Finally, Spring

Finally!

It seems like forever since the skies have been blue and the sun shining. It rained for 23 straight days and nights until two days ago.

The dogs were going nuts. No real exercise out in the pouring rain. I was going nuts. Why go outside at all when it's raining?

The sun is out, the birds are chirping, the fish are swimming and it's about 70 degrees today and expected to get warmer tomorrow. Actually, 70 is a little warm for me. I like 67 and partly cloudy.

I'm feeling very disgruntled this year. My husband left me home alone while he visited family in Arizona last week. It made me hate him. Now, the sun is shining and he's busy at work in his San Jose office and I still harbor harsh feelings toward him. I guess I don't really hate him, but all he brought me home from his trip to Arizona was a stupid plastic key chain. I threw it at him and it landed on the floor. It was so boring the dogs didn't even want it.

I tried to get a friend of mine to run off to Cabo with me for a few days but he says his wife won't let him. I've invited various people to come and stay for a visit, but nobody has taken me up on it.

I'm bored to where I'm throwing popcorn at my cat for kicks. I'm even thinking of buying myself a nice condo in the heart of Paris. If I do that, I will go live there and drink wine all day and paint. (I am not artistic, but if it's my fantasy, I'll do it my way.) Maybe I can lure good looking men up to my lair telling them I want to immortalize them in oil! (They don't have to know I mean olive oil till they get there, do they?)

Maybe this is just "spring fever". Or maybe I'm actually having an epiphany. It's been at least 3 weeks now since I've had one so I'm not sure anymore. I'm not even sure I know what one is at this point.

I think maybe the problem is bathing too much. I never get dirty, so why bathe? I may just quit taking baths until I get good and dirty and have ants crawling on me.

I used to like the way I smelled. Now I don't smell like anything. Isn't that weird. If I put on perfume, I smell like "Coco" but other than that, I think I'm just too clean.

That's it. No more baths!

Gift Horses

Don't look gift horses in the mouth!

What does that really mean? If somebody gives me a horse as a gift, I probably will want to look in its mouth. It is also likely I want to have a vet look it over from head to tail to hoof. I will be expected to care for and feed this horse, right?

My husband Alex came home from a little jaunt to Arizona last week. He went down to see his family and take in some pre-season Giant's games. When he came home, Alex began telling me an astounding tale.

Alex's mother wants to give him approximately 200 acres of undeveloped land about an hour from Gallup, New Mexico. The land borders on the Navajo Reservation and has been in the family for a long time.

Alex is Navajo and he has a lot of family in the area. All these acres of land sound pretty good to him. To me, not so much. What would we "do" with land like this? Alex grins and says "we could get a double wide and live there!".

If I didn't know better, I'd swear he had been having at the peyote buttons, but no, that's not the case. Although Alex is Navajo, he is an urban Navajo. He was born in San Diego at a Marine Corps base hospital, grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the last 23 years. He has short hair and does not ride horses. I doubt if Alex has ever touched a sheep or been inside a double wide.

If Alex owns this land, what does he expect to do with it? Pay property taxes? Develop it? Oh I give up. I guess he could sell it. (Wait, this is family land we are talking about! "You don't sell land that has been in your family for a hundred years." says Alex.) Oh, yeah, right.

This reminds me a little of when we got married. Alex's mother fretted a lot about how she was going to afford the four sheep and two goats that she needed to give my mother as traditional gifts for our wedding. (My mother lived in a San Francisco apartment at the time.)

But, sweet as it sounds to give such a lovely gift, even if my mother had lived in a house with a huge yard, it's unlikely she would have wanted to care for sheep and goats. It was difficult talking Alex's mother out of the gift.

Alex is very excited to receive the gift of 200 acres of property from his mother. Maybe he can build a casino on it.

Tea Party

I have always loved a tea party.

My friend Kim has two young daughters. I invited my Kim and the kids to my house for a tea party last summer.

We had scones with strawberry jam, cookies and pretty little egg salad sandwiches. I also had two different kinds of tea, and honey, of course. I set the mood with some nice classical music. The girls, Kim, and I had a ball.

After we had our feast, we had a design competition where my friend took one girl, I took the other and we made them formal dresses out of toilet tissue. The girls also got to use make up and put on as much jewelry as they wanted.

Alex took the "glamor shots" of the girls when they got ready for the judging.

We let Alex choose the winner. (I had prizes for everyone.) Alex chose one dress as the "best design" and the other as the "most flattering".

Both dresses started pretty much falling apart as soon as we put them together. But we had enough tape to keep them modest enough with no major wardrobe malfunctions.

I love boys too, but there is nothing like girls for having a really good time!

Terrible Trials Of The Non-Technical Left-At-Home-Alone Wife

Technology can be a good thing or a bad thing.

We have a big old 60" flat screen HD TV with surround sound, Blue Ray, and a bunch of other things. I really don't know what most of those things are.

When my husband is at home, we watch movies, sports events, and our few favorite shows on this television. It's a fairly comfortable place for a family room.

