Reality, according to him

It is always a good idea, as a couple, to do a little reality check once in a while -- say, every 3 years or so. This responsibility will primarily fall to the wife, because the typical husband often lives in a Different Reality, one somewhat removed from Actual Reality.

The husband, for instance, may think things are humming along quite smoothly in The Household. He takes care of his immediate needs -- shaving, and all that -- and he is vaguely aware that other things in the household get done. How, he is not always sure. Perhaps, like for the comic strip cat Bucky, there exists in his household a magic cupboard that automatically restocks itself. And a magic closet that refills itself with clean clothes. Yes, life is good.

This is where those reality checks come in. SOMEONE must remind him that there is no magic cupboard, and that the clothes do not wash and dry and fold themselves. And that SOMEONE would like a little appreciation shown for this once in a while.

Generally the husband is only too happy to express his appreciation. His method of expression, however, may not be in keeping with Actual Reality.

The husband's thoughts will naturally tend toward the type of appreciation he would like to receive. Believing that his wife, as his other half, would feel the same, he offers her the best thank-you he can possibly imagine, and he offers it almost reverently:

"Can I make a trophy for you, for BEST WIFE IN THE WORLD?"

He is envisioning past days of glory, when boys he knew with trophies were heralded and envied, and he imagines how proud and excited his wife must be at the thought of receiving such a coveted --

But his wife is shaking her head. "No," she says. "I'd just have to dust it. I'd rather you make me a sandwich for my lunch once in a while. Oh, and let me have the parking spot more often."

He is dumbfounded. This does not make any sense. He offers her Shangri-La, and she wants...salami.

"You...don't want a trophy?" he says haltingly.

"No," she repeats, more emphatically.

He is silent for a moment. Slowly, he begins to realize that his wife inhabits a reality far different from his own. If she does not swoon at the thought of receiving a trophy, he must try another tack.

"Then, can I have a trophy?" he says. And is further mystified when the sandwich his wife had been making makes sudden contact with his person. She mutters something about a parking spot. He decides to retreat before she can express her displeasure with her car.

He files this away with other little tidbits he has learned about his wife ("When she asks you in a dreamy voice if you would like to come out on the patio with her to admire the stars, do not say 'As soon as Lost is over, hon,' " and "Do not assume that just because she is perfectly capable of opening her own car door that she enjoys doing so"). Ah, women. The inhabitants of some far-off, completely mystifying reality. And with that thought the husband retreats contentedly into his own, understandable, reality. For at least another 3 years or so.

But secretly, his wife thinks that although a trophy would simply gather dust, it was sweet of him to think of it.

Social deadbeats

Ah, weekend evenings. The time when we all look forward to relaxing, going out on the town, having fun...and going to the grocery store.

At least, that's what you do on weekend nights if you are us.

Call us a wild couple, but that is what we have found ourselves doing lately. Saturday mornings, which used to be our -- "our" meaning "my" -- usual time for doing the shopping, slowly started getting busy, and before we knew it there we were at Superfresh on Saturday nights, along with all the other social, um, misfits. I am embarrassed to be seen at such a place on an evening when everyone else is out making revelry, and at first I would slink in lest anyone I knew, who might be nearby going to see "Indiana Jones," would see me. The most exciting thing we can do at the store is pretend we're Indiana Jones, searcing for hidden treasure in the form of Lucky Charms.

But don't think that the grocery store on Friday or Saturday night is dead. That's what WE thought, and it was some comfort to feel that, even if we were now among the ranks of those whose most exciting evening activity was deciding whether to get the oven roasted or the mesquite turkey lunchmeat, at least we could do our deliberating in peace. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all, the grocery store is overrun with excess children on these evenings -- children, perhaps, whose babysitter canceled at the last minute and whose parents decided that the store could double as a playground for the kids while they get their weekly shopping done. There is no supervision at this playground. Parents are heedless of the destruction caused by their little pirates and bandits swooping through the aisles, catsup and toilet paper and maraschino cherries all being knocked to the ground. At one of the stores we frequent, someone with a malevolent sense of humor has stashed cages of beach balls right near the self-checkout lanes. Need I say more?

