Ordering Off The Menu

I inadvertently sexted with my wife last night, asking an innocuous question using marriage shorthand. It just looked pretty dirty when it popped onto the screen. Like something out of 50 Shades of Grey, which I know nothing about except, I guess, the subject matter.

It made me laugh and I wanted to share, and I had a funny thought. I have this a lot, actually. I don’t want to offend the older folks, I think. The older folks. It’s like I don’t have a mirror, or a driver’s license.

Not to mention those copies of 50 Shades of Grey that I’ve seen in the homes of people 10-20 years older than I am. Yeah. I see them. I think I can make whatever sex jokes I want. Now I don’t want to, but you know. I could.

Julie meets the newest member of the family.

Anyway, that was the highlight of the afternoon, a mild double entendre in a text conversation with my wife while she waited for her flight home. Her flight wasn’t due to land until 10pm, so I had an evening to fill. I washed the linens. I swept the floor. I took a walk at 6pm, a great time of the day for it in this season, at this latitude.

I also texted her that she might not recognize me, because I’ve gotten so fat in her absence, which was an actual, intentional joke. I weighed 3 pounds more yesterday than I did the day she left, which is mostly bogus weight but I like it anyway. Sun and warmth seem to have sparked my appetite, which in turn created energy that felt unfamiliar, it’s been so long. I walked 30 miles last week, according to Mr. Fitbit, which is more than it’s been in a while. It feels as though I’ve moved beyond the sedentary into summer.

I’ve also eaten a lot of croissants. I have no idea.

I got the croissants because I’ve been to Costco twice, which is something I almost never do alone. The first trip was when I was hungry; Costco is a safe place for that state of being, since it’s hard to spontaneously buy 500 cookies. But I saw those croissants, as I always do, and I picked up a dozen.

Then I went back, because I gave a friend a ride to an optometry appointment, so while I waited I shopped some more. Got some more croissants. Ate them.

So I don’t know. There’s not a lot of nutrition in a croissant, mostly protein and iron (hardly any fiber), which I get plenty of anyway. Maybe it’s just the calories. Maybe it’s something else I’ve been eating. Whatever. All of this is good.

I also wonder if I’m getting some contact serotonin effect, since both John and Julie are on new meds. It’s cliché that we’re living in the Age of Anxiety, and there’s so much discussion that I tend to reject it as too simple, too faddish.

And yet my daughter recently pointed out some family history to me, and she made excellent points. I’m not sure what good it does me at this stage, although I’m always a fan of self-awareness. It seems obvious that I’ve been negotiating with depression for most of my life. It’s just clearer now that a large component of that was anxiety, which really feels like fear to me, and I recognized that from day one.

I have a limited interest in changing the past, no matter how well I understand it now. I guess it helps a little, knowing more. I think maybe the croissants are the important thing here.

...

I always have to look up a la carte. I’m not sure why. It doesn’t make any sense to spell it any other way. I still look it up.

We live in an a la carte world now, it seems to me. My wife mentioned yesterday that she’d like to watch Wimbledon, as she likes to do every year (and the Open). I’m not a tennis watcher but she always has a great time, as it’s summer and she’s relaxed, etc. I pretend not to know the names of the top players so she’ll laugh. We have a routine.

What we don’t have is cable TV, and haven’t for a decade. We never miss it, but these situations come up a couple of times a year, maybe. In the case of summer tennis, I’ve used a variety of free trials of streaming live TV over the years. I think I probably paid for a month of Sling TV once.

So I was both pleasantly surprised and a little sheepish to realize I could just buy a month of ESPN for five bucks. This really isn’t about the money (even though we probably save $1000 annually by not having cable); it’s always been about the waste, paying for things we don’t want or need or care about.

So I can spend $30 on an Uber, say, if I’m traveling and need a ride, and not end up parking a rental car on a street for a week. I could come up with other examples, I guess. We’ve been heading in this direction for a while. It just seems to me that we’ve shifted from paying more for convenience to paying less for these a la carte things, since we avoid the bundles of junk that used to come with them. I dunno. Just an idea. I like paying 5 bucks for a month of something.

The sex stuff is free, of course.

I just meant, did she want me to pick her up inside the airport, or outside. Get your minds out of the gutter.