Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Travel

Gary messaged me to say that he has a grand plan to get in shape for when the Covid is over, so that when that day comes, he'll be ready to travel. Evidently, if you keep a homebody stuck at home three and a half years, even the biggest homebody will get the urge to rove.

Where will we go? He mentioned Asia. I suppose that's because he thinks of China as the place where the pandemic started, and though he didn't call out Wuhan, I am certain he feels drawn there due to the danger.

I suppose he's trusting that the virus will just give up while he is still young enough to travel. Or, it may just have been an odd wild hair. No doubt I will one day book tickets to hear him say, "ASIA? DO YOU WANT TO KILL ME WOMAN?"

I think I'll pretend too, for a while. It's a lovely idea. 

Gary Wig

In the spirit of Casual Friday, I have taken to wearing my least professional wig once a week. On Fridays, I swap out Sexytown for this wig:

This wig is the closest to the hair of my youth, below.

Like my original pube-like cloud of head-hair, but twice as much of it.

So, Gary sleeps all day on Fridays, so when I emerged from my room wearing the Casual Friday  wig he laughed in my face, and said, "You look ridiculous." When asked why, he said: too much hair.

I just went and got a giant hair clip and clamped it back. Still too much hair, but only noticeable in profile, but Gary grumbled it was conventional enough to go to the pharmacy and get our vaccines. 

Saturday I was back to the workhorse daily wig, Sexytown, not the big pile of nylon that makes me look like a country-western singer, and Gary had the nerve to complain.

"Where's your new hair? I thought you'd be wearing your big new hair. I really liked that look." 

"You laughed at me. You laughed directly in my face. 'Ridiculous', you said."

"No! I loved it!"

"I quote, 'Ri-dic-u-lous.'"

So, too bad for him. He will have to wait till Friday if he wants to see me in all my pube-headed splendor.

By the Numbers

I did the math last night. I've been in love with Gary 41 years. He has said "I love you" almost  every one of those days, even on most of the days we've fought. Even if you take off the six months we were on the outs, that's still over fourteen thousand times (14,785). 

Mom didn't start saying "I love you," until I was in college. I don't remember Jerry saying it, and my stepdad certainly never did. 

But Gary's so swamped me in an avalanche of "I love yous" that if anyone else were to ever say it,  I couldn't hear it from underneath the avalanche. Much less feel it. Much less to begin a new life and a new count starting at one.

WWI

I wondered aloud if a relative might have been of the right age to fight in World War One.

I should have tried to do the math in my head first. Gary rolled his eyes and snapped:

"Ellen, don't talk about things when you know nothing. " I braced myself for the mathematical ridicule.

He continued, "The United States didn't fight in World War One."

And he did it with a tone, even. 

I laughed heartily and directly in his face.  He held fast to his contention that the US didn't fight in World War I. I can tell you after the fact, if you ask Alexa, "Was the United Staes in World War One?" that her first word is Yes.

One hour later Gary finally stopped reading the Wikipedia page List of Wars Involving the United States aloud to me. If I were in his situation, yes, I would go to Wikipedia to educate myself, yet what I would NOT do is educate my spouse for an hour on something she already knows.

And actually, I know he knows. He has to know. He watched 1917 - but then, were there Americans in that movie? All Quiet on the Western Front? Wait, we spent hours in the WWI museum in Kansas City. I know he knows this.

I actually checked to see if "forgetting historical facts you have known for years" is a sign of Alzheimers or dementia. Luckily, I only need to worry if he forgets recently-learned information. 

Dee

It feels like just months ago that Gary stopped talking about his new electric car and bought a new electric car. Because it was.

And now the next electric car is coming out and he wants one and he wont shut up about it. It's just a concept car now. The BMW Dee.

It has electrically charged paint so you can control the paint color.

There are no controls on the inside.

It has windows that display an avatar of you (that I assume can flip off other, lesser cars). 

So how many years until this comes out? Because that's how many years I'll be listening to Gary talk about this car. 

TWIL: Electric cars can still cause garage fires

I have charged my car in our garage for three years. The nose of the car is pointed toward the house and the heat from the charge is directed at the garage refrigerator.

And all was well for years. 

Gary charges his car the same way, but it is bigger, more batteries, and when you walk into the garage on a 90 degree day when Gary's car is charging, then yes, the garage is really hot.

Gary has now studied the specs on the ideal conditions for home charging and we are not up to Gary Code.

