I'm not alone

Just a quick one, but not from my wife.

The other day, my brother's wife (who has a bachelor's degree in business) asked me if she would need a passport to go to Hawaii.

A Loin By Any Other Name

I have mentioned before that I do all our cooking. Naturally, I also do most of the grocery shopping. When our schedules do not allow for this, she goes. Lucky for me, she had some time to go today.

That's when it started.

She has called me called me three times today within ten minutes with various food questions. But this one was my favorite.

M: Me, trying to work.
W: The wife, checking out the tenderloins.

W: "So what's the difference between these two? This one is called 'Beef Filet' and the other one is called 'Pork Tenderloin'."
M: "One is beef and the other one is pork."
W: "Oh."

A Sink is a Sink. Ya Think?

My wife loves working on our house. Check that. My wife loves it when I work on the house. She doesn't quite understand all the planning involved with this.

She decided one day that she wanted to replace the sink in one of our bathrooms. So she went out, found one she liked, bought it, and brought it home.

"What is this?", I asked.

"A sink for the bathroom. I was sick of looking at the one in there." (I agreed. It needed replacing.)

"How did you know what size to get?", I asked.

"What?"

"How did you know what size to get?", I repeated. "Sinks come in different sizes. We need a smaller one than usual since the cabinet is kind of small."

"Oh." This is the sound she makes when the light goes on in her head.

As I figured, the sink she bought was too big, so she had to take it back. I also had to stop the other work I was doing to go with her and find the right size.

Whatever You Want Is Fine...Unless It's Not

Me: " So, what would like for dinner tomorrow night? Grilled steaks or spaghetti and meat sauce?"

I usually have to ask my wife this since she is a very picky eater, whereas I will eat just about anything.

Her: "Why do you need to know now?"
Me: "So I can take the right meat out of the freezer to thaw."
Her: "Oh. What ever you want is fine."
Me: "Okay! Steaks it is."
Her: "Oh. Really? What about spaghetti?"

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Stupidity

I wrote a previous entry about the fact that my wife refuses to wear her glasses except when she is driving or watching TV. This forces to constantly search for them since she just sets them down when they become uncomfortable.

It finally happened. She lost them for good. We had gone out one day, and she did not realize they were missing until we got home.

We returned to the same place the following week. She actually wanted to patrol the parking lot and look for them. Obviously, we did not find them.

She has finally decided she needs new glasses. She asked me a question I did not expect.

"What do I do?"

"What do you mean?", I replied.

"How do I get new glasses?"

"Well, just call an eye doctor, make an appointment, get the new prescription, and then take it to LensCrafters or something."

"How do I do that?", she still asked.

My head began to hurt at this point. "Do what?", I said.

"Make an appointment." she said, matter-of-factly.

"Wha...How have you gotten glasses in the past? How did you see an eye doctor?"

"My mom made the appointment."

I remember when she got her last pair of glasses; it was about ten years ago. We were still dating, and she was well out of college. Yet she needed her mom to do it for her. What is even more bizarre is that she can make appointments for other things like doctor and dentist visits just fine.

Incidentally, she has needed a new prescription for a while, even before she lost her glasses. The only reason she has refused to go is because she doesn't like it when they perform the glaucoma test and puff air into her eyes.

Get a Leg Up

"Help!", she screamed. This could only mean that once again she had gotten herself into some inescapable predicament.

I tracked her voice to the top of our basement stairs where I was greeted not by my wife, but the bottom of a folding card table with all its legs extended.

We were preparing for a little Independence Day party and needed to bring some things up from the basement. Like the table.

She was leaning backwards trying not to fall while simultaneously keeping the table legs from scratching our newly painted basement walls. She found out too late that the table would not fit through the door to the first floor without folding the legs and was trying valiantly to wrestle it through.

As she held the table and I folded the legs down, I asked her why she just didn't fold the legs up first.

"That's too much work!", she barked.

High & Tighty

In the summer I like to get my hair cut fairly short. I told my wife this as I was leaving for the barber recently.

She jokingly meant to ask me if I was going to get a "high and tight" ala the U.S. Marines, but actually said "tighty-whitey" ala the underwear.

When It Rains, It Pours

Much of the country is experiencing semi-drought conditions right now, so I have been watering my lawn in the evenings like most of my neighbors.

Our sprinkler is rather flimsy, but it does the job. It can really put out a lot of water, but I have to place a brick on its base to keep it from flying all over the yard. Once it is secure, I can adjust the strength of the sprinkler with one knob and the pattern with another.

Here is why this information is important. The other night, my wife decided to "help" me.

I had just gotten it adjusted to spray those portions of the front yard that were particularly dry. But my wife was not satisfied with this. She thought that we needed to make it weaker since it was spraying the driveway somewhat and tried turning the spigot on the side of the house lower. I told her that it was fully open and that I could adjust it at the sprinkler.

"No, you can't", she replied. Turn. Turn. Turn.
"Yes, I can! Look." She didn't look. Turn. Turn. Turn. The other way.
"That's for the pattern!" Turn. Turn. Turn. Back again.

I motioned her over finally and reminded her of the little throttle on the side. I even demonstrated it for her.

"Oh", she replied finally.

At this point, she thought we weren't properly covering the lawn, so she went back up to the house and began pulling on the hose to move it closer to the house. Before I could tell her to stop, she pulled the sprinkler out from under the brick. The sprinkler promptly fell on its side and started thrashing about, spraying me in the process before I stomped it down with my foot.

The look on my face must have spoken volumes, because all she said was, "Do you just want to go in the house now?"

I did. I really did.

Burn, Baby Burn

"Help!", she called from the laundry room.

I rushed down the stairs as she called out, "Do you smell smoke?"

I did not, thankfully, and began to wonder what laundry mishap she found herself in this time.

She had once again chosen to ignore the care instructions emblazonened on an item. This time it was the cover for one of the kid's car seats. As I pulled it from the dryer, I noticed that one end was lightly singed, the opposite fairly damp. Underneath the burnt end, the plastic cushioning had begun to melt and congeal. Ironically, the giant care label was still hot to the touch.

I asked her why it was in the dryer when the instructions clearly say that it should drip dry.

"Oh, I don't have time for that."

Fortunately, I was still able to wrestle the cover back on the seat.

On the Road Again...

I got home from work one day at the usual time, and I noticed that my wife was just getting home herself. This is not unusual, but I know that she had left my parent's house about two hours earlier, and it is normally only a thirty minute trip.

I asked why she was so late. She sheepishly replied that she had done something dumb.

First, I need to provide some background. We live in a fairly large city, while my parents live in a smaller town several miles away. They are connected directly by a major interstate. There are lots of signs in both directions stating the distance to either.

She had left my parent's house and gone the wrong direction on the interstate.

For a half-hour.

All the way to our state capitol.

"Didn't you get concerned when you saw signs for the capitol and not our city?", I asked her.

"A little. But I didn't know what else to do.", she replied.