The other night while exiting the building where he works, J fell down some stairs and ended up spraining his ankle. By the end of the day when I went to pick him up it was pretty swollen, so he came home, got on the couch (thus, officially taking over my territory) and we put his foot up on some pillows with an ice pack to try and reduce the pain and inflammation. It felt pretty good to take care of someone else instead of going off about my clogged ear for the 12 billionth time but needless to say the novelty wore off and soon I, too, was lying down. I got on the floor and put my head on a pillow, first on one side, then the other, trying to see if either reduced the congested feeling or the ringing, which is slowly driving me insane.

When we awoke the next morning we were both a little grumpy, neither of us having received any sweet relief during the night. J hobbled out to the car so I could take him to work, and I got in the driver's side at the same time and maybe because neither of us was in any mood to, I don't know, pay attention to anything but ourselves, we ended up hitting our heads together really hard while situating ourselves in the vehicle. And we pretty much didn't talk for the rest of the ride.

The good news is that this was a low point and despite the fact that we're still fighting our individual wars, we've each gotten a little more optimistic. Sure, as a unit we can't really walk or hear that well, but we're pretty sure that eventually things will be ok. Also, thank God, the couch is big enough for both of us to lie down if we cooperate and if there's one thing I've learned in this marriage it's cooperation. And the power of take-out food, which has also been incredibly helpful during these trying times.