Category: Matrimonial Log

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Matrimonial Log – Star Date 5784.045

“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”

I, more than likely, over did it a wee bit yesterday.  Besides being tired, my back was barking at me excessively.  Before Señora had left the house for her choir practice at around 1815 hours, I had taken a muscle relaxer. An hour or so later my back was still being less than polite, so I took another Flexeral.

I am chalking it up to a combination of being tried and the medications, but I went to bed earlier than usual, somewhere between 2000 and 2100 hours.  I was asleep when my prodigal wife made her way back to the hacienda.  When she found me asleep in the bed, she awaken me, gently to be sure, but still she woke me up. Indubitably, you will understand why I found this a wee bit irritating. I don’t remember how I responded, but in my best Clark Kent manner, I am sure.  I then rolled over and went back to sleep.

As this was not the first time, she has waken me in these circumstances, this morning I started ruminating as to why.  Generally, when I find her asleep, I simply back out of the room so as to not disturb her.  Or if it is late, slip into the bed as lightly as I can.

Then it dawned on me her reason, so I went searching for her, finding her on the couch,  I explained to her that I did not quite understand why she woke me up.  I then asked if she had some trepidation that I might be dead in the bed. She confessed that it was.  I suppose it would be minorly horrible to go to bed, only to find a cold, dead corpse headed toward rigor mortis laying next to you the following morning.  But sometimes a gal just needs her beauty sleep.

And that is how it goes sometimes in La casa de los viejos.

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Matrimonial Log – Star Date 5784.038

“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”

I am looking at Señora with great affection and tenderness in my heart, and I say to her, “You are so beautiful.”

To which she replies, “You need to put your glasses on.”

“I have them on.”

“Then you need to clean them, Caballero.”

“You know I clean my glasses several times a day.”

She won’t let it go and asks me, “when was the last time you saw the ophthalmologist?”

“My prescription is recent,” I reminded her.

“Well it is dark in here,” she went on.

“No, it is not, it is mid morning and sunny outside.”

“Obviously,” she remarked, still not letting it go, “you’ve been drinking.”

“Whenever have you known me to drink in the morning.”

“Well something is off kilter.”

Then I uttered the words, “You are right! Here is a paper bag, I think you know what to do with it.”

Pray for me, the doctors tell me I will not be in here too long…

And so it goes.

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Matrimonial Log – Star Date 5784.024

“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”

Señora and I had gone to bed. We were both engaged in canine behavior, that is, we were imitating Princess Lily’s bed time preparation routine.  While we were not circling our respective sides of the bed three times, we each were fluffing pillows, rearranging blankets, flouncing around as we attempted to find that ever so perfect spot for falling asleep.

In simpler words, we were trying to get comfortable, and thus were moving around quite a bit.  There was an almost spooky, creaking sound that was occurring sporadically but frequently.

Señora says to me, “Is that the bed or one of us?”

I still am hoping it was the bed.

And so it goes.

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Matrimonial Log – Star Date 5784.023

“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”

I am a little worried about Señora.

Let me set the stage.  We have an Internet connected Smart Thermostat. It has a sensor downstairs and a sensor upstairs.  Remembering that hot air raises and cold air falls, playing with the opening and closing of vents on the various levels of our abode, I can keep the temperature more or less even on all floors.  The thermostat functionality  is based on averaging the temperature at the sensors together.

As a balance between comfort and pocketbook, we kept the thermostat at 70 this time of year.   With the averaging of the sensors bouncing around a bit, it reads 70 part of the time  and 69 the rest.

Señora has a Feliz cumpleaños coming up shortly.  I always think of this time of year as a triple witching hour as her birthday, Valentine’s Day and the anniversary of our meeting all happen with five days of each other.  I make Hallmark’s budget balance in that short period of time.