And then you have various groups of young people, looking for something to take to whatever gathering they are going to, and wondering, aloud, if brownies can be baked in a frying pan, because that is all the cookware they have at home.

And then there is the two of us. I can't even say that this is a social outing, because we often split up due to Joe's firm belief that what one of us can do, both of us don't need to do at the same time. Besides, his visits to the grocery store are infrequent enough that everything is quite new to him. While I proceed through the store collecting the items on our list and dutifully crossing them off, he is inspecting all the different forms of garlic one can buy, or examining the nutritional content of the 387 varieties of breakfast cereal.

But who knows? Maybe one of these nights, when no one is looking, one of us will jump in the cart and the other will careen through the aisles with it. And now that I think about it, maybe those beach balls at the checkout lanes aren't such a bad idea after all....

In search of warmth

Things were a bit slow there for the first several weeks of my new job, but they are certainly beginning to pick up. Yes, sir. My most pressing work project at the moment is: trying to keep warm.

Keeping warm is not ordinarily something one has to worry about in June, when it is 85 degrees. But that is the outside temperature. This, oddly enough, has nothing to do with the inside temperature of the average workplace. Indoor temperatures seem to be more closely related to the mating habits of hippos than to what the weather is like, or even -- astounding thought! -- the clothing being worn by employees, who generally dress in accordance with the outside temperature. This is a big mistake, however, particularly when they don't work outside.

Due to the recent departure of several employees where I work (none of whom, to my knowledge, had temperature-related issues), and the impending arrival of several new people, offices are being switched around. If they ask me if I want a new space, I have my answer ready:

The bathroom.

My rationale is simple: The bathroom is the warmest room in the building. I spend a good deal of time at the sink in there -- which poses a problem on my time sheet, there being no category for "restroom activities" -- just letting the warm, wonderful water spill over onto my hands, restoring life where there had been but bitter numbness. I'm sure someone in finance has noticed a marked increase in the company's water usage since I joined. Any day now, I expect to be accosted in the act and led away to my boss with the explanation that "We found her in the bathroom again, just holding her hands under the hot water."

They may even revoke my sink privileges. "This employee must be accompanied at all times to the restroom," they might intone, "by a responsible female employee, perferably one who is always warm and who will not be tempted to follow the employee's example of wasting the hot water. The employee will be allowed 10.2 seconds to wash her hands ONLY in the event of actual restroom need."

Several years ago when I was still teaching, I had an assistant who was, shall we say, in a different stage of life than I was -- one in which she would, without warning, bolt from the classroom and stick her head inside the nearest freezer. One day the building engineer, who was unaware of this routine, came around with the heating and cooling guy to see if there were any problems. Sounding confident, he asked, "You guys don't really have any issues with heating and cooling in here, do you?"

My assistant stared at him as though wondering how on earth a person so ignorant could possibly exist. "You are talking about a woman in her 40s and a woman in her 20s being in the same room," she said frostily. "Of COURSE we have issues with heating and cooling!"

And that pretty much sums up the problem. As long as there are these interpersonal variances -- age differences, gender differences, inny and outie belly buttons -- there will be issues with heating and cooling. If you have any ideas about how to solve this problem, please let me know. I'll be in the bathroom.

Short thoughts about toilets

Sometimes you find yourself in a life situation that you did not anticipate. (If you have never found yourself in such a situation, let me know. I'd like to know how you have accomplished this, and -- more importantly -- how I can accomplish this.) When this happens, it is important to find an individual who is supportive, is understanding, and can help you put things in perspective by, say, telling you how much worse the situation could be.

I was explaining to a friend my disappointment with a certain situation, one that involved a considerable amount of boredom and uncertainty. As friends do, she endeavored to cheer me up by telling me a story. The story was about missionaries, which didn't quite pertain to my particular situation, but as missionary stories are usually interesting I listened attentively.

She said that she had read that sometimes missionaries find themselves doing everything but what they had gone to the mission field to do, things like hauling water by donkey, competing with hairy creatures for sleeping space, or cleaning toilets. This last point was the one my friend thought was pertinent to my own situation.

"Eventually," she said, "you'll figure out your purpose. Just think of what you're going through right now as your toilet-cleaning experience."

