Tag Archives: husband

Fun

Posted on October 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

I hate to shop. OK, I like to shop at Whole Foods because the butchers treat me well. Shopping online for others is a different story. I like that, just not shopping for myself.

Dog bowls are coming, Zoe. They sent you cat bowls instead and your set has been rusting away for nearly 12 years. I got you a stand so you won’t have to bend down to eat. I’ll keep the perfectly intact bowls in the car tub (jumper cables, mylar blanket et al) for you.

My husband has worn a really nice shirt, gabardine trousers and exquisite shoes to work for years. Then he did what I call “Utah formal” for a few years which could include very nice corduroy slacks and an expensive cowboy shirt, no snaps, only buttons. The shirt could be Stetson, Resistol or George Strait.

Now he has to make a statement in a suit, same level shirt. But he needs long ties because he’s tall. Usually he only wore suit and tie to funerals, but now he has to do it every day.

We started with ties and found a company that makes wonderful silk ties that fit. Then I decided to give him a signature piece for everyone to see at work, on the plane, in a seminar.

It is a tie bar or clip. As of end of the week he will have six of them to use as he deems appropriate. They are designed to get positive attention and motivate teams.

He grew up on a dairy farm so I got him a Euclid tractor clip circa 1960’s. Off road vehicles, dump trucks, after many years now owned by Volvo. He drives an old Volvo so it’s appropriate.

He is the son and I am the granddaughter of a carpenter, so a level. Yes, in the tie bar. A real level.

Loves machinery so I found a steampunk watch mechanism.

Science, An Erienmeyer flask for physics and chemistry, his college degree.

A hand-stamped clip that says MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU for his love of Star Wars and sci-fi.

Then for his ability to play well with others, a tie bar with DNA.

I’m also saving his life. He is at airport gates with crying kids all the time and keeps Swedish balloons in his pockets and his hat. Once he makes a dog or pirate sword from a balloon the kid is happy, everyone wins. He usually has pumps for this but in airport lounges he only can blow. I can’t blow one up or twist a dog or his favorite, Wyle E Coyote. Wyle takes time and he’s out of practice.

A tie statement with quality tie and interesting embellishment is easier. More fun as I got to make a statement, shop for my husband and write to you, Dee

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Looking Up

Posted on September 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

We always want options. We look to the future, whatever it may bring. After I got to know myself, it took a while, I got into the business of change. My husband and I are vastly different in personality and abilities but we’ve been together nearly 14 years and have a great dog.

We both effect change. It doesn’t matter the size or type of organization. If it’s broken sometimes we can fix it if the tumblers are in place. If not, our work will be sabotaged and those who are only about CYA will show us the door.

We are people, too. We do not like to put our best foot forward (I say this as I’ve broken a little toe and walking is painful) only to be shown the door because people do not want to be their best for themselves and the company that pays their salary, benefits and 401(K).

I’ve rehabilitated institutions. It’s in my blood, thanks Dad! Retired now, I rehabilitate dogs. Ours is nearly 12 and has no hips. I can’t tell you the amount of research I did in two weeks to decide on two FHNO’s three months apart before she turned 10 months old so she had an 80% chance of recovery. That is a femoral head and neck ostectomy, a removal, aka no hips. She grew her own from cartilage. Yesterday she ran around like the proverbial Tasmanian Devil from old cartoons. CHANGE.

A few months ago my husband wanted us to move. I started the process but knew he was coming home and wanted to make the MBR a Tuscan retreat. He returned and said “you’re not packing, you’re nesting!” He was correct. I was as well because we’re still here and have a few pictures on the walls and I told him anything I can see, I can pack. There are rules around this issue.

Oh, I found the corn pudding recipe I’ve made and want to make it into a quiche with puff pastry. Change. Yesterday my husband’s favorite picture (I drew it in crayon age five of all the characters from The Wizard of Oz) fell off its “command” strip and broke the only thermostat so we had no air.

I cracked a window and opened a door, despite nasty bugs from the MMPA swamp on the old train tracks many floors below. I was told that it was an issue not warranting maintenance attention. I begged to differ. I literally was closed in, breathing my own carbon dioxide because the door tolerances are so great that the gnats were getting in anyway so my husband put weather stripping around it so it’s solid. Waiting, I cracked one window and opened the front door all the way knowing our loving dog would never leave my side.