Unlike yours truly, Señora is not horrified by birthdays.  This year is different, however. She is having a hard time dealing with the number.  Every time she walks past the thermostat and it reads 69 she goes a little batty.  She is convinced that this piece of smart, Internet connected technology is mocking her.  I am hoping there is not a whole year of this.

But then again for the rest of the year we keep the thermostat at 72.  Guess who is hitting this wonderful number this year.  I am sure this maldito contraption will be mocking me too.

And so it goes.

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Matrimonial Log – Star Date 5784.022

“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”

Señora with her eyebrows arched, thankfully not peering at me over the top of her glasses like my Mama used to do, said to me, “You know I have grounds for an annulment, don’t you?”

Being skilled at repartee, I replied, “Oh?”

“Yes,” she went on, “you did not disclose an important fact to me.”

Again with the adept repartee I answered, “Oh?”

“You did not tell me you were an alien, that you were from another planet.”

“Really,” I countered, “I thought you would have figured that out before we were married when I taught you the ear tugging trick.”

And so it goes.

Okay like a lot of my stories there is a grain of reality in there, and just a wee bit of literary license.  I did something or the other, very innocent I am sure, that caused  Señora to accuse me of being an extraterrestrial.

If you did not get the ear tugging reference, follow this link to Bad Jokes and read the one entitled The Martians.  It’s and oldie, but goodie.

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Matrimonial Log – Star Date 5784.004

“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”

I am reasonably sure I know the answer to the question.

The question: Is it harder for an OCD person to live with non-OCD person, or vice versa?

Señora has had two major surgeries on her back. This has put limitations on what she can and cannot do. It is just part of our reality as the two of us age.

One thing she finds difficult is loading items into the bottom rack of the dishwasher.  As much as possible I try to take on this household chore.  I have explained to her multiple times that I do not mind loading and unloading the machine.  I really don’t mind doing the dishes manually as it is one of those household tasks that you can step back from when done and feel a sense of completion. However, like many household chores as soon as you turn around and say Beetlejuice three times, it needs to be done again.

My mother’s attitude growing up was that she had five sons and a husband to feed; she was not going to also wash dishes for that crew.  In my first bout of matrimonial fever, once the kids reached a certain age, we all took turns washing dishes, marking our turn on the calendar.  The goal was to have everyone with the same number of turns at the end of month. As a teenager, I washed dishes “professionally” at a few different restaurants.   After all that, I would just as soon load the dishwasher.

I started out talking about OCD.  When I load the dishwasher I do it a certain way.  I try to group spoons with spoons, knives with knives, dinner plates with dinner plates, etc.  I do this as it requires less sorting when I am unloading the dishwasher, simplifying and speeding up the operation.

Since Señora only partially listens to me, being a founding mother of the Idle Hands School, she will frequently just hand wash the dishes. She will also occasionally add items to the dishwasher. I was cleaning up after some meal, and I had gone through the exercise of reordering the dirty dishes in the dishwasher after her additions earlier in the day.  Since Señora was in the kitchen with me, I thought I would explain my system to her.

After I had completed my little spiel on the OCD way of loading the machine, she looked at me with arched eyebrows – thankfully she did not peer at me over her glasses ala my mother – and said, “Good luck with that Melvin Udall.”

Yup, I am reasonably sure I know the answer.

And so it goes.

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Matrimonial Log – Star Date 5784.347

“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”

Rodney Dangerfield and me… we just do not get any respect.

Señora and I were lying propped up in bed this morning, drinking coffee, doing our morning routine.  I was reading the news on my phone and she was working New York Times puzzles on hers.  We both had something to do, in different directions, at 0900.

Realizing suddenly that time was indeed flying, I said to her ever so sweetly, “We need to get out of bed, make it, and you need to hop in the shower. ”

“You need to stop barking at me,” came flying back to me from her side of the bed.

I gently reminded her, “I thought you liked it when men were forceful, commanding, taking charge of situations, their testosterone on full display?”

The jet fighter came in for another pass, this time letting loose its rockets, “Oh, blow it out your arse.”

