Suzanne Olsen's Humor Blog - I don't offend some of the people most of the time

Category: Relationships Page 2 of 4

The End of Men

I was looking through Sunday’s paper – yes I still get the paper, mainly because I’m addicted to doing the Jumble Puzzle. Plus they have artsy items of interest.

For instance, there was a review of a book, The End of Men, by Hanna Rosin. I haven’t read the book, and only part of the review, so this makes me the laziest blogger on the planet, but I was drawn in by the catchy title.

It looks like the book is about men being unnecessary – or, as the review said, they’re the new “ball and chain.” I know they’ve driven us crazy all these years, what with doing things ass backwards, half-assed, or with their heads stuck up their asses*, but have women really come this far that we feel men are holding us back or weighing us down?

As the Three Stooges would say with a New Jersey accent, “Certainly.”

Just kidding. I suspect women could afford to be more picky now that we no longer need a man to give us a home or children. And since we work out at the gym, we don’t really need them to open jars for us anymore.

I do think, however, that men are pretty interesting creatures to have around. They probably need us more than we need them, but I believe we are better off with them than not, and I personally would not like to see an end of men in our future.

*This does not imply that I believe they are all jack asses.

Stubborn Southerners

So when I was back in Tennessee a couple of weeks ago, I went with my friend, Mary, to see her mom, Belle. I used to practically live at their house growing up. Mary’s dad, Demp, gave me the endearing name, “The Boarder.”

Belle lives in Fall Branch, out in the country, and since Demp passed not too long ago, her thirty-ish nephew, Josh, has been staying with her. Josh is a computer engineer who is currently out of work, most likely because he has no social filters. Mary informed me on the way.

Josh was downstairs stoking a fire in the unfinished garage/basement, but came up later and joined us at the kitchen table. Mary dished him up a bowl of chili.

“It sure is hot down there,” he said. “But if I build a hot fire in the basement, it’ll warm up the whole house. That way we don’t have to turn the heat on yet.”

Then he said, “Man, I’m hot. I’m going to take my pants off.”

“No you’re not, Josh,” Mary said in a low, controlled voice.

“Why not?” he said. “I got boxers on – it’s the same as wearing shorts.”

“No it’s not, Josh. You will not take those pants off and sit here at this dinner table eating chili,” she said firmly.

“I don’t see why not,” he said, and eased his tall, lanky body into the chair, brought his head close to the bowl and started wolfing down chili. All you could see was the top of his blond head.

Mary looked at me and mouthed, “See what I mean.” Then she said, changing the subject, “Do you get the Hallmark channel, Suzy?” I said yes. “We don’t get it here anymore unless you pay extra for it.”

Josh yanked his head up. “That’s not true!” he said like he was defending his mother’s honor. “It’s free with cable.”

“It used to be, Josh,” Mary said with contrived patience, like she was talking to an impudent child. “But a few months ago they took it away.”

“They did not,” he said like a defiant child. “You can still get it for free.”

“They sent us a letter, Josh, and said it wasn’t free, and when we didn’t pay extra they dropped it.” Her voice rose as the last words came out.

“You can still get it if you have cable,” Josh said, not giving an inch.

They went back and forth like this for some time, their voices almost shouting. Belle leaned over and said to me under her breath, “They sent me a letter too and said you had to pay more or they were going to cut it off.” I started giggling because it was so ludicrous. Who gave a crap either way? But these two were NOT going to let it go. Finally I said, “Mer, I want to get a picture of you and your mom.”

“I want you in the picture, too,” Mary said.

Josh jumped up and said, “I’ll take the picture.” I thought it was pretty nice considering he and Mary were this close to coming to fisticuffs over the Hallmark channel just seconds before.

My camera has an on/off button and a button to take the picture. That’s it. An imbecile could operate that camera. Josh, the computer engineer, didn’t seem to have any trouble. He pointed the camera at us, then looked at the picture on the camera’s screen and said, “Oh, that’s a good one, but let’s take one more just in case.”

We posed with arms around each other, grinning like a mule eating briars, and he took the picture.  Again Josh looked at the back of the camera and said, “That’s a really good one. You’ll be happy with that.”

Later that night, when I got back to my aunt’s house where I was staying, I uploaded all the pictures I’d taken, and every single one was there except the two that Josh took. My camera is a $400 Canon point and shoot, and it doesn’t make mistakes. Either Josh didn’t press down the shutter on purpose, or he deliberately deleted the pictures.