Maintenance, T, showed up with a container from food I gave him. Story is J, who trained him, had a container of my corn pudding as a going-away gift. T, who was staying with J, ate it. J calls it corn quiche and loves it. T was in the dog house that day.

My mission, if I choose to accept it, is to make a true corn quiche for T to thank him for coming back after hours to make sure I was OK. My husband was out of town until very late and he would have made things work but T was there so he’s going to get a puff pastry quiche. Or Mom’s simple pastry crust quiche. I’ve parchment paper and beans for blind baking and look forward to a challenge.

T also found that no-one has been around to change air filters and ours was really bad. Luckily my husband has several micro filters for his allergies so T put one of those in as well. He does deserve a good meal! I think I’ll add ribs. To Change! Will the late Andre the Giant find us two white horses? Dee

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Posted in dogs, Editorial

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Dog Tired

Posted on August 1, 2015 | 1 comment

What execatly does that mean? It’s mid-afternoon on a Saturday and my husband came back from an international trip an hour ago. He went right to bed and is snoring away.

Our dog, who prides herself on her beauty sleep at 80 in human years (nary a wrinkle) begged to go to the bedroom and have me “Otis” her up to the bed to hang out and sleep with him. She sleeps at least 20 hours every day, does not have a job outside the home nor one inside it. She doesn’t even do enough to earn an “allowance” what I would call a treat. How can she be so tired?

I’d go bonkers if I slept 20 hours a day, unless I had a really bad 24-48 hour flu. But for over 11 years she’s done it every day, and at 80 she looks better than we do! She doesn’t have to pay bills or worry about a bad boss or co-worker, and thinks she’s got a pretty good deal around here. She does, and when she’s bad my husband says of this herder “we should have adopted the dumb one” and I threaten to take her back to the shelter where we got her, too young, just spayed at five weeks and sick as can be from hookworms and coccidia. Poor girl.

Empty threats. You should see it when she gets up to the stove to steal a croissant and carries it moustache-style by us and our guests at brunch to sneak to her favorite spot to eat it. I couldn’t even discipline her! We were all laughing too hard, wish I’d gotten a photo of that.

Perhaps entertaining us and her dog and people friends make her tired. They shouldn’t, as we spend brief periods of time and she always gets praise and a treat from someone.

Talking about Dog Tired our old buddy Jake the Golden Retriever who died last year, stayed a weekend with us a couple of years ago. He and Zoe played nicely for about four hours then I didn’t hear him for a minute or so, only hard breathing. He’d locked himself in a bathroom to get a break from Zoe. Now I understand dog tired! It’s dogs being tired FROM Zoe! I get it. Dee

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Posted in Education

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Pain, Husbands and Fathers

Posted on July 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

My dear husband reached out for me the other night and caught my nose. He’s always touching the dog with his feet and she jumps down but can not jump up because she has no hips. So she whines near my pillow, I get up and lift her back and the two of them sleep. I’m detecting a pattern here. She wants a full side of a King bed! Smart girl, an old herder. Kick Dee out!

Last night I had a Charlie Horse on my right calf. I lifted my leg and did exercises to bring the spasm down. Then I walked around indoors for 1/2 hour and drank a lot of water. Then I tried to go back to bed. After sleeping a while, I reached out for my husband and he was not there. He can’t even call me from where he is because his minutes are limited by international law by the name AT&T.

Luckily I ran into an athlete who told me I need Magnesium for leg spasms. Pay enough and you get to meet doctors, news anchors and great athletes. Thank you! The calf is a bit sore but I bought my Magnesium today. I love my husband, dog, family, friends and in a while the people I meet every day.

My father got a medal yesterday he should have received years ago, for helping a not-for-profit business be a business. Forbes, early 80’s. Cheers to the former President. From his eldest, and with love, Dad, Dee

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Herding

Posted on June 4, 2015 | Leave a comment

Our dog Zoe is a herder. She has herded us every day for over 11 years. No herding knowledge, only Obedience 101 (she aced it). She has beds positioned in order to keep us from leaving without her knowledge. The beds were placed because she has no hips, so I put them in the areas she frequents. In summer when the sun comes up early she gets off the bed before 4 a.m. to crawl under the bed under my pillow, must have her beauty sleep, also so I can’t leave without her.

