Tag Archives: husband

Could You Repeat That?

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It’s been said that when a couple is old, their primary form of communication is being in separate rooms, yelling “What? What?” a lot. My husband and I do it multiple times a day. So, yes, we are old.

We’ve determined that Dan needs hearing aids. (I probably don’t. Since Dan can’t hear well, he talks softly, imagining that he’s speaking loudly enough and that the other person can hear him. I can’t. But I digress.)

Years ago, he had a hearing test that said his hearing banana is rotten enough to be covered with fruit flies. Since then, he has struggled along until we reached the “What? What?” phase. (The “hearing banana” is a measure of your ability to hear. Your results on a graph look something like a banana. Where the banana is located determines which pitch of sounds—high, low, or medium—are problems for you. Dan had trouble with midrange sounds. But I digress again.)

Now that his hearing is a bad banana with a greasy, black peel, I began shopping around online for hearing aids. And let me tell you, there are many different brands and kinds available. All sorts of price ranges, too, from $99 to nearly $2000.

Shopping online is one of my family responsibilities. I know enough not to pay attention to the ads that say a product is a fabulous innovation at a low, low price. Even online reviews are iffy. Some companies invent their own comparison sites and rate their own products highly. Eventually, I decided to buy a subscription to Consumer Reports. I figured that the savings on the hearing aids alone would make the cost worth it.

The Consumer Reports article on OTC hearing aids didn’t even rate the $99 ones. There was a large chart that compared the choices in different categories. (I once had a job that required proofreading large charts. We had to print them in sections and tape them to a wall. Then one person read from the manuscript and the other checked the printout. It was beyond tedious, especially all the yes/no columns. But I digress yet again.)

The device (devices?) I chose cost $250 and had pretty good ratings. They included features I liked, like a rechargeable recharging case (if you can follow that) and different-size “cups” to accommodate fat and skinny ear canals. (There were also features I ignored, like the ability to control the devices from your smartphone. Dan uses his for phone calls from exactly two people (me and his mother). But I digress some more.)

Dan won’t even look older because of wearing the hearing aids. The little piece that goes behind the ear, and indeed the piece that goes in the ear, will be pretty much invisible. With Dan’s more-than-ample locks of Jerry-Garcia-like gray hair, they will be completely hidden from view.

The hearing aids won’t be delivered until the end of the week, so it remains to be seen—or rather, heard—what effects they will have on both Dan’s hearing and our relationship. I know I won’t miss the shouting from room to room or having TV shows set to window-rattling volume. Those are my goals—not to restore Dan’s hearing to preadolescent levels, before he started going to large rock concerts and cranking the sound on his stereo to 11 and yanking off the knob, but to cut down on the yelling from room to room. Our cat seems to have gotten used to the cacophony, but I worry about his sensitive ears. The cat, at least, has a fine hearing banana.

On the other hand, I most likely won’t be able to sneak snacks without Dan hearing me rattling the packages. This will lead to a more equitable distribution of cookies, of course, but every advance has its drawbacks, and I suppose it is simply one of the sacrifices I must make.

My Journey Through the Vast Wasteland

books, cooking, etc., food, humor, television, , , ,

I used to read a lot of books. I still read more than the average or even above-average American (though that’s not saying much). But increasingly, I’ve been journeying through what F.C.C. chair Newton N. Minow in 1961 called the “vast wasteland” of television. It’s only gotten vaster and waste-ier.

I’m not going to hold up my TV viewing habits as lofty and noble. What I watch is easily scoffed at, and you may do so if you choose. If you do so quietly, that is. I don’t need to hear how I’m disgracing my two English degrees. Think of it as my “Dare to Be Shallow” phase.

Reruns

These shows are what I call my “comfort shows.” Sometimes I actually watch them. More often, I just have them on in the background while I write. I think of them as my “emotional support noise.” (My mother used to do this too when she lived alone after my father’s death. She put on baseball games, but didn’t watch them. I’m not sure what she did after baseball season was over. Game shows, I think. But I digress.)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’ve already seen every episode dozens of times, so I don’t have to actually watch them, just glance over when a particularly interesting bit comes on, like the musical episode. (Oddly, my husband got me hooked on Buffy. I don’t know why he was hooked on it. But I digress some more.)

