Text conversation:
Me: (Picture of a clock winding key included) Is this to the clock on the living room windows floor shelf? Yours or X's?
The Other Guy: I think that's the key to the anniversary clock.
WISIMH: Oh goody! We're playing a version of Answer a Different Question where you beg the question by making more questions arise to grab me around the ankles like standing in a pit of snakes. The best way to reply to my text would have been "Yes" (or no). "Mine" (or X's). I infer you aimed your answer in the general direction the first question only, and further, that your answer was no, it's the key to another clock - maybe. Montaigne said what is not know is more important than what is. He would have run screaming from the room at this point.
M: Who has the clock?
TOG: I'm pretty sure X took it… I should've kept it.
WISIMH: I know EXACTLY how you fee: that gnawing regret. I'm pretty sure I should've made some better choices in my youth, like choosing to live with you until I lost my mind. I should've kept it. So now we're playing a game I like to call Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. I think we're driving the conversation down a pretty straight road and you veer into the bushes without slowing down. We could be heading through tall grass straight toward a cliff. My part in this game is to grab the steering wheel and try to keep us from plunging to our conversational death on the rocks of nonsense below. Best to try not to jerk the wheel too suddenly or you'll could fall out the window. Instead, I'll adopt a strategy to gradually get us from the brink of disaster back to the main road to our conversational destination. You know, about what I should do with the fucking key.
M: Should I send X the key? I'm sure he'd send the clock back if you asked.
TOG: Yeah well---send the key to him.
M. Ok.
WISIMH: Let the happy hour begin!
"Shaggy, somehow allowed to drive the van, has become confused and made some navigational errors…" Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge
Monday, November 18, 2013
Thursday, November 14, 2013
To Bagel or Not to Bagel
So, me and The Other Guy now live separately. The reasons
why he moved from our home to a studio apartment in an independent living
senior community where he will eventually migrate to assisted living are either
seriously complex or sublimely simple depending on what time of day I try to
explain. In the bright light of day, he desperately needs a full time caretaker and
I’m distressingly not up to it. In the dark hours of the night I’m simply a selfish bitch. We
talk, text, use FaceTime to kiss goodnight and do lunch a couple of times a
week when I bring him mail or run errands with him. We still love each other
and now we don’t drive each other crazy.
Or, as crazy.
Today, I decided to deliver a large ungainly but not terribly
heavy box he ordered online but had delivered to me instead of his place. We’d
planned to do it tomorrow, but I was nearby walking the dog around the lake and
called him from the car to see if I could drop it off today instead of
tomorrow when we'd planned to meet for bagels and coffee and then go to the grocery store.
So, I used the Bluetooth function on the car and called him.
There was a regular ring, then an odd ring which we later learned meant he
tried to answer in FaceTime instead of by voice. Since I can’t/didn’t accept
the facetime call on the Bluetooth, I got a strange different ring then a disconnect.
So I called again. It went straight to his voicemail because
of course he was trying to call me back via facetime again. I left voicemail,
hung up, and the phone promptly rang. Remember, I’m in the car, now about 10
minutes from his place.
Me: Yellow.
Pause because, well, because it always takes The Other Guy a
while to understand, process, react and reply.
TOG: Do you want to (Keep in mind I’m deaf) base
line?
M: Do I want to what?
Lather, rinse, repeat. Again.
M: Ahhh,
facetime! No. I’m calling from the car.
You know. Driving.
TOG: Where?
M: In the
driver’s seat.
TOG: You’re driving here?
M: I'm driving past your place. I’m taking Lucy to walk around
the (nearby) lake. Then, we can meet at the bagel place for coffee (he can ride his
Go-Go down the block). Then I can drive back and drop off the package. Ok?
TOG: (Bear with me as I paraphrase. It’s difficult
to replicate his words and lack of content) Matt will tell you where to drive
the car. Drop off the package so maintenance can get it to my room. At some
point. Call me back.
WISIMH: The plan included you coming out with me to
sit in the car with the dog while I went to the grocery store. I infer I’m to
drop off the box, but have no information regarding when or where, let alone about our other plans. Before the
lake? After the bagels and coffee? The
grocery trip? At what fucking point? And why call when later when
we’re actually talking now and could make some sense if we really put our minds
to it? Then again, why do I bother?
M: I’ll call you when I’m done our walk at the
lake. About an hour. By the way, the package is not really heavy, just bulky…
WISIMH: … as I
might have mentioned several dozen times…
M: … a hand truck will get it into the elevator
and to your room.
