The End of Wishing Our Days Away

By CJ and Tammy Renzi

All we could think about was making it to Friday. But by Sunday afternoon, the sirens of anxiety were sounding again. Back to work. Time’s up.
Fun had become a figment of our imagination, our time together a commodity. Diet and exercise – Puh-leeezzzzz.
A health crisis woke us to the misery of our lot. One of us is reduced to a list of symptoms and various discomforts. The other is lost in a silent world of maddening frustration.
What followed our lengthy recovery was an explosion of questions about our mediocre lives. Why were we still working our crappy jobs? Why were our pant sizes increasing with such ease, such nonchalance? Why hadn't we retirement accounts? Why were we watching stupefying TV shows? Why was our marriage part-time when we wanted to be together so badly?

The answers to these questions frame the story of our transformation from merely existing to living, from starving for time together to having all we wanted, from dreary and dull to laughter and fun with a capital F.

Ruthlessly, we began to cut the cancer of mediocrity out of our lives, beating it back with wild-eyed viciousness every time it dared to make so much as a peep. We made a commitment to something loftier than work or obligation. We made a commitment to each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CJ and Tammy Renzi
• Release date: May 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301964673

CJ and Tammy Renzi

Swashbuckling Squirrels, Pirates of Prestidigitation, Sultans of Slappy-face, Quirky Quaffers. Hi, we are CJ and Tammy, and we are totally nuts about each other! Naturally, we completely revamped our lives so we could spend as many moments together as possible. Just like most newlyweds, we were excited for the rest of our lives together. We were ready to dominate the world. By our first anniversary, we found ourselves in a new city with new jobs. Then began the long slide into mediocrity. We worked too much, ate too much, and exercise meant strolling through Pier 1 on a Saturday afternoon. It was our wont to count down the days to the next long weekend or the next vacation because those were the only times we truly enjoyed. After quitting our public school teaching jobs and starting our own businesses, we welcomed fun back into our daily lives along with exercise, healthy eating, and creativity. We hope you will join us.

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The End of Wishing Our Days Away

CJ and Tammy Renzi

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 CJ and Tammy Renzi

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Table of Contents

Opening

Work

The Salt Mines

Work for Work's Sake?

A Dogfight with the Dogma of Work

Letting It All Hang Out

Oiling the Machine

Nice Work. What Else You Got?

In Closing

The Fruits of Fewer, Yet More Meaningful, Work Hours

11 Books That Helped Set Us Free

Fitness

Aches, Pains, and Machu Picchu

In the Beginning There was Even More Sloth

A Not So Fresh Start

The Perfect Exercise for Us

Now We Got It

Quitting and Right Work

Shit or Get Off the Pot

Work Redefined

Making Our Daily Deposit

Unexpected Enchantment

Ward Cleaver and an Old Man on a Bike Trump Bill Gates

Refinement Not Reinvention

In Closing

Diet

Let Us Get Us Some Eats

Speed Dating: Finding the Right Foods Quickly

Maintaining the Golden Cornucopia of Deliciousness

Refining the Dining

Dietary Dangers

Professional Ball-Busters: Diet Sabotage

Butter Boats and Diet Cokes

Boulevard of Broken Belts, Eats on the Road

Blowing Your Burger

Two Fun Meals to Send You to Bed with No Nookie and Exceptional Indigestion

Café Conundrum

Today's Vittles

Current Diet Calorie Count: Dining at Home

Current Calorie Count for Dining Out

In Closing

Fun: It's All You Have

Fun, Fun, Where Ever Did You Go?

Coffee Time

From Carafe to Café

Our New Friends Norman and Robert

Raillery and Palaver

Playing but Not on a Fancy Phone

New Place and Some New and Old Faces

Books

The Vicissitudes of Young Love

A Fairytale Marriage

He's In

Discerning Tastes

Not Settling

Beer

The Charms of Beer

Beers on Vacation

In Closing

Money

Tooting the Loot

Money Eyes Bugging Out

Face to Face With the Root of All Evil

Getting Real with the Devil Himself

To Spend or Not to Spend

Spending with Yourself in Mind

Planning for Wizened, Wrinkled Wisdom

Subduing Credit Cancer and Keeping the Leviathan Contained

Kicking the Taxman in the Jimmies

Not Paying Bills Like Grandma Did

Conclusion

The End of Wishing Our Days Away

We are working magic. After working over ten hours, I sit with the fourth grade teachers around a small table in a classroom. It's approaching six o'clock, and the sun has disappeared from the January sky. Student writing samples are spread out before us, and we're reading each one. From my right, I hear, Oh gosh, Tammy. I am crying silent tears. While it is true that children's writing can bring me to tears and these fine women know me enough to realize that, this time it is different. The words on the paper are not affecting me. It appears I am crying for no reason.

In that moment, I am acutely aware of the crossover from known to unknown. We all sense that something is wrong. Or maybe it's just me.

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Why don't you go home? someone suggests.

I'm so sorry guys. I haven't felt right for a couple of days. I have my usual sinus infection, and this medication is making me quite loopy.

Do you think you can drive?

Yes.

Is CJ home?

No, he's teaching lessons in Katy tonight, but I'll call him. It'll be alright.

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I walk down the hall to my office to grab my bag and head out the door. I grip the wheel and follow my headlights through the dark, back streets hoping they will lead me home to safety. Halfway there, I push the top number on my Contacts list. He answers in one ring.