Forged in Fire. I like competition shows where the contestants actually make or do something. On Forged in Fire, they make knives and swords from scratch (or scrap). I can even put up with Project Runway. But cooking competitions are my go-tos: Chopped, 24 in 24, Top Chef, and such. (I never make any of the recipes—except once when I made Ina Garten’s Triple Ginger Cookies, as I’m a ginger freak. But I digress yet again).

Medical, legal, or medico-legal shows. House. Bones. Forensic Files. Mystery Diagnosis, Monsters Inside Me, and Dr. Pimple Popper (another show hubby got me hooked on).

Science fiction series. Star Trek, of course. Firefly, even though there are few episodes. And Babylon 5, which is eerily relevant even now. (See the “Nightwatch” episodes if you don’t believe me. But I digress even more.)

New-to-Me Shows

Recently, I was burned out on the shows I was watching and needed something new, so I asked a dear friend for recommendations. (We used to watch Simon & Simon, Magnum, P.I., and MacGyver together, back in the day. Simon & Simon was particularly good, as we each lusted after a different Simon. But I digress still more.)

My friend recommended Will Trent, High Potential, The Rookie, Matlock, Elsbeth, and Sheriff Country, which, alas, I had to explain to my husband as “Inara in khaki.” Unfortunately, these are all shows that, while I like them extremely well, have only one season or so. I have to wait months now for new episodes.

Dexter and NCIS are shows I’ve never seen before. NCIS, at least, has plenty of seasons, so I don’t expect to get caught up on it any time soon. (Dexter is particularly interesting, in that he kills people who kill people because killing people is wrong. But I digress yet again.)

One new-to-me show that I tried to watch for a little comic relief was How I Met Your Mother. I had to stop watching it, though. After the first season or two, it became “All About Barney,” and he’s such a misogynist-sleazebag-horndog that I can’t bring myself to watch.

(Let’s not even talk about my husband’s viewing habits. Suffice it to say that when I go to bed, I have to remind him not to watch the S&E Channel (Screaming-and-Explosions). And that’s enough digressions for one week.)

Love for the Writers

books, etc., film, literature, music, television, writing

My friend Beth messaged me one day last week to inform me that she had been watching Tales From the Darkside and recognized one of the writers’ names as someone we both knew from attending science fiction conventions: Michael Kube-McDowell. She said she found his episodes very imaginative.

I happen to still be in touch with Michael (who has since dropped the Kube part of the name) after all these years, so I messaged him to tell him what Beth had discovered.

“Where did she see it?” he asked. (He meant on what streaming service, I think.)

“She was watching it on her old collection of DVDs.”

“I didn’t even know they were on DVDs,” Michael said. It turns out the only copies that he had of his own work were some VCR recordings he had made at the time the episodes first aired. And he no longer had a VCR player.

I pointed out where he could get all four seasons of the DVDs online for about $20.

And so he did. “A mere 43 years later, I finally have a professional copy!” he said.

This happy incident happened because Beth watched the DVDs and noticed the writer’s name, something not many people bother to do.

Perhaps because I’m a writer myself, I do, too. I find myself saying, “Wow! David Gerrold wrote this episode of Babylon 5!” or “Theodore Sturgeon wrote this episode of Star Trek!” (I then often have to give this announcement some context for my husband by telling him who the writer is and what else they’ve written. But I digress.) (Oh, and not completely off the topic, did you know Ray Bradbury wrote the script for the movie version of Moby Dick? But I digress some more.)

I like to look for the names of directors, too. I don’t recognize them as often as I do writers, but sometimes I notice that an actor on the show has directed one or more episodes. I always think, “Good for them! Way to branch out!”

I feel the same way about songwriters. People give love to the singers, but barely notice the songwriters much of the time. (I have a little game I play with Dan. When I’m listening to iTunes (or Apple Music or whatever they call it these days), we’ll hear a song, and I’ll say, “Okay, who wrote this?” He’s right a lot of the time, but when he doesn’t know, he’ll guess Kinky Friedman if it’s a funny song or Willie Nelson if it isn’t. Once he said, “I don’t know his name, but he wrote that song that goes ‘living and dying in 3/4 time.'” It was Jimmy Buffett, and he was right. I was impressed. But I digress again.)

So I say, “Pay attention to the writers! Show them some love!” It’s hard to throw your arms around ChatGPT and say, “Thanks for the memories!” (Or, if you’re not close enough to the writer to throw your arms around them other than metaphorically, send them money. I once sent Michael a quarter to make up for royalties when I bought one of his books at a used book store. But I digress yet again, for the last time this week.)

