While I was immersed in my self pity Jeff was having even worse medical problems. What had started as a gradual loss of vision in both eyes was now complete blindness in his left eye. He had several lasers surgeries to retard the loss of his vision but on a plane trip to California he lost his left eye. He had the eye replaced with a prosthesis which became his favorite toy. If you knocked on his door you were likely to be greeted with his hand holding his eye like he was Senor Wences. Jeff had a sense of humor about everything. Diabetes doesn't just damage one thing at a time. It actually slowly kills your smallest blood vessels and creates circulatory problems. Eyes and kidneys are vulnerable and now Jeff was starting to have problems with his kidneys as well. Dialysis was around the corner. Jeff had been a waiter in rather upscale, dark restaurants. Losing an eye made work difficult and he found himself at a loss.
When I had calmed down a bit and felt I was ready to see Elsie I called. His plan was that he buy my P. A. and take it to his house. He had an empty room where it could stay set up. Jeff and I were welcome to come over and rehearse, get gigs and use the P. A. Elsie would operate the sound board for fun. Time to be singers. Jeff and I were ready and with little effort easily had enough sets of music to play several hours. I told Elsie I was a bit cautious because I couldn't take having the rug pulled out from under me. Like say for instance we are supposed to be at a gig and he didn't show up because he accidentally had to sleep with someone and couldn't find a phone. He swore he wouldn't.
I had about two weeks left before I was released by my doctor as "well enough to go back to work". Only there was no work. Zelda had a good friend who worked for Xerox Corporation. Xerox was hiring badly needed temps to do everything in administration. Xerox is a marketing company, a service and supplies provider. When they entered the market place they were the only copier company. NO competition. Xerox customers paid their bill or they got their equipment picked up. Now the Japanese manufacturers had entered the market and Xerox was getting a butt kicking. There would be a temp job for me as soon as I was healthy enough. WHEW. I was not going to have to LIVE with my parents. Thank, not God, still having some issues there, so Thank The Divine Power and Ruler of the Universe Keeper of Knowledge and Light and Energy or whatever. I started developing my own religion of sorts. I didn't think anyone had it right yet and I wasn't happy with all the dos and do nots. But I was grateful to the Universal Power.
I spent my last two weeks of recovery at my house with Zelda. She waited on me. She cooked me meals. She ran errands for me. She was a goddess. One day after she had fixed breakfast she said, "I hope you are never in a wheelchair or anything. This arrangement better not be permanent". Somehow that made me laugh so hard I know I snorted. I needed that laugh. I had not laughed in ages it seemed. Bless you Zelda your ability to cut to the chase gave me a needed lift.
I was able to go to work at Xerox about the same time Jeff started finding us gigs. He had worked at restaurants, people own restaurants and bars, bars need entertainment. Ta Da. We are singers in public together at last. Since the day we were filled with glee to master a bar chord we wanted to do this. Now I had a job, as a temp but still a job, a second job earning very little money but doing something I loved. That was a pretty good feeling. I still wanted kids. Now I wanted lots of them but one would do. How the heck does a penniless, barren woman adopt a baby? You get married of course!
Now all I needed was a husband who wanted to have children. That should weed my choices out pretty quick. This is when I decided that when I ruled the universe every body would be marked in some way in some private place. Some where in the world was a body with the exact mark. Only two exactly alike and when you found that person you had your mate. This plan would eliminate so many things. Heartbreak, lousy dates, horrible dinners with your steady's parents. Simple.
No, nothing is simple. I am about to be the most popular woman with no uterus on earth, OK, Ft. Worth. OK, I was going to be more popular than I ever dreamed. It is not all it's cracked up to be.
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