Category: In Which We Mock Our Husband

I was talking to a group of people, and one asked how Gary was feeling. I answered, “This morning he said he felt okay. I told him that was the first positive thing he’d said about his health in a year and a half.” The questioner asked if my intent was to make sure Gary…

Remember Gary and his ear mites? He was talking about his imaginary ear mites just yesterday. He was discussing the mites because I believe I had just sighed, “Enough about your imaginary ear mites already.” “IMAGINARY? THEY ARE NOT IN ANY WAY IMAGINARY.” “Until you go to a doctor and that doctor says you have…

Gary and I have tinnitus. I have mild tinnitus, the kind that lasts about a minute. Gary has tinnitus that drowns out everyday conversation and lasts for days. Gary’s current theory is that his tinnitus is caused by microscopic mites that were released into the air by the same house construction that ruined his skin.…

I was trying to tell someone that in about eight weeks I will have been married forty years. I said — and see if you catch the mistake — “In about eight weeks I will have been buried forty years.” No way to walk that back.

Gary has taken to visiting me in my room at the end of my workday, which is the start of Gary’s … non-workday? As I say, it’s at the end of my day, I am tired, but Gary arrives ready for a chat, refreshed at the end of an eighteen hour nap. Usually, we get…

Gary, famously, cannot puke, as he was born with an extra-long uvula resting on his gag reflex in utero. Or at least, he rarely pukes. In the past 43 years, some erythromycin did claw its way up through his esophagus. I saw it with mine own eyes. He might have puked when his gallbladder was…

As I have said before, I need to start taping Gary. Last fall the Mini people said there was a recall on the electric Mini Coopers. Batteries may catch fire. Fire.The thing I fear most. Fire in the garage. especially. I can already see the Disaster Autopsy episode regarding the Great Saint Louis Fire. At…

Vignettes from Gary’s visit to the allergist. There is a plan now, anyway, even though Gary is already balking at it. She’s going to make him stop his daily OTC vitamins, make him take two pills for his inflammation, then have me paint the back of his left knee with a special cream. I’m all…

Well, it’s official. Gone are the days of the expansive birthday month in which the birthday boy is omnipotent. I forgot entirely that it was Gary’s birthday month. He’s so dispirited that he has doesn’t care. His official answer is, “You already do everything I want,” which would sound great, only what he wants is…

In this house I am chief cheesemaker, basketweaver, and now … barber. He made me stop before it was entirely right. (That little clump by the collar will madden me.) He claims to be pleased, though.