My husband took a multi-hour video of her in a crate years ago after we left the house. That was traumatic to watch because she was biting at the wires. We went to lunch and a movie. We never crated her after that. Now, I know she sleeps. She can go anywhere in our home and sleep.

She just wants to be with her pack, which is us. mostly me because I’m the disciplinarian and food wench.

Years ago we went to the ranch and the folks had bought two female baby goats. They were a bit weak and frightened so I asked as a newbie in the family if I could name them. OK. Eleanor (Roosevelt) and Rosa (Parks). I knew they needed strong names to survive.

We let Zoe in and she herded them for perhaps 30 seconds then ran away. Hey, these gals have hooves! She’s always been terrified of the cattle, especially the bulls, and should be. She only herds people.

When we’re with family she protects us and watches for my father-in-law from his special reading spot on the sofa to come home safe on the four-wheeler. She definitely lets us know (Grandma and I are in the kitchen) when anyone arrives.

She’s almost a grandkid where my husband grew up, maybe even a great grand. I’m lucky to be called a daughter and grand-daughter to my husband’s family. All I know is that my M-I-L is disappointed when Zoe doesn’t show up for our now five day Thanksgiving cooking marathon! She licks the floor. Everyone has a job. It’s Texas. Cheers! Dee

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Posted in Editorial, Education, Family, Pet

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Rights and Wrongs

Posted on April 15, 2015 | 1 comment

A lot happened today, Tax Day. I re-did all our taxes and finished them and paid a software publisher $250 to file them. They will not do so, and an extension was the only way to go. We don’t owe a dime. They owe us, which is great news.

The week before Thanksgiving 2014 I drove my husband’s car halfway across the country because he’d been getting rental cars for months. He drove it the rest of the way and used it to get to work and back from any number of hotels. If anyone needs to stay in a hotel in Silicon Valley for several months my husband can tell you the best way to do it.

So, we put in for mileage for the nearly six weeks my husband had his car in CA last year. Now the government thinks we own or are leasing/selling or have a fleet of cars. My husband drove one car to CA, charged for mileage, and sent it home to another state.

IRS and CA keep asking me to delete the zero on the sale amount and leave it blank. I did so a number of times. Then after I paid the $250 in filing fees after fighting this forever, the software provider said I had to fix the error of my “fleet” or copy and send everything in by mail without any support after I paid $60 for “audit protection.” So I got an extension. We don’t owe anything to anyone but I would like us to see us the money they owe us someday, so have to get around the purported sale of my husband’s car when it is sitting in our underground garage, for now, until they park it and mine in the open in an unsafe neighborhood for the next ten days. Then it just might be stolen. Another debacle. Police, insurance, taxes. Tomorrow is another day, said Scarlett O’Hara.

They’ve been re-doing our underground garage for two weeks and it’s been a constant travail. Not for me, because I feed the temporary valets and placed a cute talking pig on my key chain so they know me. We pay a fortune to park here and we’re now supposed to take a bus to get to an open lot and back. May I remind you that our family “fleet” consists of two old cars that get us from point A to point B and hopefully back to A, home. They are fully owned by us and used personally except for a brief business use for one when my husband was far away for work for several months.

A good thing, indeed more than one is that I can look up the conflicting tax forms tomorrow morning, my husband is actually scheduling to be home two days each weekend instead of one, and I’ve a potential dog sitter to interview if we take a weekend off or go home-hunting. One must take the good with the bad. Cheers! Dee

 

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Spouses

Posted on April 12, 2015 | Leave a comment

It’s funny how things change when we marry. I’ve written about the falsity of bridal magazines showing everything as laying on a sofa together on a weekend reading the papers and doing a crossword puzzle, and that’s not ever going to happen in real life. Sorry, brides, congrats husbands being out playing ball.

A friend’s wife is on an educational mission out of country. My husband was away for seven months and now is home every weekend. As Old Married People we’re allowed to say we miss our spouses when chatting for a moment or two. I spent some time thinking of a gift he could bring his wife. My husband is home more often recently so he craves my homemade food.

