And I guarantee that she has no idea she even said this. When she’s sleepy her words cannot be trusted.

One thing about me is that I usually like to go to bed when she does. I enjoy the routine of brushing our teeth, tucking in, talking, reading and falling asleep together. It was kind of like a bonding time, especially since we seem to be going in opposite directions most of the days. Before, going to bed at the same time was never an issue. Now it is.

I have tried to go to bed at 9:30ish or whatever…but I just can’t do it–mostly because I am out at meetings until then most nights and I need some decompression time before bed. But in the times I’ve gone up early with her if I do happen to fall asleep early it always end up being a disaster. I always wake up about 2 hours later and then am wide awake as if I just took a nap. So I try to sleep, but the more I try the worse it gets…and the more annoying my tossing and turning is to her. Sometimes though it is because she wraps herself up in her Korean “lead-blanket.” You know the heavy lead bibs they give you when you get an x-ray? She has a red Korean blanket that is like that. And when she burritos herself up the lead blanket takes up A LOT of room. She never believes me, but it does and then I can’t get comfortable making me toss and turn even more and the cycle just repeats itself.

Last night she went up at 9. I told her it was too early, but I was going to come up with her. She made me stay down stairs watching TV until 10:30. Thank goodness for the Olympics because that hour and a half was just crawling by. Finally I did go upstairs at 10:30. It was snowing and since the W loves snow I decided to wake her up to tell her it was snowing. Bad decision. Then as I lay bed next to her I all of a sudden get so extremely hyper. I don’t know why. But all i wanted to do was to be jokey with her. Again, bad decision. Finally I dozed off…and we both got some sleep.

However, since the W has commanded that instead of my original intent that I do whatever she says there are days that go by with no commands (or as is often the case no commands worth blogging about). So without realizing it her commanding ways have actually (at times) created less work for me to do.

The commands today included taking out the trash, emptying the dishwasher and doing laundry–in her words, the usual. Not a bad list. It certainly beats having to be creative. I guess I’m lucky she hasn’t been too commanding lately.

In Ireland I had more than my share of fish ‘n chips, other pub food and most of all Guinness. The Guinness over there is actually better and I spent a lot of time in the lab (pub) researching this phenomenon. Even though we walked pretty much everywhere I think I put on a few pounds. I need to get back into going to the gym. It’s a struggle right now. It’s too cold to even want to go outside. Plus I have become lazy in my exercise and eating. Even as I type this I am literally eating lasagna and drinking beer, not exactly the healthy recipe to get in shape. My cheeks are getting fuller which is my tell-tale sign of weight gain. Another problem is I know I can quickly lose it if I work out consistently so I think I end up trying to get away with something and then cover my tracks. All of this has led the W to be up to her old tricks.

She told me today that I have to go to the YMCA tomorrow…not only because she says so, but also because she will cancel my membership if I don’t start using it again. I’ve heard this song and dance before but in my heart of hearts I know she has a point. I need to go to the Y and get back into it. So I’ll start at some point tomorrow.

One of the many amazing things we witnessed in Ireland was the “6 Nations” rugby tourney. In Dublin that week was Ireland vs Italy. Crazy fun mayhem all around especially after Ireland trounced the Italians. Caught up in the spirit I pleaded for an Irish rugby jersey like the team and locals wear. It wasn’t cheap, but I did get it on the last day. (The adventure of the last day is another story for another day). As a part of the wheeling and dealing for this jersey I agreed to wear it an hour a day every day until she said I could stop. I missed a few days so today I am making reparations by wearing it all day. It’s not too bad other than the short sleeves are cold. I am actually wearing it now.

Yesterday we went to our favorite Korean grocery store near Fort Lee, NJ. This place is one of my favorite places in the whole world–no joke. When we’re there we stock up on the Korean necessities…rice, kimchi, etc. We also always get these little side dishes to bring home to snack on. One of my favorites is octopus so yesterday we picked up what looked like a nice packet of octopus arms and brought it home. Upon ripping the cellophane open we realized that they sold us whole octopus WITH the heads still on.

This was unchartered water for me. I am usually an open minded eater, but octopus heads were a little much. I did briefly channel my inner Andrew Zimmern and consider eating the bit sized head, but that thought quickly passed one I saw the open mouth and where the eyes had been. So we went into the kitchen and “Off with their heads!” Chop chop. Snip snip. While this did leave us with some very edible octopus arms/legs (whatever), it also left us with a bunch of octopus heads. We quickly placed them into a bag and I set it on the front porch to take out to the trash later. She replied, “No, you have to. Love project.” “Love project” has become her term or phrase for why I have to do something I don’t want to do. For example, “Do it now. Love project.”

