Sharing My World 68

Share Your World March 27 

(But first some missed questions from last week….)

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

I think 40 is a pretty good age to be.  It’s somewhere in the middle of your life after you’re over the trauma involved in being a kid, you’ve gotten pretty good at functioning as an adult, and there’s still so much to do with your life and so many good things to come.  You know, as long as you don’t get hit by a bus or eaten by spiders.

However, I can believe all I want that I’m in my forties until I look in a mirror and go, ‘whoa’, that can’t be right.  It’s funny when some musician or celebrity I’ve known about since I was a teenager is celebrating a birthday and I think it’s shocking how old they are.  Because if i stop to think about it for a minute, I have to admit I’m around that same age myself.  And then I realize we’re both still looking relatively good for being such old farts.

So, you’re on your way out and it’s raining. Do you know where your umbrella is or do you frantically search for it all over your apartment/house?

The umbrellas are in a basket above the coat rack at the back door.  Even though they are very handy, this does not mean that I will remember to grab one on the way out.  Those things are going to look brand new forever.

Do you recharge your energy by going out with friends for a good time or by spending quiet time alone?

Quiet time alone.  I don’t even know what that other thing means.

Name three things you and your spouse, partner or best friend have in common.

1. Coffee first thing in the morning.
2. We are each responsible for our own laundry.
3. Family comes first.  Well, right after coffee and laundry of course.

Does your first or middle name have any significance (or were you named after another family member)?

My middle name is Mae because it sounds good with my first name, like Ellie Mae and Daisy Mae.  But it’s neither of those, thank gawd.  My dads eldest sister was May, my maternal grandmothers nick name was Mae, and I was born in the month of May.  There really was no escaping it, was there?

Music or silence while working?

Definitely silence.  The more silent the better.  I am very easily distracted.  Being distracted makes me irritable.  So shut up and let me drink my coffee before you try to talk to me.  Haha, sorry, I’m still on the things in common with your spouse question.

If you had a special place for your three most special possessions (not including photos, electronics, people or animals), what would they be?

We had a garage sale and then made several big donations to Goodwill.  So any potential most special possessions are now someone else’s problem.  It’s very freeing to get over attachments to things.  Plus it frees up a lot of storage space.  You know, for all those things that aren’t special.  Okay, the real answer is my top dresser drawer.  I don’t even know what all is in there anymore.

The Never List: What are things you know you never will do?

1.  I will never stop being surprised and dismayed when people die.  We are all in our forties so it’s just bizarre when it happens.
2. I will never voluntarily sky dive, deep-sea dive, springboard dive or bungee dive.
3. I will never again be responsible for a pet.  With me these things tend not to end well.  However, as I say this, I am thinking about the video I watched of shelter dogs on a bus being distributed to their new owners and their forever homes and it made me cry and really really want a dog.  For about half an hour until I calmed down and got over it, as little stray dogs everywhere breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Optional Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m grateful for the witches around the world who have twice now performed their binding spell on the big DT to thwart his and his cohorts efforts to do harm.  Looks to me like it’s working.  We all have to do whatever we do best.

I’m looking forward to April and the REAL start of Spring around here.  Which sometimes isn’t until May actually, but I’ll settle for the snow going away as a good omen.

Things That Last

What do you see when you look at these two pictures?  This is the kind of thing that makes me go “Awwww….” because here’s a relationship that has survived a lot of years.  It looks like they worked at it and took care of it just as they also so obviously (to me) took care of each other.  And they are still together after all these years.  It’s very sweet.  I think they are very lucky.

When I saw this I smiled, and all these things went rushing through my head, so I flipped my I-Pad around to share it with W.  I thought he would make the same connections.

He stared at it with a frown for about three seconds and then he went on and on and ON about the car.  The make and model and year and paint job and tires and chrome and God only knows what else while I sat there in stunned silence.

When he finally wound down I said, okay, but what about the PEOPLE?  And he said, well, I guess they’re probably the original owners.

I guess they probably are.  I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.

Adding Up the Little Things

Piglet (Winnie-the-Pooh) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”
– A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Last night when I was standing in the kitchen vacantly staring into a cupboard for five minutes, W asked me what I was looking for, and that made me remember it was ice cubes.  Whereupon I went directly to the fridge and found them.  I should mention here that W is a serious maker of ice cubes.  Our trays are never empty.  If we ever get an ice making fridge he will probably cry.

