Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

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?

Conspiracy Theories

Twice this week I have found myself being the voice of reason.

I, too, just recently watched The Staircase, and yes it is exciting to think Ivana Trump died from being pushed down a staircase, but she didn't. She fell. Or she had a heart attack and fell, or tripped and fell, or was attacked by an owl and fell. 

And if you listen to the MSNBC pundits you would think the Secret Service never erases test messages, that they have kept every exchange for every day except January 5th and 6th. It's the Secret Service. Not the Full Disclosure Service. I'm more surprised they keep them than ai am they erased them.

It's no fun being the voice of reason, but someone has to do it.

Exchange with Gary

Gary asked Alexa, "Alexa, how hot is it outside?"

Alexa replied, "It is 93 degrees."

Gary immediately went into the little guest room where I now spend all my time. "OH MY GOD IT IS A MILLION DEGREES IN HERE HOW CAN YOU STAND IT."

"My room is perfectly comfortable." I have had this conversation with him before. Usually he starts pressuring me to install a ceiling fan.

"IF ONLY YOU WOULD INSTALL A FAN IN THIS ROOM."

I was reasonable. "You can install a fan when I'm dead."

"IF YOU DIE I WILL INSTALL A FAN FOR MY WHORE, ONLY SHE WON'T NEED A FAN BECAUSE SHE'LL BE NAKED."

This was a new tactic and it caught me by surprise. I laughed instead of escalating. I should leave a note under the mattress in my room for his future naked whore.

Recipe

Gary creates a weekly salad and eats it for dinner, lunch, and sometimes breakfast. He's very creative. This is the recipe for a typical salad. 

The base is a pre-made Chicken Caesar salad from Dierberg's. This accounts for about 20% of the finished salad. Then Gary layers on the items detailed a year ago in this post: blue cheese dressing, feta cheese, Parmesan, croutons, grape tomatoes, plus red, yellow, and orange bell peppers. And croutons. 

Last week, though, he started with a base of an Applebee's chicken /strawberry balsamic salad, which had a completely different flavor profile. Gary tasted it after he had doused it in the dressing and cheese and stirred in the peppers, and felt that what it needed was a smattering of white grapes and Mega-Omega Trail mix.

Because walnuts, mango, almonds, cranberries, and pumpkin seeds and grapes match so well with balsamic vinegar and blue cheese dressing. Not to mention that I had already portioned out 30 grams of this trail mix  and added exactly five chocolate chips to each tiny snack baggie.

He chewed on it for a day until he finally had to say that a salad of chicken, blue cheese dressing, feta, Parmesan, croutons, grape tomatoes, grapes, bell peppers, croutons, walnuts, mango, almonds, cranberries, pumpkin seeds, and chocolate chips was not tasty.

He fixed it by mixing in another "normal" salad and thus diluting the trail mix / fruit salad flavors. I must say, this salad obsession makes me glad that he didn't stick with his pledge to cook for us in his retirement.

Fireworks

Last night Gary discovered that fourth of July fireworks and The Clapper do not mix well.

This Just Happened

I just complained bitterly to Gary that he hadn't done or said anything funny for a least a year. 

"You used to be great blog fodder. I could write up some goofy thing you said and get a blog post out of it. Do something funny."

He just frowned at me, and then looked down, then looked back up at me, and I realized he was standing there with his pants off and his penis tucked into the center of a roll of toilet paper.

37th Anniversary

My word, thirty-seven years. It's just sheer stubbornness now. 

What have I learned in that time? I've learned the care and maintenance of Gary. 

• If anyone is not listening to him, I need to schedule time to literally sit at his knee* and listen to everything he says.
• If anyone is arguing with him, I need to schedule time to literally sit at his knee* and agree to everything he says.
• If someone has educated him on a subject, I need to schedule time to literally sit at his knee* and  listen to him explain that same subject to me, even if I am an expert already.
• If he is tired, I need to schedule time to literally sit at his knee* and  listen to him ramble relentlessly the way he gets when he is tired, even though I am equally tired. 

*No, really, there's a footstool I pull up by his chair.

It's pretty easy, now that I've got the hang of it. It keeps me out of trouble: I don't want to be the second person Gary's argued with in a day because I get the fallout from both arguments And not to worry, a few hours after that twenty minutes I'll approach him with the idea that perhaps there's another way of looking at a situation.

I've only learned this in the nine years since he retired. It was harder when he was working, his ego would take a hit at work and I wouldn't know if I should listen, agree, or learn. 

I am sure he does the same for me with my foibles. Well, no, I'm not sure. He does listen to my work conversations and tell me that anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot. 

37 years. Pretty great.

Shortages

So far I've avoided any affects of the recent shortages. There was a shortage of baby formula, and while I was sympathetic, that didn't affect me. Now I read there's a shortage of tampons. That will affect not only pre-menopausal woman but everyone with upholstery. 

The gasoline crunch is so significant that Gary said, "I need to start driving the electric car."  I only leave the house in the electric Mini once a week, while he's been stubbornly sticking with the '08 Honda Fit.

Since then he has declined every chance to drive the electric car. But at least he's talking about it, and given that Gary feels that economizing is an insult, it must be rough out there at the gas pump.

 

High Tech

Gary installed some electronic device that sparked, and after that it went in the trash and all our  devices needed to be reconfigured. 

Gary, who is Mr. Technology, did not want to synch his bedroom light to the Alexa again and I swear he reverted to 40 year old technology.

UPDATED; Syntax Word Problem

I have a question. Gary was expressing something about the doctor's waiting room.