Mary might have won the pants battle, and she didn’t back down one bit during the Hallmark skirmish, but I do believe that Josh got the best of her in the end.

I went to Tennessee a couple of weeks ago to get some fried okra and brush up on being Southern. Or as Atley, my son Chris’s friend, would say, “Su-then.” He’d make jokes about my accent, saying, “Chris, your mom’s Su-then,” putting an emphasis on the “Su-” part to bring out the accent. It got laughs from everyone, so I went along. When I’d say something like, “Atley, can you pick up your glass and take it to the kitchen?” he’d say, “Suzanne, you Su-then.” Maybe you had to be there to truly appreciate it, but now in my head the word is no longer “Southern” but “Su-then.”

Anyway, on one of the layovers in the airport (no one flies to Tennessee from anywhere in the US without laying over in Chicago or Dallas or both), I decided to write out my top most fun times, and was kindof surprised at the things I wrote down.

They weren’t the times when I went to expensive dinners or to fancy plays or even tropical vacations. They were just regular times with one thing in common. I was with someone and we got the giggles until everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, became funny and we burst out laughing over and over again at absolutely nothing.

I’ll give you a for instance. After high school I dated this guy who was pretty funny – I called him Bangum, a Su-then pronunciation of his name. He had a great bunch of friends who fortunately became my friends, and once when Bangum was out of town, his friend, Adrian Ferguson, asked if I wanted to go see a horror movie at the drive in. This was about the extent of our entertainment options back in the day in Kingsport, Tennessee – going to some B-movie at the drive-in.

The movie was so bad that we could predict every plot point coming way before it happened. It was the kind of movie anyone with any taste would have left after the first few minutes, but Adrian kept making sarcastic remarks about everything and I got the giggles. This prompted his humor to seek loftier heights, and he kept firing funny comments, each one more ludicrous than the last, until I was begging him to stop so I could catch my breath.

He wouldn’t stop. He had a captive audience, and there was plenty of material  on that giant outdoor screen. I can’t remember the plot, seems like it was about an illusionist who was so good that he could actually saw a woman in half – blood squirting out in all directions – and the audience only saw the box with the lady’s smiling head on one end and her wiggling feet on the other. Of course we, the moviegoers, could see the poor sawed lady screaming and guts and blood everywhere.

There was something in the movie about hitting a woman with a rubber hose. It was supposed to be horrible, but the whole concept of someone attacking a woman with a rubber hose sent us both into hysterics. Here’s the scene in our car.

Adrian: “You’d better behave, woman, or I’ll beat you with a rubber hose!”

Me: “Ha ha ha, oh please stop, don’t say rubber hose again, ha, ha, ha, no, no, no don’t I can’t take it anymore, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Where’s the bathroom – stop or I won’t make it, ha, ha, ha, please, you have GOT to stop.”

Adrian: “I’m going to beat you with a rubber hose.”

Me: “HA, HA, HA, oh please, please, please stop, HA HA HA HA HA oh my gosh I can’t breathe, stop, don’t say anything for a couple of seconds, let me catch my breath, ha ha ha.”

Adrian: “I’ll beat you with a rubber hose.”

I don’t’ know if I made it to the bathroom in time. I don’t know if we even stayed to the end of that dreadful movie. All I know is that I laughed longer and harder and with such complete abandon that I didn’t even feel like I was part of the world anymore.

That’s the great thing about going back to your hometown – I got to see Adrian and Bangum during my visit, along with a myriad of other friends and family – and we relived lots of fun times with fresh laughter.

I don’t care what Atley says, I’m darned happy to be Su-then.

Don’t Wanna See No Naked Man

Men do not look good naked – at least not to women. We don’t mind a nice looking guy in a pair of shorts – except if they are short-shorts, which look almost as bad as a naked man. A guy in a speedo is the worst. This may be an acquired taste for some women, but the rest of us would rather look at a puddle of vomit full of maggots than a man in a speedo.

Unlike a woman, who will incite a veritable stampede of men if she simply takes off her shirt, a man must have other qualities besides a nice body in order to attract a women. He is forced to demonstrate his manly prowess by opening stubborn jar lids.

In the animal kingdom, males have to work very, very hard to attract a mate. They’ve got to butt antlers with other males with the force of a sledge hammer, or make their feathers stand up like they’ve stuck their beak into an electrical outlet.

