think I had spiked his drink, poisoned his food or surreptitiously injected him with syringe of swine flu. Just about the only time he talks to me is to inform me I need to rub his feet/back/neck because of "what I did to him".
I'm just hoping he gets over it in the next couple of days. Starting the New Year like this doesn't bode well for the future.