He said that when he's been there, "Everyones not masked."

So if he goes in to the waiting room and he is the tenth person there, how many people (other  than Gary) are wearing a mask?

Update =========

I interpreted his statement to mean there were 0 people masked. I said I only remembered one non-masked person, he said, YES EVERYBODY WAS NOT MASKED. When I pointed out the ambiguity, he said WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO ARGUE WITH ME. One hour later he claimed he said "Not everyone was masked," and did not appreciate it when i pointed to the documentation I'd made pre-post. 

Trash Mystery

About thirty-seven years ago I mentioned to Gary that putting the trash at the curb is the man's job.  He disagreed.

I thought he might embrace the trash after retirement, but that was ... what? Almost a decade ago? 

After patiently waiting a decade, I find that last month Gary became TrashMan. He routinely goes through he house emptying the trash. He also puts the trash at the curb once a week, which is problematic because he puts Monday morning's trash out at 2 pm on Saturday. (Except for last week when he put it out at 9am Saturday.)

Of course, I can't complain to him for the way he does the thing I've wanted him to do for years.  I can complain to you. I'm just waiting for the neighbors to complain, but if they don't complain about the squirrels that bury peanuts in their yards and chew on their truck wiring potentially causing a fire, then they won't complain the trash is out two days early.

Decision Idiocy

Gary and I have been squabbling like mad. Some decisions need to be made in the house, and his decision-making process is this:

Stage 1: Ellen, what do you think of X? (I fall into the trap.)

Stage 2: No, Ellen, you are wrong and stupid, and here is why.

Stage 3: Repeat Stage 2 until all possibilities are exhausted.

Stage 4: Buy the thing / Do the thing based on some whim he has because it doesn't matter, every option is crap.

How do I break this cycle? I wonder if he's expecting me to come up with a pro to counter every con. Like a little Pollyanna punching bag. Nope. Not doing that. 

I suppose I have the option to not fall into the trap. "I don't know Gary, what do you think of X?" He would hate that. No decision would be made, ever. 

I am sure he hates my decision-making process, which is to make the decision without involving him at all. I do know when I ask his opinion, he is great at giving me a list of all the cons, and how it would be best if we do nothing. It's his anxiety. I should be more sympathetic. 

I can't say it's dysfunctional, because it functions, decisions are made, but I have this fantasy that there is a world in which couples make decisions rationally. They write a list of pros and cons and don't turn a debate into an argument. 

I suppose I could try being Pollyanna Punching Bag now that I think of it. It would be awful but I might wear him down. Eventually he would be magnanimous and permit me to do whatever I want. Would it be worth it, though? The emotional toll? 

Opera

I was complaining to Gary that recent Covid developments are going to make it so I can't go to the opera.

"At least not this year," I sighed. "Maybe ever."

"Don't be stupid," he said, sympathetically, "Just sit in a booth by yourself."

"A booth?"

"Yes. One of those booths they have. And don't share the booth, and double-mask, and you'll be fine. I mean not now, but maybe later."

I just stared at him, about to say, "A booth? Do you think the opera's like a diner --" when I realized he meant box, not booth, and that even more amusingly he thinks the Saint Louis Opera has opera boxes full of wealthy women in furs and eighteen-button gloves, and that I would just take an entire "booth" for myself.

 

Rolling Stone Covers

We keep magazines in the bathroom: there's a chrome bucket that holds old issues of the AARP magazine and Rolling Stone. A few years ago I noticed that Gary kept putting one issue of Rolling Stone back in the bucket so you couldn't see the cover. I'd see the back cover instead of these pretty faces:

Turns out Gary found it too difficult to do any seated bathroom business with the girls staring at him.

I have been having the same problem this month.

I have taken a different approach to the problem.

The Gary Diet

Encouraged by the short-lived success of the Gulag Diet and the Six-Bite Diet, Gary has invented another diet: the Caesar Diet.

Every few days he makes a gallon of Caesar salad and gnaws on that when he feels hungry. Hungry at breakfast? Eat some salad. Hungry at midnight? Eat some salad. 

"Healthy salad!" Gary says. Depending on how you define "salad," it may be a salad, but it is in no way healthy. Well, perhaps that's too harsh. There is no broken glass in the salad.

It is comprised of 20% Marie's blue cheese chunky salad dressing, 10% feta, 5% parmesan, 30% bell pepper, 30% shredded artichoke, 5% chicken breast, and 0% lettuce. (He always adds in half a bag of crunchy croutons on the side in case you are worried he doesn't get enough fiber.)

He came back from the doctor, pleased that he had lost 34 pounds Knowing Gary's ambiguous numbering system I double-checked. He lost 24 pounds. Still, that's pretty good. 

He also dropped his Dr. Pepper consumption in half. And of course, that's the key.

Pension

It was last June when Gary began the process to get his pension. He hasn't worked there for decades, so it wasn't a turnkey operation, plus the company was sold to another major aeronautical company late in his tenure. So he somehow had two pensions, and that complicated things. Plus, he wants it dispensed as a lump sum to so we can roll it over and briefly avoid taxes.

Top that off with his laissez-faire attitude about money, even more laissez than mine, and that explains why the kitchen table has been covered with pension forms for nine months. 

Thankfully, through there were many letters from the company insisting they need to speak with him urgently, and zero phone calls from Gary asking anyone for help, that chore is done and the table is almost clear. He refuses to put away the magnifying glass and the last communication. Because he thinks he's done something wrong and they could take it back.

So, nine months. Factor that into your retirement plans.