Ed came home from a volunteer ombudsman meeting in Orlando. At least he said it was a meeting for volunteers. I think he went for the rides at Disney World and I expected him to come home with Mickey Mouse ears. Mice figure largely in Ed’s mind and he owns notepaper in the shape of a mouse (that he won’t let me use because then he wouldn’t have it anymore). He was gone two nights. I would have gone along for a mini-adventure but it was decided the kitties needed me more. Brunswick has epilepsy and needs medication twice a day and Chewy goes into cardiac arrest if he doesn’t find me after 15 minutes of searching.

Anyway I had plans to do some landscaping while Ed was gone. This was definitely risky since he considers himself to be the landscaper of choice. In any case, the handyman who was going to do the heavy lifting, stood me up and none of it came to pass.

This was probably fortunate because Ed started his current no-smoking plan. He feels he is more likely to succeed with this plan if he is distracted, so the trip was the catalyst and he put the patch on. In former times, he would use one patch, announce himself cured after three days, and then take a cigarette because it wasn’t giving him any more nicotine than a second patch and it would just be the one, the idea being that he could then live life on one cigarette a day, everyone is happy. Not.

I explained to him that his plan had not worked and would he please follow the instructions exactly and he promised he would.

He came back, we had a reasonably pleasant evening but (eerie music here) during the night, the evil twin lurking in his subconscious emerged. If he had also been dealing with my “betrayal” in working on landscaping in his absence, I would have been murdered by dawn.

Nicotine withdrawal behavior mimics that of a woman with PMS. The patch is supposed to forestall that kind of stress but the patch manufacturers don’t know about Edward. Whatever they are doing, it isn’t enough.

More on this if I survive.

xx, Teal