Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Target

Posted on February 10, 2012 by

If my husband were to clean the house, he would be finished in two hours, and it would look like it had been cleaned. I, on the other hand, could work on it all day and you wouldn’t know I’d touched a thing. That’s because every time I start, I find a drawer or a closet or a pantry that seems cluttered, and I have to run to Target immediately to remedy the situation. I can’t stand clutter. Surely Target will have some container or closet organizer, or drawer divider that would make things better.

After the trip to Target, I need to spend time sorting things, making a pile to go to Salvation Army, which naturally leads me to go through all the closets for more things for Salvation Army, and don’t you know it, my cabinet with all the plastic wraps and foils is a mess, and now that I think of it, my spices keep falling out of the cupboard every time I open the door, and doesn’t Target have a turntable that would solve that problem?

When my husband comes home and looks around, he scratches his head and thinks, “I thought she said she was going to clean the house today,” but he doesn’t voice this because he is one heck of a smart guy. Eventually, though, he sees what I’ve been up to when he opens a drawer and things don’t fall out, or he walks into our bedroom closet and he sees all the shoes sitting neatly on a shoe shelf instead of scattered across the closet floor. “Been to Target?”  He know me well.

I thought about the difference between men and women last night when one of my sons called me. I had sent him a text yesterday morning, asking him if he could use a file cabinet I didn’t want anymore. “Thanks, Mom, but I don’t think we really need one.” The gasp in the background was loud and clear as my daughter-in-law said, “Yes, we want a file cabinet! We have stacks of papers all over the place. A file cabinet would be great!” A girl after my own heart. My son got back on the phone. “Yes, Mom, apparently we do need that file cabinet.” A woman knows.

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It’s For Your Own Good

Posted on February 9, 2012 by

My husband has been lusting after a pair of pewter oil lamps he saw awhile ago at the Shirley Pewter Shop in Williamsburg, Virginia. We make the hour drive to Williamsburg about every other month, just to get out of town for a few hours, and no visit is complete unless we’ve made a stop to see his oil lamps.  I suggested that we buy each other those lamps as an anniversary present to each other. My husband was so excited, he was like a little kid. He couldn’t wait to get them, so we stopped in Williamsburg on our way back from our anniversary trip to D.C.

The pewter shop was temporarily out of the lamp oil needed to burn the lamps, but they told us we should be able to get it at any hardware store. On the way home we stopped at Lowes, a big-name hardware store chain, and went looking for the oil. None was to be found. We asked one of the store personnel, and she told us that they had taken all the lamp oil off the shelves and would not be selling it anymore. “Why?” I asked. Her reply stunned us.

“It’s too dangerous. People light oil lamps and forget to blow them out and they could start fires. All the big chains have stopped carrying lamp oil. You won’t find any at Home Depot, Target, WalMart, or any other of the big chains.”

Standing in a store that sells power tools, we were being told that we couldn’t buy lamp oil because we might not be careful and set our house on fire. But we could feel free to buy an $800 multi-cutter table saw that could chop us into little pieces. Would they be coming to our house to make sure we were wearing our safety goggles?

Lowes also sells gas stoves. What if someone leaves the stove on? Couldn’t that burn down the house? Maybe they should stop selling stoves. Stop selling bathtubs. You could fall asleep and drown. Obviously, candles should be done away with, too. You can have a romantic flashlight dinner instead. I’m so glad Lowes is looking out for my well-being since I’m too careless to do it myself.

We got back in the car feeling a little panicky. Our beautiful oil lamps. What good were they without lamp oil? We decided to try Taylor’s Do It Center, a little hardware store close to our house, just in case they hadn’t gotten the memo that consumers are not to be trusted to look out for themselves. They not only had the brand we needed, they had another brand as well, and they had both brands in multiple sizes. Clearly, they don’t care about us.

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Will Love Conquer All?

Posted on February 8, 2012 by

Yesterday morning I read of an HBO documentary about the fight to end the ban on interracial marriage. A young couple who fell in love in Virginia in the late 1950′s could not marry because Virginia was a state that banned marriage between couples of different races. They traveled to Washington, D.C., to marry but were arrested as soon as they returned to Virginia. They fought the law, and in 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it. The reason Virginia banned interracial marriage in the first place was that the majority of the voters believed that marriage between races was an abomination in the eyes of God.  Believe it or not, there are a good number of people today who still think it is wrong.  You will never change some people’s minds.

