Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Commentaries

Since the first days of DVDs, Gary has stoutly refused to watch the commentary track. If I try to watch the commentary he leaves the room in protest.

I can’t tell you why.

• Is it because an expert is telling him things he doesn’t know, and therefore he cannot be the expert?
• Is it because someone is talking over a movie and it’s sensory overload?
• Is it because it spoils the magic? 

No, it can’t be that last one — he gobbles up all those “Making of” documentaries. In fact, he has rediscovered his set of discs for Blade Runner with every damn version of Blade Runner ever made, and I finally convinced him to watch the “work print” with the commentary turned on. 

I watched him for the twenty minutes that he could tolerate of the commentary and I’m fairly certain it’s the first reason. Not being the expert makes him very cranky. (See all posts in which he has to listen to doctors or use repairmen.) He already gets a little cranky when I go to IMDB and share details he doesn’t know. 

I suppose when he’s watching a movie his imagination is stimulated and he makes up his own reasons and motivations (such as the “suicide” at the end of The Heiress). Then he’s confronted with what the director actually meant and it enrages him and he becomes Gary Godzilla, squashing  directors and smashing movie sets and rearranging them.

As it turns out, half of IMDB is transcribed director commentaries, so l’m good never seeing another. I’ll need to take some time to manipulate Gary into an expert position soon so he can get his expert fix in some constructive way.

Frog

For the last few weeks there has been a frog on the glass on our back door. We thought he just liked watching us.

I was admiring the frog when I noticed he would move - just a bit - just a little twitch every so often.

Turned out there were an apocalyptic number of winged bugs coming up from the patio, climbing skyward on the glass, and passing right by the mouth of the frog. He just had to sit there on the shoulder of the bug highway and flick out his tongue. 

I pulled Gary over and we started high-fiving each other for every bug that the frog consumed. 

Gary has abandoned his idea that the bugs are taking the air vent superhighway and recognizes them as outdoor animals. Now he has bought an outdoor bug zapper. I even said the zaps will frighten the raccoons and THE FOXES yet he is heartless. 

I am certain that after little baby raccoons are videotaped being startled by the sound his heart will melt and we will be left with a nearly-new outdoor bug zapper in the basement.

Gary and the Flies

Gary’s bathroom, the master bathroom, is plagued every summer with tiny little flies. Last week Gary came out of his bathroom, found me in the kitchen, and said he’d had a revelation.

He saw a moth in the bathroom, and squished it, then wondered what in earth a moth was doing in there. There is a bug zapper inside by the back door, the moth should have gone into the light, figuratively and literally.  

(I HATE the inside bug zapper. I also hate bugs, but I hate the zapper more. Picture an outside bug zapper in the floor inside your peaceful house. ZAP. (Random time passes.) ZAP.

Gary wondered why the moth wasn’t zapped. I will turn the story over to him and his exact words.

“I wondered about the moth, and then I saw a fly inside the air conditioning vent. As I watched, it squeezed through the grate, expanded its wings and fluttered them delicately to dry them out. It then buzzed up into the bathroom.

There is a matching AC grate on the floor near to the bug-zapper in the dining room. Flying insects are getting stunned to the ground, crawl into the AC grate to safety and simply walk to the end of the house where the AC grate comes out in the Master bathroom. Mystery Solved.”

Great, hon. Or the bugs crawl in, see the piles of bug bodies inside the zapper, then opt for the AC detour instead.

Door needs to be fixed. Gary has not felt the door needs to be fixed up to this point. Perhaps the March of the bugs into his bedroom will change his mind.

Spatchcocked Chicken

I have a copy of Salt Fat Acid Heat, and all I have ever made from it is the Spatchcocked Chicken.

So, foodie friends, when you spatchcock a chicken, does your spouse or partner do an impression of a spatchcocked chicken? Gary’s impression has him holding out his arms (ala crucified spatchcocked chicken) and doing an impersonation of a screaming chicken.

I can just imagine how he’d scream if he knew the chicken has no arms post spatchcock. Or if he knew the uncovered chicken spends the night fully exposed overnight in the garage refrigerator. I don’t know if I’ll ever get tired of spatchcocked chicken.

