Tag: Carol

NYT Connections keeps us together

27 years

I’m working on the premise that the New York Times Connections keeps us together. I mean my wife and me.

Here’s Connections’ answers for April 25: —

  • Body coverings: ENAMEL, HAIR, NAIL, SKIN
  • Masses, in idioms: CROWD, HAYSTACK, MILLION, OCEAN
  • Old-timey slang for law enforcement: COPPER, DICK, FLATFOOT, GUMSHOE
  • Starting with synonyms for “Throw”: CAST IRON, CHUCK E. CHEESE, HURLY-BURLY, PITCHFORK

On this particular puzzle, my wife found most of the first category, and we split the second. I got the third, because I’m old. She saw the fourth.

We see different things, and that works to our advantage. We usually get a reverse rainbow, identifying the hardest one first, mostly avoiding the ruses.

Likewise, when we do the New York Times news quiz each week, I’ll either know or remember the sports stuff. She reads a daily NYT summary and picks up tidbits that my sifting through various sources doesn’t catch, and vice versa.

So I know when she calls my name in the morning after daybreak, she’s asking for the time.

We’re more likely to do schtick together in the a.m. You know, the usual intentional malaprops. “Sam and Janet Evening” (Some Enchanted Evening), e.g., I could ask my wife for more groanworthy examples, usually generated by the situation, but the wordplay wouldn’t make sense to most people anyway.

The Zen of departure

I have finally recontextualized the departure thing. You know: she says either we’re leaving an event now, or a time certain. And then we don’t, almost as a result of her talking to someone. For a time, I saw it was a violation of a contract that SHE had initiated. “We should leave at 12:30,” and then we don’t.

I used to have a conversation with someone, but then she thought we couldn’t depart because of it. No, no – I’m just utilizing the time.

So now, I just sit quietly. If I have something to read (a newspaper, a magazine), I’ll do that. Otherwise, I’ve gotten quite proficient playing backgammon, hearts, and pinochle on the phone. I realize that she NEEDS to have those conversations, even when they’re unplanned, and that they put her own schedule off-kilter.

My wife’s calendar is very full. Her work schedule, ostensibly part-time (HA!), is extremely busy. She has a bunch of stuff involving her mother’s finances she has to deal with; my MIL’s mail now comes to our house. I generally sort out the solicitations, but there is still a slew of bills and other financial items for her to deal with.

Then we’ve been dealing with the Daughter’s art show and upcoming graduation. My wife was the magician who figured out how to pay for those four years of our child’s education.

So, it’s all good. 27 years. Who woulda thunk it?

The picture is of us with our only child. I used it for my blog 18 years ago, so it’s recycled. As NBC-TV ads used to note, “It’s new to you.”

Mother’s Day learning curve

m,y friends’ moms

One of the interesting tensions about having a kid, our kid, was the perception of the two parents. My wife thought she had a pretty good handle on it, whereas I felt I knew nothing.

Okay, that’s a bit hyperbolic. My wife knew there would be some learning curve, but that she’d “get” it. I watched my nieces and babysat a couple of other kids, so I figured that I wouldn’t totally wreck a child – or I hoped not.

The moment I realized we, as a couple, didn’t know something was when we both failed at swaddling. Hospital nurses tried to teach us, but we both sucked as students. 

I think my wife was shocked that she couldn’t “get” it. My response was more nuanced; I figured that if I failed at origami, I’d also fail to master swaddling. It’s not that I was HAPPY that my wife and I didn’t catch on to it; that child had powerful lungs. But it did make me less incompetent. Or we were equally incompetent. 

But in so many other ways, she was and is a very good mom.

Trudy

Sometimes, I think about my mom. She worked outside of the home, often leaving us in the hands of her superstitious mother. How did she feel about that? Did she wish she could have afforded to stay home like many of my friends’ moms? It is true that I knew some of my friends’ moms more than my friends got to know my mom. 

(Interestingly, my dad got to see my classmates, and vice versa, when I was in 3rd to 6th grade  because he came to my classroom every semester to sing folk songs.) 

I often got the sense that my  mom thought she was still “figuring things out.” It could have been a function of growing up with her grandmother, mother, aunt, and at least one uncle, who seemed overly protective, I’ve heard.  Since my mom died 15 years ago, I can’t ask her, alas. 

My wife was reading my blog

a whoa moment

Much to my surprise, my wife was reading my blog. She mentioned to me in last week of June, she perused the post about our daughter coming back from South Africa, and also the next one.

Then, on Saturday morning, June 28th, I heard music from her office.  Usually, if she has any audio entertainment, it’s either talk from NPR or classical music, but this was distinctly not that. No, she was listening to links from my post about the #1 country songs in 1955. This is fascinating because I’ve been writing for two decades, and that hasn’t always been the case.

I remember the days when we would visit my friend Fred Hembeck and his wife and child. Fred and I would talk about things we had in our blogs. My wife is trying to understand what we were talking about. 

