In Other News
Incestuous journal commentary time. Despite making a point of not writing about other journals in this one, I do it from time to time and I'm about to do it again. Methinks I doth protest too much. This time around I'm talking about one of my favorites, the Daily Dose of Deb.

I've been reading about her marriage for some time now and I've bitten back the urge to write to her about it. I don't think she'd be that enamored of my opinions, and she didn't ask for them anyway. So I read about something out-of-hand her husband has said or done and her self-flagellation for it and I want to write to her but I don't. And then I keep thinking about it and have to keep making the decision not to write to her. And that's where I am now.

Well, I can't help myself any longer. I have to say something, so I'll say it here rather than invade her mailbox with unsolicited opinions. Chances are she won't ever read this, but if she does it'll be because she came here, not because I kicked the door in.

Deb. Babe. Stand up for yourself, please. I'm sure your hubby's a hell of a guy in real life, I know that what we're reading is just your side of things. But your side of things is awfully hard on you and, IMO, way too damned easy on him.

My wife and I have a little girl, and not only would I never think of spending a weekend thinking/reading/gardening while she did all the work and then gripe about the lack of attention paid to me, there's no way in hell she'd let me get away with it. She'd skin me alive if I tried that shit. I help out, I do my share, and I do it because I should.

Parenthood is a partnership, a concept that seems to be beyond your hubby's ken -- and yours. I almost wish Beth would take lessons from you, because your boy's on Easy Street with you doing all the work. And maybe I should take lessons from him, because it's got to be some kind of sinister brilliance that allows him to turn his every wrong back on you and then get something special to make up for how small you are for being angry with him.

Yank the leash, Deb. He's a selfish, spoiled, self-absorbed little boy. IMO...

Sunday - November 22, 1998
Out With The New, In With The Newer

Our new new refrigerator came today. This is the fridge that replaces the one we bought a week and a half ago. It's more than just a handy kitchen implement, it's also emblematic of how I'm molding Beth to my wacky ways.

Most married couples, I imagine, end up developing a little bit of their partner in themselves after they've been together for awhile. At its most mundane it's simple little things like thinking the same thought at the same time, finishing each others sentences, picking up their love of the cooking shows on the TV Food Network. At the more extremes you have the transfer of neuroses, which is where Beth and I seem to be. Without me, Beth would never have gone through two refrigerators in two weeks.

You see, I have this little shopping problem: I'm never satisfied with what I've bought. For example, I'm a computer gadget hound and so I make semi-regular pilgrimages to Fry's...and then I make return pilgrimages to exchange what I bought the first time around. (If you're at all familiar with Fry's you know what torture this can be.) My Umax scanner? An exchange. My Force/FX joystick? An exchange. My 24X CD-ROM? An exchange. I just can't seem to be happy with what I buy the first time. I hem and haw between two similar items before I buy one, then I invariably exchange it for the other within two weeks. I'm the guy they invented restocking fees for (but so far I've ducked them), and now Beth is catching my dis-ease.

The first fridge was a fine model. Fine and huge. 29 cubic feet of side-by-side chilled storage, big enough to serve a busy restaurant. Only we don't run a busy restaurant, we run a 3-person home. So when the moving guys wheeled this monstrosity into the house, we were a bit taken aback. Garsh, it didn't look that big in the store! And our kitchen didn't look that small before the monster was in there. It dominated the room. It was a bad joke: Hey, you want some kitchen with that fridge? You walked in and saw the fridge, then you noticed there was a house around it. It stuck out like a sore thumb -- all the way into the walkway through the kitchen. All hyperbole aside, it was kinda largish.

After a week of tiptoeing around this beast, squeezing past as we walked by, flattening against the opposite wall to open its maw, we decided that we wanted our kitchen back. We went back to the store and picked out a smaller model, something a little less on the walk-in meat locker side. The moving guys took the new one away and brought the newer one in, and all is happy again. This new fridge is big, too, but it's not huge. It behaves itself and stays in its alcove; it doesn't go sticking its big snoot out into the middle of the room. Small children no longer run away in terror, the frost buildup in the living room is finally melting, the climatic changes here in the Valley have been reversed, and we can once again walk through our kitchen without detouring through the dining room. All hyperbole aside, it's nice to have our kitchen back again.