Overbought

I personally don’t like to eat the same thing two days in a row, but Gary delights in it. Given that Mr. S___ will eat no meat, and his wife will eat no carbs, we share no meals. I’m back to cooking home meals for myself on the weekends while he assembles ornate salads for himself. Each salad is a science experiment: he begins with the standing hypothesis (X% lettuce, X% feta, 1/4 cup salad dressing), eats that for two days, and tweaks it slightly on the next round. He has lost sixteen pounds doing this.

So this means Gary’s grocery list is only tomatoes, lettuce, croutons, cheeses, and two sides: cottage cheese and yogurt. Every week he tells me how much of each he needs, and for some reason last week I didn’t notice that he ordered two week’s worth of food, when he already had one week of food. 

I spent last weekend moving my food into the garage fridge, and sorting his 21 yogurts by date so nothing spoiled.

I also did this:

Note how certain bags are marked “OLD” in Sharpie. The font I used was Sarcasm Sans Serif.

Gary countered by not eating the old first, and then yesterday he went through the OLD bags and selected the one green leaf that was not rotted and incorporated it into a special Heirloom Lettuce salad.

Today he says he is off bag salads entirely. He wants to eat his cheese and tomatoes and dressing on a bed of something else. Spinach? Yeccch. Corn? Yeccch. Green Pepper? Yeecch. I suggested he augment his salad dressing with a purée of cheese and tomatoes and eat soup every day.

I think he’ll do a base of artichoke hearts and hearts of palm. He’ll be back to step one of the salad experiment but I think he likes that.

Apologies Robert Browning

Grow old along with me?

The worst is yet to be

The aches and pains from which the quarrels are made;

Our bile grows worse each year

We pass the pain to those held dear,

Once wife, now nurse, with thinning sympathy.

====

Gary doesn’t deal well with illness. Sympathy doesn’t make him feel better, what I think makes him feel better is expelling the venom. I’m always going to be younger, and therefore healthier, and therefore always the nurse and always the target.

That works fine if I’m not filled with bile myself. How do two sickly people stay married? Do they? 

====

P. S. I have a particular hatred today for Rabbi Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra and the poem that bears his because my left foot, the best foot of all my feet, is still jacked up by its encounter with the Grow Old Along With Me sundial.

Salad

Gary speaks well when you get him going. Bring up Trump, he can rattle on in pentameter for an hour without pausing for breath.

In fact, he did that last night, not quite for an hour but for at least twenty minutes, when I interrupted him to ask, “Did you eat anything today?”

Indignant. “You interrupted me! Let me finish my thought!”

”Sorry, but you weren’t winding down, and I was thinking about dinner.”

He said, ”I had …” (waving hand at refrigerator) “one of those round bowl-y things.” 

“What?”

Gary got more annoyed, threw his hands up in the air. “Bowl! White round bowl-y thingy!”

All he’s eaten of late, in a white bowl or not, are salads made of 25% dressing, feta cheese, and croutons, and chicken, and scraps of lettuce. 

I said, “A saaaa … llaaaad?”  I am afraid I pronounced it just that way, slowly, two distinct syllables.

”Yes! A saaaaaaaa … lllaaaaad,” he hissed, and then I laughed for a good long time. He laughed too. Eventually. 

Gary Drives

Gary had not yet embraced the Mini, so Friday afternoon I took him down quiet country roads and busy city streets to a spot ten miles away so he could drive back, only, per Gary, “I am not taking the Mini on this dusty podunk two-lane country road” and “I am not taking the Mini on this busy stop-and-go two-lane city street.”

I threatened him with driving in an abandoned parking lot like a teenager and he agreed to switch places with me and drive home. He was as tense as a cat going into a bath when he pulled out into the city traffic, but then he accelerated and you could see him unwind a little bit. The stop-and-go traffic gave him plenty of chances to accelerate and unwind until he was neutered drunk cat in a sunspot level of relaxed and called the 10 and 2 position on the steering wheel, “where the steering boobies are.”

