Tag: nature

Mysteries of Marriage – Guess Which Episode This Is…

I have a wife. Her name is Judy. She is the most awesome human currently residing on the planet. Yes, Earth – THAT planet. 

Judy has a husband (me). His name is Bill. Many people aren’t sure WHICH planet is his current place of residence, but let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that he lives on Earth, too. 

Bill and Judy have been married for a few years, almost 46 of them, and they are both very much in love with each other. 

Sometimes people ask Bill and Judy the secret to the longevity of their marriage. Judy used to say that it was because she has a really bad memory, but she has changed her mind on that score. Now she says it’s because she has a really good memory. 

Bill, on the other hand, has a bit of a different take. He gives the credit to something he calls mystery…

One day, a few weeks ago, Bill was helping out around the house by doing the dishes.  During this act, it dawned on him that there were a few utensils missing from the inventory of knives, forks, spoons, etc.. Not that there weren’t any, but that there were not the former quantity of eight place settings of matching style. In other words, there were lots of utensils, but no eight of them matched. 

This kinda bothered him, because he knew that they had purchased actual place settings of matching silverware for eight users. But now there was this hodge podge of different styles types and sizes. He was able to find three salad forks, four dinner forks, five teaspoons, two tablespoons and one knife, all of the same make and model. Plus a plethora of mixed makes and models.

All in the same drawer.  

This finally led him to check in with Judy to see if she was hiding the rest of the set somewhere, possibly in her purse where you can find anything from lipstick to a toilet plunger if the need arises (Bill refers to Judy’s purse as her magic bag of tricks), but to no avail. She had no idea where the missing items could be.

This further led him to suggest that they should purchase a complete set of knives, forks and spoons, etc., just so they can have matching place settings in case anyone ever wants to join them at their house for a meal. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

Judy agreed and immediately started searching the internet for something suitable. She found several good deals on nice settings and presented them to Bill for his input. After a brief few days of discussion, they agreed upon a specific 45 (actually 50) piece set. It looked nice and it didn’t cost too much. 

With the decision made, Judy ordered them and a few days later they showed up at the post office, where Bill, with hope in his heart, picked them up. He was not immediately disappointed when he opened the package: 

flatware1.jpg

It all looked good to him, so he left it as it was and didn’t open the rest of the sub-packages because he wanted Judy to have the pleasure of seeing her brand new silverware, fresh out of the box, when she got home.

This worked out great, until she got home. 

When she, with great anticipation, opened the rest of the boxes, they discovered that there were a few surprises:

  1. There were no knives and only a few forks

  2. There were LOTS  and LOTS of spoons

This was the perfect set of flatware if you want to have a large ice cream and soup banquet, but it wasn’t much good for meat, spaghetti, potatoes or anything else requiring reduction in size or stabbing in order to get it from the plate to your mouth.

In order to save you the trouble of reading about this episode forever, I’m just going to move on the rest of the actual mystery involved. But be assured that the situation was (mostly) rectified by contacting the manufacturer. I say “mostly” because they are out of stock on the knives (possibly because they sent ours to somebody who can now have a “let’s cut stuff up but not actually eat it” banquet). 

Subsequent to this challenge, Bill has discovered that the rest of their “eating”ware suffers from the same malady that he discovered with the knives, forks, etc.. Partial place settings. They have always bought these items in settings of eight. Eight of each bowl, plate, saucer, cup, etc.. But now there are twos, threes and fives of these items present. 

How does this happen? Bill doesn’t know and he really doesn’t care. All Bill wants to know is where this stuff goes. Do the kids have them? Are there boxes they have not yet unpacked in the last move? Have they broken over the years and Bill just didn’t notice? Have they been burglarized and all that was taken was a plate, a cup, a fork or a spoon and Bill just didn’t realize that they were gone?

Bill approached Judy with his conundrum and she didn’t help solve the mystery (in his mind, anyway). The best that Judy could come up with was “They have probably been broken over the years. You DO realize that we have had these same dishes for the last thirty-plus years, right?

