Tag: marriage

Moby Dick

The east wall run the current kitchen. Yeah. For reals. It's a stylized filter so you don't think it's so bad.

One of the pre-identified risks in this project is the possibility that I will not stay married. A disruption of this magnitude could fray the loosely woven cloth, nay, the net, of our union. At our core, the Spouse and I are incompatible.

To get this particular project moving–this project that has sat simmering, fermenting, fomenting and even festering for nigh on a generation–I extracted a promise. It was really quite clever of me. I asked that for my birthday present, the Spouse would give me boss status on the project. Final say on any disputed decision.

It was helpful that we were at the beach, that there was a post-sun beer or two and a lovely bottle of red that we drained along with grilled sea and farm fresh fare. With the Beast splayed on the cool tiles of the oddly large and mildly dysfunctional rental kitchen, his baleful hound dog eyes tracking the slow merry-go-round of the ceiling fan and with the red sun flaming the window over the sink (with a view of a yellow brick corporate mall that included the Piggly Wiggly) signaling the end of my birthday, a “yes” was extracted.

Yesterday we saw the kitchen elevations. And I wasn’t blown away. I was a little surprised. I thought that I would hear choirs of angels. Nope. No celestial movement.

Kitchen elevation of east wall. All cabinets.
It was the great white wall. A wall of cabinets that stretched to the very top of our ten foot ceilings. A great wall of white that ensconced and cocooned the rangetop. I railed against it. I was Ahab who needed to destroy that great white monster.

Working with the architect, we moved some storage blocks off of the counter. We replaced some closed cabinets with open shelves. We decided that the bottom cabinets would not be white. It was a great solution. We picked out some stuff, scheduled the next meeting and went about our day. But still, I wasn’t settled.

After work, I walked into the kitchen and imagined the storage space at the top of the room. What would I put in those cabinets? I’d need a real ladder to reach them. I stretched my hand above my head, as far as I could. I opened the current cabinets and stood on my tippy toes. I could barely touch the third shelf of these low ones. I could neither see nor touch anything in the back. I looked up to the ceiling again. It looked like a shear rock wall that I had no idea how to summit. I felt closed in. I felt claustrophobic.

I shook off the future kitchen plans and turned to the current meal plan. I worked on getting dinner together in my borderline decrepit kitchen. It was comfy. Most everything was in reach–mostly because the footprint was confined. Stuff was either right there or not in the room. But still, it was manageable. I was managing.

I plated the arugula, topped it with the burrata and scattered halves of heirloom cherry tomatoes and a few red onion strings around the mound of cheese. I crushed black pepper over the top and rained sea salt. I sliced the leftover roasted chicken and placed it on the other side of the plate. I drizzled a lemony pesto sauce on the chicken and finished the burrata and arugula with olive oil and a drop of the good balsamic.

The Spouse and I sat down to eat. I poured the wine that he had opened. I said that I wasn’t sure about the big wall of white. The Spouse said that he was surprised when I didn’t object to the enclosed exhaust hood. He was surprised because when I showed him images of what I liked, a hearth surround was not on the list. In fact, he noted that I liked the clean lines of an exposed stainless steel hood reaching to the ceiling and disparaged the hearths fashioned to look like a pizza oven or a fireplace.

He knew this because when I swiped through dozens of pictures that I amassed online, those times when I thought his nodding head was a signal to move along, he was actually paying attention. And that his nods indicated that he understood. 

Now I saw the white monster in its true form. It was the closed-in range. I wanted freedom to cook and create, but the design of the cabinetry was closing in.

But here’s the thing. I didn’t know he was listening. But he was. And he fixed it. What a dope. Me, that is.

So, really, the secret to our marriage is that we are incompatible. At least that’s what I say it is. And I’m in charge of this project.

Posted on by docthink 0

Boiling Points

A tea tin, filled with bags of tea. English breakfast.

He filled up the electric kettle with water to the half-mark. No reason to waste energy on boiling extra water. It doesn’t stay hot.

The kettle was a very good addition to the ridiculously small and poorly laid out kitchen. There was a general dislike of kitchen appliances. Among some. Okay, among one. He minded less than she. There was paltry counter space for starters. The kettle, however, was used at least once each day, and very frequently two or three times. It earned its real estate. Its place was in plain site.

