Category Archives: Conversations with my wife

Conversations with my wife: Vitamins

Back when we were first preparing for stay-at-home orders, we, like many people, scrambled to make sure we had a good supply of the family’s prescription medications. On one of her trips to the pharmacy, my wife picked up a bottle of daily vitamins for each of us. I hadn’t been in the habit of taking general vitamin pills, but it wasn’t a bad idea to keep the levels up, with pathogens potentially lurking around every corner.

A contrast between the bottle of Women’s vitamins and the bottle of Men’s vitamins was immediately apparent. I thought perhaps her pills were larger than mine, because maybe the vitamins a man needs are smaller than the vitamins a woman needs. I don’t know how big an individual vitamin is. Or maybe she needs extra supplements to give her the strength to deal with me in isolation.

A vitamin gap?

These notions were dispelled when I read the labels side by side. Her bottle had 200 daily doses, while my bottle held only 120.

I found interesting the theory that I would not need to be kept in optimal health for as long as she would.

ME: Your vitamin bottle is bigger than mine.

WIFE: So it is.

ME: Yours has 80 more pills in it that mine does.

WIFE: Yeah, I know.

ME: Why did you get me fewer pills?

WIFE: Women live longer than men. You don’t like it when I waste money on things we might not need.

 

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Conversations with my wife: Diversity

In the car, my wife tells me about something she read online that has her very excited.

WIFE: There’s this company that will pay you $6,000 to eat just junk food for a month.

ME: Why are they doing that?

WIFE: They want you to eat just junk food and take their herbal supplement and see how you feel after a month. I guess their supplement is supposed to give you all the nutrition you need. I wanna do it!

ME: Is it just chips and candy?

WIFE: I’m sure you can eat fried food and burgers and stuff. It sounds great. We should both do it. Then we’d get $12,000. Just think, $12,000 for eating chicken wings and mozzarella sticks. It’s perfect.

Fire up the deep fryer! It’s greasy time!

ME: I don’t know that I could eat that kind of stuff for a solid month. Besides, I bet they want more diversity in their subjects.

WIFE: What are you taking about? A young, black woman – an old, white man. What could be more diverse than that?

ME: I was thinking more about environmental diversity, but since you put it that way, I guess they’d have to take us.

I hope their supplement doesn’t interact with my senility meds.

 

Conversations with my wife: My itchy ear

While I’m getting ready to leave for work my wife notices me poking around in my ear with my finger.

WIFE: What’s wrong with you?

ME: I got an itch inside my ear.

WIFE: Oh, that means good news in coming?

ME: (Staring at her in disbelief) What?

WIFE: When your ear itches it means good news is coming.

ME: Says who?

WIFE: I don’t know. The people who keep track of this stuff. It’s just a thing.

ME: I’ve never heard of it.

WIFE: (Shrugs and looks at me like it’s not her fault I’m an uneducated yokel)

ME: Are you just an old wife, making up a tale?

WIFE: I didn’t make it up. It’s a thing.

ME: (Walking toward the door) Okay, I’ll be on the look-out for good news then.

WIFE: (Following me to the door) Wait. Which ear is it?

ME: (Poking my finger into my ear) The right one.

WIFE: (Screwing up her face like she’s concentrating on getting the facts straight) Oooooh! In that case it might be bad news.

ME: Great!

WIFE: Well, have a good day at work.

ME: I’ll do my best, now that I don’t know if I’m about to strike it rich or fall to my death.

WIFE: I mean, that’s pretty much the same as any other day, right?

In case you’re wondering, it turned out to be good news: my ear eventually stopped itching.

Checking for good news

“Tell us doctor, do you see good news or bad behind the wax? We need this data for our scientific study.”

Conversations with my wife: Early birds

If it’s not the skunks, it’s the birds. None of God’s creatures wants us to get a good night’s rest.

I’ve mentioned before how we have a thriving skunk community in our neighborhood. They like to offer their perfumes to us in the night. If you’ve ever shared property with skunks, you know they can jolt you out of a stone dead sleep without saying a word.

The skunks come around from time to time, but in summer, the birds are out every morning. I have no problem with the birds. I’m a country boy; their joyful chirping doesn’t bother me. My wife, who is not a country boy, is driven up the wall by their chatter. By the laws of marriage (“for better or worse, richer or poorer, through plagues of birds, etc.”) this makes the birds my problem.

Every morning, not long after sunrise, the birds wake my wife, who reacts by closing the windows in our bedroom. Country boys are not accustomed to the noise of windows being closed on a pleasant June morning. Consequently, this wakes me up.

“Close the window if you don’t want to hear the morning announcements!”

 

WIFE: Sorry to wake you, but those birds are at it again.

ME: They’re just letting you know , “It’s morning time!”

WIFE: Could they whisper it? Or maybe wait until 7 o’clock? Let’s just leave the windows closed all night.

ME: It gets too hot in here. I’d likely be a wreck every morning.

WIFE: Let’s risk it.

ME: You know, some people buy recordings of birds singing to relax them.

WIFE: Singing? They call that singing? It sounds more like a brawl.

ME: Do you also hate the sound of a gentle rain?

WIFE: I swear, one of them is about to pull a knife.

ME: What about the ocean surf?

WIFE: The ocean is fine. It’s all one constant noise, not all these different notes and pitches these birds have.

ME: So if we could get more birds, and their noises all blended together . . .

WIFE: Have you ever heard bickering that blended together?

Not in our house, I haven’t. Wife wins that round.