He didn’t want to floor it on the country road back home, and he doesn’t like the extra power you get in Sport mode, but he was talking about the car when he woke up the next day so I am encouraged.

Review: The Heiress

I campaigned enthusiastically to watch this movie with Gary as part of his effort to find a movie his mom will like. I had fond yet vague memories of loving it, particularly the ending when - well - I didn’t quite remember. 

[spoilers, with additional spoilers for scenes that exist only in Gary’s imagination]

So, two men are awful to Olivia de Havilland, and she has tremendous scenes in which she destroys them. Was your father mean to you? Watch the scene when she confronts her father. Do you have abandonment issues? Watch the last scene. Is your self-esteem based on knowing that other people were wrong about you? Watch the whole movie.

Gary watched the movie and the said, “Well we can’t show that to Mom, because of the suicide.”

”What suicide?”

”Well they make it obvious she’s going to kill herself. She said she’s never going to embroider anything ever again.”

”Yes, she’s abandoning introspection and is going to live life to the fullest.”

”Oh no, can’t you see, she’s going upstairs to kill herself.”

I mean, she does look determined, I’ll give him that … but … a whole coda in which she kills herself because she’s off embroidery?

How many hobbies have I turned on? Has Gary thought I was going to kill myself each time?

Glad We Have the Pet Model of Roomba

Evidently I only clean on national holidays.

This is Gary’s hair loss since Memorial Day:

The bin was completely jammed full.
I have no idea why I didn’t get the “Please remove and clean Roomba’s brushes” message. Perhaps it sensed that my Pet paid for the Roomba.

Gary Needs to Have his Facebook Card Revoked

So this happened Saturday June 26th. 

The stubbornness. The dogged insistence. But, maybe he could claim he was late because Texas was late? I don’t know. I also don’t know if he will delete the post, or if he will wish us all a happy belated Juneteenth. 

====================

Update: he claims that the northern areas of St. Louis county celebrate on the 19th, yet St. Charles County, being further south, didn’t get the word until the 26th.

Spam

The new Caller ID announced, “SPAM RISK.”

Gary said, “Spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam,” and then we sang the whole Monty Python song perfectly with the crescendo and all.

Only, not. Prepare to have your mind blown.

In response to his call of “spam,” etc., I sang, “spammity spam, spammity spam,” and

NO

 … those are not the words.

The words are “lovely spam, wonderful spam.” I feel like this is one of those Yano/Laurel/brainstorm/green needle tricks.

Sticks and Stones

I was on Facebook and posted a fun fact about sloths: they are constipated. 

Gary commented: “Babe, you are my sweet sloth.” Awww. 

I responded with, “No, you’re MY sweet sloth.”

Facebook complained, “Your Comment May Go Against Our Community Standards.”

Facebook? I can only guess “sweet sloth” must be some kind of far-right code word, like “cuck?” Or is there an algorithm that picks out phrases like, “I know I am but what are you” and “I’m rubber but you’re glue.”

Gary’s Dr. Squatch Soap Review

Well, just last Monday on our anniversary I heard about some special manly soap the Young People at Work love: a Dr. Squatch soap, and as it was our anniversary that very day I bought a sample of Manly Man-scented soap for Gary.

Here is his review of the scents, as verbatim as possible.

Pine Tar - athletic

Alpine Sage - old fashioned 

Cedar Citrus - he likes, citrusy

Deep Sea Goat’s Milk - he likes most , interesting 

Bay Rum - masculine

Gold Moss - old fashioned, he likes

I also liked Goat’s Milk, Gold Moss, and Cedar Citrus, in that order.

One thing I forgot is that neither Gary nor I are on what you could call a “frequent” shower routine, so the soaps will likely stay in the shower, and the Tar, Sage, and Rum will likely be donated to the next Boy Scouts drive. Someday, somewhere, I will sniff the air and there will be a little homeless child smelling of rum. 

Anniversary Gifts!

Late in the day on our anniversary I asked Gary if he had truly forgotten, or if he was just waiting to see if I had forgotten. He was so immediately so wracked with guilt he bought me three pairs of gardening gloves.

