Category: The Queen

Phone conversation with The Queen.

Me: So, I’ll see you at four, then.

The Queen: [pause] Huh?

Me: I said I’ll see you at four o’clock.

TQ: [pause] Wha-? No.

Me: No? No, we’re not meeting at four o’clock like we discussed?

TQ: [pause] Um? Uh, oh, four, yeah. We’re meeting.

Me: Are you reading your email while you talk to me on the phone?

TQ: [pause] Huh? No, no.

Me Should I believe you?

TQ: [pause] Wha-? No. I mean yes!

I walked into a door this morning, and now I have a big red blemish on my face. All day people at work have been asking me what happened. And I don’t want to say “I walked into a door,” because that totally sounds like something you’d say if your spouse hit you and you didn’t want to admit it. So, instead, I’ve been saying “my spouse hit me”. It’s not technically true, but at least people don’t think I’m hiding anything.

It is early Sunday morning. My wife and I are lollygagging about, reading books and drinking coffee. She climbs out of bed and leaves the room to refill her mug, while I continue my book on critical thinking.

The chapter I am reading is all about fallacies: mistakes people make in their arguments and reasoning. The current paragraph states:

The Fallacy of Hasty Generalization: One is guilty of hasty generalization, or jumping to conclusions, when one draws a general conclusion about all things of a certain type on the basis of evidence concerning only a few things of that type.

At this moment my wife re-enters the room and, glancing out the window, says “Wow, our Madrone tree is looking beautiful.”

I follow her gaze to the backyard. The Madrone has recently shed its bark, and it now appears youthful and hale. The only bad thing about this tree is that it drops leaves year-round, many of which fall on the the property to the south — something that perpetually vexes that elderly homeowner. “Yeah, it looks great,” I agree. “Too bad the neighbor doesn’t like it.”

“Oh, you know old people,” my wife replies as she clambers back into bed. “They hate trees.”

Wife: Ug. I hate these uphill parts.

Wife: [Two minutes later] Okay. Okay, I think we’re at the top of the hill. Yes. Yes, we are. Ahh, that’s so much better.

Wife: [Two minutes later]: Ug. I hate these downhill parts.

“Jesus!” I said as I drove us to work today. “A pipeline for Stupid Gas must have ruptured in this area. Everyone is driving like an idiot.”

“It’s really bright this morning,” my wife observed. “People in Seattle have a hard time driving when it’s sunny out.”

“Or if it’s raining, it’s snowing, it’s hailing, the skies are overcast or the skies are clear,” she added. “Or at night.”

The house my wife and I just bought was built in the 60s. While some parts of the home have been remodeled, other areas, such as the bathroom, have the original fixtures in the original color scheme.

Friday my wife came home and showed me the powder blue bath mats she had purchased.

“I think they’re the right size,” she said. “If not, Eddie Bauer said I could return them.”

“You spoke with Eddie Bauer?” I exclaimed in mock excitement. “The Eddie Bauer?!”

“Well, it wasn’t really Eddie Bauer,” She deadpanned. “It was actually a gay man who openly winced when I asked him if these would go well with our mint green bathtub.”

My wife, a botanist, owns a truck which she uses when doing field work. The bed of the truck has a lockable canopy over it, and inside is a large trunk. The trunk is blood-red, with a bronze frame and an ornate lock. This is exactly the sort of ancient trunk where you would expect to find either

• A priceless treasure, full of rings fashioned by the craftiest of dwarves, platinum-tipped arrows enchanted by the Elder Elven Council of Thom, diamonds as large as Granny Smith apples and countless coins minted from every precious metal known to the inhabitance of ManaEarth; or
• A collection of automotive and fieldwork equipment, including jumper cables, a quart of oil, an old milk jug fill of water, a bag of kitty litter (for traction), leather gloves, a rain hat, and an $20 electric boot dryer.

Last night some punks broke into both the canopy and the trunk. They took the boot dryer.

I washed a white towel with a bunch of brightly colored clothing and, to no one’s surprise, it came out pink.

Upon discovering this, my wife sighed and said “It’s no big deal, but in the future could you at least try and make your husbandly blunders a little less stereotypical?”