When my husband is not at home, I go upstairs and turn on the TV and nothing happens. Why is that? Well, there are about 10 remote control devices laying around the room. It usually takes a combination of two to turn the set on. There is a computer attached to the television, disc drives galore, places for DVD's, places for UFO's for all I know.

We have a total of five televisions in our home. Oops, make that six. I forgot the one in the man cave under the house. Except for one very tiny television in the kitchen, I cannot turn any of them on. I don't have a degree in electrical engineering or remote control device management.

When I am home alone because my husband chose to go on a little vacation to see his family in Arizona and I have nothing to entertain myself with, this is the television that I know how to operate. I do have to use a magnifying glass sometimes to see the smaller print on the screen.

I hope my husband is having a fun vacation in sunny Arizona while I sit in my pitiful kitchen and watch this pitiful 10 inch television as rain splashes on the windows.

Well, okay, maybe I should be doing his laundry about now, but my heart just isn't in it. I have a better idea!

I'm going to make him a nice batch of toasted almond scented cookies for when he gets home! And I'll go shop for a nice new black dress. Nothing too fancy. Something appropriate. You know.

She Said "Fine"

My husband, Alex, is on vacation next week.

That's nice, right? Uh huh.

Alex made a plan to go visit his mother in Phoenix and catch a Giants spring training baseball game. Uh huh.

He will be leaving on Tuesday morning and coming home late Thursday evening. Uh huh. That leaves Monday and Friday for us to enjoy "vacation" together.

Well, okay, it was my suggestion. Alex brought it up and at first I thought we would all drive down to Phoenix. The problem is that we have two big dogs. Harry, the boy dog, doesn't like to travel. He can't sleep in a moving car. In fact, he can't even sit down.

After 4 or 5 hours in the car, Harry is whimpering and crying with exhaustion. I guess I could drug him, but then we'd have to deal with a drugged standing up whimpering and crying Harry.

Another issue with Harry is that he does not like to poo anyplace but home. This makes for an uncomfortable couple of days for him. Harry doesn't like travel in other words. And, kennels are out of the question. Both of my dogs have "issues".

After some consideration, this began to sound like a lot more trouble than it was worth. I told Alex, "Honey, you just use your airline miles and go down to see your Mom."

Alex immediately said, "Oh no, I can't do that! I travel all the time for work, and I leave you alone far too much, my darling wife! There is no way I would even consider doing what you have suggested!" Uh huh.

Well, actually, that's not exactly what he said. He said "Oh, okay." And I responded "Fine." Maybe I will send him along some nice almond scented cookies for his plane ride. I do look quite fetching in black.

Where Did He Go?

I have a husband.

My husband is the same one I've had for 21 years. His name is Alex.

From the time we got married, Alex has found places to hide from me. I don't know why he does this, but he does. At one point many years ago, I was mad at him and Alex hid in the house for 3 full hours. I never could find him until he came out of hiding. I searched everywhere. He had disappeared.

Over the 21 years of conjugal bliss, I have lost a lot of my passion. I no longer scream at my husband or try to shoot him. (That was a joke. I never tried to shoot him. Poison him? Maybe.) But even today, his disappearing act has continued.

Alex disappears for hours at a time. When I call him and say "Where are you?" He sometimes answers "Right here." But I have no idea where "right here" is. Our house has three levels, one being a full basement. That basement contains the laundry facilities and what can only be called "the man cave".

The house proper has 11 or 12 rooms. Now don't get excited because most of them are relatively modest. Because the house is 130 years old, there are lots and lots of weird spaces in it. If Alex chooses not to be found, he won't be.

I love my husband but this behavior of his can make me tired. I've been known to take off all of my clothing and run around the garden screaming "I'm free! I'm free!" very loudly until he comes out of hiding out of fear that the neighbors will call the police.

My Persian girlfriend and I used to run up the hall at work naked with a large black man on Friday afternoons screaming "I'm free!" That was very fun and that's why I still do it.

Camels In Cars

I have always had a certain fascination with regard to the Bedouin tribes.

These nomads of the desert are such romantic figures. I've seen them portrayed in movies and I've read numerous stories about them.

When my husband Alex was stationed in the middle east for a year during the Iraq War, he spent a good amount of time in Saudi Arabia. During some of his "cultural field trips" in Saudi, he claims to have seen numerous Bedouin people. While I believe a lot of what Alex says, there are some times when I question his veracity.

Alex told me that the Bedouin people are mostly seen now driving SUV's, with their camels in the car with them. It was not unusual he said to see camels' heads stuck out of the sun roofs on as the people drove down the freeways.

When I mentioned this to some friends because I thought it was amazing, they burst into laughter and said "Alex is kidding, Linda." The subtext being "how can you be so stupid?" of course.

When I confronted my husband saying "Why did you lie to me?" he responded that he was telling the absolute truth. He saw Bedouins driving along with their camels in their SUV heading out into the desert. Alex further elaborated that the camels can "fold up their legs" and fit in an SUV just fine.

Okay, I have no idea if this is the truth or a lie. I think it makes some sort of sense, but on the other hand it doesn't. What self respecting Bedouin would only have one camel? I think they have a whole herd of camels.

But maybe Bedouins only take their favorite with them when they go to town.