Therefore, charging the cars now involves a ballet of pulling out to the street, backing halfway into the garage, leaving the nose out over the driveway, then locking the car because the garage door is open, then locking the door from the garage to the house.

This makes me enraged. I was indulgent at first, yet now it is a true nuisance, especially because backing in is difficult. I know there's a rearview camera, but there are red lines and green lines and I don't get that at all. 

It caused quite a rift, and I was only placated after Gary showed me articles in how there are still garage fires under certain conditions. Specifically hot conditions. So, only about a month more of this nonsense until it will be cool enough to safely charge in the garage again.

So that is what I learned this week. I wish I had learned it back when he bought the car.

Oh Let's Hope Not

So supposedly the trial people were going to call end of this week. 

They did not call.

Just as I wondered, huh, why wouldn't they call, I read that theres a new variant of Covid.

I remembered the Omicron variant rendered the previous incarnation of the trial drug useless.

And even though this new drug is effective against Omicron, and even though the new variant is an offshoot of Omicron, I wondered if perhaps they were taking a pause to drop a bit of the new variant into a petri dish full of the new drug and see if it was useful to continue the trial.

Or, perhaps I'm wrong. Or perhaps the new drug in the imaginary petri dish will wipe out the new variant. Or maybe they're just busy. 

TWIL: Cipro Can Kill You

Gary's guilt over the bladder infection drove him to the Facebook and the internet, and he came back with news that a common antibiotic used for bladder infections, Cipro, can destroy your tendons and probably even kill you.

"They stopped giving me Cipro years ago," I said. "You know, probably because of the tendon thing."

Gary didn't care. He went on quoting the scholarly papers he read and detailing the many ways you can die from Cipro.

I tried to join in. "They give Cipro to people who've been in contact with Anthrax." (Specifically Tom Brokaw's assistant, if I recall.)

"Well, those people are going to die anyway." And then he carried on for another ten minutes on Antibiotics: the Secret Killers.

So, storing that away if anyone tries to kill me with Cipro, I guess.

Proposal

Being sick sometimes makes me think of the first time Gary proposed to me. I was at his apartment, in bed, apologizing for having suddenly having fallen ill with the flu. He was getting me a washcloth, and said he was happy to take care of me, and that he wanted to take care of me for the rest of my life, and he wanted to marry me. 

It really is too bad that the Ghost of Gary Future did not materialize and show me what "taking care of me" would look like after 38 years. Future Gary dons his mask, shrinks from me, shrieks about germs and how he is elderly and cannot get sick himself. 

I said no to his proposal, of course. Red flags all over that proposal. You like it when I feel sick? You want me to depend on you?

Sixteen proposals later he hit on one that worked. You would think having a girlfriend who turned you down sixteen times would be discouraging, but he is stubborn. I can't remember the argument that won me over, only that again I was in bed: the traditional place where DeWolfe women accept marriage proposals.

In general it has worked out well. I'm glad he stuck with it.

Rough

It's Sex Week here on the old blog. Yet another post about my current preoccupation. And really, I'm sorry. Because this time it's about porn. 

I think we all know the tradeoff between frequency and speed when it comes to a person's alone time. Now that I'm only giving myself mere hours of recovery time instead of weeks, it's just taking too much time, so I have turned to porn to move things along, for God's sake.

This is nice ladylike porn. "Porn by women" is the tag line. No really weird stuff. Lots of kissy stuff. Slow kissy stuff. Really really slow kissy stuff.

"Oh my god," I thought. "Pick up the pace."  Click. Ah, there are different categories. I bounced around the categories. Slow threesomes. Slow hot guys. 

However, The "Rough" category seemed -- at first -- to have a reasonable tempo. In fact, it all seemed very familiar. Women are repositioned, rotated, tossed in the air like pizza dough. You know. What I would call "sex."

"GARY!" I bellowed. "WHY DOES THE INTERNET SAY WE HAVE 'ROUGH' SEX?"

He just came into the room, head low in shame, then he pantomimed some rough sex and scuttled away.

So, who knew? I didn't. I don't have any other all-out lover for comparison purposes. I suppose Gary and I started out slow, with negotiations and polite requests, then we just transitioned into the soft version of the rough category. Wouldn't it be awful if I visited some crazy place like PornHub and found out that there's an arcane category for something else he's convinced me is normal? 

Sneaking in Some Illicit Housework

The closest I come to cheating on Gary is when I do chores behind his back. I remember when I repaired the toilet I hid the replacement flapper under the mattress. 

