ER

Tim and I are parked in front of the final episode of ER, and I am kind of sad. We haven't been watching much this season, but tonight I had to soak my jankey toe (the results of a bad pedicure) which means I have to sit for a half hour watching tv in real time (was there life before Tivo?). While I am recording this on all the televisions, I decided to tune in and promptly got sucked in, as did Tim.

On the first day of our recent tropical vacation Tim had about 10 to many mojitos which led to a tremendous temper tantrum. A tantrum complete with wall punching (no damage done, thank heavens), screaming, crying (his, not mine), and the surfacing of a whole host of issues he has kept bottled up for way too long (apparently he is jealous of my relationship with my sister). While we were able to salvage the vacation (despite Nora's "vacation gastroenteritis") and we have kind of worked some things out, a lot of what he said has kind of stuck with me.
Being married to an only child is hard. Not like breaking your ankle hard, but like living without a leg hard. I love him so very dearly, but he is missing so many life lessons from not having a sibling and having parents who provided mere supervision. I joke about having three kids a lot (Tim being my third), but lately it has felt like I am the one responsible for rearing him as well. While I don't really mind, it is a tremendous amount of work. He is more stubborn and resistant than my three year old, and more ridiculous and immature than the six year old. But I love him.

So here we sit, like we have so many other Thursday nights, in our respective seats on the sofa watching the trials and tribulations of life at County General. As I said, we haven't been watching this season, but it doesn't matter. All the episodes are pretty much the same. There is something comforting about this show and our Thursday routine of watching it. To be honest, I am going to miss having it as a reminder. A reminder of episodes past (when we were worried about Abby Lockhart's drinking and Carter losing his baby) when we would sit on the couch silently watching crappy drama. I would sit and write thank you notes from shower/wedding/baby gifts and Tim would actually sit still for 50 minutes (we usually tuned in late or fast forwarded commercials). This show presented us an image of our potential future- of us being that old couple facing terminal illness, or, God forbid, us being the parents with the sick kids who have fallen out of trees, eaten rosaries or drank to much. The bad recreation of the human drama would bring Tim and I together for an hour a week and in a way it would remind us that life was not so bad, and I am going to miss having this as a way to spend Thursday night. BUt hey, there are always DVDs, right. I mean, we have to figure out when they brought Jerry back. Didn't he die?