The best-laid plans…

“All right. Are we doing this?” I ask, hopping up from my yoga mat.

“Now?” replies David, looking up from his laptop. He’s in the midst of programming a new script app.

“Now,” I say, cracking my knuckles.

“Now, it is.” He shoots me a broad grin. 

I race him up the stairs.

My clothes are off before I reach the bedroom. I turn on David’s bedside lamp. Whoa! Too much light! It is WAY too bright in the room. I hunt through my bedside table, discarding items. 

A pencil.

Ear plugs.

Arnica cream.

A colourful chiffon chemise!

I drape the black and floral chemise over the bedside lamp. Now the room is too dark.

I turn on MY bedside lamp. I open my bedside table again. I find a chiffon scarf in blues and greens… that is… too small. Bright light beams from its edges. 

Where are my…? My eyes light on the wardrobe by the window. Atop the wardrobe is a basket holding my belts and scarves. YES! I flourish a pink and yellow floral square scarf – I could easily be mistaken for a 1950s magician… 

This scarf covers the full lamp shade, but its fabric is nearly transparent. The room is, once again, too bright. I artfully drape the first scarf over top of the pink and yellow scarf. Perfect.

David enters the room, doing his best impersonation of a naked Kramer. 

“Just a sec,” I say, grabbing my scarf basket and making my way to the…

Tripping over a pillow at the foot of the bed, I land, arm first, against the wardrobe. Foot first too, apparently, because my big toe is now yelling at me.

“GAH!” I yell.

“Are you okay?” David asks.

“Yeah, yeah…” I limp towards the wardrobe, depositing the basket back on top. I look down to my arm where there is an abundance of scraped skin.

“What did you do?”

“I tripped and ran into the wardrobe.” 

David shoots me a concerned glance, cataloguing my person.

“No blood!” I happily report. I start pulling the scraped skin off my forearm.

“Is it broken?”

Tentatively, I circle my wrist. Sore, but not unbearable. “I don’t think so.” I’m now pulling off more skin near my elbow. How many parts of my body made contact with the wardrobe?

“Do you need an ice pack?”

I start to shake my head, but then test out my wrist again. “Yeah, maybe.” Admitting to an injury is not my strong suit. “Yes please.”

“I’ve got this!” David runs down the stairs.

“Don’t FALL!” I yell. 

The laughter starts even before he leaves the room. By the time he gets back, I am having a full-blown giggle attack.  As I velcro the cold pack to my wrist, my giggles turn into snorts.   

“We can recover from this,” says David.

“Can we, though?”

“Yes,” he says. “We are doing this.”

“We’d better put some music on then. I’m gonna need a distraction.”

“Music! Yes! Great idea!!” He swipes on his phone screen. Smooth jazz… with a LOT of saxophone.

“Too much sax,” we both say at the same time, before both dissolving into laughter once more.

“We could always just put Love Over Gold on,” I suggest. “No! Wait! Jackie Gleason’s Music for Lovers!”

David’s eyebrows tell me that I’m crazy.

“No, I’m sure that it can work! We can pretend that we’re Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr from An Affair to Remember.“

The next few minutes are spent doing terrible impersonations of Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.

David leans in for a kiss. 

“Wait! Wait! No passionate kissing! I still have that canker sore!” I push on the canker with my tongue, distending my bottom lip, indicating said canker’s location.

“Noted.”

My lips twitch. “Maybe tonight isn’t…”

“ARGH!” David grabs his leg.

“What? What is it?”

“Charlie horse! Charlie horse!” David massages his calf.

I bite my lips, but can’t stop a snort from escaping. “Do you need me to…”

“No. Nope. I’m good.”  By this time, he’s laughing again.

Our laughter crescendos. We’re both wiping at our eyes before we taper off into calming breaths. Our eyes meet. 

And I don’t know if it was the Jackie Gleason playlist, or the mood lighting, but we regrouped.

Twenty-four and 10/12 years of marriage – never a dull moment.