They used to have a stovetop whistling tea kettle. That took over a burner for the first part of their marriage. They went through four or five. A few burned out. One wore out. Most lost their ability to whistle during their tenures.

While traveling, he stayed in an apartment with an electric kettle. It reminded him of an old girlfriend’s mother. She emigrated from England and brought her love for tea and the efficiency of her electric tea kettle. He missed the mother much more than the daughter. It’s like that when you get older. Old girlfriends hold less meaning than their families who embraced you as one of theirs. He saw the kettle and was immediately attracted to it. He thought about the flaky crust of the fruit pies that the mother used to make.

The following Christmas–as they did before, one year when they exchanged toasters and another with pillows–they bought each other an electric kettle. They both did research and came up with two different models. He either took one to work or returned it to the store. She didn’t remember, but was happy that they did not have two additional small kitchen appliances. One was likely too much, anyway. Except it wasn’t.

The kettle was remarkably fast. Much faster than the whistling stovetop type. Even the direct flame from the gas burner could not compete with the magical kettle. You would think that the warming up of the carafe would take a long time, but just 60 seconds after flipping the switch the water starts to hiss. The hiss drops a few octaves before hitting a silent lull while it gathers enough energy to burst through the surface of the water and burp the first gurgle of the boil. Click. It automatically shuts itself off. Perfect safety for a flaky family.

After the 4.5 minutes of boiling, there is 5 minutes of steeping.

There is a small, well-curated selections of tea. The herbal choices include pure chamomile, pure peppermint and usually one lemon mint or lemon hibiscus or some hippie flavor mix. The black teas normally included English and Irish breakfast teas–the English is richer and the Irish more flavorful. There might be loose Earl Gray and Darjeeling. And a jasmine green tea. He can’t drink tea that might keep him up at night. Caffeine has no power over her.

She likes her after dinner black tea with a little milk and a little sweetener. He drinks his herbal brew straight or, occasionally, with honey. Sometimes she nods off before she finishes her tea, with her fingers resting on the keyboard, neglecting her writing. And sometimes he nudges her to finish up, brush her teeth and come up to bed.

Posted on by docthink 0

Throwing in the Towel

Pink bath towel set.

It was a simple task. Maybe it wasn’t really that simple since there was already a task in the queue. She would call them “errands.” She had no idea what he would call them.

The goal was a simple wedding, and, as far as weddings go it was. The time frame between “will you marry me” through “I do” was a week shy of three months. They conned a priest into marrying them in a church and selected the #2 readings with full mass. Honestly the only criteria for the service was to avoid the “submit to thy husband” reading. Any of the other Old or New Testament love readings would be fine. A box checked.

There was a maid of honor and a best man, no additional maids or bearers. She told the maid to pick out a dress that would be appropriate to the best man’s tuxedo. And any color. Except white. There were many compliments to the bride over the maid’s sartorial selection.

She bought her own dress off the rack from the fancier department store. It was left over from prom. She had a choice among four or five white or near white frocks. She was very happy with the one she bought. And it was on sale, too.

The reception would be in his huge group house where there had been many large parties with multiple keg runs. He had a roommate who had access to wholesale booze, and they found a caterer that would bring food and a cake and wouldn’t charge for the champagne flutes even though they were only pouring and not supplying the bubbles.

Her sole requirement for the catering was that they show up. She didn’t care what the food tasted like as long as it was there before the guests. When the caterer mentioned a bakery he worked with, she enthusiastically said “Yes!” even before he could sell her on the the airy, buttery cake with raspberries spread between the layers. Her only request was that the bride and groom at the top of the cake was a man and a woman. Done and done!

The week of the wedding was pretty busy. There was family and friends coming from across the country–at least one, and perhaps as many as six, said that they had to witness him say, “I do.” There was a house that they closed on two days before the wedding. And there were two separate households to move into the freshly mortgaged cottage.

He and his best man were heading off to pick up the three tuxedos, one for the father of the bride, too. This is where the simple task came in. She realized that there were no decent finger towels for the bathroom.