These come with claws on the left or right hand, so he bought me two pair so I should have one plain pair and one fully-clawed pair. 

I don’t know how far those claws will go in our clay, but it’s a nice thought.

These rose suede garden gloves with rose embroidery on each gauntlet were perplexing at first. How am I to scrabble in the clay with suede gloves? He then explained they were specifically for when I go out to the rose garden and I want to protect my arms as I clip the individual long-stemmed roses.

It’s a lovely thought. I mean, we don’t have roses, anywhere, at all, but it is nice that he sees me as both the gardener clawing at the dirt and the duchess gathering the roses.

Limited Review of the Billy Wilder Classic: Sabrina

I was under the impression that I had seen Sabrina starring Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, and an oddly blonde William Holden. 

I thought I had seen enough scenes piecemeal to put together the plot, and Gary thought he had as well, and evidently we had never seen a bit of this movie. I mean, what we did actually know, “Love triangle with men too old to be in a love triangle with Audrey Hepburn” still held up, but the comedy element was a surprise. Also the plodding in the second half was a surprise. 

The final surprise? Audrey Hepburn had huge feet.

Gary has a nice quality in that he sees a beautiful model or actress and checks out any supplemental body part he might criticize. The more lovely the woman, the more criticism he gives her earlobes or elbows or lower teeth. 

So every time Hepburn looked particularly head to toe luminous, Gary would shriek “MY GOD LOOK AT HER FEET THEY ARE BOATS GOOD LORD.”

(Car shown for scale.)

I think of her as petite - imagine being petite with giant feet. WikiFeet puts her at 10 and a half shoe size. 

Only giant in proportion to how tiny she is - but yes, not International Toe Porn Superstar quality feet. Poor thing.

Flag Day

Flag day was yesterday. And, it was also our 35th wedding anniversary. The coral anniversary.

Gary entirely forgot, which delights me. He had Facebook to remind him, and Alexa told him the exact date, but he never caught on.

I don’t know why I love it when he forgets. It’s not just that I feel superior (which I do). It’s more that I am glad he doesn’t feel our 35 years of marriage is an “accomplishment.” Accomplishments are hard. 

Another nice thing happened on our anniversary. Last Friday Gary asked me to find our marriage certificate and it is nowhere in this house. Thankfully, today the state emailed me that they do have proof of our marriage, and they will be sending it here in 3-5 days, so I will not be starring in my own personal remake of some Doris Day movie where a couple realizes they aren’t really married.

Gary’s Hair

When most vaccinated men are breaking their bubble to get a haircut, Gary is keeping his long hair.

He does accept that it’s untidy, though, so he found two solutions on Amazon.

One solution is an innovative little bead lasso marketed for women, so, a bold move:

The other is a manly-man’s hair band that is marketed for men, because men want hair bands that can hold up to 80 pounds.

If he is anything like me he will purchase a dozen solutions before he finds the irreplaceable one that works. He will use that one exclusively until it vanishes and destroys his world.

Gary and the Car

Gary has not embraced the car. Well, he has not embraced driving the car. He did drive it last Monday, but he was hesitant. He claims it’s because he knows every mile he drives takes up one percent of the battery. 

I see his point - I drive to Florissant and back and discover that I’m at 50%, which is fine - but plugging it in at home takes over a day to top it off again. He hasn’t seen how easy it is to charge up on the road, so he feels like he’d be stranded.

To ease that anxiety we visited a level 3 road charger Monday night, and everything went wrong.

1. EVGo charging card had not been activated.
2. Another car pulled in right after we did so she was waiting, adding to the stress.
3. Gary is familiar with how it feels to breathe in sulphuric gas, because batteries in his  mainframe computer room leaked once, and he said this battery was leaking sulphuric acid, and he choked and coughed violently.

So, we left with the same level of stress, if not more.

To alleviate his fuel stress we decided to accelerate our plan to put a level 2 charging station in our garage. I did notice that there is one application you can use that will tell you where the nearest charger is - and it is a house two miles away. Does this mean that people will arrive and ask to charge up? Awkward.

Responds How?

So I saw this commercial for a “smart bed” that responds to snoring.