This month I've been sneaking about repairing a water spot in the ceiling. He's gone, I get out the ladder, I use the Killz, I time it so he's gone long long enough that he can't smell the Killz, it's a  whole assignation. Not some trashy one-night stand like the toilet repair. 

Then I wait a week until he's out of the house again, then I paint over the Killz, and try to get the paint color on the 35 year old ceiling to match, and that is frustrating, and I wonder if it's worth it. 

That's done now, so this weekend is the last tryst with the water spot repair. Some acoustic texture cracked in the process and I have to get that patched up, and the that's the last time I sneak around doing chores, I swear. 

Lume Deodorant

Gary screams whenever MSNBC plays this commercial.

And they play it hourly, if not more.

Yesterday morning he came out of the bathroom holding our shared speed stick deodorant. He had a demented look in his eye. 

"What did I do?" I sighed, because I quite often do things wrong with our shared sanitary items.

He held the deodorant in my face, as I expected, and shouted "ARMPITS BUTT CRACK UNDERBOOBS THIGH FOLDS KNEE PITS EAR CREVICES."

I did not expect that. Poor thing has that chant in his head every time he uses the deodorant now. 

Gary and the Grand Passion

Gary and I were watching Sleepless in Seattle, and Meg Ryan was talking about the "magic" that happens when you meet "the one."

"Did we have the magic?" I asked Gary. "I don't remember."

He said, "We had the magic at first. But then, you know, the magic always fades."

And then he rubbed my big toe. 

I'd rather have reality over magic.

Gary And Stress

Street work is going on outside our house. Evidently the lifespan of a suburban street built by the contractor's son-in-law is about 30 years. We got the note in the mailbox that in four days our stretch of the nepo-street is to be re-poured, and we cant use our driveway. So we must park on the street, thus our in-home electric vehicle charging station will also be inaccessible. 

This one tick of stress kicked Gary up over his stress horizon and he was out of control, stomping around the house, escalating. 

"THEY WANT US TO PARK ON THE STREET SO THEY CAN DROP GRAVEL ALL OVER MY NEW CAR AND IF WE DON'T MOVE OUR CARS OUT OF THE GARAGE IMMEDIATELY ALL THE SPOTS WILL BE GONE."

I told him I didn't have time for this, shut the door, and ignored him until he came back in completely calm. 

"I PARKED MY CAR IN THE Street ... And ... I feel better."

I pointed out he had places to go in the next four days, and he said he knew that, he knew it was irrational, but he felt total peace now. 

So I suppose that's the trick. I always try to reason with him, but really I just need to wait until he invents whatever personal stress placebo he needs.

Civilization Continues to Decay

Civilization has gone to hell. First we had the Clydesdales falling over themselves, then the champagne carpet.

Now, twice in the past week, I have been conversing with my husband when has gone into the bathroom, and from the clarity of his tone it has been evident he has not closed the bathroom door.

And his tone is not the only thing I can hear clearly.

We can't have this. It's easily fixed. As soon as he sees my face in the bathroom mirror while he's got the door open  --  problem solved.

I have no idea why after 37 years he has decided to lower his standards, though. It’s a strange shift in intimacy.

I can't complain, though. I can retaliate. But can I? Can I actually leave the door open and converse with him?  I think not.

This Year's Birthday Month

Conveniently, all my major marriage celebrations take place on minor holidays,. The calendar reminds me it's Flag Day, so that's my anniversary, or it's the first day of Spring, which is on or about Gary's birthday.

He is not particular about his exact birthday, because as you know, we celebrate the Birthday Month. (During the month of ones birth one wins all arguments de facto.)

This morning the news alerted me that Spring was on the way, and thus almost Gary's birthday, and I immediately woke Gary up to tell him it had been his Birthday Month for three weeks and he had not yet exercised his Birthday Month Privileges.

He had not forgotten, He was aware. I would think we had not argued but of course we had. 

Less than an hour later he came to me and said, "I think we need to buy a bidet and install it in my bathroom."

He was evidently holding that Birthday Month card close to his vest so he could play it for something ridiculous. I sent him off to research installation. We'll just see if he follows through.

Potato

Me: "Gary, have you seen a raw potato around here? I put on the counter half an hour ago."

Gary (half-asleep in reclining chair): "Huh? Potato?"

Me: "I lost a potato somehow. I looked in the garage and the pantry. Let me try the laundry room." (Moments later) "Well, I got a new potato out of the potato bin in the laundry room. but I'm still down a potato."

Gary: "Potato?"