This thirty hours he spent sleeping and working on his computer installing a new hard drive et al because work doesn’t hand him a laptop when he walks in the door and take it back when he walks out. He has to use his own and give money to big companies who may not pay his salary or expenses.

I drove my husband to the airport, after making him the best spaghetti and meatballs he ever had, even met G the Swede’s test because I roughed up a huge Challah roll into crumbs in the food processor and then soaked that in milk. G, our neighbor, taught me Swedish meatballs and I’ll make them for him for my final exam but I’ve already aced it so he’ll be learning Texas Chili this weekend and it’ll be fun. Then he gets his final exam when he has to make it for us.

Oh, after spending all weekend on his computer components and downloads even at 4:00 this morning my husband finished whatever downloads he needed, later he placed his suiter bag and laptop backpack next to each other in the back of my SUV. I dropped him off at the airport. He called me as I was on overpasses with closed ramps under construction right by the city. “Oh, I forgot my laptop bag.” So I finally found a place to turn around and went to the airport twice.

It’s different than NYC. You can live in a building and know some neighbors and others from walking the dog. Still, some folks, when they hear your key in your door, close the elevator anyway. I always ask if anyone’s there and hold the door.

My husband tries to always hold any door open for me in any way. Things happen when you’re married, like kids. Unfortunately not kids for us. We have had a wonderful dog for over 11 years, however. Neighborhood mascot? Perhaps.

I never looked for a husband. We found each other. Fate? I don’t know. I can’t tell you how different it is from when you’re a teen to perhaps college to engaged and married. We eloped, older. Still met all the parents cross-country beforehand and believe we’re in good graces with all.

Kindness plays a part. Slings and arrows will come no matter what one does in life. Let all but the worst go by and address the latter. This includes the work and other frustrations you bring home every day. Vent and get over with. Have a great dinner together and watch an old movie, take the dog out and go to bed.

Clubbing? What is that? I’ve never heard of it. I have a club/pack of my own, thank you. I have a husband who forgets his laptop. Dee

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See You Tonight

Posted on April 10, 2015 | Leave a comment

In 14 years of being together, my husband has never said that to me. It was a given until last year, when it didn’t make sense timewise or financially to come home halfway across the country for a weekend.

He’ll still have to fly tonight and I have to plan Saturday dinner and other menus and shop for food but we weren’t wiped out by a tornado last night, despite the storms so all is well. Next weekend we’ve a cooking session with a neighbor (not with husband, he can sleep or go buy dog food) and dinner with neighbor and guest. It’s a Texas Chili lesson with a Swedish neighbor. My husband looks forward to it. Not the prep or lessons, the dinner.

My husband called from 1,000 miles away to say “I’ll Be Home Tonight.” Life is good. Dee

PS They don’t call me the dog lady for nothing. This morning I held my 35 lb Zoe on a leash along with a 120 lb Akita who wants to be her boyfriend (don’t worry, she was spayed at five weeks of age) and they both stayed calm and three feet apart, a leash in each of my hands and were perfectly behaved. Zoe didn’t flirt at all! Cesar The Dog Whisperer would be proud. Cheers, Dee

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I Know

Posted on January 8, 2015 | Leave a comment

when looking at a restaurant menu, what my husband will order. I’ve known all my life what my brother will order, and he’s difficult because if anyone orders the same thing he’ll choose something else on the menu.

I look for my favorite thing, then my second, and I let them have the first choice. With my brother it’s usually lamb, husband, beef. Yes, I’ve graduated college and culinary school but most of my social life is intuition and reading people. I can’t tell you how I do it but aside from learning which fork to use and walking with a dictionary on my head I don’t know, except the fancy manners stuff all came from my mother.

My husband is a physicist, now a software consultant. He wrote software for stock and oil/gas trading systems so comes from a technical bent. I am soc/psych. He knows things I’ll never comprehend and just know enough acronyms to read/revise his resume. He’ll never know what I know because I don’t know how I know it. It’s ingrained.

Between us it makes quite a pair. Husband and wife, brother and sister. We each operate from different sides of the brain and it makes us stronger when we work together. Right now I took on a CEO and won. My brother will be doing so as well, not to compete with me but to make a point, as I did.

Is it difficult to give up my lamb or beef dish at a restaurant to keep my husband or brother happy? No. There’s always fish, which I love. Cheers! Dee

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