At first I thought, so how does the bed respond to the snoring? Does it rattle you awake? Toss you off the side? Then I saw the head tilt graphic. So if someone snores because he has, let us say, sleep apnea, it will raise his head so that his airway isn’t as obstructed? Wouldn’t that wake him up? 

I’d mention it to Gary, but he snores so consistently that the thing would keep elevating until he was folded in half like a toddler’s PB&J. 

Wires

Maybe I have a little Joan Crawford in me, but I find this unacceptable:

This mess is behind the monitor on Gary’s computer desk. Usually I steer clear of his little hoarder haven, but I needed a big monitor for a work task. I was finally able to find the monitor cable after I gave up and left the room twice.

(He’s not really a hoarder. He’s just more disorganized than I am. I keep following mom’s advice: men don’t need a mother, they need autonomy.)

It Went as Expected

The new all-electric Minis:

• are four inches bigger than the old ones. (We went without our trade-in, and they suggested we donate it to a good cause instead.)
  
• are an odd color of blue/black (they still make red, but of course Gary couldn’t wait)
• look non-plussed now
• drive exactly like the Moon cars at Six Flags - when you lay off the accelerator they just stop
• have white leather seats, which scare me, because I think we all know I will pee on them or worse.

 

 

Mini Update

One nice thing about the pandemic is that we really don’t need two cars. It’s entirely possible we just take the sick Mini off the insurance and leave it in the garage ... well, forever.

But, Gary’s Honda Fit has as many miles as the Mini, and if it goes out then we have zero cars, and then I think, you can buy a lot of taxi rides for what a new car costs. 

But thinking ahead, in a year or so, there will be concerts and museums and visits to other cities, and potentially there won’t be the $7,500 tax credit for the electric Mini. 

I think we just need one more thing to tip us into car buying mode. A discount, which Mini evidently doesn’t do. A good price on our trade-in.

“OR, WOULDN’T IT BE COOL IF THEY DELIVERED IT RIGHT TO OUR DOOR?” Gary said. “WE LOVE GETTING THINGS DELIVERED.”

True. That would do it.

Signs

One thing about Gary: he doesn’t like to be told what to do. I know, no one likes to be told what to do, but Gary hates it so much he even resents road signs.

We were in the car together for the first time in months, and he encountered two road signs he felt were trying to oppress him. 

The first sign that stepped outside its station and dared to tell him what to do was a “NO OUTLET’ sign. 

“I HATE THAT SIGN. NO OUTLET. STUPID SIGN TRYING TO KEEP ME OFF THAT STREET.”

”I think it’s to keep you from getting stuck  — “

”NO THOSE PEOPLE DON’T WANT ANYONE TURNING AROUND IN THEIR PRECIOUS STREET.”

The next sign was worse: it didn’t just boss him, it tried to play mind games. 

It was a digital sign that said our exit was going to be closed for construction starting at 9 that night. 

”I DON’T READ THOSE ELECTRONIC SIGNS. WHO KNOWS IF THEY’RE EVEN RIGHT.”

I thought, “Of all signs, the electronic up-to-the minute signs would be the most accurate: no one has to come out and unscrew the sign,” but I didn’t want to be seen as defending the double-plus-ungood signage mind control plot.

Obligatory Easter Post

Remember Gary’s Easter preparations in years past?

Remember 2012?

Or even 2007?


Not so much anymore. I didn’t even recognize this years paltry patch of mummified bunnies.

Three bunnies! Bubble-wrapped and tucked in the fridge.

(Minutes later - ah, I see on Amazon he bought three more.)

My Continuing Fight Against the Apnea, Part III

So, Gary’s gone from using his Oxygen ring monitor to test the efficacy if different sleeping positions to simply sticking in denial gear. He’s landed on: “One of the three summaries it gives  shows I’m in the green zone. No problem.”

So I offered myself up as a control. I could wear the ring to show him what a normal person’s numbers look like. If I came up short I would go to the hospital and get the test, and then that would shame him into doing the same.