Me (Marches over to Gary, shoves laundry room potato under his nose.) "Yes. I lost a potato. It looks like this ... You know, maybe I didn't look in the back of the garage refrigerator." Puts  potato back in laundry room, goes to garage, searches garage refrigerator, comes back in.)

Me: "This is making me nuts. Where is that potato?"

Gary: "Did you look in all the drawers?"

Me: "You mean the vegetable crisper drawers? Yes. In the kitchen fridge and the garage fridge!"

Gary: "Did you search the junk drawer?"

Me: (Opens junk drawer. Sees potato.): (Wheezes with laughter.)

I wish I could say he had the original potato in there all the time, but it impresses me more that he heard me close the door to the garage, jumped out of the recliner, got a potato out of the laundry room, hid it in the junk drawer,  and appeared to go back to sleep.

(And no, I never found where the original potato was.)

(Now hiding a potato in his bed.)

Gary Aches

I imagine Gary has made this joke before, given that he initially blames all ills on "the change in the weather," and now that he is old enough for aches and pains.

Even so, I did laugh heartily last night when he called himself The Garometer. 

Not a Review: The Banshees of Inisherin

Sure, and this would ha' been a review of The Banshees of Inisherin so, but we couldn't get past the first feckin' twenty minutes.  

Twenty minutes in the characters have mainly all been established as charming, and your sympathies are with Colin Farrell, and then the conflict is established (man is too dull for other man) and it hit me too close to home. I was watching remotely with a friend, then she checked some spoilers and we decided this movie was too dark even for us.

So, we stopped. I scrubbed through it after and just from the images flashing on the screen I'm very glad we stopped. Then I watched the last scene and I was sorrowful they had to be so heavy-handed before. It seemed like it was a worthwhile movie at the end, I just couldn't get there.

However, I watched it long enough for it to have an effect on my day-to-day life. The dialog is  full of the Irish cadence.

This is the Irish cadence:

I said X
He/she said:X???
Yes, X, I said.

Here's an example. (I making it up because I don't want to go back to the movie to get a quote.)

"So I told her, 'Don't be getting your nose into my business no more.' So she says, 'What, then, you don't want me getting my nose into your business then?' and I said, 'That's right, I'll thank you if you don't be getting your nose into my business, right then?'" 

I had an irrational urge to shake these characters, and then I wondered why it annoyed me so much. It's because it sounds like Gary every time he relates a conversation. I also want to shake Gary. 

So I see now that it's an Irish thing. Gary's a quarter Irish. I might accept the repetitive cadence if he had the charming Irish accent. That might make it more tolerable. 

The Car Hunt: the Deed is Done

Gary was very sad that only one bot contacted him, and it told him he needed to call the two dealers he had selected online.

He complained to me that the dealers knew he was old, and that's why they weren't calling him and looking for his electric car business. It was pitiful. I puffed him up enought that he called the dealers, and then he looked at the website for the other Chevy dealer, the one he'd tried before that had a lot of Bolts but they were pre-destined to live their lives as pizza delivery cars.

Evidently that pizza deal fell through, so those cars were still on the lot. Plus, somehow the dealer was still obligated to sell the cars at the "fleet" rate, so Gary left me behind to keep slogging away at work and rushed off to the dealer.

As soon as he gave me an update I left this message in my work chat:

And he did. He didn't get the  bells and whistles model, instead he got the pizza delivery model, not the red one but a grey one, and not the Ford Mustang price but (counting the tax rebate in 14 months)  an electric car that costs less than our first car thirty something years ago.

He went back later with me so that I could drive it home, which is understandable. It was an adjustment even from the Mini: it doesn't have that "Six Flags Moon car" feel in which letting up on the accelerator is the same as stomping the brakes, but Gary says that's adjustable. Also, even though it isn't the SUV model but it's a behemoth compared to any other car we have ever bought in our married lives. It's quite odd being a foot away from the rest of the cars instead of inches away.

I wondered what he might talk about now that he isn't obsessed with the pros and cons of every model of electric car but, oddly, he is still comparing this one to all the others. 

The Car Hunt Continues: Click

Gary has gone back to his first love, the Chevy Bolt. (New for this final year with fewer car fires.) And now that he has embraced ordering a car on-line, he called me over so that we could place the order "together."

All that meant was that he asked if the seat color was acceptable. After about 30 minutes of dithering, we ordered a second-tier Bolt, red, with all the bells and whistles.