Yesterday’s article naturally led me to think about the issue of gay marriage and it’s ban in most of the country. I know race and sex are two different things, but I can’t help but wonder when it comes to love, why are so many people against allowing two people in love to marry each other if they are of the same sex? This troubles my heart so greatly that I can’t keep silent. Life is hard enough. Why do we have to make it harder for some people?

I’m all about love. If you’re lucky enough to find it, then it needs to be protected. Why should people like Newt Gingrichget to decide that a loving couple cannot marry unless they are of opposite sexes? Is love more sacred between a man and a woman? So same sex couples having a loving and committed relationship is an abomination, but what people like Gingrich do, and quite a few evangelical ministers, I might add, such as cheating on their wives and being serial monogamists, is not?

One of the arguments proponents of the ban offer is that only marriage between a man and a woman can produce children, and we need to protect that. What about the thousands of people who produce offspring outside the bonds of marriage or the couples who marry who don’t want any children? How on earth does marriage between homosexuals hurt procreation? Some supporters of the ban also say that equal legal rights can be given without marriage. But there is something so special about marriage that nothing less is equal. Empty arguments, both of these reasons.

I do not believe the Bible is fact. I believe it is Truth, but the men who wrote it were bound by the knowlege of their times. They did not understand homosexuality as we do today. They believed it was a choice, not a part of who a person is. I don’t think it should matter anyway. If you are one of the people who think the Bible teaches homosexuality is wrong, I’m not trying to change your mind. You are entitled to your opinion. I’m just reminding you that the Bible is not the law of the land; the Constitution is. I hope that love wins out.

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Our Fabulous Weekend Getaway

Posted on February 7, 2012 by

I don’t know whatever possessed us to get married in February in Connecticut. Every time our anniversary rolls around, it’s too darn cold to do anything close by and too expensive to get far enough away to escape the cold. People sometimes ask us why we married in February, and my husband looks at them and says simply, “We had to.” When their jaws drop, he explains, “We had to because we were madly in love.” Well, we were definitely crazy.

Since we’ve had a fairly mild winter so far, we decided to celebrate our 40th anniversary by taking an extended weekend to Washington, D.C., less than four hours away. We left Friday morning and returned late Monday afternoon, but we packed a ton into those few short days. Saturday we spent six hours in the Newseum, and I could have spent more, but we stayed almost until closing as it was, and we had dinner reservations. This museum alone is worth the trip to Washington. Sunday we went to the Natural History Museum and the National Gallery of Art. Our hotel was on 14th Street NW, so we could walk everywhere. I walked my little legs off. We can’t wait to return because there is so much more to see. If you’ve never been or haven’t been in many, many years, consider treating yourself to a great getaway.

Occupy D.C. tents. The occupiers had a skirmish with the police early Saturday morning.

A piece of the Berlin Wall at the Newseum. This was on the West Side. The East Side portion was white, a reflection of the rigid regime the people in the East were under.

Inside the National Gallery of Art

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Why Do I Love Thee?

Posted on February 3, 2012 by

Have you ever tried to write a love letter, only to give up because words seemed so inadequate to describe how you’re feeling? I wish I could have penned Elizabeth Barrett Browning‘s words to her husband when she wrote, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…” Alas, she beat me to it, and I am left here fretting about how to get started.

You see, this weekend my beloved and I will have been married for forty years. We have this little joke between us that when I tell him I love him, he responds, “Why is that?” I always say it would take too long to list the reasons, but the real reason is because I can’t put the reasons into words.

Big Al says, ” The real reward in blogging is not whether you are widely read but how it acts as a journal for your feelings, opinions and interests.” I wholeheartedly agree with him, so I’m writing this post to capture, in whatever imperfect way possible, how I feel about my husband.

Dearest Husband,

Why do I love thee?  Let me count the reasons.