At first I couldn’t sleep because the ring kept buzzing with ever-increasing desperation every time I started to drop off. “Oxygen is 80%!” After a few hours of that I marched out to tell Gary I was going to die, and he said the ring was just loose. Also, you can turn off the buzzing. 

In the morning I was able to show him his report compared to mine.

His report - note his numbers tell one tale and his graph another.

Versus my report:

The numbers aren’t that different, especially if you ignore the ones you don’t like — but the graphs are.  

He said he would go back to wearing the ring and tracking his different sleeping positions, so that’s a gear shift to a lower level of denial, anyway.

Gary’s Continuing Fight Against the Apnea, Part I

Gary’s been creeping toward getting a C-Pap to deal with his sleep issues. So far, after being told be probably has sleep apnea, he has purchased an Oxygen ring monitor and found that yes, his oxygen does dip under 90 up to 40 times a night.

Since then he has gone through these stages of denial:

Minimizing: “Well, still, 86% oxygen isn’t that bad.”
Cherry-Picking: “See, this number says overall I got 94 percent, and that’s in the green zone.”
Delaying: “Instead of a wearing a mask I am going to lose weight.”
Alternative medicine: “I am going to [a) sleep on my left side b) elevate my back c) lie on my back and elevate my feet and jam my jaw shut with a pillow] and then see what my oxygen numbers look like.”
Prioritizing: “My swollen feet are the real problem, and I can’t lie on my side and elevate my feet at the same time, so a I can’t deal with sleep apnea right now.”

And of course I have said all the things (you can be on a machine while you diet, you can be on a machine while you elevate your feet, when I come out and see you sleeping in a recliner in the living room it reminds me of my dad in a hospital bed in the living room, I don’t think you’ll end up addicted to oxygen, etc.)

Gary still needs another twenty days of processing until he starts repeating back to me the points I’ve made. (“You know, it occurred to me, I could diet and be on a machine!”) After that we’ll just need to clear some books out of his room, that will be the next insurmountable obstacle, and then he’ll get hooked up probably mid-summer.

Gary’s Birthday

It is both the first day of spring and Gary’s birthday today. He hasn’t made any outrageous demands this month, except for the ornate shaving reliquary, which he still uses even though it has been almost a week. 

He has been on an Amazon binge, trying to fill some hole in his heart with classic movie DVDs. I asked Alexa where the ETA on some shampoo I ordered. She said:

”A package for Gary’s order should arrive today, containing movies. Another package should arrive tomorrow, containing movies. Another two packages should arrive tomorrow, containing physical media, and movies. Another seven packages are on the way.”

I don’t get the movie hoarding. They are all readily-streamable Alfred Hitchcock movies. I think  Gary is using Amazon as his new form of applause. Gotta encourage Alfred Hitchcock. 

However, I can’t complain, at least I don’t, because some husbands buy boats and liquor and other unnecessary things. 

Gary’s Birthday Present

What does a man who has everything — like hoarder-levels of everything — what does he long for?

Evidently it is a more difficult shaving experience.

He came in to see what I thought of replacing his Bic razors with this contraption. I responded, “Happy birthday!” because birthday month rules apply.

I also agreed because this would look fine in the medical bathroom after he stops using it. As he will. He isn’t using the bowl, already, because he just uses soap, and even though there’s no straight razor, the fancy razor is still “too sharp,” and then even if he uses the brush to soften his soapy beard, I don’t see this lasting more than a week. 

Just the right size to sit on the shelf by the speculum, though.

Every Year With this Birthday Month Nonsense!

Ah, March is back, the month in which Gary has his birthday, and as it is his birthday month he gets everything he wants with no argument.

I’m already doing everything except feed the raccoons and hit the Start button on the dishwasher. He has started a new thing, where he asks me to get the throw and put it on him. The throw is in arm’s reach. He would have to un-recline the recliner to reach it himself. 

This is going to be an extra strain this birthday month, because he’s experiencing covid fatigue, chronic migraine fatigue, and now a doctor looked at his weight and suggested he might want a sleep study for his sleep apnea fatigue, and my god you’ve never seen anyone so insulted.  I hope he gets over that. I tried to convince him that maybe if he has three things making him fatigued and one can be fixed, he should FIX IT. (I was also mad enough to throw something so I tore off my shirt and threw it at him. Can’t really be taken seriously topless. Didn’t think that out.)