Finding Your Inner Weirdo

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The New York Times recently published an article encouraging those of a certain age to embrace their inner weirdo. They explained it in terms of not being afraid to find your authentic self and not worrying about what other people think. In my opinion, it’s not just a matter of finding your authentic self and embracing what’s weird about you. Nor is it tied to not caring what other people think, though those are all good reasons to explore your own weirdness.

To me, it seems that the NYT is redefining “weird.” When you reach that certain age, you no longer think of “weird” as a pejorative. You either accept it as a fact of life or wear it as a badge of honor. At a certain point in life, you’re allowed to be weird, and it’s a shame if you don’t give in to it. When a woman reaches old age, she tends to become invisible. People’s eyes slide right over her. And many old women make themselves smaller because of it. Being weird is a way to fight back.

I didn’t wait until I reached the age I am now. I’ve always been weird. I was a weird kid. Then I was a weird teen. I was a weird collegian. I was a weird adult. In point of fact, I’m still weird, even at my advanced age.

Call me goofy, silly, or peculiar. Strange. Unusual. Bonkers. Bizarre. Odd. Outré. Crazy. It won’t be anything I haven’t been called before (well, maybe not outré). I won’t mind. In fact, I own it. My friends are weird. My husband is weird. Even our cats are weird. (We had one that would play fetch, and another that liked to throw toothpicks across the room. But I digress.)

So, what have I done to merit the description of weird? Well, there was the time my husband and I cooked naked while doing Julia Child impressions. The only rule: no deep frying. There were times I ate ruffled potato chips with cream cheese and M&Ms. I still quote Star Trek, Star Wars, and The Pirates of Penzance.

My sister thought I was weird when I made lasagna or ratatouille or ordered in sushi for Thanksgiving. I once was able to use the old line, “If I could walk that way, I wouldn’t need a knee replacement.”

I have a weird t-shirt collection, and I wear them in public. (Once, Dan and I went to the bank, both wearing t-shirts with pictures of winged cats on them. The teller said, “I know I’m going to regret this, but what are those t-shirts about?” I replied, “On weekends, we go to the park and fly radio-controlled cats.” But I digress again.)

I have bacon earrings and a sushi necklace. I have earrings of planet Earth, and when I wear them, I like to shake my head violently and cry, “Earthquake!” I had a purse shaped like an armadillo and named her Erma. Many people responded to the weirdness, and Erma sparked many interesting conversations.

I guess all this hearkens back to Jenny Joseph’s poem “Warning.” You know the one: “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple….” The one that inspired the Red Hat Society.

I may not wear purple with a red hat. I prefer to wear a Deadpool t-shirt and bacon earrings. But I won’t give up my weird or go gentle into invisibility. I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to. I have so much practice being weird.

The Eye Has It

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My knees have been taking up so much of my attention for the past year that any other medical needs have fallen by my mental wayside. (My knees are still in play, as it were. My other knee is bone-on-bone and will need to be replaced at some point. Today I received the good news that our insurance will cover the gel (not jello, darn it) shots that will postpone more surgery for a while. But I digress.)

In the meantime, we get to consider Dan’s eyes. He’s been complaining for quite some time that his glasses are all scratched up and he needs new ones. Imagine our surprise when we went to an ophthalmologist and were told that his glasses lenses were fine. It was the lens of his eye that needed replacing. What he had assumed were scratches and fog on his specs were actually specks on his cornea. (Some time ago, he had a problem with his retina that resulted in a massive flash of light, followed by a large “vitreous floater” in one eye. Ever the wit, he named it “Freddy the Free-Floater,” a joke you have to be of a certain age to get. But I digress some more.)

So cataract surgery is in his future, most likely in August, he thinks, because it will then be too hot to work outside in the garden. Sweat rolling down into his eyes likely won’t help his vision any, either. (No, I will not be repeating the racist joke about cataracts, though (of course) I will be thinking it. But I digress yet again.)

The whole notion gives me the willies (or “wiggins,” if you’re a Buffy fan). I find the idea of anything touching anyone’s eyeball nauseates me. That’s one reason I could never wear contact lenses. Thinking about a sharp instrument like a scalpel poking Dan in the eye is my idea of a horror show. The only thing worse I can imagine is said pointy object (“Mr. Pointy,” if you’re a Buffy fan) approaching my eye. (I’m so squeamish about my eyes that I chose an ophthalmologist who was a black belt in the martial arts class I attended. I figured if I freaked out when being given eyedrops, he could subdue me. But I digress even more.)

For a couple of days after his operation, Dan won’t be able to drive. (In point of fact, he’s having trouble driving now, so it won’t be much more of a handicap.) I’ll get to help him by driving him around (now that we have a car with power steering) and also by putting in his eye drops (and throwing up afterward).

Personally, I hope they’ll make him wear an eye patch. I have this thing for pirates (of the Caribbean and of Penzance, in particular). The day I met Dan, he was wearing a patch over one eye because the lens had fallen out of his glasses, and he looked appropriately piratical. (He also had on a t-shirt that said “Dr. Demento,” which was another point in his favor. The rest is history. (This is the Reader’s Digest Condensed (or “clean”) version of how we met.) But I digress nostalgically.)

Dan, obviously jealous of all the attention my knees have been getting, had his own x-rayed the other day. Merely arthritis and some torn cartilage, so no fun with operations, infections, PT, and other indignities in his near future. Now we just have to arm wrestle over who gets the next operation, my knee or his eyeball. Frankly, I think the odds are ever in his favor at arm wrestling. Maybe I should hold out for a round of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock.

Welcome to the Jungle!

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I can just picture my husband dressed all in khaki, hacking his way through dense undergrowth (and overgrowth), battling anacondas, and adorned with a pith helmet. (Whatever that is. I can only assume it’s a hat full of pith.)

That’s my vision of Dan as an eco-warrior. None of this chaining himself to construction equipment, living in a treetop for weeks on end, or throwing himself between a harpoon and a whale.

He’s a kinder, gentler eco-warrior. He carries a trowel rather than a machete and a watering can instead of a canteen. Dan never met a plant he didn’t like. (Except for thistles. He had an epic battle with thistles one year, and I’m still not sure it’s completely over. The thistle is the creeping definition of an invasive species. But I digress.)

In fact, Dan never met a weed he didn’t like. In yet another fact, he’s never met a weed at all (unless you count the aforementioned thistles). To him, as he often says, sometimes at dinner parties, a weed is just a plant that grows where you don’t want it to.

Unfortunately, the city disagrees. To them, a weed is a plant ten inches tall or greater. (Thistles are generally taller than ten inches.) They’re not quite as bad as a Home Owners’ Association, but they get pretty snippy if you don’t snip plants off where they think you should. I try not to get involved in the epic battles this clash of cultures leads to. (I don’t always succeed.)

Anyway, Dan has changed his strategy. Instead of planting flowers or shrubs that get mistaken for weeds, he’s planting trees this year, which are supposed to get over 10 inches tall. (He’ll never see the fully grown trees, of course, but he wants to leave a little forest in the sloping space that would be impossible to mow anyway because it’s so steep. Not that he’d want to. But I digress again.)

He’s also given to making a small jungle inside the house. He regularly brings home plants from Meijer when they’re about to expire (or be dead, reduced in price, or thrown away). He has night-blooming jasmine, shamrocks, and some long-legged things that I fear are going to strangle me in my sleep someday. He brings me orchids for my desk, for no reason. He’s also very fond of hanging baskets of begonias and ferns.

Every year, he makes a wish list of plants that he wants for spring or fall. (I get to research them on the internet and find the money to pay for them. Then he (reluctantly) prunes his wish list down closer to the figure that I came up with. He always forgets to add the shipping costs, which are pretty high for live plants. I also get to check with the companies to see which plants are out of stock and which are available only as seeds rather than live plants. Dan wants me to be involved in his gardening, and I’d have to say I am, even if I don’t dig in the dirt. But I digress at length.)

These internet-and-catalogue expeditions occur regularly twice a year, in spring and fall. And spring is often defined as January, so that the plants he wants won’t be out of stock. Then comes the waiting and the pleas to check my email to see if the greenery has shipped yet. (All the correspondence comes to me since I am the one who does the actual ordering. My plant catalogue email list is as prolific as a spider plant. But I digress some more.)

Back when he lived in Pennsylvania, Dan had a small greenhouse attached to his parents’ house. I don’t think he has ever gotten over it and wants to replicate it here, which we can’t afford. (He had a “dwarf” banana tree in the greenhouse. When it touched the roof and started to bend over, he dug a hole in the dirt floor and sank the pot down into it, so the tree would have extra room to grow. He seems to have a visceral objection to pruning. But I digress yet again.)

This year for Christmas, I think I’m going to buy him that pith helmet, if I can figure out his size and find an online supplier. Maybe one for me, too, just so I can be involved in the eco-wars.

On the Road Again

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What do you say when someone offers you an 18-year-old car? If you’re me, you say, “Thank you very much,” and you fly down to Florida to pick it up.

Mom Reily had a Mercury Milan that she rarely used, and she said I could have it. So, I have a new-to-me car at long last.

What makes the Mercury more than a museum piece is that it has only 40,000 miles on it—a literal “only driven once a week to church by a little old lady” car. And before we arrived in Florida, it had been thoroughly cleaned and adorned with new tires, and looked over by a mechanic. You can’t ask for much better than that.

The Road Trip

That was how we ended up flying down to Florida to pick up the car. (We thought about having it shipped, but once we added up the plane tickets, gas, and supplies (including hard pretzels and cereal, which, for some reason, Dan always takes on road trips), the cost was a wash, which the car had also had. But I digress.) All the flights were on time and no more or less hideous than economy travel ever is.

Then we drove the car back to Ohio. We figured to be gone for three days: one to fly down there, and two to drive back, stopping at a motel halfway. I kept Dan awake on the road and practiced driving. (With my various infirmities, it wouldn’t have done to leave me alone for three days. I might have tripped over the cat and fallen. But I digress again.)

On each day of the trip back, we drove well into the night. Partly this was because Georgia is a very tall state, and partly because I insisted on stopping at sit-down restaurants. I didn’t want fast food wrappers piling up or taco spills on the upholstery. We even found a Denny’s in Valdosta, Georgia, that was quite nice and had a lovely apple pie crisp à la mode for Dan to have on his birthday, which happened in the middle of our trip. (A little Googling tells me that there are only nine Denny’s in Georgia and only around 1,300 in the whole U.S. Also, there are only 24 in Ohio, none of which are near me. I have fond memories of one particular Denny’s, though. Back in the day, after practice, our martial arts group would convene there, taking up the big, round corner booth, and discuss the finer points of punching someone in the throat. But I digress at length.)

Google Maps helped a lot, except when we got off I-75 to find one of those sit-down restaurants. Then it would insist that we make a U-turn or go down Cherry Blossom Lane in order to get back to the highway. But we never would have found our hotel in Marietta without it.

Now that we have the Mercury home, I have freedom that I haven’t known for years. I will be able to do errands, get to appointments, meet friends for lunch (looking at you, Ellen Kollie, Kelly Heir, and Beth Bengough), or drive myself to Urgent Care without Dan having to take off work. That means Dan will have more freedom, too, which is also a Good Thing.

I know many people name their cars. I don’t usually, though the little Chevette I once owned was “Baby Car-Car.” Will the Mercury get a name? Right now, I’m thinking of it as The Freedom Machine. Or maybe Harriet, after Mom Reily. (No, maybe not. I’d end up saying things like “Someone scratched Harriet in the parking lot” or “Harriet has plenty of gas.” Dan says to call it Mom, as in “My Mother, the Car.” (Yes, we’re old.) But I digress yet again.) Perhaps, as cats do, the car will let me know what her name is. I imagine I’ll be as surprised as anyone when she does.

Things I Never Thought I’d Say

cooking, etc., family, food, humor, ,

When you get married, you’re moving into uncharted territory. Plenty of people have been there before, of course, but this time it’s you. And it can be an education.

For me, marriage brought with it a lot of things I couldn’t even imagine myself saying. Of course, there are things like, “Which side of the bed do you prefer?” and “So how did your mother make her amazing stuffed peppers, anyway?” But there are also things you say that, when you look back, are completely unfathomable.

Here are some of mine.

“Please don’t use power tools after I’ve gone to bed.”

I’m not even sure which power tool it was—let’s say a circular saw. I’m not sure what project he was trying to finish. And I’m not sure where in the house he was. (I was in bed, upstairs, on the edge of sleep. But I digress.) But I am sure that it was loud enough to wake me up and unexpected enough to alarm me. Was some evildoer trying to saw his way through our front door? Was the intruder trying to even out the height of the dining room chairs? I never found out. But at least hubby’s never done it again. (Or anyway, he wakes me up first and tells me he’s going to be using power tools, so it won’t take me by surprise. But I digress again.)

“What do you mean I’ll cater your parents’ surprise 50th anniversary party?”