So we clicked, and nothing happened. No bots even. Gary decided the bots weren't awake yet. Even though I made sure sufficient funds were in the account, no money changed hands.

So, now, I guess, we wait. Progress anyway.

The Car Hunt Continues, Same as it Ever Was

So, finally: progress! Gary acknowledged that it would be better to order a car and have it built rather than rely on the scant electric vehicles dealers keep in their lots. He keeps finding great cars that are gone the next day, and he suspects it's all a come-on.

So his new plan was to buy a Chevy Volt (his original choice) after he ate lunch. It was to be click click click, small deposit, progress!

Right before the clicking, he realized, "But if I buy on-line, I could get any car I want. A Mustang! An I-3! Any color!"

So, say it with me, back to square one, again.

Car Hunt Continues

What did I tell you? Gary is back to square one in the car hunt.

He found a seven page list of nothing but electric vehicles. So here we go again. I've given up mentioning the government tax debate; they made that way too complicated, and all the rules change in March anyway. And now Toyota says they are going to just take old cars and pack batteries in them and that’ll work. And then yesterday Tesla reduced all their prices. The target needs to stop moving.

I remember buying the latest Mini when the old Mini broke. 

Me: “Car is broken.”

Gary: “So, electric Mini next?”

Me: “I’ll get my shoes.”

Usually he works best with a limit. We set a price limit, and a lower range limit, and he’s ignoring both. Maybe if I demand the new car must be red he can focus.

Mustang Gary

Oh my gaaawwwd the car search. This has been worse than the search for the Fit. We test drove Hummers and Zs and every car made before his research led us to the Fit.

We can't test drive these electric cars, because You Kids Today like to order your cars from Amazon or something, plus the Covid. That makes his decision harder, and batteries explode and there are different types and all, and there are just way too many variables.

He's just physically exhausted by it. 

He had pegged the Electric Ford Mustang as the car to get, talked about nothing else for three days, I moved money around, then he was too tired from to mental toil to buy it and then the next day he woke up, changed his mind, and now he's back to square one. 

Don;t recommend a pros/cons list, he did that last night. Perhaps I need to help by making suggestions so he can shoot them down. It's sad that I can't help.

Migraine Cure

Recently Gary went to the NP at the neurologist's office to see if he can get some relief with his migraine. He came back and reported:

• The NP is sick with covid
• The neurologist is not available for three months
• There were remarkably few cars in the lot because, as Gary surmised, Covid

There has a been a 50% increase in daily cases the last week.  I think he intends to have a telemedicine visit with the NP in a few weeks, but in the meantime he needs to get relief through non-scientific Gary methods.

I have never had a migraine, but Gary tells me that these things make his migraine lessen:

• Cold lemon yogurt
• Aggression

According to him, being angry and yelling really helps his migraine. I left the room four times one night. I don't know if this is a common migraine cure. I suppose it might redirect the serotonin. All I know is that I don’t need to be around when he is taking the aggression cure. 

Home Repairs

Gary's car search has come at a bad time, because it has been a month after Dave died and I had already re-earmarked the money I set aside for Dave into long-delayed home improvement projects. 

The back door. Do you know they make exterior doors out of fiberglass now, so they don't rust and rot? I started the process to have one installed. Gary was concerned the workers would get pneumonia working in both the hot house and the cold backyard (THEY WILL GET PNEUMONIA AND DIE I DIDN'T THINK YOU WERE THAT TYPE OF PERSON ELLEN) but happily it will take four months just to order the door, so no workers will lose their lives.

Gary wants to weigh in on what the door will look like. So factor in a few months for that.

The sagging bathroom ceiling. The Medical Art Project Bathroom ceiling is sagging, somehow. The salesman said this was first priority, because "you might be in the bathroom at night" (yes) "and then the ceiling might fall in and crush you." Not on his watch. He added $2k to paint the bathroom, which I did not opt for. I can paint a bathroom, especially one almost entirely covered in anatomy charts.

The handrail. I tumbled  down the basement steps years ago and my desperate grab at the handrail saved my life, but broke the handrail in half. I have had half a handrail since then.  That is the easiest fix. 

Gary is not going to like any of this at all. 

Bolt Hunt

Last Friday I arranged work so that Gary and I could go buy the car Gary has finally decided on: a Chevy Bolt. (Not a Volt, Volts were an embarrassment, caught fire, etc..) 

Another all-electric, but this one has better range. These were his conditions:

1. It can not benefit Elon Musk in any way.
2. No flashy interior lighting, because of his migraine.
3. Not be too much of a behemoth, which is impossible because of the last condition ...
4. Get around 200-300 miles in range.