Well, this certainly made me think. But probably not in the way my friend meant it to. Mostly it made me think of my real toilet at home, which desperately needs cleaning. Maybe someday I can get my own missionary to take care of that.

Adventures in eating

Against my better judgment, I went to an Indian restaurant for lunch today. My idea of adventurous eating is putting mayonnaise on both pieces of my sandwich bread. So you can imagine my trepidation at eating at an Indian restaurant, where, for all I know, they might think tree bark is a delicacy. But as I am new at my job, and the rest of my department was going, I didn't feel I could decline. Maybe after I've been there for a few months or so, I can say, "You want me to do what, now?" But for now, I just pretended like Indian food was my favorite thing in the world.

Joe, being more experienced in these matters, had given me some pointers before I went: The spinach stuff (authentic Indian name: "spinach stuff") is good, but stay away from pork vindaloo (so named because victims -- er, consumers -- often must rush away to the "loo," at least if they are eating this in Britain).

"So, how was it?" Joe asked when I came home.

"It was...baby food. Basically, I had baby food for lunch," I said.

The restaurant had been a buffet place, and that's exactly what everything looked like. Pureed mush, with some little chunks of unknown solids floating in some of the mush. Even babies probably would have mistaken it for something to play with, not eat. The only things that were recognizable as actual food were the pita bread and plain rice.

Joe wanted to know if there had been any chicken dishes. "Usually they have a couple of meat items," he said.

"Well, there were some things that were labeled chicken," I said dubiously, "but I couldn't get an independent confirmation of that. They seemed a little offended when I asked."

"And another thing," I said, "there weren't any directions telling you what you were supposed to do with this goop -- assuming you wanted to eat it. Do you dip something in it? Scoop it? Slurp it? It really was rather rude of the establishment to keep that to themselves."

Fortunately I did not have to survive on pita bread and baby food for the rest of the afternoon, as we had a party later in the office. I was so happy to see food that I knew was food: little squares of pineapple, carrot sticks, chips (although Joe disagrees with the categorization of chips as "food"), cake...and the best part of all: no bowl of mush, with little chunks floating in it.

Parental wrongs

Although my parents live several states away, I am kept well-abreast of their disagreements because they tend to conduct them when I am on the phone with the two of them. They insist that they never argue when they are alone. No one, of course, can confirm this.

The latest of their spirited discussions occurred back on Mother's Day. They were both on the line with me, as usual, and were telling me which of my siblings had already called to extend their wishes to Mom. This is common among families in which there is more than one child, and it serves to cause the siblings to strive to be the first to call the parents on an important occasion. In families with strong sibling rivalry, this can lead, over time, to phone calls in the middle of the night, which in the case of my parents would likely catch them awake, but in the bathroom.

Anyway, my mother relayed that she had just talked to my oldest sister. My father, ever the Keeper of Truth, informed us that it had been Sister #3, not Sister #1.

My mother politely corrected him. It had been, indeed, Sister #1.

Equally politely, my father said it had not.

"I'm sorry," my mother said, "but you're wrong."

"Well, I'm sorry," my father said, "but you're wrong."

From here the politeness experienced a marked decline.

"How would you know?" my mother retorted. "You didn't even talk to her."

"I was sitting right next to you when you were talking to her. I could tell from the way you were talking who it was," he said.

Mothers may have eyes in the back of their head, but fathers are not without their little tricks -- they have ears in the back of their head, or somewhere in addition to the usual spot.

"How was I talking to her?" my mother asked.

"You -- you mentioned her trip!" he said triumphantly. "She just went to Tennessee," referring to Sister #3.

There was a pause. "I asked about her trip because she just went to Ohio," my mother said, referring to Sister #1.

I could imagine my father shaking his head. "You must have talked to her earlier in the week," he said.

"I should know who I'm talking to," my mother said in annoyance.

"Yes, you should, but you obviously don't," my father said. His tone indicated his belief that she was just steps away from a facility for those whose memory isn't what it used to be.

At this point I put the phone down to empty the dishwasher. I was in no danger of missing anything they said; it all came through quite clearly. When I picked up the phone my mother was saying, "We should just call her right now," meaning Sister #1, "and ask her if she just talked to me."