Actually, I knew what he meant. He didn’t mean calling a catering company and telling them what we wanted, or sampling the wares of various purveyors and choosing among them. What I had heard him promise over the phone was that I would prepare all the food and drink myself. He graciously agreed to book the venue, their longtime family church, which at least had a kitchen. (I got it done, but it was only by channeling Martha Stewart. And I hate Martha Stewart. But I digress some more.) I managed to convince Dan to hold it in the afternoon, so dinner was not a concern. Hors d’oeuvres, cake, and punch seemed doable, at least until I saw how many cherry tomatoes I’d have to core and stuff.

“There’s a Cheerio in my underwear.”

Now, this one takes some explanation. Dan has a favorite snack food. He buys a huge bag of already-popped corn. Then he dumps in a variety of crunchy foods—Cheerios (as you may have guessed), Wheat Flakes, Corn Chex, and sometimes mixed nuts. Then he shakes the whole thing and feasts on it for not as many days as you’d think. Often, he sits in the comfy chair to watch TV as he snacks. And he grabs handfuls of his magic concoction and shoves them in his mouth, never caring where the crumbs fly. (Hint: Into the crevices of the comfy chair.) I use the comfy chair sometimes, too, often wearing a rather short nightdress. And one night, I did indeed find a Cheerio in my nether garment. (I guess I’m lucky it wasn’t one of the Corn Chex. At least Cheerios don’t have corners. But I digress yet again.)

“I do.”

I was never the sort of teenager who wrote her initials and a boy’s in hearts on my notebook cover or wrote my name in combination with various potential last names. (As it happens, when it came down to it, I didn’t change my last name. But I digress even more.) I just assumed that I was too weird to attract a male partner and settle down with him. But here we are, after more than forty years. We do things I never thought I’d do, like live with five cats or travel to Croatia. I guess the power tools, the catering, and the Cheerios are just what go along with it.

Simpsons-Speak

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Pop culture is responsible for many sayings that people quote: “Inconceivable!” “He’s dead, Jim!” “Make it so!” “You’ve been chopped.”

(Of these, “Inconceivable!” and its follow-up, “I do not think that word means what you think it means,” are perhaps the most useful in everyday conversation. But I digress.)

But if you ask me (no one did), the best source for memorable quotations would have to be The Simpsons, which today airs its 800th episode. Some of these bon mots have even made it into our family vocabulary.

Bart was on his way home from Sunday School when Marge admonished him for saying hell. Bart’s reply? “I sure as hell can’t tell you we learned about hell unless I say ‘hell,’ can I? Hell, hell, hell, hell!” Now, whenever one of us says “hell,” the other jumps right into the quote.

Then there’s Homer. After a lesson on fire safety, He sings, “When a fire starts to burn/There’s a lesson you must learn./Something, something, then you’ll see/You’ll avoid catastrophe. D’oh!” Dan forgets lyrics often, and some older songs I just don’t know. We often end up saying, “Something, something. D’oh.”

(I understand that in the Simpsons’ scripts, “D’oh” is indicated by “annoyed grunt.” But I digress.)

One particularly important exchange for Dan and me starts when the characters are standing around the statue of Jebediah Springfield, the town founder and local hero. The legend on his statue reads, “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.” Someone inquires whether “embiggen” is a real word. Mrs. Krabappel, the teacher, replies, “It’s a perfectly cromulent word.”

(I would think the meanings of “embiggen” and “cromulent” should be clear from context, but let’s take a look at Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, where both are defined. “Embiggen” means “make bigger or more expansive.” And M-W defines “cromulent” as “acceptable; satisfactory.” What’s even more amazing is that autocorrect didn’t balk at either one when I typed them just now. But I digress again.)

(Just as a digression (to a digression), Dan and I use “embiggen” all the time, almost daily. Because of my various injuries and operations, I can’t climb the stairs to where the bedroom is. So we bought a chair that expands into a single bed and collapses back into a chair. I ask Dan to embiggen the bed in the evening and dis-embiggen it in the morning. But I digress some more.)

Then there’s Grampa Simpson. He has a technique for answering intrusive questions. He goes into a totally irrelevant soliloquy. Like this:

“Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m’shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ’em. ‘Gimme five bees for a quarter,’ you’d say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time….”

(Sociolinguist Suzette Haden Elgin recommended this tactic as well. She could also shut down awkward conversations by saying, “Well, you can’t tell which way the train is going by looking at the tracks.” But I digress yet again.)