“When you guys are out, can you pick up some hand towels for the bathroom? Pink, please. And if they don’t have pink, white would be fine.”

The time to the rehearsal began to close in like the trash compactor in Star Wars. There were amazing wedding elves moving furniture about, sweeping and mopping, and artfully hanging these ridiculous white paper bells and twists of gray and pink crepe paper, but the list of things to do was still daunting. She was becoming overwhelmed. He knew. She didn’t know, so much.

She needed to get her clothes and check into the hotel, then change, then to the church for rehearsal, then the dinner, then back to the hotel. She kept going over her list around and around like that stupid zipper ride at the fair. The one where you go up one side and down the other in these cars that swing around and upside down and the people riding throw up. The elves checked in and she distributed more tasks.

The soon-to-be groom and his best man came back with the tuxedos. He handed her dad’s suit to her so she could bring it to the hotel. He wasn’t going to the hotel.

She looked at him.

“Did you forget the towels?” Her voice went sharp and a half octave higher from the strain of being calm. She was approaching the peak of the zipper ride.

“We got them. We didn’t know where to go so we went to the drugstore. They didn’t have many towels but we found these.” His brother showed a shopping bag. He pulled out four towels. They were more like kitchen towels, which would be okay, but they were not pink. They were orange.

She did not handle the color substitution well. Her disappointment was of volume. It was such that the women who would be her sisters-in-law the next day flanked her, grabbed her by the elbows and led her out of the house to work through her zipper list. She wasn’t sure, but it seemed that everyone who remained in the house was relieved when the squad removed the ticking bomb.

Anyway, The Spouse brought up those orange towels today. “Well at least it’s not as bad as when I got those pink towels!” (Yes, he still clings to his improper claim that they were pink. I kept the evidence for about twelve years.)

Why bring it up? It’s been decades of errands and lists and stress and explosions and near misses since that day. I guess the towels are an expression of something the priest read at our supersized wedding:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

—1 Corinthians* 13:4-8

So when he reminded me of his abject towel failure, I asked him why with a crooked grin then a chuckle and then a belly laugh. Because I know exactly why he said it.

* for those keeping track at home, that’s pronounced First Corinthians.

Posted on by docthink 2

Wedded Abyss

FLOTUS and POTUS looking fly.

I hear that The Spouse and I look amazingly happy on Facebook. One friend asked me, “How could two people be so ‘lovey-dovey’?”

And I’m all like, “So you think I’m gonna to post pictures of us fighting?”

That would be the most vainglorious of selfies. Imagine me: eyes bulging, spit flying from angry lips, hair akimbo’d by angry electrical pulses emitting from my head? And The Spouse with a sneer, egging on my insane wrath with an infuriating indifference.

Yeah, let me just whip out the camera for that one.

Seriously, that day I yelled The Spouse out of the house? I’m running barefoot down the porch steps after the jeep, hurling profanity as it drives away leaving me standing in the middle of the street with no target for my denigration but plenty of fuel to continue the tirade.

Nope. No camera for that one either. And, let me tell you, if someone else filmed it, I sure as hell would not post it, tag us and type #LOL with a smiley emoji.

So, I can’t tell you if two people can have a sustained level of the “lovey-dovies.”
You never know what actually goes on between two people. We’ve had friends who shocked us all when they announced their divorce. Contrast that with me and The Spouse whose friends have likely been waiting on our announcement–all bets off for decades now.

Makes me think about the fetishized relationship between Michelle and Barack Obama. People project their ideals of a “good marriage” on the first couple. They’re so in love. They have a great relationship. They have such a great time together. Blah. Blah. Blah.

I expect that sometimes they disagree and may even find the other disagreeable. I bet that more than once someone has been accused by the other of being inconsiderate or even selfish. I would not be surprised if there’s an occasional few hours, or even few days, when iciness surrounds home and hearth, when two people are in the same room and are not together. Somebody may harbor uncharitable thoughts. Someone may even voice them.

Does that make the relationship a bad one? A good one? I don’t know, but it sounds like a real one.

I don’t want a marriage like the Obamas’–or anyone else’s. I have enough trouble with the one I have. The one that’s mine. That’s ours. That’ll do.

Posted on by docthink 0