FGH

In fact, I wrote about it here in 2008: Fred, “our wives and I also had a philosophical conversation about blogging. My wife chastised me for saying that she should look at my blog, rather than me having to explain what I had written. I noted that it isn’t just the information in the blog that I was trying to convey, but the style and manner in which I said it.” Ultimately, I resigned myself to making inadequate bullet points if she asked.

She intellectually knew that I always wrote about her on her birthday and our anniversary, and occasionally on Mother’s Day, though our anniversary and Mother’s Day are very close together. 

Now she’s reading the blog, at least sometimes.  I’d taken it as a matter of faith that she’s not reading it, so the change is a whoa moment.

Anyway, today is her birthday. She’s taken off work for the summer, though I know at least a few work-related calls. This means that all things she can’t get done during the rest of the year are going on. My wife had to go through that stuff after her mother moved from one retirement facility to another, smaller location. 

Things are already better. She’s cleared off the dining room table of the material that had been there since we filed our taxes in April. (Why didn’t I put it away? Because our filing systems are mutually confounding.) She probably has more projects to do than time to do them in the next four weeks, but she’ll use the time well—she likes morning walks—and I’m sure I will be enlisted to work on many of those projects.

Happy birthday, dear. I love you.

Lying about time

inaccurate

from the Oddity Mall

As long as I can remember, I’ve been lying about time. When I was growing up, my household, probably my father, decided that the kitchen clock should run 15 minutes ahead. This was an attempt to get us to attend church and other events on time. I think it worked for a short while, but after a bit, we knew we had an extra quarter-hour and would get to events late anyway.

Incidentally, the clock in the kitchen was the only timepiece everyone could see. My parents may have had an alarm clock in their bedroom, but I do not recall a clock in the living room.

I’ve learned to lie to some people about time. If I tell someone I must get to a train station or airport by a specific time, I suggest the train or flight is earlier. I find this to be an acceptable fabrication. Doing otherwise would make me irritated with the driver when I get to my destination with too little time. (I have specific examples.)

Including me

I lie to myself about when I have to leave for a CDTA bus. If I tell myself I must leave by 1 p.m., when I don’t need to leave until 1:05, I can return to the house and retrieve my wallet or find the house key.

When I worked at FantaCo in the 1980s, we had a great artist named Raoul Vezina. However, when he worked on a project, such as a Smilin’ Ed comic, he was such a perfectionist that he was invariably late. So Tom, the owner, would say, “Raoul, the book MUST be done by February 1!” It didn’t need to be completed until February 15, yet he’d still be putting on the finishing touches.

Sometimes, my wife tells me she’ll be home by a specific time. She is not lying, but she isn’t usually accurate. One time recently, I was supposed to start pre-heating the oven and then add the macaroni and cheese she had prepared the day before. I started the process 15 minutes late, just the right timing.

When planning a family trip in early February, the daughter suggested that we all agree to leave by 9:30 a.m., assuring that we would go by 10 a.m. We left the house at 10:08, pretty darn good.

Do YOU lie about time to yourself or others? Do others lie to you about time?

My wife’s best anniversary present

Working hard for the money

Our 25th wedding anniversary was two months ago, this very day. Here’s my wife’s best anniversary present to me.

I asked her when she wanted to go out to dinner at Yono’s that week. We hadn’t gone out to that elegant four-star restaurant in about 15 years, probably on or around our 10th wedding anniversary. We knew it was time to try it again.

So I asked my wife when she wanted to go out. Wednesday, which was our actual anniversary? No, she couldn’t because she had a work meeting. Tuesday? No, she had another meeting.  Thursday, not only did I have choir rehearsal, but she also had yet another meeting.

OK, I guess we could go on the weekend, although I hate going out when everybody else is likely doing the same. Then she said, “Well, you know what? We could go out on Wednesday because it’s our anniversary!” I thought this was extraordinary, given the busyness of her life. So she DIDN’T go to a work meeting, which was astonishing. 

We had a lovely time. There was great, attentive service and excellent food.  Our conversation with one of the service, newly in Albany, was quite interesting. 

“Retirement” job

My wife’s “retirement” job is obviously very time-consuming. The other thing that my wife did, presumably for herself, is that she took off eight weeks during the summer. It is so she can catch up on various tasks, including household chores, gardening, and whatnot.

We also have to do exciting things like talk to our TIAA-CREF agent because our old one got kicked upstairs and we need to meet the new one. They’re probably a nice person, but this is real My Eyes Glaze Over kind of stuff, though probably necessary. 

I will tell you the truth: her taking time off from work is also a vacation for me. When she was working I often got volunteered, or, to be fair, volunteered myself to help her with her tabling at various events or to set up for event such as the end-of-year volunteers’ dinner.  

Also, we’re going to go away a couple of times during the summer, which we can do because our lovely daughter is home taking care of the feline. That’s a good thing.

Happy birthday to my dear wife.

 

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial