The Little Things Drive Me Crazy!

I reached into the candy dish only to grab a handful of wrappers. My husband ate some candy, and threw the wrappers back into the bowl. I told him countless times that the candy dish is not a garbage can - you don't throw the wrappers back into the dish. Does this register in his brain? NO! He seems to think it is perfectly acceptable to do this. I, on the other hand, find this to be one of the little things that drive me crazy! Suddenly, the past fourteen years flashed before my eyes. My mind was flooded with the things he does that drive me crazy.

I decided to make a list. The problem is, just when I think I'm finished, I think of something else. Don't get me wrong, I love my husband dearly, but there are times when I'm convinced he is purposely trying to drive me crazy. It is almost like a case of marital Chinese Water Torture. Little by little, one drop at a time, I'm being driven insane!

Anyway, as of this moment in time, this is what I came up with:

1. Doesn't replace the bag in the garbage can after taking out the trash. I tell him this is all one job. You empty the garbage; you put a new bag in the can. He tells me his job is to take out the trash - only! It is up to someone else (me) to replace the bag! Replacing the bag is a separate job.

2. Doesn't close his dresser drawers all the way. Now how hard is this one? You take something out, you push the drawer CLOSED. Don't leave clothes poking out of the top of the drawer. No one cares to see what brand of underwear or socks you wear!

3. Empties the ice cube trays, but doesn't refill them. Again, how hard is this?

4. Uses the last of the toilet paper, but doesn't put a new roll on the holder. I made this one as simple as possible by getting one of those three roll cannisters that stands by the toilet. Still, I am the only one to put a new roll on the holder. This carries over to paper towels too.

5. Doesn't return the salt and pepper shakers to the table, or stove. He stands at the counter and uses them, but never returns them to their original spot. Of course, I'm the first one who goes to reach for them only to find they aren't where they should be.

6. Never, I mean NEVER, hangs up the bath mat after taking a shower. I walk into the bathroom and my socks get soaked from the wet bath mat.

7. Takes half a banana, and leaves the other half on the counter with the peel pulled up to make it look like a full banana. Unsuspecting, I come along and pick up, what I think, is a full banana. The peel falls away revealing a now brown, slimy banana half. By the way, more times than not, it is the last banana in the house.

8. I return from the grocery store and he says, "You know what you forgot?", or "You know what else you should've bought?" Before I head to the store I always check with him to see if there is anything he needs or wants. He never has anything to add to the list. If he thought of something after I left, I'm a phone call away since I carry my cell phone with me! How come he doesn't think of these things when I'm AT the store?

9. Pronounces words incorrectly - on purpose - and thinks it's funny. He pronounces "innuendo" like "in-da-window". Okay - I admit this is funny, but only the first hundred times he said it!

And, finally, the one that really, I mean REALLY, drives me crazy:

10. Takes a bite out of the last slice of pizza, then wraps it neatly, and puts it in the refrigerator! The next day, I go to the refrigerator thinking there is a slice of pizza I can have for lunch. Imagine my surprise, when I unwrap it and find a huge bite taken out of it! I can't tell you the number of times I fell for this one!

I could go on and on. I didn't mention the stupid phrases he makes up and tries to pass off as rhymes - or funny. For example, as I type these words, he says, "I need the keys, Donna Reed." It doesn't rhyme! Or when he uses the phrase, "I rectum" instead of "I reckon." Or how about using his name in songs like the theme from the t.v. show "Cheers". "Making his way through the world today, takes everythng {b}Mic's{/b} got. Taking a break from all Mic's worries, sure would help a lot. Wouldn't Mic like to get away . . ."

I better end this now, or I will never be finished. Besides, I hear him singing the theme song to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" while reaching into the candy dish! "Love is all around why don't Mic take it? Mic's gon-na make it after
all. . ." Just reading through this makes me run for my medication! To find out more GO HERE code -->

Writing.Com: Diary of a Middle-aged Woman (Book)

Writing.Com: Diary of a Middle-aged Woman (Book)

I DON'T Share Chocolate!

“Can I have some?” This pathetic request came from my husband whenever he caught me eating chocolate. I always hesitated a moment, then reluctantly gave in, rolling my eyes as I forked over a piece or two. It’s not that I’m a greedy person. I can be quite giving and generous - honest. However, this is CHOCOLATE that we’re talking about! It’s not potato chips or Cheez-its for crying out loud, but CHOCOLATE! You see, I consider chocolate my personal reward for doing the grocery shopping, which is a chore that my husband absolutely hates! I’m the one who: makes the list, roams the aisles of the supermarket, loads the car, unpacks it, and then puts everything away. Yes, I deserve it!

Besides, after fourteen years of marriage, you would think he would know by now, chocolate is my first love. I’ve known the joy of chocolate long before I knew him. Whether it’s filled with almonds, raisins, peanuts, crispies, crunchies, or plain, chocolate has always been there for me. Through good times and bad, I could always count on the sweet, creamy goodness to help me forget my problems, if only while eating it. I find escape with the initial crinkling of the paper as I unwrapped it, to the aroma of its enticing chocolate scent, to the creamy texture as it melted in my mouth. Chocolate and I are friends from way back. I keep it to myself - for myself. I simply DON'T share chocolate!

To avoid further chocolate-related tension with my husband, something had to be done. I realized I needed to be sneaky if I wanted to have chocolate to myself. I had no choice but to go underground with my chocolate eating. I pondered several methods to outsmart him.

First, I decided to have a secret stash of chocolate. I would horde it! I squirreled it away in various places throughout my home. That plan didn’t work. No matter where I hid it, he found it. And, believe me, I’ve hidden it just about everywhere! Hiding places included: under the bed, in closets, cupboards, drawers and even in the bathroom! Each time he was able to find, and plunder it. For a while I thought he had the tracking abilities of a blood hound. Countless times I went to one of my hiding places only to find a measly two or three pieces of candy left at the bottom of the bag. Two or three pieces! Give me a break! That’s just a tease! It’s not a treat if you only have two or three pieces to eat! I knew the location had been compromised, and it was time to find a new one. Something else had to be done!

Next, I began buying chocolate he disliked. I thought, wrongly, I would have it all to myself. But that didn’t work either, since he ate it anyway! "Some chocolate is better than no chocolate," he would say. A sentiment I could agree with.

In desperation, I tried eating it in the middle of the night, while he was asleep. But, the blood hound senses kicked-in again, and with the first crinkle of the wrapper, he was wide awake with his hand open.

Finally, I came up with the idea of buying “bait” chocolate. This would be “alternate” chocolate that I would hide where I knew he would find it. (“Alternate” chocolate being seasonal candy, such as Santas, Halloween candy, Easter bunnies, or chocolate that I previously craved, but was now over it.) This would be his chocolate.

Meanwhile, Phase II of my evil plot involved keeping the “good” chocolate hidden in another spot - my underwear drawer! This was THE one spot he wouldn’t dare look in, even if he suspected it was there. As every man knows, a woman’s underwear drawer is “off limits”. He was no different! Finally, my chocolate would be safe!

To this day, my husband knows “good” chocolate is hidden somewhere in our home. But, as to where it is, he can only guess. One day I caught him looking wistfully at the candywrappers I had thrown away. I smirked knowing I finally outsmarted him!

As for me, I peacefully enjoy my stash of chocolate - all by myself! I’m wondering - when do you think it will finally dawn on him to go to the grocery store to buy his own chocolate?

Bifocals, Menopause, Death

Today I received a reminder that I am due for an eye exam. I have been dreading this moment. At my last eye exam, I somehow managed to squeak by without needing bifocals. However, this time, I have a feeling that I won’t be so lucky.

It’s not that I have a problem wearing bifocals. It’s just another stage of being middle-aged. All I need to complete the look of the ‘classic middle-aged woman’ is a chain so I could wear them around my neck. What really worries me, is that there aren’t too many life-stages left for me. I realized that once I get bifocals, the remaining major life events are menopause and death.

Once I get bifocals, the “Big M” looms before me. I wouldn’t mind delaying that for as long as possible. I’ve heard far too many stories from menopausal women, and what I heard, wasn’t pleasant.

The stories couldn’t all be true. Could they? Hoping to ease my mind, I did a quick search on Web MD and found a list of symptoms associated with menopause. I should have known better than to search Web MD! Whenever I do a search there, I always leave the site with the feeling that life as I know it, is over, even if it is a common cold that ails me. This search was no different. A short list of symptoms includes such things as: facial hair, hot flashes, cold flashes, mood swings, bladder control problems, and insomnia.

Facial hair! You’ve got to be kidding me! Does that mean that I’ll need to stand at the bathroom mirror and shave my face every morning? That will add an additional ten minutes to my morning routine. What if I cut myself? Will I need to walk around with little pieces of toilet paper on my face?

And what can you do about hot and cold flashes? I’ve seen women carrying around those mini-fans for when a hot flash hits. To me, carrying one of those, when you’re not on the beach, is just a red flag telling the world “I’M HAVING A HOT FLASH”. I don’t think that I would carry one. But, then again, who knows? Maybe I’ll need it and won’t care. Cold flashes should be fairly easy to deal with. I’ll just put on a sweater even if it is one hundred degrees in the shade.

As for mood swings, I think I should be able to deal with them fairly easily. Of course, if I become a raving lunatic, I think people will notice. In that case, I’m sure there is a nice padded cell somewhere especially for “menopause-related” personality disorders. Perhaps I should reserve one now.

Bladder control problems? I panicked when I read this symptom. Should I start paying closer attention to those Depends commercials? Is that why they always depict women? Do you carry a ‘spare’, just in case? Will I need a diaper bag equipped with extra Depends and a change of clothes? Why didn’t I hear about this before now?

And finally, insomnia. For some reason, that doesn’t bother me. When it hits, well, I figure I’ll get more things done. I‘ll plan household chores. This symptom might actually be beneficial! I imagine finally having all the laundry washed and folded, and my kitchen floor will be spotless!

After going through the mine-field that is menopause, death would be the only major stage left. To think that I am this close to death, makes me uneasy, to say the least.

So, I was thinking. If I put off going to the eye doctor, maybe I can also delay the onset of the remaining stages. They can’t happen until I get bifocals - right? What do you mean there are a lot of menopausal women who don’t wear bifocals? Great! So much for Plan A! Excuse me while I contact Web MD to ask how they missed passing on that little tidbit of knowledge. I guess I’ll call my eye doctor and make that appointment. Bifocals here I come!

Is Camping a Vacation?

"Why don’t we go camping?" Every year, as we sit down to discuss summer vacation plans, my husband will inevitably ask this question. Every year the answer is the same - NO. It’s not his fault. Someone must have told him, wrongly, that persistence pays off. No matter how hard he tries to convince me that camping would make a great summer vacation for our family, the fact remains that camping is not a vacation.

In my opinion, camping is nothing more than work! I just can’t find the ‘fun’ in camping. First, you load the truck with enough gear to see you through the longest African safari. Work. Once you get to your campsite, you unload. Work again. Then, you set up everything, build a fire, and cook dinner over the fire. Work, work, work! Then you . . . what? You sit on a folding chair and stare at the fire. Finally, when the boredom is just too much to bear, you climb into your tent, and sleep in a bag! Right? Where’s the fun?

I have asked several friends, who highly recommend camping, just what do they do after they set up their campsite. The answers that I received ranged from "hiking" to "ride a bike" to "sit around, talk and drink." BORING! I don’t even own a bike, and as for ‘sit around, talk and drink’, well, I can do that at home!

And hiking, well that is just another draw back to camping. I am not a hiker! The only hiking that I like to do is around a mall. I really doubt that there is a view that I need to see, or 'nature' that is so breathtaking or obscure that I must see it no matter how far the hike. If I want to see obscure nature, I can go to the mall on Saturday night and watch the mating rituals of the local teenagers! Just going to the bathroom requires a "hike" too. And, if you need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, which is a given once you are middle-aged, you need a flashlight, a pair of shoes, and a good sense of direction! At home, the bathroom is just down the hall.

Some friends recommended swimming in the lake. Personally, I don’t like to swim in a lake. There is something about not being able to see what my feet are stepping in, or whatever those things are that brush past my legs and freak me out. I like a pool. In a pool, I can see my feet, and I don’t have to worry about unseen ‘things’ rubbing against me. Besides, I was never told to get out of the water because of a snake-sighting at a pool! I know there are campgrounds that have pools, but, as my husband would say, "that is not "roughing it." I wouldn’t get the true "camping experience" if I swam in a pool.

Don’t get me wrong, I have tried the whole camping experience. Years ago, my husband and I rented a cabin in northern Pennsylvania. It had a bathroom, refrigerator, stove, beds, and a television. Just as I thought it wouldn’t be so bad, I realized that the television was a portable, 13-inch black and white model, with no remote control. No remote control! Every time I wanted to change the channel, I had to get up and actually walk over to the television. Talk about roughing it! I don’t know how I made it through the week! That is as close to ‘roughing it’ as I ever want to be again!

My Quest for the Perfect Pair of Jeans

Have you shopped for a pair of jeans lately? There is no quicker way to make yourself feel ‘old’ than shopping for a pair of jeans. Apparently, Madison Avenue and every designer on the planet feel the only suitable jeans for women my age are the ‘mom jeans’ that I found everywhere. ‘Mom jeans’ have roomy thigh and butt areas, with a waist as high as your rib-cage. I do not need ‘mom jeans’!

My quest for the perfect pair of jeans began when I received a pair of ‘low-rise’ jeans as a Christmas present. I tried them on and wore them for about an hour before deciding they weren’t for me. I felt like I had to continually pull them up, even though they already were up, and the flared-legs flopped around my ankles with every step I took. Not only that, but that inch of middle-aged flab around my stomach hung over the top of the waist band, jiggling with my every movement. Now, I have seen younger women wearing low-rise jeans with their stomach flab hanging over the waist-band and knew this was not attractive. If it wasn’t attractive on a younger woman, it certainly wouldn’t be attractive on a woman my age. Face it, no one should be exposed to something like that!

So, I went to the store where they were purchased and naively asked to exchange them for the ‘Classic Cut’-style that I had purchased there only a year before. The twenty-something clerk, looking at me as if I were a dinosaur from the past, informed me that the ‘Classic Cut- style had been discontinued. This I didn’t understand since they were ‘Classic-cut’. I mean, doesn’t the word ‘classic’ imply that they are continually in style? I tried another approach. "Do you have any jeans that are straight-leg and have a normal waist?", I asked hopefully. "No" she replied with a slight hint of exasperation in her voice. She added "maybe you should search on-line". At that point I requested my money back and began what would turn-out to be a quest for the ‘perfect’ pair of jeans.

I went from one mall to another, spending hours looking through the racks and piles of jeans. Below the waist, low-rise, and very low-rise were all that I could find. Finally, I found a store that had Levis. I breathed a sigh of relief feeling confident that I would find the classic 501 button-fly jeans. Guess again! Even Levis had the ‘below waist’ styles! The jeans that were at the waist were all boot-cut or flare-leg. Not a single, pair of straight-leg jeans to be found! My beloved Levi Strauss had let me down!

Leaving yet another mall empty-handed, I wondered to myself if this wasn’t some kind of omen. Is someone trying to tell me something? Have I reached the age when jeans should no longer be a part of my wardrobe? Am I destined to wear ‘mom jeans’ for the rest of my life? Discouraged and disheartened, I sat down at my computer to begin my cyber-search for ‘the perfect’ pair of jeans.

