New week, new virus

Sunday

My vacation ended and I returned to work last Wednesday. It was a quiet day. Eve was out recovering from the stomach flu that she came down with on New Year’s Day. A lot of other people were still out, some using vacation and others sick. I stayed close to my office with the headphones on working on the closed captioning for Henry’s videos.

Eve was back at work on Thursday, and we had lunch together at the office. We decided we needed to do something to bring people together to try to improve morale. We found out just before Christmas that one group had decided not to go to the holiday party, then one did because he felt guilted by the second invitation that went out. That’s a whole lot of WTF, Eve and I agreed. Still, we think there’s room to improve overall morale before next Christmas, and we plan to do it through lunch. We haven’t worked out the details…

Blaine came over Thursday night. We had dinner and spent a couple of hours sorting the boxes of letters. I want to put everything in chronological order before we start reading.

For a lawyer, Blaine is surprisingly impatient and easily distracted when it comes to methodical work. “I’ll just read this one…” he kept saying, snatching random letters.

I’d point at the shoebox I’ve turned into a filing system. “File it.”

After awhile he became interested in a box of newspapers and spent quite a bit of time reading me the WWII news of the day. That was interesting, especially a few articles about the failure of the battle for Monte Cassino. My dad was part of that. His letters home only confirm it was bad.

Even with Blaine’s help (and he was as helpful as distracting), it took a long time to sort through a small number of letters. The family had a habit of writing across the postmarks the date they responded, and I’ve never seen so many smudged, blurry postmarks. That’s saying something because I have a couple hundred family letters that I’ve done this for. At least my family dated their letters; this family uses “Friday evening” and whatnot to head the letters.

Blaine and I planned to work on this over the weekend. That plan changed on Friday when I started feeling crummy at work and decided to go home early. I let Blaine know and told him I’d send a text after I’d had a nap.

The next time he heard from me: Stomach flu. Save yourself.

His response: May be too late.

And that has been our weekend.

Allison, bless her thoughtfulness, dropped off care packages at both of our houses. Gatorade, really good chicken noodle soup and, brilliantly, a package of toothbrushes. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to include toothbrushes, but talk about something that should be discarded frequently at a time like this.

We’re both doing much better today. Our appetites aren’t back yet but images of food on TV no longer disgust us. I’m staying home until I’m 1,000 percent better, and I don’t care how many days it takes. I’m tired of catching every germ that passes.

On this day one year ago, Blaine and I had our first date. (I have decided it was indeed a date and am going to go with it as if there were never a question.) To celebrate it, Blaine had arranged to surprise me with an afternoon visit to the winery we went to last year. He’d created some kind of romantic package that was to include wine and dinner and an over-the-top chocolate dessert. When he told me this over the phone today, he added, “There were going to be flowers.”

That poor man and flowers. It never goes right for him.

It is the first time a man in my life has gone to the trouble to remember an anniversary of any kind, let alone plan a surprise. It is the thought, the effort and the affection behind the plan that means the world to me.

Also, it was nice not to have to change out of stretchy pants and an old tissue-soft flannel shirt. I didn’t tell him this part, only the first part.

Besides, we had a wonderful New Year’s Eve. We dressed up and went to dinner at a pretty restaurant. There were drinks beforehand and flirting that was helped along by the fact that it takes long legs to sit comfortably in a dress on a bar stool and my short legs necessitated inelegant shifting. I kept bumping Blaine’s legs with my knees. He let his hand drop onto my leg and opened a then-and-now conversation. Then being this time a year ago. Then, I didn’t show up to Eve and Paul’s New Year’s Eve party which thwarted Blaine’s plan to ask me out (a fact I didn’t know). Now… Well, obviously I no longer avoid him.

Dinner was delicious and unrushed. After, we decided we should stop at Maggie and Terry’s for a little while. We arrived at Blaine’s well before midnight. He turned on the Christmas tree lights and some music, and we danced in the open space between the dining room and living room.

We’ve been dancing like this fairly regularly since John and Kim first encouraged us to take lessons. I can’t envision my left feet doing such a thing, but I haven’t minded Blaine trying to teach me. At some point we gave up on teaching/learning and just do what we can. I’ve actually gotten much better at following his lead. Mostly, I’m in it for the feel of Blaine’s hands on my back, his shirt against my cheek, his warmth through the fabric and the scent of cologne and soap that may always cause my head to fill with sparks.

We have come a long way in a year. It has been fun, interesting, beautiful and occasionally scary. It has been effortless in the sense that everything has moved us closer together, but some of those things have been individually tough. I’ve had to work through a lot of insecurities about men and relationships and Blaine has had his own journey to go through.

Neither of us knew what would happen. Early on we hoped it would last another week and then it became something we wanted to go on and on, and finally there was a point of no return that neither of us spoke of until we were dancing to midnight.

So, healthy may not describe the way 2018 ended and 2019 started but happy, very happy fits.