Let’s finish with Marge. In one episode, she went away for a self-care day, indulged in a bubble bath, and called room service:

“I’d like a banana fudge sundae. With whipped cream! And some chocolate chip cheesecake. And a bottle of tequila!”

(We don’t use this one in conversation, but once when I had to write something on self-care, I worked it in as an example of what self-care isn’t. But I digress even more.)

Thus has our vocabulary been enriched by a cartoon show. (I also like the episode in which Ned Flanders complains to Principal Skinner that he doesn’t want Darwinian evolution taught at school, and Skinner replies, “You mean Lamarckian evolution?” It doesn’t fit into any conversation I’ve ever had, but it cracks me up every time. And this is my final digression for this week.)

To the Adriatic and the Alps

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Eastern Europe isn’t a vacation destination that many people would choose these days, given the uncertainty in that part of the world. But in the past (those days as opposed to these), we did.

It started one day when I called Dan at work and asked, “So, do you want to go to Croatia?”

Dan is pretty much used to anything that pops out of my mouth, but this had him stumped. How did I come up with such an outlandish notion?

The answer is fairly simple. I belong to a website that advertises low-cost vacations. We had used them to arrange a trip to Mexico for us, which was very nice. So when they offered a trip to Eastern Europe for an unbelievably low price, I was ready to jump on it. And I hoped Dan would be, too.

“I can get us a deal that includes a vacation in Croatia, with days in Venice and Slovenia, and excursions to Bosnia/Herzegovina and Montenegro. It’s a great price. But I need an answer right away. At this price, it will fill up fast.”

“Okay,” he said. “Why the hell not?” (Did I mention I love him?) I booked the trip.

Venice, of course, isn’t in Eastern Europe, but it is a gateway. To get to the region easily, you fly into Venice and transfer by bus to Croatia. We had a jet-lagged afternoon in Venice to spend seeing the sites, including some off the tourist map like the tower with a spiral staircase named El Bovolo (the snail). We took a gondola ride around the city and a water taxi to the island of Murano, where we got to see glass blown and many examples far too expensive for us. Then on to Croatia.

Croatia, like Venice, is on the Adriatic, and the coast shares the Mediterranean climate and many features. There are Roman ruins in the Istrian Peninsula and olive and citrus trees everywhere. The whole of the coastline consists of beaches on the Adriatic Sea, harbors, and quaint houses with red tiled roofs. On the inland side of Croatia, where it nears Bosnia/Herzegovina, you are in the Dinaric Alps. A gorgeous National Park, called Plitvice Lakes, features lakes (of course), waterfalls, cliffs, stone trails, and rainbows. It’s particularly lovely in the snow. This side of Croatia is definitely not Mediterranean.

Zagreb is the capital, and there we saw, in the Old Town, a 15th-century clock tower 31 meters tall. I went into a bookstore, found a science fiction novel I dearly love, and bought it. “It’s in Croatian,” the proprietor said, looking puzzled. “I know,” I replied. I wanted it for a souvenir.

Another entertaining sight in Zagreb was a public festival celebrating contraception and safe sex, which featured a number of people in large sperm costumes dancing around. I wish I had gotten a picture of it. And in a town called Split, Dan and I split a banana split in a restaurant.

We also visited Slovenia and a city there, Ljubljana. There is a Tolkien-themed bar there where we had a beer to celebrate one of our favorite works of fiction. And there are castles, one of which we tried to geocache at (see my post on geocaching), but were stymied. We knew exactly where the cache was, but it was underneath a large mound of snow.

We made a side trip to Montenegro, a small, mountainous country (the name means Black Mountain) at the tip end of Croatia. It’s famous (to mystery fans, anyway, of which I’m one) for being the birthplace of detective Nero Wolfe. The country is quite mountainous, with little taverns strewn about and rockslides that looked like Wile E. Coyote might be trapped under them.

Eventually, we made our way back to Venice, where we spent another night before flying out. It was my birthday the day we left, so Dan sneaked out in the morning and bought me an orchid, which I had to carry all through the airport. Strangers kept asking, “Is that for me?” and I always replied, “I don’t know. Is it your birthday?” (It never was.) The orchid made it home with us, no more disheveled than we were.

With all the metaphoric clouds hanging over the area (the weather was pleasant the whole time we were there), I’m not sure I’d want to visit Eastern Europe right now. But Dan says he wants to retire in Montenegro. I’m thinking Costa Rica. We’ll see.