Then he asked me why there was a small hand-held mirror sitting on the kitchen counter.  That would be because I picked it up instead of my empty coffee cup to bring it from the computer to the dishwasher.  (And where is the coffee cup?) Oh… I’m not really worried about that, I’m sure it will turn up.

Now if you think this is heading towards my being grateful for slowly losing my mind, you would be wrong.  What I’m thankful for is W’s ability to refrain from making disparaging comments about my various scatter brained and brain-dead moments.  Sometimes he’ll make his confused face, or raise his eyebrows or roll his eyes, and sometimes he’ll do all three of those things at once, but he doesn’t really say much.  There might have been a time in our marriage when he did say a lot of things, but apparently nothing helped or made any difference and I suppose he’s finally just given up.

A few months ago we got a bill for our household insurance (they send the stupid thing three months before it comes due so they’re just asking for trouble, really) and I put it away in a safe place, and then about a week later they sent a credit statement of fifty some dollars for the same account.  So I decided I would wait for them to get out their calculators and send me a revised bill with the proper final amount owing on it and then I would pay them.  But that didn’t happen, and instead, much much later,  we received a rather rude letter telling us our account was past due and our insurance would be cancelled if we didn’t pay the mystery amount immediately.  I called them assholes.  W. agreed that they were indeed assholes, but urged me to pay them anyway.  So I did.

What he didn’t say was OMG, you have GOT to get ORGANIZED and KEEP UP with this shit!   So I am very grateful for that. Because he could have said it, and it would have been true, but then I would have stomped off and thrown some things, so he saved us from all that.

I don’t really want to get into the grocery fiascos we’ve had where we end up with three identical peanut butter jars and matching boxes of cereal, or enough salad dressing to last a lifetime – except that it doesn’t because of all those annoying expiry dates that you can’t believe are a year old already by the time you look at them.  W has just quietly taken over most of the food shopping.  He makes one list – ONE!  and doesn’t misplace it.  I married a grocery shopping genius. Wish I’d known that long before now.  Who knew men were capable of picking up more than just beer and fishing tackle.

W still lets me muck about doing most of the cooking but then he helps to clean up.  Amazing.  He either loves me a lot or he simply can’t stand looking at the mess for the next 12 to 24 hours.  I don’t really care why he does it, I’m just incredibly grateful that he does.  And he also turns on the dishwasher and knows how to empty it.  When he brings home take out I’m not sure which one of us is the most ecstatically thankful and appreciative and more than willing to rinse out the styrofoam containers and pop them in the recycle bin.

He always tells me who’s playing hockey or football or basketball on tv and then later he tells me who won, so I never have to watch any televised sporting events.  He lets me know when something interesting or earth shattering has happened in the world so I never have to pick up a newspaper and read it for myself.  He changes my tires and checks the oil in my car and even takes it to the car wash for me when we can no longer remember what color it used to be.

He clears the snow from our driveway and drives me to work when it’s forty below.  He says he’s concerned about my car sitting out in the cold all day, but I think he might also be concerned about me getting stranded with a vehicle that won’t start.   He lets me paint and hang pictures and rearrange the furniture however and whenever the mood strikes me.  (I’ve had a lot of bizarre moods over the years.)  If he’s not exactly supportive of some of my interests and hobbies and pastimes, he has never discouraged me either or interfered with my pursuit of them.

He does his own laundry!  We’ve been headed in this direction ever since I shrunk every woolen item he owned and turned all his underwear pink.  Whenever I put my clothes in the washing machine and forget about them, they will miraculously appear clean and dry and folded in a neat pile on my dresser half a day later.  Once I was going to complain about how the towels were folded but thankfully I was able to shut myself up before I ruined everything.

This man buys me spiced rum even though he hates it himself.  He listens to me complain about work even though he really doesn’t want to hear about it.  He never interrupts me when I’m reading, or doing things on my phone, or sitting at the computer for way longer than could possibly be healthy.

He asks me for my opinion.  He wants to know what I think.  He tells me I should do whatever makes me happy.

How in the world could I not be grateful for all that.