Exposure

I'm in love with the house. Or, more accurately, we're in love with the house. And the lake, and the landlady, and Robin and Juno and the sunlight on the rocky patch of garden, and....just about everything except the peachy-off-terracotta shade of the bathroom walls and the fact that I, a relatively competent human-being and outdoorsman (gender-nonspecificity is key, here) of 31 years although apparently a mediocre water-skier at best, just about damn near died of hypothermia last night. In the middle of fucking civilization! In a house, in fact. I was not amused.

The good news is, I lived to feel like a complete dork, no matter what Robin says. A word of advice, here, if I may break the fourth wall and address the unseen audience, a writerly convention which bugs thoroughly the snot out of me at most times. Do not, under any circumstances, fall prey to hypothermia. At all. Ever. It's a really lame way to spend an evening, plus the men in your life will divide up your supper portion of amazingly succulent charcoal-grilled ribs and feed what little they can't eat to your dog. I can't believe I missed ribs. So mad. Instead I got to lie on Robin's bed, shiver uncontrollably, ride out a fever of 102+, hallucinate a little bit, take a bath, drink peppermint tea, and threaten to vomit a couple of times. They tell me that once the bath was drawn I became much more fun; possibly also they were feeling less like they were going to have to explain my demise to my boss tomorrow. ("Well, everything was fine until we started watching the documentary on Liberia, then she just got up and her head started spinning around on her neck....")

So the upshot of all this was I got to take a five-hour nap today, another supreme late-summer day. I also didn't get any coffee for breakfast. (he got his delivered bedside, the way I used to.)
Still, it was a wonderful day. Even being so horribly ill I was grateful. Grateful that the two men who are closest to me (who aren't named "dad") were there to take care of me, grateful that they knew what to do and were fairly amusing doing it ("Room service!" Robin yodeled cheerfully as they brought the sheets up out of the dryer to make up the bed.) and afterwards told me not to feel like a dork. Advice I, of course, listened to as always.

But can I tell you how much I want this house to become a reality? So much so I'm afraid to want it. Afraid when I told my boyfriend how much. Attachment is not my friend. Grrr. Attachment pretends to be my friend but then leaves giant abrasions when I have to drag myself away time and time again. Clinging ivy. He simply won't let himself focus on anything except the orthopod.

My, isn't this turning into a self-indulgent little bit of multimedia? Tomorrow on "No this is not a french melodrama or a Jefferson Airplane song"

I must go back to bed. How much energy it takes, to not freeze to death.