1.  You buy my popcorn at the movies.
2.  You are a quick learner.  You learned early on that the two most important words a husband needs to know are, “Yes, Dear.”
3.  Sometimes I can feel you staring at me, and sure enough, when I look up, I catch you smiling at me.
4.  You call me Mrs. Beautiful, even after all these years.
5.  Your favorite song is Jimmy Durante‘s “Make Someone Happy,” and that someone is me.
6.  You laugh at my jokes, finish my sentences, and always know what I’m thinking, because it’s what you’re thinking, too.
7.  You pay attention to me. In a world where people are constantly in motion, their minds rushing from one obligation or task to another, you slow it all down and take the time to notice me.
8.  You pump my gas, check my tires, and wash my car.
9.  When there are only two pieces left, you give me the biggest one. (This is not true if Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream is involved, and that’s why I had to finish the rest of the carton while you were at work the other day.  Sorry.)
10.  You buy my popcorn at the movies, or did I already say that?

Drat!  As I said at the beginning, it’s impossible to put my feelings into words.  Maybe I could sum it up in the words of the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, “Of all life has given me, you’re the best surprise.”

Now here are a few pictures to chronicle our forty years together, nearly forty-two, if you count when we met in college.

The cocky young man as I met him in college at the University of Connecticut. Man, I thought he was a hot ticket! I still do!

Do you think my grin could be any bigger? He still makes me smile. All the time.

First there was one...

Then there were two...

And then there were three. They outnumbered us...scary.

About twelve or thirteen years of marriage. Blue eye shadow was in then...trust me, it really was.

Our 30th anniversary

Forty years and still going strong

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I Figured Out Romney’s Brilliant Strategy

Posted on February 2, 2012 by

People are being too hard on Mitt Romney. He meant well when he said he wasn’t concerned about the poor. After all, they do have safety nets like Medicaid and food stamps. It’s the millions of middle class families who are struggling right now who need help. I think Romney means that we shouldn’t help raise the poor out of poverty because then they would become members of the middle class who are struggling without safety nets. By that reasoning, I’m surprised he didn’t say we should do nothing to help the middle class because then they would become members of the poor, and the poor have safety nets. So does that mean we should do nothing for anyone? I’m so confused. I don’t think I get the hang of this politics thing.

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Time Traveler

Posted on February 1, 2012 by

A few years ago I read The Time Traveler’s Wife.  Though I didn’t see the movie, the book was terrific and intriguing.  I’ve been going through family photo albums this past week for a project I’m working on, and the question arose, “If I could return to any age, what age would I pick?”  That’s a tough one, plus there is a huge difference between picking an age and then moving forward from there, or choosing an age to revisit.  Though I would love to return to a time when gravity didn’t make my skin sag, wrinkles hadn’t been permanently etched into my face, and my knees and hips didn’t ache every time I get up from a chair.  But I definitely don’t want to go through toilet training, giving my keys to my just-licensed teenagers, hubby’s illness, and many other things, big and little that were unpleasant and stressful.  I’m happy being right where I am and moving forward from here.  But still…

It’s fun to imagine being a time traveler and enjoying different periods in your life.  I certainly would not choose high school, a time when I felt awkward and unsure of myself. I did well grade-wise, had enough friends to look respectable, but I wasn’t on the “A-list.” I remember one of the most popular girls in school, a gorgeous blond cheerleader, who always had her nose in the air, when and if she ever spoke to me.  It was quite satisfying to see her again thirty years later at our high school reunion, fat and single.  Of course, I still found her stuck-up, but she no longer intimidated me.

When we first moved to San Antonio. The children were 2, 5, and 7---great ages! Notice the cowboy boots on the kids. We were going to be raising real Texans!

One thing I do know, and my husband would agree, if we could return to a former time in our lives for just a little while, it would be a time when we were a young family.  Our love is deep and sweet, but we miss that time when the kids were still with us, young enough to enjoy them without all the teenage angst and drama. Of course, time marches on, and it’s a good thing for it gives others the opportunity to enjoy what we have enjoyed.  Otherwise, my daughter would not have the joy of raising her own family, and we would not have the terrific son-in-law and daughter-in-law we have.  But wouldn’t it be magical if we could be a time traveler once  and just revisit a day or a month or a year in our former lives once in awhile?  Which times would you pick?

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