I know I should be glad he’s still here, and I am. It’s just a whole month of slavery is tiresome.

 

Gary’s Safe

I am generally cranky when Gary wakes me up, which he did right before midnight. He barged into my room, which is my room because I was thrown out of the marital bed for keeping him awake with my “energy,” and said, “Well I’ve got mine.”

”Got your what? Why are you waking me —“

”Vaccine appointment.” He held up his iPad.

That woke me up. I went from muttering into my pillow to sitting on the edge of the bed.

He said, “Oh no, it’s tomorrow. I can’t go tomorrow. That’s too soon.”

”Too SOON?”

“I was going to sleep tomorrow. And I want to wait until it’s warmer and do a drive-through vaccination.”

To summarize what I said in response, it was multiple iterations of, “So you’re going to put the rest of us at risk so that you don’t have to get out of bed?” and that seemed to convince him.

He said it was a 40 minute wait, but people were distanced, and he got the Moderna Vaccine. I feel I plumped up just from the the unwinding of every muscle. I might have gone boo-ii-ing.

Gary’s Dance

I made a mistake this past Thursday. I left the guest room door open when I was in a Zoom meeting, and Gary came home and poked his head in.

I gave him a barely perceptible nod, because I was paying attention to my meeting, and I am a professional.

He began a sinuous dance. He waved his arms like a hula girl. I bit my lower lip hard.

He began flipping his long white hair and I lost it, and I reached to turn off my camera just as my boss asked, “Ellen, are you in some kind of distress?”

And then, everyone had to meet Gary, only, no one really met Gary. They met Retired Gary. All I could think of was how furious Work Gary would have been if I had tried that. 

Continuing on With the Skip Principle

Skipping Thanksgiving and Christmas was vital for getting through the holidays. Evidently it worked so well that we are also skipping the observation of the Feast of Saint Valentine. 

It’s interesting to me how Gary’s expression of love have changed so much of late. Gone are the days of 21 gifts for my 21st birthday. Gone are the days of 40 roses for my 40th birthday. I tell myself it is because he is secure in my love.

But then, we did recently have The Unfortunate Croissant Incident, in which he brought home an unsolicited chocolate croissant and I refused to take a bite. I was not aware this meant I no longer love him, but evidently, it does. It turned into a whole production.

(I would get a chocolate croissant and take a bite just for him, but I already did that the next day.)

2000 a Week

According to Gary, the car mechanic asked Gary how far he drove a week. 

Gary answered, “Two thousand miles.”

I am not good with math, but even I knew this was wrong, and I questioned him.

This tells you all you need to know about Gary: he argued with me, doubled down on it, questioned my logic and my ability to  multiply by two because it was a round trip, and then said there was a decimal point on the odometer he didn’t account for, then when I said “still, even two hundred miles is insane for the one trip you make a week,” he said, “I am not having this discussion anymore.”

The Road [SPOILERS]

Seven years ago when I was on my Pulitzer binge, I read The Road by Cormack McCarthy. I had some issues with it.

1. First, I confused Cormack McCarthy with Carson McCullers, so I was a generation off to start, and then I was really taken aback at how dark she must have gotten in her old age.
2. Second, Hero’s Journey plot? Hate them.
3. Third, you might expect that I had a problem with the [SPOILERS] Roast Baby, but I didn’t: in fact that was the most memorable part.

So, that was seven years ago, and last night Gary mentioned he was “almost finished with The Road.”

“Oh, yes, I hated that.” I said.

”Did you make it to the end?” He said this in a haughty manner, as if to suggest he had made it to the end and it was quite an accomplishment. 

I assumed by his tone that he was done and wanted to discuss it. I said something like, “What did you think of the ambiguous ending? When the father died, did you — “

”THE FATHER DIES?”

Seriously, he hadn’t gotten that far yet. And since that and the Baby Kebab are the only things that happen in The Road, I spoiled the end of the book for him.