So I had to put on my shoes, go out into the snow and take a bag of octopus heads down to the trash cans on the street for morning pick up. I kept wondering if the trash men had ever picked up a bag of octopus heads before and if they had any idea they were do so.

Today the Wife is away again at a retreat for the weekend. This is fresh off the heals of her little trip to Atlanta for a conference. I’ve seen her less than 24 hours this week…and yet, she has given me a whole heck of a lot to do.

The list this week had been relatively light. I commented on my last post how I was “doing nothing.” When the W saw this, I think a little voice inside her brain told her “this is not good.” So like a good and faithful wife, she adjusted, reorganized, circled the wagons (I’m not sure I really know what that means, but people say it a lot), and doled out a new and improved mandate full of fresh “frog projects.” “Frog projects” is her phrase. Without further ado, I give you the project list:

1. Clean up the spare bedroom, especially all the clothes–this one sucks and is like a punch in the gut. That room is not really a spare bedroom, but instead it doubles as my home office and place for me to put all my clothes and other random things. And its a HUGE mess right now. I get why she wants me to clean it up, and I do want to clean it. The problem is right now, I don’t have time to do it. Work stuff is carrying over into the weekend, I have to get all set for Ireland, and manage the animals. I think I can maybe manage the clothes part, but not the rest of it. I hope that suffices. Remember the cartoon where the kid will sweep everything under the rug to make it go away? I’m thinking that’s my plan of attack.
2. Do my laundry and all the towels–OK fine. This one actually helps with #1 above…and I need clean underwear and socks for our trip.
3. Clean the cat’s poo–I take issue with this one. We have a very clear breakdown of chores at our house and cleaning the cat’s poo on the last weekend of the month is 100% her job. I scoop it the other weeks (in addition to cleaning up Ellis’ poo in the back yard) but on the last weekend of the month she really rolls up her sleeves and gives the litter box a thorough cleaning. It’s a nasty mess and one that I am so glad she does. Conveniently she’s away this last weekend of the month, so it got pushed on me. I don’t like it. Because of this I had to make a special run to the grocery store to pick up cat litter as we were out. So braving the 13 degree temperature outside to the cold car I went early this morning. I’ve also had to put off taking a shower yet today because, let’s be honest, this is a nasty job. Truth be told, I was planning on just scooping the litter instead of the full litter box cleaning, but thought better of it for the sake of the dumb cats. Even as I look at the W’s list of “frog projects,” this one “Cat’s poo” is the only one that is underlined…twice.
4. Figure out a loose Ireland itinerary–She emailed me a list of things we/she wants to do. So in the zero free time I have I am supposed to plan an itinerary. I am armed with 2 guidebooks and some advice from some friends…so it should be OK and kind of fun, but I feel a little pressure here to make this a good trip. This might be something I can figure out on the flight over there…but I am sure that will land me in hot water. Plus I do want us to have a good trip. In addition to all the laundry and packing I have to do, plus keeping up with her passport (see earlier post) I have my work cut out for me.
5. Eat all the bananas–Yes, you read that right. Eat all the bananas. The final project to list here is actually the 1st thing on her list and in my opinion, the strangest demand of hers yet. Seeing as we are leaving town for a week there is obviously some food in the house that will go bad and end up trashed if we don’t eat it. The 6 bananas are included in this bunch, but for some reason they are the only food to be named–thankfully. We also have almost 2 loaves of bread which would be unrealistic to try and eat by myself. We really need to do a better job of taking inventory before we go to the grocery store. Anyway, I have been eating bananas a lot since I got this list yesterday. There are still 2 left as of now. They are at the turning brown with spots and lines stage and I think they look like they are somehow getting skinnier, if that’s possible. Either way. I have to choke down 2 more damn bananas and the last one I had was not very pleasing to the palate. Heaven forbid we let 2 bananas go to waste, so I have to eat them. I think I will try to imagine I’m on a show on the Travel Channel, Man vs. Food perhaps, as I take on the challenge of eating 2 quickly browning bananas. Yuk.

So that’s about it. I’ll be away from the computer for about a week, but I am sure I’ll have a lot of great things to share when we get back. Bye.

Since the W left for ATL…and yes, she did get there…it’s been crazy bananas here. My car needed to pass state inspection…and of course, it did not pass. So it’s been in the shop since Friday. I did get it back today. All I had to do was pay $1081.00 and it was mine with new state inspection stickers. I love the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and their damn emission rules and regulations. Anyway, not having a car has meant that my stress level has gone up. It’s a particularly hectic time at work and not being able to drive into the office…and worse, not being able to be at my computer  to check email has not been fun. I’m so glad to have the car back now.

So for the last couple of days I’ve been trapped home alone with the animals. I often feel like St. Francis as the 2 cats and 1 dog all sit within 2 feet of me and all stare at me simultaneously. This just stresses me out even more.

I am doing an awesome job however doing what the W has left for me to do…nothing. Following her little passport episode she told me that there was nothing on my “to do” list while she is away. And I’m doing just that…nothing. Well, I am drinking a beer and watching the girl cat chase a plastic lid around the kitchen floor. Being home alone is good…but I can’t wait for the W to get back tomorrow.

She was supposed to leave this morning for Atlanta until Thursday, get back home Thursday evening, then on Friday go to a weekend retreat with work, then get back Sunday afternoon before we leave that evening for Ireland…That was the plan…However, she is currently in Philadelphia and leaves for Atlanta tomorrow. Allow me to explain…

As she was packing for Atlanta last night she decided to look for her passport for the Ireland trip. This was a good idea, except for one problem–she could not find her passport.

So she spent about 5 hours tearing the house apart, upside down and inside out…still no passport. I do my best to just stay out of her way. At this point it’s about 11:30 PM and I am beginning to worry about what will happen to the Ireland trip IF the wife does not have her passport. The trip is 7 days away, she’s scheduled to be out-of-town, and it’s not like you can order a passport online (there are some sites that claim to do it, but I don’t trust them). Finally I find a bona fide governmental website and start frantically searching for what she can do…but it doesn’t look good. Eventually I do find that she can go to Philadelphia to the Passport Agency and try to get a new one, as the website says, “in a hurry.” There is no guarantee that she can get it in less than 7 days (the website says it takes 2 weeks), but it’s worth a try.

So now that we are armed with this information, we go to bed…after laying there for a few minutes I ask her is there is a light on in the hallway from her frantic search. She says, “no” and I say, “are you sure” because I could definitely see that there was. Because of this project I had to get up and turn it off. Once I get back in bed I suggest that she calls the 24/7 phone number to schedule an appointment at the Passport Agency. After a slight delay, she tells me to go get the phone. Now, all of this is her fault but I have to go get the phone. There are moments when I hate this project.

She makes the call to an automated answering system and schedules an appointment for this morning. BUT this still does not guarantee that she can get the Passport in time…so the conversation turns to the very real possibility that she might not have it, won’t be able to travel to Ireland…and whether or not I should still go by myself or if I should stay home.

She said that I should go, especially since we already spent the money on tickets, etc. I said that I didn’t want to go without her. After a back and forth on the subject, I began to imagine what it would be like to be in Dublin without her and on my own. Honestly, I’d miss her and feel very guilty about being there…but it did sound fun! And seeing as how I have to do everything  she says, if that includes going to Ireland then I guess I have to go to Ireland.

Wrapping this up, she’s currently in Philly and is supposedly picking up her new passport this afternoon. It all worked out on that end. So, we’re both going to Ireland. She also was able to line things up for a flight to Atlanta tomorrow. So that worked out too.

The amount of stress this has caused me is incalculable. BUT in the spirit of this project, I have got to say that the way I served her was by being supportive, understanding and encouraging during this whole ordeal. And honestly it wasn’t that hard. I would have used to want to yell at her and give her a hard time about all of this…but not anymore. I have learned that it is much better to be positive and supportive than to yell and make her feel stupid. Plans change and have to be adjusted…I still get to be a bachelor, just one day later.

So I grab her left foot, starting with the toes, and began working my way around the foot. After several minutes I switched over to the right foot and did the same thing on that foot. After a few more minutes of this my hands were beginning to hurt and become tired. So I stopped…

The W then said, “Excuse me! Keep going!”

So I had no choice but to keep going…Again, I tried to walk away after a few minutes only to hear her say, “What about my other foot?” So I started back on the other foot.

My hands, at this point, were really achy and the little muscle between the thumb and the pointer finger was beginning to cramp…but there seemed to be no end in sight. When all of a sudden I hear a “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding” sound coming from the dining room. It was the girl cat. She has a new habit of laying down on my laptop…I think because of the heat…and cats like laying on top of things and in weird places. When she lays on the keyboard she presses and holds down the keys underneath her. The result is the bell-like dinging noise. The other day the cat google searched “4444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444 etc” and it took like 15 minutes for the computer to stop dinging.

But today it was her search of “tttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt etc” that produced the bell sound that freed me from the message. I had to tell the W that I needed to go check on the computer. That’s how I ended up here posting this now and that’s how I got out of the foot massage. Saved by the bell indeed.

That is, not bad until I eventually tried to sleep. For some reason I can easily fall asleep on the soft cozy leatheryness of our couch for a daytime nap…but at bed time I have a hard time falling asleep. Tossing and turning and kicking the blanket and being too tall to fully stretch out just added fuel to the restless fire. Finally I did fall asleep…only to be awakened by the smell of a skunk outside. I was not sure if it was hit by a car somewhere, just hanging out on our porch spraying his stuff around or what, but it definitely smelled awful. And once I was aware of it, I couldn’t fall back to sleep. All I could smell was skunk.

Then it was no longer my olfactory senses working overtime…my hearing went into bat sonar mode. The clock above the bookcase in the living room was ticking and sounded like it was being broadcast through loud speakers or an intercom–kind of like the techniques used by the military to drive out crazy people from their bunkers or to make them talk in prison. TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK…

Then Ellis starts snoring and it’s all downhill from here. The longer I stay awake the more worked up I get and in turn, the less sleep I get. An interesting paradox isn’t it? An increase in “tired” does not equal an increase in “sleep.” At least for last night anyway. At what I guess was around 3 am (I couldn’t see the clock, although I could hear it) she comes over and starts giving me kisses. Normally that’s the best thing in the world and even last night I loved it…then she went back onto her bed. Finally I fall asleep. I think I just needed a goodnight kiss.

I wake up this morning to the W, who obviously had a good and peaceful sleep, zipping around the house in very rare morning chipper and energetic mood. She then gave me a list of projects I have to do today. On the list…trash, take all my clothes that had gathered downstairs to upstairs, and take Ellis for a walk. I was NOT in the mood for a list of projects first thing in the morning, but that is what I got. Work was tough today. You know the feeling–so tired that you feel kind of shaky. That was me today. One interesting thing I did notice on the drive home from work for lunch was skunk roadkill…could this have been the guilty party from last night? If so, then he punished me for what someone else had done to him. It smelled eerily familiar as I drove by this mashed carcass.

During lunch the W was still in her upbeat mood which was 1000% contrary to my mood at the time. She read my post from the other day about “memory loss” and demanded that we would watch a minimum of 2 Glee episodes tonight. Right. It’s basically bed-time here and I guarantee that she has no idea she even said these things. She also threatened to set up a “counter blog” (her words) to give her side of what I post here. Again, this will never happen. I’m too tired to worry about that now…so it’s off to bed hopefully for a good night of sleep and hopefully all the skunks will survive at least until morning.

What did happen today is I was all set to go to the YMCA for a workout. I’ve been kind of lazy and taking it easy after hurting my back, but I do need to get back into exercise mode. Today was the day because she told me that if I did not start going (i.e. today) then she’d pull my membership. Seeing how I have to go along with her, I was all dressed in my running shorts, t-shirt, low cut cotton white socks and my running shoes. I grabbed my YMCA id card, wallet, keys, ipod…but I couldn’t find the headphones. After I looked and looked I sent the W a text (She was already at the Y during all of this). She responded that she did not know where my headphones are and “I am using mine.” About 2 minutes goes by and my phone beeps again with an incoming text. It read “Oops I have yours!” in reference to my headphones.

I was honestly thinking that since she’d been at the Y for a while now, by the time I got down there she’d be done and I could just get the headphones from her. Instead she told me to take the dog on a walk and to “come to the Y later”. So I once again changed my clothes and got ready to take the dog on a walk.

Earlier in the day she did tell me to take the dog on a walk around the neighborhood at some point in the day, so I knew it was coming, I was just hoping to do it after the Y. Also earlier I was given explicit directions not to let the dog run sprints at the park because it’s too soggy outside and the other day after our walk Ellis came in, jumped on the couch and smeared a nice amount of mud all over the leather. So Ellis and I went walking for 45 minutes in the neighborhood. I didn’t realize that her being a full blooded Boxer also meant she is part bloodhound. The walk would have been at least 15 minutes quicker if she didn’t have to stop and smell every damn thing under the sun. It’s like she’s never been outside before.

Next I have to clean up the kitchen. The other thing I have learned in my 6+ years of marriage to the W is “I’ll do it” has different ways of being understood. I understand it to mean “I will get to it at some point during the day.” She understands it to mean “right now.” Cleaning up the kitchen is not a big deal, but it was another one of her instructions for me to follow today, so I’m including it in the post…and it was kind of annoying to have to do it “right now” because I was chatting with a friend online at the time. But who am I to argue with her this year?

Finally I am able to change (again) and get ready to go to the Y. This time I have the headphones to go with the ipod so I am ready to roll. I get there, stretch, and put the ipod on just before I go to hit the treadmill. Only to hear 7 seconds on my Lolo Jones playlist before the battery on the thing dies. This sucks. I loathe the YMCA music selections.

So now I’m home, off to shower and then cook our dinner–penne vodka. I’m cooking every night this week which I don’t mind because she has a really busy week…BUT  I’m still hoping she forgets about Glee tonight. I really really really want to watch “No Reservations” with Anthony Bourdain.