It goes without saying that I made the bed by myself.  I am just grateful she left me some hot water for my shower.

And so it goes.

Recently WordPress and Nextdoor came to some sort of agreement about allowing WordPress bloggers to automatically feed into Nextdoor.

I did it, not sure why.  The only reason I am on Nextdoor is to occasionally sell items I do not want.  On the whole I just find Nextdoor to be a bunch of whiny Millennial/Gen whatever they are, or overly paranoid citizens.

Anyway this post was flagged as unacceptable after someone complained.  Only thing I can figure out is that arse offended someone.  Perhaps ass would have been better.

Tis interesting though, I generally try to keep my post clean, but I get about 10% flagged… even if they are not political.  Perhaps they do not want to degenerate into the swamp that is X former Twitter.

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Matrimonial Log – Star Date 5784.328

“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”

Twas the day after Thanksgiving, and neither Señora nor I had even the glimmer of ambition to get out there amongst them on this day of  frenzied consumerism known as Black Friday.  In other words, we were staying home and taking it easy.

Normally, my day begins by drinking a little coffee, flipping through the news on my non-Apple phone, followed by taking care of the three “S”s.  Of course, the last “S” being showering.   One reason I do this is that I have scheduled my Spanish conversational practice classes fairly early in the morning, mainly to give myself an inducement to get out of bed at a reasonable hour. Since I have the dubious honor of having my picture next to the definition of bedhead in most standard dictionaries of the English language, I definitely need to shower before I talk to someone in another country.  After all I need to represent the US of A in a somewhat acceptable manner.

This morning I lounged around longer than normal, drinking coffee and reading the news as I had no class – and yes, I just tossed someone a softball. I even skipped showering at this juncture of the day, opting to go to the basement somewhat late to utilize the treadmill and weights.  When I was done I fixed myself lunch consisting of a turkey and dressing sandwich.

With both of us being retirees, we have flexible schedules, but stay busy enough to suit us.  One of our standard questions to the other is what does their day look like. When I got up from the kitchen table Señora asked me a variation of this question.

“Where are you headed next?

Replying I said, “I am going to go shower.”

With surprise in her voice, she queried, “You’ve not showered yet?”

Responding, thinking of my bedhead, I countered, “Do I look like have showered?”

Her unhesitating retort was, “I just live with you, I don’t LOOK at you.”

Well… reckon I was rapidly put back into my proper place.

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Matrimonial Log – Star Date 5784.304

“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”

This is an ongoing problem in what would otherwise be – I am sure – a blissful bout of matrimonial fever.

Señora and I ran some errands this morning, returning home just about at noon, both of us were hungry. She opted for her favorite standby, a bowl of her home-made soup.  I had an urge for one of my favorite sandwiches that I only eat rarely for reasons I am sure you can fathom, sardines and onions on toasted bread with a brush of mayonnaise on one piece of the toast.

Now Señora is pontificating from her soap box, declaring she will not kiss me for the next several hours. It probably did not help my cause that I ate the rest of the sweet onion like it was an apple.

Ahh… the romance has fled from our once rapturous relationship.

And so it goes.

And yes JMR, this was a bit of a recycle.  I just find it humorous the way she reacts to my consuming this delicacy.

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Matrimonial Log – Star Date 5784.284

“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”

It is a beautiful autumnal morning here in the St. Louis metropolitan area. I had a routine dental appointment at 0900 for a cleaning and x-rays.  Teeth are great, thanks for asking.

As I was checking out the administrative person behind the desk asked what was I going to do with the rest of this beautiful day.

“Well,” I replied, “I am retired and I am going to do whatever my muse moves me to do.”

I went on to add, “Of course my muse’s name is Robin and I am married to her.”

For once I got a real laugh, not the pity laugh I am used to with my chronic, groan-worthy jokes that tend to cause people’s eyes to roll  backwards in their heads.

And so it goes.