And therein lies the real mystery…

There’s no way that’s true. That hypothesis goes against nature.

Look, Bill and Judy are a man and a woman. They are married. They love each other. Very much. They spend a lot of time together. It’s only natural that, with all of those truths in place, over the years the forces of nature would win out and they would eventually succumb to their feelings and go out and buy a new set of matching dishes at some point.

They would have to.

Wouldn’t they…?

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The Max Factor – Chapter Seven: Poetry Dedicated To Max (Maxetry) – Verse Two

Hello again, gentle reader… Once again, it’s time for another Max Inspired sonnet, officially inspired by Max…

I launch…

Max: A Dog’s Life

By
The Very William H. Kammerer, Jr., Esquire (not)

.

I spend my life barking at flies

And I wonder why

And so does the fly

.

I pass my day staring at cats

I think about that

And so does the cat

.

I often dream of chasing down cows

And I wonder how

And so does the cow

.

I truly enjoy hunting down deer

I’ll catch them, I fear

And so does the deer

.

I often succeed at sniffing out toads

when I’m on the road

And so is the toad

.

But most of all…

.

I LOVE to watch Master picking up poop

For he has no scoop

Nor does the poop

The End…

Thank you for listening…

Conversations with Judy – Episode 12 – The Max Factor – Chapter Six Point Five: “The Dog” or “Max”

The setup:

This morning at about 4:45 I was lying in bed trying my best not to be awake when it occurred to me that I needed to visit the bathroom. So, stealthily so as not to disturb Judy from her slumber, I slithered from the bed and skulked my way to the bathroom.

After a successful mission there, I decided that I was ready for a glass of Carnation Instant Breakfast and I made my way to the kitchen.

While I mixed up my early morning pre-breakfast, by the light of the refrigerator, I looked out the window over the sink and discovered that it had snowed during the night – the first snow of the year. I thought that was kind of neat, so I went to the breakfast nook to get a better look through the larger windows.

Immagine my surprise when I discovered that, while standing at the window, my right foot was partially submerged in a puddle of cold liquid…

Thinking water must have leaked in through the window, I felt around the sill and frame for more moisture. There was none.

This was, both, a very good sign (because it meant that there was nothing wrong with the construction and installation of the windows) and a very bad sign (because the only other possible sources of the liquid I could think of were me, Judy and Max).

I knew it wasn’t me, and I was cautiously hopeful that it wasn’t Judy. That left only Max.

The chagrin I was experiencing was exacerbated by the fact that the sink and everything necessary to clean up the mess is located about 20 feet from where I was standing with my drippy foot. Not only that, but there is a glass dinette set and a granite island that are positioned between where I was and where I wanted to be.

As I had not the slightest desire to track the biologically induced liquid across the entire kitchen floor, it was required that I hop on one foot from point “A” to point”B” and back again, all the while negotiating the necessary course corrections around the previously mentioned impediments.

And, because I had closed the refrigerator door after constructing my breakfast drink, I had to do all this in the dark. 

After I did the cleanup job, both on the floor and my right foot, I went back to bed.

Judy had, somehow, woken up and asked me if everything was OK…

“Everything is fine. I just went to get something to drink,” I replied. “Except that the dog peed on the kitchen floor.”

“The dog?”

“Yes. I figure the only other possibilities were you and me, and I knew it wasn’t me. Plus, I assumed that it wasn’t you because you would have cleaned up after yourself.”

“But you said ‘the dog’.”

“Yes. The dog.”

“You have never referred to Max as ‘the dog’ before.”

“He has never peed on the kitchen floor before.”

“So if he pees on the kitchen floor, you call him ‘the dog’, but any other time he is ‘Max.”

“Yes….…………And let that be a lesson to you.”

As it happens, this warning appears to have been sufficient to keep Judy from peeing on the kitchen floor because it’s been about 15 hours and it’s still dry.

And this is a very good thing because I don’t want to have to call her anything other than ‘Judy’ or ‘Honey’ or ‘Sweetie’ or some other term of endearment. 

I’m fairly certain that we both like it that way…