He Says Potato, I Say What The Fuck Are You Talking About?

Baroy and I connect on some very fundamental things and on a very personal level. But sometimes, when I look around this house, I wonder how we ever found each other, much less came to live together.

We both have areas in our family room that are designated as our offices. The area he chose is in the darkest, windowless corner of the room. My desk is situated between a wall with two windows and another that has our double french doors (each with 15 small panes of glass), and has not only a light overhead, but a lamp behind me. And I still complain abour it being too dark.

We rarely watch television together any more, because he keeps the sound up at decibels levels that I consider assaultive, while I need it so low that the padding of the dog's paws as he walks across the floor can make it difficult to understand what is being said. My greeting to him almost every morning, as I come downstairs while he's listening to Air America, is "Could you turn that down, please?" If it were up to me, even dance music would be kept at a whisper. (And I wonder where N gets his "sensory defensiveness"--his tendency to put his hands over his ears whenever there's a lot of noise around him?)

Baroy opens the windows in the living room to let the cool air in no matter what the temperature is outside, and likes to run a fan in our bedroom even in the dead of winter (whatever that means in Los Angeles). I am a heat seeker, and will pump up the thermostat in the house and then STILL insist on putting a fire in the fireplace.

He dislikes coffee and beer, my two favorite beverages. I could live on pasta and cheese; two foods he absolutely despises. (Imagine trying to cook for a man who eats neither pasta nor cheese...nor cream sauces, nor avocado, nor yams, nor pretty much every other thing I love. It's hell, I tell you. Hell.) Our refrigerator might as well have lines of demarkation for 'his foods' versus 'my foods.'

He likes action-adventure movies; I like documentaries. He likes 60s doo-wop and show tunes (gayest stright man I've ever met!); I'm a child of 70s rock (Rush, anyone?), though I've mellowed in my old age a bit.

I know these are all superficial things, but sometimes--after I've walked through the house turning on lights, shutting windows, turning up the thermostat and muting radios and TV sets--I just have to shake my head.

It's a good thing I like him, that's all I can say. And I'm sure he'd say the same about me.

Another Reason to Regret My Attempt At Anonymity On This Blog

In short: The picture I took last night of Baroy, sprawled out across our Big Comfy Chair, "resting his eyes" while the kids watched Spy Kids 2 during Family Movie Night, with N's Spongebob Squarepants doll nestled in the crook of his arm.

Hilarious. And just the piece of ammunition I need for Thanksgiving dinner when he threatens, as he always does when there's a fresh audience, to trot out that old story about how I once unwittingly tried to kill my cat.

What? You mean to tell me that the stability of your marriage isn't based on a strategy of Mutually Assured Embarrassment? Well, where's the fun in that?

A Sense Of Ownership

I fell asleep on N's bed (again) last night. Before Baroy went to bed, he came and shook me awake. This is what we do. This is fine.

I stumbled out to our office/family room, remembering that I'd left my computer (an iBook) open on my desk, and wanting just to close the cover before I went to sleep. It was off. This is what Baroy does. This is NOT fine.

He and I have had this conversation about a million times before. It is my computer, I'll tell him. There are often reasons I don't want it shut down...programs that are open, documents I haven't saved. But that's not even the point. The point is that it is my computer. Mine.

There are so few things in this house that are mine. Baroy and I share a room, a bed. (Not that I'm complaining, mind you!) We share an office, which is also our family room. The food in our refrigerator is everyone's; if I buy myself a treat, it's just as likely to be gone when I go for it as it is to still be there for me. Em is already at the stage where she likes to borrow my clothes (they're still too big for her to go out in, but she often sleeps in my shirts) so I never know if something will be there when I want to wear it.

Of course, Baroy and I own this house together, but somehow, in one of those ways in which I've not quite fulfilled my earlier-life dreams of self-sufficiency, I do not feel like it's really mine. I don't know how to fix things, or even where everything is in the house and how they work. I've abdicated that responsibility to Baroy in certain areas, and I'm OK with that. Same with "my" car, which has both of our names on the registration, and which Baroy takes care of in terms of maintenance, etc. But it does make me feel like a fake in many ways. Not a real grownup. Real grownups have ownership. I'm being taken care of.

A lot of the 'big' things in our house are someone else's. Our big old plasma-screen TV was a present for Baroy's 50th birthday, and he treats it as his. (That's fine with me; I no longer watch regularly anyway. There isn't a single series on TV right now I'm interested in.) The TV in the family room is one we bought for the kids last year, so they would have something to watch when Baroy is settled in front of the plasma. I sometimes almost feel like I need to ask permission to sit down and watch a movie on a DVD player; it's a stupid feeling, but a feeling nonetheless.

There are a few things I feel ownership over, and I guard that jealously. There is my iPod. There is my Blackberry. And there is my computer.

I waited until this morning to say anthing to him.

"Baroy," I said, swallowing hard so it didn't come out sounding nasty, "I have a favor to ask of you."

"Shoot."

"Please don't turn off my computer at night; there's usually a reason I still have it on."

"Oh," he said, looking genuinely surprised, genuinely confused. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

It's the same thing he says every time. But I just thanked him and went on my way, secure at least in my ownership of feeling like a big old baby.

Why Is He Hiding All the Knives?

I was flipping rhrough my news feed when I saw the headlines about Jane Wyatt's death at age 96.

Me: Wow. She can't really complain about that, can she?

Baroy: Yeah, really. I'd be OK with dying at age 96.

Me: Oh, no you don't. I've got plans for after you're gone.