Marriage is a funny old dog. One of its applied truths is that the more you know your husband or wife, the harder you try to color inside their lines while maintaining your artistic freedom. The result of these maneuvers is not so much compromise as evasive pandering. The classic example is the husband who swears to his wife that he has stopped smoking. Since he has not actually done so, he douses himself with Royal Copenhagen before he leaves work and cultivates a taste for chewing gum. When he arrives home, his wife, who may have been born at night but not last night, greets him with crossed arms and a stone face as his circus of smells waft over her. He wants to please her, but he still needs to follow his muse, even if it’s all the way to intensive care.
Husband and I have our own current marital theme going on, and that would be healthy eating. I would say “nutrition” if the word didn’t make Husband’s eyes glaze over like we were discussing suppositories. So we just make it healthy eating. I’ve given up Taco Bell (ouch) and he’s agreed to eat a salad with dinner. I really miss Beef Meximelts and Husband eats greens with the same gusto as paint chips. The remaining minefield is sweets. I haven’t even been able to downgrade his double-stuffed Oreos to the regular ones. It’s a red zone, but he’s trying.
Over the weekend, we visited the little condo we have upstate in the Hudson Valley. As usual, we drove there in separate cars because of our divergent schedules. I arrived first, and when Husband joined me I asked if he wanted to go out for dinner. He said he wanted to go to the mall first and buy a hat since his had blown off during the drive.
OSV: Your hat blew off in the car?
HSBD: It was very windy. Didn’t you notice the wind?
OSV: Yes, it was fiercely windy. Outside. Inside my car it was pretty calm.
HSBD: Well, I like to drive with all the windows open.
OSV: You had all the windows open in February? What about the sunroof?
HSBD: Everything.
OSV: Shit, it must have been a tornado in that Acura.
We looked at each other. I resisted the impulse to cross my arms.
HSBD: Okay. I was eating a brownie and the hat was on the seat next to me and it got covered with brownie crumbs. I know how you feel about brownies so I held the hat out the window to blow the crumbs off but it blew away instead. That’s the truth. But you shouldn’t look at me so disappointed.
OSV: Why not?
HSBD: It was an organic brownie.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos lend color to a Winter City
purple empire
bronx graffiti
truckin’
sunrise over harlem