The Chevy Bolt sounded perfect. He found a great deal. Turned out it was a Costco kind of a deal: you had to buy volume. Like, you had to own a pizza company and need a fleet of delivery cars. In fact, according to his subsequent research, dealerships don't sell these Bolts, they auction them off.

So, that was a disappointment. I soothed him by saying, "I'm sure you can find exactly what you want," which is now a BMW, god help me.

===========

Hours Later: Now he says he might go to a dealer and have them order what he wants. 'So," I said, "Why not just order it yourself online?" UNTHINKABLE. 

More Fun with Gary

Sometimes I leave the Favorite Wig, Chimera 2.o, in the bathroom, where it startles Gary.

He complained about it one too many times.

Ozark 809 Crash

I vaguely remember blogging about Gary's experience with the crash of Ozark flight 809, but I can't find it. I apologize if I am telling you this story as if you haven't heard it before.

It comes up because last week Gary told me the story as if I hadn't heard it before. The first time I heard it we had just started dating, and I was skeptical. I was skeptical because I was 19 and in college, and I knew everything, yet somehow this crash was news to me. 

Of course, it had happened when I was 11, so I asked my Dad, and he confirmed that there was an awful crash by UMSL grounds and this Gary fellow was not lying to me about this one specific thing.

It happened when Gary was working at Normandy Osteopathic Hospital. He said the staff was all called into the emergency room because there had been a plane crash right across the street.

Gary said he remembers the rain blowing into the ER, because as an orderly his job was to mop it out. At first he was mopping, and then he got a push broom and just started shoving the water outside. After a few hours he was shoving more blood than water through the open door. 

Now, forty years ago I would have been skeptical, and kept my mouth shut so as not to sour my budding relationship, but last week I said, "Are you telling me the storm kept blowing the doors open? Weren't they automatic doors?"

"The doors never closed, because the firemen and police kept carrying in bodies on the airplane wings and parts of the plane fuselage."'

"Oh, come on. There is no way an airplane wing would fit in an ambulance."

"An ambulance? No, they just carried them across campus."

"That would be crazy. That would take too long." 

"There was no rush, they were all dead. They just stacked them up in the hallways when the morgue was full."

You can see why this sounded iffy to me, especially since I didn't have an iPhone and Wikipedia to check out the full story, minus the dramatic details.

For the full story, with a slightly lower body count but additional dramatic beagle-related details, check out this article from the Post-Dispatch archives.

New Toy

At night when the house is silent, the fan on Gary's new laptop roars like a typhoon. I let Gary know.

I don't think he listened to the laptop before purchasing an extra cooling fan for the laptop to sit on.

I know he didn't look at the image of the fan on Amazon. Or read the description. Or looked at anything on the page before clicking Buy Now.

It was quite a surprise.

Gary Suddenly Becomes Elderly: Part the Second

The Packet

The next day we were setting up the two televisions to use AT&T's facsimile of live TV, and when we ran into a hitch Gary said, "WELL WHAT'S IT SAY IN THE PACKET?"

"Packet?"

"THE PACKET. THERE'S GOT TO BE A QUICK START BROCHURE IN THE PACKET."

"No packet, babe."

"WHY DID YOU LET THE INSTALLER LEAVE WITHOUT GIVING YOU THE PACKET?" 

"No, Gary, I mean Kids Today don't need a packet to get started with technology."

He gripped his forehead because he didn't have his cane on hand to shake at Kids Today.

He was so dismayed that I quietly compiled all the notes I'd taken during the installation visit and during the various endless phone calls, printed it, and presented it to him with "Here's your Welcome to AT&T packet!"

But still, that so soon after the Amazon freakout and it looks like Gary's going into the final stages of codgerdom.  It was just so alarming to see, as if a crystal planted in his hand was going to begin flashing as he nears 70 and then he'll be taken off to Carousel.

No matter how on top of things we are, the world just races ahead.

Gary Suddenly Becomes Elderly: Part the First

It didn't worry me when Gary's hair turned grey. Older men are hot. I was fine when he started losing his hair. Happens to all of us. However, just this last week he has exhibited two signs of aging that have concerned me. 

Scam Panic

Because we're changing our email, Gary is getting a lot more spam than he's used to. Last week he had me call the credit card company because he got an email that our Amazon account had been locked. 