First I tried all of the national chain stores with no luck. I broadened my search to include companies that bombard me with catalogs. L.L. Bean and Lands End had the ‘mom jeans.’ Other companies that I searched had jeans with elastic waistbands. This was unacceptable! I began to think that I should search Ebay under their ‘vintage’ (a.k.a. old) clothes category.

I finally tried Victoria’s Secret and, to my surprise, there they were! I found classic straight-leg, normal waist jeans. They even had a ‘touch of Lycra’ for comfort. Not only that, but they were on sale for $25! This fit-in perfectly with my 80's sensibility. My quest had ended! I quickly placed an order before the style was discontinued.

My next shopping trip will be for a swimsuit. That shouldn’t be too hard, should it? Finding one will be easy, right? I mean I’ll just go to the mall, find a style I like and I’m out the door - right? Oh who am I kidding?! Here I go again!

The Invisible Line to Middle Age

The summer of 2005 marked an important event in my daughter’s life. She turned ten. We had entered the double-digits! It also marked an important event for me. I had somehow crossed the line into ‘middle-age’.

How do I know? Well, at first there were subtle signs that I could easily explain away. Signs that I chose to ignore for what they were. For example, I became aware that I disliked driving at night. It seems the oncoming headlights were too bright for me. This, I passed off as my eyes being sensitive to the bright headlights. If I had to go anywhere, I would make sure that the sun was still shining.

Speaking of my eyesight, suddenly, I couldn’t read anything without my glasses. This too, I reasoned away with the comment that the printing on medicine bottles and the like is made smaller and smaller. It had nothing to do with my deteriorating middle-aged eyes.
It wasn’t ME!

My next hint came at the amusement park. Now, in the past, I could ride any type of amusement park ride there was. Fast rides, swinging rides, spinning rides - you name it, I could handle it. My daughter asked me to go on a spinning ride with her. I had been on this particular ride numerous times, and in fact, I considered it one of my favorites. That all changed! The ride began, and suddenly I didn’t feel so good. I wanted it to be over immediately, or at least I wanted to jump-off. Once the ride was over and my stomach caught up with me, I began to realize that something was up. I couldn’t explain this one away.

Another hint came as I was sitting on my living room floor playing a board game with my family. Normally, before I became middle-aged, I could sit on the floor through the longest marathon of ‘Monopoly’. My legs didn’t fall asleep, or stiffen up. Now, I sit there for fifteen minutes and suddenly millions of pins and needles shoot through them, and getting up is a challenge since they refuse to respond to my commands.

The final straw came as I sat minding my own business in my dentist’s office. There was a twenty-something guy there with his son, who was about two years old. The little boy walked over to where I was sitting and said casually, ‘Hi Granny!’ I immediately said, as nicely as I could muster, ‘I’m not your Granny. Do I look like your Granny?’ What happened next, I was not prepared for, nor did I welcome it. His father looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, you kinda do.’ I was shocked, speechless, and insulted. How could they think that I was old enough to be anyone’s Granny!?!

With this came the thought that perhaps I have solidly entered middle-age forever. My husband has been telling me for the past few years that I am middle-aged and I should just admit it. After all, he would ask, how old do you expect to live to? My answer was ‘probably to my mid-seventies’. ‘There you go - you are middle-aged!” Still, I fought the label refusing to be called such a thing. Never mind the fact that clerks from supermarkets to department stores called me ‘ma’am’ for the past seven years. This proved nothing in my mind. They’re just being polite.

But, as my daughter began calling me ‘Mom’ instead of ‘Mommy’, I reluctantly admitted that I had entered a new stage of life. I resigned myself to the fact that I am middle-aged! I’m not comfortable here, and I still feel that perhaps I can pass myself off as, not necessarily ‘young’, but at least as ‘non-middle-aged’.

However, as I rush out to the grocery store before the sun sets, making sure I have my eyeglasses with me in case I need to read something on a can or bottle, I have to admit that I am (gulp!) middle-aged!