About a month ago, Western Washington was hit with a wave of beautiful, sunny weather.
The rain stopped, the clouds parted, the Washington mole-people ventured out into the sun with their mole-babies. It was incredible.
However, air conditioning is pretty much nonexistent out here. It's usually freezing, so A/C is obsolete. People open the windows, run a fan or two, and just get through it.
I am psuedo-married to a big guy. Carlos, my huggy-bear, isn't fat, he's just, I don't know, tall and solid:
And heat is his arch enemy.
He insists on running fans and opening windows the second the sun peeks over the horizon. He's bugged me about buying an air conditioner the entire summer. And he can't sleep unless the room temperature has been artificially lowered a few dozen degrees.
Ever since my bronchitis in February,
my lungs have been in a rather sorry state. Any blast of cold air sends me into coughing fits. I wake up hacking. It sounds like something out of the 1800s.
One night, when I saw Carlos setting up the fan in the bedroom, I drew the line.
"Baby, please don't turn on the fan while I'm asleep. My lungs are bad, I'll wake up sick from the cold."
"But I can't sleep when it's hot!"
"And I can't live when I'm dead so please, please promise me you won't turn that on, I'm serious."
*sulks* "fine."
I woke up around six am the following morning, hacking my lungs out. Carlos had turned on the fan.
Since that day, I've had one of the nastiest coughs of my life. The entire month of June was spent doubling over in pain each time I went into a coughing fit. I've coughed up green stuff, yellow stuff, and a troll named Mike. The codeine cough syrup given to me by my doctor hasn't helped, and my body's natural defenses seem to be taking some time off. I'm sick. And I'm mad at Carlos.
At work today, I went into a coughing fit so bad I nearly blacked out. The clients that usually love having me around backed away and suggested I go home...immediately. I barely made it up the hill to my bus stop, and I was coughing so bad when I got there that a hitchhiking meth addict (I'm so serious) asked me if I was going to be alright.
There's no real sick days in my life. I have a job to go to, errands to run, if I don't clean the house, no one else will. The dogs need walking, feeding, I do all the cooking, laundry and grocery shopping. Such is life when you're with anyone in the aviation profession. Your other half works nonstop while you hold down the fort. That movie "Pushing Tin" is scarily accurate.
I've been doing all of this while sick and I've finally reached a boiling point. I know that Carlos wasn't trying to kill me when he switched that fan on, but I know that I asked him not to. I know that he shrugged off my plea and did it anyway. And I know that he hasn't lifted a finger to help me around here since I've been sick.
I'm exhausted. I have a fever. I want someone to just take care of me until I get better. I don't know how to ask these things of my other half and I'm not sure if he knows how to provide it. His only gesture this past month was buying me a bottle of Day-quil and a bottle of Ny-quil when I asked him to.
How do I demand a break when my partner works upwards of 50 hours a week? How can I complain about housework when he's wedged in the belly of a plane fixing stuff all day? Do I even have that right?