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Hello, sweet pie.

CJ? I am in a half-crying, half-hysterical state when I ask, Where are you? Are you headed home? I don't feel right. I am not right.

I just left. What's going on?

I think it's the medication. I'll call the on-call doctor when I get home. Just get there fast.

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The sliding glass door is heavier than usual, and I collapse on the couch without removing my jacket. The answering service listens to my frantic description of symptoms and tells me a doctor will call me soon. CJ walks through the door. The phone rings, and I am told to take Benadryl. No one needs to check the medicine cabinet. We do not have this in the house. I only need medication twice a year for the inevitable sinus infection that comes with the stresses of teaching. I'm quite sure CJ's asthma inhalers and a bottle of Tylenol are not the solution. CJ won't leave me alone, so we head back out into the night.

In the parking lot, I promise CJ I'll be fine in the car if he could just please lock the doors. I am from Upstate New York where front doors were rarely locked even at night, but familiarity has increased rather than assuaged my fears of Houston. Smashed windows and purse-snatchings are citywide occurrences. Even so, I doubt my ability to accompany my husband into the pharmacy.

A few minutes pass, and I note a thumping that grows louder and closer unraveling each nerve one by one. I am too exhausted to lift my head from the slightly-reclined passenger seat, and my brain is incapable of linking my previous experience to this new sound to infer the root of this persistent pounding. My inability to make sense of the world around me or bring my head and body down to earth leads me to believe that I have gone mad. This is when I see the three shadows pass the car, one pack-pack-packing his cigarettes against the inside of his wrist which sounds more like the beating of a bass drum in my ear. I think of Jess, Mary, and Sarah back in my days at the University of Rhode Island. They did this before lighting up. Oh, how I love them. I hope they're not smoking anymore.

CJ is back with the first in a long line of medications that will enter my body over the next five years in an attempt to alleviate the myriad symptoms of this undiagnosed condition. Back in my living room, I am safe and sleepy after taking the Benadryl. I am drifting off on the couch believing that soon I will be back to my old self.

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The following morning, at the office of my primary care physician, I am confident she will be able to tell me what I am facing and offer remedies. I list symptoms. Brain fog. Searching for words. Hands numb. Chest and throat constricted. Legs feel unattached to body. I tell her that when I saw one of her colleagues just six days ago for a sinus infection he prescribed Levaquin. She looks through my charts and sees I am allergic to penicillin and a few other medications. Even though we have gone over this at other visits, I tell her that penicillin gives me hives. This is much different, I tell her. This is not what I felt when I took those other medications.

At my yearly Pap, I welcome her genial disposition and the diversion of casual conversation about my teaching job and her daughter as she prods about my nether regions. Today, her perky hair and wide smile cloy. The Crayola picture her daughter drew is taped to the supply cabinet. Would she wish the doctor so chipper and seemingly nonchalant if her daughter were sitting where I now sit? Maybe this is what she has been taught in medical school. When faced with a baffling case, smile and nod a lot. Take copious notes.

She assures me that I will be fine and encourages me to drink plenty of water.

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The next few months I exist but only as a list of symptoms and various discomforts. Many nights, it is CJ who writes on the small yellow pad which has now been converted to a medical log. I list aloud - brain fog, numbness in hands and legs, vibrating in spine and legs, pressure in lower back, sore knees, weakness in legs, fatigue, pressure behind eyes, detached feeling of hands and feet. My facial muscles are sore, and I have to concentrate to chew my food. Oh, and did I mention I am searching for words? Can you tell? He nods and looks at me. I try to see what is behind his eyes. Is it pity? Frustration? He is only 35, and surely he can't love me as much now that I'm 80.

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I see my first neurologist two weeks in. Although I share with him the details of that night and the various discomforts that followed, I tell him that I am feeling much better. The tops of my hands and thighs are still numb, and I still search for words and have difficulty typing coherent sentences at work, but I tell him I feel 90% better. He tells me that indeed there is a difference between an allergic and a toxic reaction to medication. It seems that I am suffering from the latter. Now that he tells me the possible root of my health conundrum, I sense the possibility that I am indeed almost better and leave the office in high spirits.

Comparatively, the illnesses I have personally experienced in my previous 33 years involve a period of discomfort followed by the comfort of progressively feeling better. This is the natural flow of even the worst of viruses, flues, and random aches and pains. Even after breaking my pelvis and femur and spending a month and a half in the hospital after a car accident at the age of 17, I healed. My experiences guide my haste in predicting that this too shall pass. Words spoken with great confidence carry the power of a well-wielded sword, so I share the details of my visit and my newly adopted diagnosis with CJ and declare myself on the mend.

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A week later, every symptom is back and, if it is possible, my vertebrae are now rubbing together. They snap as I walk down the stairs each morning to head off to school. They snap when I head up to bed each night. It is as if my cartilage has dissolved, and my spine is now bone on bone.

When I walk up and down the stairs, this latest of maladies lets me know I am not the same person I once was. No longer am I running back upstairs for the item I forgot. CJ does that now.

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Would you mind - ? Wait. Forget it.

What? What, sweet pie?

My earrings. The silver balls. Bottom drawer in my jewelry box. Do you mind?

Of course not.

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My world shrinks, from the whole wide one I was one day going to save, down to a tiny bubble with enough room for me and my pain. I make room for CJ and sometimes it feels tight and hard for us both to maneuver about