(Crickets)
M: Ok, see you
later. Bye
After the walk, I call. We say hello.
TOG: Drive around to the front lobby entrance and
Matt will bring a hand truck.
M: Ok, then we’ll
go to get bagels and coffee and then groceries?
TOG: Um, just around by the front entrance. Not
where you usually park to pick me up.
WISIMH: Which is exactly at the front entrance.
Although to be fair, I think you mean two parking places closer than that. For
somebody who never walks farther than the couch to the bathroom, that’s
practically another neighborhood.
M: Bagels? Groceries? Want to just keep Lucy
while I shop and I’ll pick her up later?
WISIMH: As if.
TOG: Think I just want to stay here.
Damn, I really wanted an excuse to get a bagel. This is
Fate’s punishment for being such a selfish bitch.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
What I Didn’t Mean to Say Aloud
I am almost certain that I know the difference between
saying things in my head and inadvertently saying them out loud. When unsure, I
try to recite the Serenity So-called Prayer, which you’ll have to google
because it’s too much of a clichĂ© for me to care about reciting aloud.
I am almost certain it’s not the Insanity Prayer:
Man, grant me perspicacity
To love the things I cannot kill,
The sobriety to fix the things I can, and
The sentience to give a rat’s ass.
The other day, The Other Guy had lunch with me.
The Other Guy: I ordered stuff we talked about online.
Me: I’m glad. The
Internet is the way to get stuff directly without having to go out shopping.
WISIMH: And to pay bills if you weren’t so afraid the
coming apocalypse will destroy the internet and we’ll loose all our
financial records about taxes and bills. Which is hilarious because your paper
filing system as organized as tossing a 6 pins out the window of a crop sprayer above a hay field.
TOG: I had it to delivered to where you live, not
to my new place.
M: Because?
TOG: It’s expensive and I’m not sure about
receiving stuff delivered directly here.
WISIMH: Which is
understandable given the fact that you’ve received several things I’ve ordered
online and had delivered to you, and I see a UPS or mail truck every time I’m
there, and your lobby has a front desk manned 24/7 by a person who puts stuff
in mailboxes and calls you when packages are delivered.
M: Or because
you’re afraid I’ll never come to see you if I don’t have to deliver stuff you
order, or mail, or light bulbs, or other crap of yours, or take you shopping or to the doctor?
TOG: No. It’s
just I know delivery to your place is dependable.
M: It’s the same
deliverer. Possibly even the same guy on the same route only you’re at the
early part of the day and he doesn’t get to our house until dinnertime. The
USPS knows where both our places are.
What I Didn’t Mean to
Say Aloud: Sweetie, I know it’s not funny that you fear I will abandon you…
What I Hope I Said in
My Head: …like you did to your
mother when I kicked her out of this house…
What I Really Mean Because I Love You: … even
if I could.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
But Monsieur Defarge, I Digress.
Remember the definition of a sentence? A sentence is a word
or a group of words that convey a complete thought. Not a few clues as to
topic. Not an unformed idea. Not an implicit game of 20 questions to determine,
decode, pretend to find amusing whatever the fuck the speaker is bloviating on
about. Not verbs wandering around the barren conversational plain in search of
nouns.
A while back, we needed to get some documents notarized. We
discover our old go-to notary is gone. Hilarity ensues.
Me : (googling on my phone) There’s
a notary public at Postal Annex. Let’s go there.
The Other Guy: OK.
Five minutes tick by as we drive.
TOG: I’m confused. I’m not going to Postal Annex,
right?
M: I’m confused too. I thought we were going to
Postal Annex, right?
WISIMH: We make plans. We agree on an objective. We
embark on our mission. En route, the plans are sometimes incrementally
compromised; they often mutate into unrecognizable forms, they are
frequently beaten bloody and left senseless in a ditch.
TOG: The place where X got some stuff notarized a
while back?
M: Use more words.
TOG: That isn’t Postal Annex. It's other place we
mail packages.
WISIMH: Speaking of being beaten senseless, that’s
what you do to sentences too. I’ve become a reluctant master at deciphering baffling
sentence fragments. By the way, both of the mailbox places are in the same strip mall and
both places offer notary services. So I see your confusion.
M: Which place are we going? The Internet just
told me Postal Annex has notaries, and you just reminded me that so does the
other mailbox place.
TOG: So, we should just go there, right?
M: Um, yes?
WISIMH: Where? The other mailbox place? Postal Annex?
The Internet? I do so love it when you reply to an either/or question with a
yes/no answer. It makes every day an adventure.
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