I said, "It has not been locked. Here, click the sender's address and you'll see that it's  --"

"IT HAS BEEN LOCKED AND I HAVE A LOT OF STUFF COMING AND THEY WANT ME TO CLICK A LINK AND I WON'T DO THAT. SO JUST CALL THEM."

Just ten years ago this man was in charge of a computer room and fended off hackers pinging him every day. 

So under Gary's direction I called the credit card company to see if a lock had been placed on the card, knowing it had not. Gary was "coaching" me though the call and finally, thankfully, he grabbed the phone and the credit card support person explained the basics of Spam 101 to my husband. 

It was embarrassing, but I've  had fraudsters on my credit card twice and I know how that feels. Rational thought just goes out the window. And he's been retired ten years, maybe the Amazon credit card nonsense wasn't as prevalent back in his day. And to be fair, he absolutely did not click any links in the email, so points for that.

(To Be Continued...)

Gary Screams

So, a few days ago I was working and I heard Gary scream. Like a mother with a toddler, I know the different screams and what they mean, and this was a scream of horror.

I thought he was listening to a scary movie, so I ignored it, until it was followed by multiple short screams of horror.

I rushed out to find he had brought in the raccoon camera and was checking the batteries only to find some big chunky ants ("WITH MANDIBLES!") had set up house inside the case. 

That was a few days ago. I have killed three. Gary is still horrified by them. 

Gary Stocks Up

As part of the switch to fiber optic internet, all our TV will now be a little less live, because it will all be streamed, and as such we need a streaming device like a Firebox, or a Roku.

There's a Firebox on Gary's TV already, in preparation for this transition.

I said to Gary, "So I guess I'll need a Firebox for my TV."

In response, he bought himself a Roku.

I said, "So I guess we'll move the Firebox into my room, then."

Because Gary's love language is Utterly Unsolicited Gifts,  he bought me a Roku. 

I said, "I thought I was getting the Firebox," and perhaps because he saw me frown because we now had one superfluous streaming device, he misinterpreted that frown and bought me a Firebox.

I complained about this embarrassment of streaming devices, and he responded with some nonsense about how the Firebox was half off, and did we not stock up when toilet paper is on sale, and how he would just put the extras in the basement, and a lot of people have two streaming devices and a switch so they can bounce between them. 

At this point he is going to do that for his TV so he can experiment and switch back and forth to see which has better color and clarity. Like a lab experiment with a control but if white mice cost 70 to 80 dollars. 

So now I guess we just have one streaming device in the larder, and for all the people asking why I don't just return the extras, I laugh at you, because Gary never, ever returns things. I plan to take that one unopened device, whatever it is, and use it for a hostess gift when I start going back to parties.

New Toy 3

Gary briefly turned against the new tennis racket bug zappers. They make a zap noise but don't cause any flies to drop out of the air. I don't know if the fly explodes into atoms, or is re-energized and files off stronger.

After he turned against the rackets, Gary bought some heavy artillery: a Bug-A-salt -gun. It's a little toy long gun that fires a barrage of table salt at flies, preferably from behind. The videos are all of shots in the back. Then the fly dies from a dozen painful salty wounds.

I found the gun in the trash the day it arrived. "'IT'S A GUN!" Gary explained. "I WILL NOT HAVE A GUN IN THIS HOUSE." It was clearly marked as a gun when he bought it, though, so I didn't know what caused the gun reversal. The only thing that stops a fly with a gun is a good guy with a gun, right?

I got the gun and its packaging out of the trash bin. It was clearly a toy gun. Plastic, colorful, orange tip, requiring no license or background check, and loaded with table salt ammunition.

Then I read the packaging. They leaned heavily on the gun metaphor. Also, half the packaging is a manifesto on why flies deserve to die. Then there are the cautions about not Shooting Your Eye Out, and there's a safety on the gun so it doesn't go off unexpectedly, and when Gary saw that he had to pump the thing like a pump-action shotgun, he dropped it in horror into the trash bin. 

I brought it back in and danced around the house for a while in various Charlie's Angels poses, but I was unable to get it to fire. Gary went into debug mode, showed me I wasn't returning the pump to the right position, used aluminum foil to prove salt was coming out, and now he's interested in the gun again.

I doubt we'll be able to use the sight and kill a bug from three feet away. More likely I'll take the finish off the furniture inside and salt the earth outside. 

New Toy 2

This is the toy that Gary bought me, the one on which I have bestowed the honor of Official Birthday Gift, which means he can sit back the entire month of August and have no gift responsibilities whatsoever.