I felt bad, but it was his own fault. “Did you make it to the end,” indeed.

Gary and the Men

Gary’s a loyal true husband, with one exception: if he can throw me over to make friends with a workman he will do it in a heartbeat.

It’s particularly ridiculous because the man has no friendships with any other men.  I don’t know if he was a plumber or a repairman in a previous life, but he longs to bond with them. The quickest way to do that is to ridicule me, pat my head, wink at them, and chuckle about The Wife.

Pisses me off. 

This was particularly evident when we met with the drainage men. My stance was, “Hmm. We paid many monies to fix this basement puddle, and yet here it is again.”

I was friendly. If I’d been hateful I could see how he would have wanted to counter my venom, but I was pleasant. 

When he decided we lived in the fifties I said, wryly, that if he would “let me” use the Shop-Vac this wouldn’t be a problem, but he did not get the hint. Instead, he doubled down and ended up explaining to me that this huge expenditure we laid out to fix a problem was actually a step in debugging what was wrong with our basement, and now we needed to move on to the next step in the debugging process, for many more monies. 

Oh my God. It’s infuriating. 

Home lab

Way back pre-pandemic we would go to the doctor and have machines check our vitals. Then Gary got sick, and he got a blood oxygen meter. Then he got one of those fingertip electrocardiographs, and we both played with that for a day. Now he has added a home blood pressure machine to his collection. 

I asked, “When’s the home EEG machine coming?”
He said, “We need a home MRI first.”

 

Emotional Urination

Yes, I’m going there.

I know fear makes people pee.

In addition, there are a lot of medical articles explaining how anxiety causes excessive urination.

I am looking for the article that explains why every time I have an argument with Gary, and I get angry enough to cry, I also get angry enough to pee. 

I mean, it’s handy, because I have to leave the fight to visit the bathroom, and perhaps we both cool down a bit.

But it takes me only thirty to forty seconds to pee. (I’ve timed it. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.) 

Rage pee.  It’s a thing. 

Assumed Level of Knowledge

Gary and I differ.

If I know something, I assume Gary knows it. We have been having those old people conversations in which one of us says, “Who was that one guy in that one show?” and the other says, “Jerry Stiller.” So I assume we have the same neural pathways and cultural references. (To be fair, recently I didn’t know “that big French woman” was Juliet Prowse.)

Recently I was trying to think of the name of a particular band. I said, “You know, the thing in that one weird book everyone has sex with.”

To my surprise, he said, ”What are you talking about?”.

By then I’d remembered the band name. “Steely Dan. You didn’t know how Steely Dan got its name? I assumed you did.”

”No one knows that.”

“Alexa, where did the band Steely Dan get its name?”

Alexa answered, “Famously, Steely Dan takes its name from a sex device featured in Naked Lunch.”

I said, “‘Famously.’ Common knowledge.” 

As you see, I think all knowledge is shared with Gary. If I know it then he does. However, if Gary knows something, he assumes that means I must not know it.

This is how the conversation would above would go if Gary had just learned this Steely Dan trivia.

Gary would say, “[blah blah blah], Steely Dan. Steely Dan got their name from a sex device in a book.”

”Yes, I know. Naked Lunch,” I would say.

”No, it was Naked Lunch.”

”Yes, Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs.”

”No. Alexa, who wrote Naked Lunch?”

”Naked Lunch was written by William S. Burroughs and published in 1959.”

My fear is that we both treat the rest of the world the same way. I know Gary “mansplains,” and I suspect I gibber on making arcane references until people ask if I’ve had brain damage. I suppose both of us would be more tolerable if we prefaced everything with Today I Learned or Did You Know. 

Horns

We have been watching Bridgerton on Nextflix. It’s a period drama — not in all senses of the word, because the female lead does not seem old enough to to have her period, though there are dramatic scenes with missed periods and surprise periods. 

The girl is luminous enough that Gary feels called upon to slight her appearance, specifically a specific  hairstyle choice he just rails on. 

“Horns!” he screams. “Why would she do that? It looks like she has horns!”

So, of course, today he came home to this:

He did scream when he finally looked at me, about fifteen minutes into our evening together.