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I am typing this on my iPad at 3:45 a.m.  Lloyd and I fell asleep on the sofa around 7, and I woke up to cats running around me at 3. That’s a full 8 hours, I guess, so we’re good. I am up in bed now and have banished the animals to the first floor. It’s raining (thank you, God!), so maybe that’s what’s freaking them out.

Tonight my kids sing at church, and then we are having some snacks afterward. I have things I need to do – certainly not a whole day’s worth, but I’ll be agitated the whole day because there is Something Going On later.

Ok, trying to go back to sleep. What are you doing today?

Blah. I got Lloyd’s barfing germs. Rough night. Rough day.

I hope you’ve finished your breakfast already. This is gonna get graphic.

I can’t remember the last time Lloyd has had a stomach sickness. Usually he gets things like sore throats or head colds that go on for years. Barfing is exceptionally rare. Well, he must have passed something other than the peace at church Sunday morning, because Sunday night he was a mess.

At dinner he said his stomach hurt, but I was serving him Mystery Soup, so I was pretty sure it was just a ploy to get out of eating it. He ate a few grapes and conked out on the sofa. Around 9:30 he got up to head to the bathroom and said, “I’m going to throw up”, but he didn’t. I sent him up to bed with a cooking pot with a little water in it. I don’t know what the water is for, but when I was a kid that’s what my mom did when I felt nauseous, so I’m not messing with tradition.

I immediately had to pour the water out, remembering that I live with idiot bathtub-water-drinkers.

Around 10:30 Lloyd was moving restlessly and breathing funny. He got up, went in the bathroom and

PUUUUUKKKKED

and

PUUUUUUKKKKKED

and

PUUUUUUUKKKKKED

and

PUUUUUUUKKKKED

and

Puked.

He doesn’t like comforting when he’s sick, so when I heard the first hurl I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water for him. I stood outside the bathroom door until he was done then quietly said, “I have a glass of water for you.”

“Yeah,” he answered weakly, “and a washcloth please.”

It was soooooooooooo gross. I will refrain from telling you the details, well….. any more details, but trust me – it was gross. All I can say is, good thing he shaved most of that beard off.

He stayed home Monday and slept all day on the couch. I had to devise a system to keep the water-drinkin’, glass-knockin’, straw-stealers away from his H20:

So, we bought these rings in Germany. Lloyd’s is a guy’s ring – plain gold band, but the cool thing is that the edges are kind of squared off. It was unique, so that was the choice. My ring is just the same, only smaller.

It’s the middle part of my now-ring:

So, I was happy enough with it. I spent the months before looking at them side by side in the little box. They looked so cool together. When I tried mine on, though, I realized it was a little lacking in the ‘wow’ department when viewed solo.

No matter. I was fine.

We got married. Right before the wedding I drew a dotted line on my ring finger with pen so Lloyd would know which finger to put it on. We went through a year of college and I was fine. During my student teaching experience I had lots of observation time due to a scheduling error, so as I would sit for hours at the desk in the back of the room, I looked at my ring. I had a similar ring that I had bought years ago, and I tried wearing them together. I liked it. It bulked up that skinny band.

We moved to Maryland. We were young and stupid and the internet had not been invented yet, so I spent an inordinate amount of time obsessing about my ring. I had two cheap silver-ish earrings that were the same size as the ring, so I tried putting one on each side.

(re-enacted here with Lloyd’s ring)

I liked it. I liked it a lot. It really beefed up that puny little band. I strongly hinted that this would be a cool thing to do. I strongly hinted often. I strongly hinted more. (It was early in our relationship, and I had not learned how to properly strongly hint, i.e. – do it myself.) Nothing was happening.

Then came a moment that I am not proud of. We had walked through a local mall where there was a jewelry store, and I must have strongly hinted as we walked by, but Lloyd said nothing. As we left the mall, I remember stopping in the entry, bunching up my fists and bursting into tears. “What is wrong with you?” Lloyd asked in shock and fear. With shame, I remember that I sniveled like a little kid, “I just *sniff* really want *sniff* my ring to have *sniff* some other rings soldered onto *sniff* it.”

“Oh…..kay……” Lloyd said cautiously, fearing for his safety. Then he did nothing. Grrrrrr.

Now you should know that in our tiny little apartment, I would take off my wedding ring to wash the dishes. (I don’t know what I was worried about.) Several days after my hissy fit he came into the kitchen as I was cleaning up after lunch and said, “I’m really thirsty for some 7-Up. I’m going to go buy some.”

He was gone for hours, and when he came home he was holding a child-sized cup of 7-Up from McDonalds.

Oh, Lloyd from the Past. You thought you were so sneaky. I looked at the cup and said, “Where’s my ring?”

He feigned surprise, then showed astonishment at my powers of deduction. Long story short, ring was at the jewelers.

And the moral of the story, children? Throwing a fit totally works.

Happy Birthday, Mark!

As we were having breakfast this morning, one of the girls asked, “Mrs. Sommerer, why don’t you have a pretty ring?” (I assumed she was not insulting my actual ring, but was curious as to why I didn’t have a diamond.) “I just wanted a plain ring,” I answered. The children then proceeded to tell me bout their mom’s fancy rings. “My mom’s ring is pretty.”

Hmmmmm…. maybe they were insulting my ring.

When Lloyd and I got engaged it was kind of a secret. He proposed kind of spur-of-the-moment (whole other story), but it was November and we wanted to tell our families in person first, and that would have to wait until Christmas. I told him that I didn’t want a ring for two reasons:

First, I am very cheap and thought that it wouldn’t be a good use of money. (Not that he was hurting – detasseling had made him wealthy.)

Second, and most importantly, I am clumsy. A hard gemstone on my hand would have guaranteed repeated scratches on my face. No thanks.

After we told our families, our college choir went on tour for New Year’s break. We thought it would be funny to get a fake ring, so we went to WalMart and bought a HUGE fake diamond ring. As we announced the big news, I loved watching the reaction of people’s faces – a bewildered yet kind smile that said, “That poor, sweet, dippy girl – she thinks it’s real.”

It was especially funny when we went to the beach and after making a sand castle I said, “Hey! My ring is all scratched up!” You could feel the tension as friends wondered, “Should we tell her?”

Hee hee hee.

Oh! I almost forgot the rest of the story! We were on another choir tour in Germany and realized that since we were going to get married in three months we should probably buy rings. We went to a shop where the salesperson spoke English and picked ours out. My original ring is just the little band in the middle…. Y’know, I’m going to save this story for another time. It will need a drawing.

I am typing this as I sit on my sofa watching Neat Freaks on TLC. This show is nuts. It is all about people who obsessively clean their homes for hours and hours and still don’t think they are clean. I feel so sorry for them, because this is obviously a mental disorder. They love for their house to be clean, but it’s never clean enough. That must be a strange kind of personal hell.

I remember reading Orson Scott Card’s final book in the Ender’s Game series (science fiction) and there was a planet that regarded OCD people as ones who were actually communicating with the gods. It followed the story of one young girl who was ‘most favored’, but her OCD behavior was to trace every single line on a hardwood floor with her eyes,and if she lost the line, she had to start over. The description was so, so sad.

This has been an interesting hour. I feel so stressed for these people, but I have no desire to clean my kitchen sink with bleach and a toothpick. In that respect, it’s no Hoarders.