"Fine with me," he said. "But you're wasting your time."

"We'll see. Well, dear," she said to me, in the first piece of conversation that had been directed at me in several minutes, "it was lovely to talk to you, but we have to go now. Take care."

Quite irrespective of sibling rivalry, I now have an added incentive to be the first to call my parents on important occasions. Next time, one of my siblings can listen to my parents argue about who I was.

Get your newspaper!

For the past few months, our household has been waging what may be called the Great Newspaper War. This was is being fought on two fronts -- on one, we are trying to rid ourselves of a free paper that, despite our repeated efforts, is deposited on our doorstep every day; on the other front, we have been endeavoring to procure another free but wanted publication that has proven to be maddeningly elusive.

The unwanted newspaper -- which we will call The Wart -- appeared without warning one day several months ago. And the day after that. And the day after that. As it carried basically the same news as our subscription paper but was not as well written (and, more importantly, had NO comics), I decided to take action.

Being of Nonconfrontational persuasion, however, I was not eager to take direct action, such as calling the newspaper offices. I might have to talk to an actual person, which I was anxious to avoid. Therefore I scoured the paper for an e-mail address to which I could direct my complaint. Now, companies know that many customers, given a choice, would rather make a complaint without talking to someone, and so they make it hard to do so. Although the paper listed, in large letters, the phone number to call to request that delivery cease, the e-mail address was printed in teeny tiny type, such that an ant would have difficulty reading it.

In my e-mail, I informed Whomever It Does Concern that we no longer wished to receive their publication. (In a fit of graciousness, I did not mention that we never had wished to receive it.) I asked Whomever to stop delivery immediately.

The next morning the paper was there again. After three days I was contemplating taking additional action, but before I could formulate a plan, it stopped coming.

"Well!" I said to Joe, satisfied. "Looks like the consumer voice prevailed after all."

My satisfaction was short-lived, as the paper showed up again just a week later. Joe's opinion was that it was easier for the driver to just throw a paper to each house rather than figure out which one of the 18 rowhouses was not supposed to get one.

I sent another e-mail. This time I praised Whomever for their prompt attention to my earlier complaint, but pointed out that the paper still came, and was still unwanted. I got no response, and the paper continued to be delivered.

I had turned my attention to the other front in the Great Newspaper War when, some weeks later, I noticed that not only was the unwanted paper not there one particular morning, none of our neighbors had gotten one either.

"Nice going," said Joe. "You canceled it for the whole block."

"Hmmph," I said. "I'm sure everyone's grateful. It was a useless paper."

But just in case they didn't see it quite the way I did, I made sure not to mention to anyone what I had done, except for Mrs. Nosy Neighbor, who was of the same opinion as I toward this particular publication.

The issue of trying to arrange delivery of the other paper -- a weekly local that ran a sometimes interesting humor column, which I admit was the main attraction for me -- demanded even more strategic planning. I politely e-mailed another Whomever, begging to be put back on the delivery route for their delightful publication. I was assured that the matter would be looked into.

Some time elapsed, but eventually The Little Paper that Could landed at our doorstep. I was delighted. Mrs. Nosy Neighbor was delighted. The other neighbors -- well, I never heard what they thought of it.

Because the next week, the paper did not come.

I let it go another few weeks before e-mailing again. Our e-mail exchange went something like this:

Me: Thank you for your prompt response to my request to renew delivery of The Little Paper that Could. We enjoyed reading it the one day that it came. Unfortunately, it has been absent ever since. Do you think you could restart delivery once again?

Newspaper woman: You are in County X. The driver generally delivers only to County Y.

Me: True, but we are in City Z, and the driver delivers to the rest of City Z. All the driver has to do to deliver to County X is to drive across Bridge A, which a turtle could easily do.

Newspaper woman: The driver greatly resents being compared to a turtle and says that if you want the paper, come over Bridge A to City Z in County Y and get it yourself. And if you make any more complaints, she'll see to it that you start receiving The Wart again. Twice a day. Sundays, too.

At least now we know the real reason for declining newspaper readership. It's all in the hands of the delivery people.