It is ideal. Perfect gift. It is me embodied in a present.

It is an electrified tennis-racquet-bug-swatter that you swing at bugs and it zaps them to death.

ZAP-IT Bug Zapper Rechargeable Bug Zapper Racket [sic], 4,000 Volt, USB charging Cable, 2 Pack.

The recent flooding has drowned all the bugs in the backyard, and I didn't want to hurt the bees in the front yard, so I started swinging randomly in the side yard and soon two bugs died a freakish death. I cackled. And I am not sorry. 

This Morning

One of the nice things about having a substantial mailbox is that you know when the mailman arrives, because you hear the clunk as the door closes. It also lets you know if you can stay in bed because your husband has gone out to get the mail instead of you for once in your life.

This morning I heard:

CLUNK - Scream - "Jesus!"

Had it been Scream - "Jesus!" - CLUNK I would have assumed that a severed head was in the mailbox.

CLUNK - "Jesus!" - Scream would be the second coming coincidental with the mail retrieval.  

But it was decidedly CLUNK - Scream - "Jesus!" which Gary then explained is the sound of a "dead" cicada on top of the mailbox springing to life and flying in Gary's face when the mailbox shut. 

Duo Dentist

By a strange fluke Gary and I ended up with consecutive dental visits. We intended to go in the same car, but he wanted to leave an hour early to drive to the five (5) miles to the dentist. I convinced him to wait, but then a work problem blew up half an hour before the first appointment. I waved him on ahead and we took two cars, because the only thing worse than a work problem is working on a work problem with your husband tapping his foot. 

I patched the problem fast and still got to the dentist five minutes ahead of time. That's why I panicked a little when I didn't see his car in the lot. He finally showed with one minute to spare -- because he got lost. My fault, of course, because my ill-timed work problem had jarred his schedule and he made poor driving choices in his agitated state.

You know what the best dental anesthetic is? Having a work problem you still need to fully solve. I didn't even notice them pry off my temporary and jam in the permanent, I was so absorbed in what could be going wrong with my database.

As I was waiting for the crown to adhere I heard him down at the end of the hall explaining  how TOOTHBRUSHES work to a DENTAL HYGIENIST.

He left before I did, but I did get a parting "Bye!" called down the hall. So, sadly, not the great dental date I anticipated.

Close Encounter

I was in bed when Gary showed up at my bedroom door and whispered, "ellen you have to come see the raccoon babies on the patio they've been patting on the window and looking in at me."

Of course, I went to the back door and saw no baby raccoons at all. Gary flipped on the porch light, and indeed there were four wee raccoons. I thought they'd run, but two of they just wandered around in circles, one stared at me, and the last made a low and slow beeline to his mother by the tree in the middle of the yard.

We admired them, then Gary made the mistake of tossing food at them, which they saw as a barrage of peanut artillery, and they ran. 

Gary wanted to thank all the raccoons, and took the the chance to fill the feeding station by the tree. He returned from the tree way too quickly in every sense: in that it wasn't a long enough time and he was moving way too fast. 

"Yikes," he said, "Momma raccoon is not happy with me. I got out there and she didn't run: she stood and growled at me."

Sure, he was out there feeding her babies, and that's her job. She was jealous. Understandable. 

Cable Shenanigans

I know the rest of you stop suckling at the cable teat years ago, but Gary and I are happy paying outrageous amounts of money for poor service and unreliable options. Evidently they can't manage to supply both tvs with all the channels we pay for, or support my antiquated TiVo and Gary's now-dead new TiVo, or keep the phone, internet, or television up earlier this month while I was working from home. 

So the current situation us that we are paying top-tier prices for unreliable basic cable,  landline, and poor internet. We can get to tv things like HBO through the app on the iPad. 80% of the calls on the landline are spam, but I just can't see losing the landline. And AT&T installed superfast fiber on our street last year. 

Here is Gary's latest suggestion. Keep the cable company but go down to basic cable, plus phone and internet. Then, on top of that, subscribe to AT&T internet, to see if it really is better. Then on top of that, subscribe to HBO streaming and Netflix plus something that will give us live MSNBC, just in case, because, Rachel Maddow. So, you know, pay at least twice for some of the same services.

I flatly told him he was nuts, and we just need to do some more research. And have faith that new fiber lines will be better than old cables.  I am going to ask the neighbors what their setup is and start with that. I am sure we can cobble together a landline, breaking news, internet, and HBO/Netflix/Prime Video. 

How have you all solved this problem?