The human male species, most of which lack either feathers or antlers, have to resort to other rituals to attract women. They will offer to carry things for you to show how strong they are. They will buy you dinner to show how much money they have. They’ll put on some manly smell-um.

You wanna know what’s really funny, though? I use Word for Mac to write, and Word is constantly underlining words because I am not the most accurate typist in the world. Hence as I write it looks like some nasty English teacher has just graded it.

At the moment, this blog is full of those red underlined words. I will run spell check and it will find correct most of them, but there will still be some intractable words remaining that I’ll have to Google to verify their spelling or change them to something else that I know I can spell.

Amongst the typos and the normal words that look like they’re spelled correctly but Word, the hussy, underlines them anyway, Word has let me get away with the word smell-um. It just did it again. Is smell-um seriously a real word?

I’m going to have to take this matter to Google and see if smell-um is, in fact, a bona fide word in the English language because frankly I don’t mind telling you that I would be shocked – SHOCKED – if it in fact is a real word. Be right back.

OMG, the Urban Dictionary says it IS a real word, although they don’t hyphenate it. Here’s what they said:

smellum

 

 

Smell-um (smael-um) -a fragrance, often used in personal care products that are applied to one’s person.1. Ulysses Everett McGill from O Brother, Where Art Though: “I like the smell of my hair treatment; … as soon as we get ourselves cleaned up and we get a little smellum – Dapper Dan Hair Tonic – in our hair…”

2. Calvin Klein’s Obsession is a nice little smellum.

 

 

So I tried to imitate the spelling by taking out the hyphen, but Word isn’t having any part of that. It likes smell-um but not smellum. Go figure.

Speaking of figures, I like a man in some low-slung jeans and barefoot without a shirt if he doesn’t sling them too low like those ridiculous Abercrombie and Fitch guys. I do NOT want to see the top of a man’s hairless pubic area. Someone must have waxed the hair away – those pants are so low – which seems sissy. I look away when I walk past their store in the mall. It’s the antithesis of attracting a mate, in my mind. Worse than a naked man, and it’s hard to get much worse than that.

Why I’m No Longer Embarrassed

The beauty of maturing is that you don’t have to suffer through embarrassment anymore. I remember being in my teens and EVERYTHING embarrassed me. If I walked out of a bathroom with toilet paper clinging to my shoe, it was enough to make me want to commit hari kari.

All I ever wanted to do back then was blend in and not make a spectacle of myself. I’d rather skip a class than walk in late.

Now it doesn’t bother me a bit to straggle in late to something. I have been late to golf tournaments and either (1) begged a golf pro to give me a ride out to the hole or (2) run across several fairways trying to catch up with my team. I wave at everyone I pass and no longer think a thing about it.

Certainly it’s better not to get into situations where I’d be late, but now I see that it’s more important that I’m there than it is to worry about what people are going to think of me. I know my team needs me – I get lucky and hit a decent shot every now and then. I also know that if you are kind to people they’ve forgive just about anything.

Although if someone isn’t kind to me, I’m not embarrassed about what I say. One time I was in a crowded parking lot, it was around Christmas, and I was waiting for someone to back up so I could get their space. It was someone really slow, and they eased out, taking an eternity. When they finally got out of the way and I was pulling in, a car came out of nowhere and whipped into the space. A tacky woman and her hunched over boyfriend got out – she was driving. I yelled, “Hey, you took my space.” She yelled back, “I got there first.” I yelled, “But I was waiting for it.” And she yelled, “So?” And I yelled back at the top of my lungs, “You’re nothing but white trash.”

My daughter literally dived into the floorboard of my car. “Oh my gosh, Mom, please tell me you didn’t just yell across the parking lot and call someone white trash in front of all these people.”

“Well, she is,” I said.

My daughter is embarrassed about everything, and she was shocked. We had just been to church. “What if someone from church heard you?” she asked. She didn’t want to get up, even though the white trashy woman had already waddled into the store. Her boyfriend at least had the decency to look sheepish and shrug his shoulders as if he agreed with me but what could he do?

Years ago I would never have confronted that woman, and maybe I’m white trash myself for doing it now, but I just don’t care. If someone I knew had heard me, I would have been mortified, I guess, but I would have made the best of it.

Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe it’s not so much the fear of embarrassment anymore, it’s knowing that, whatever happens, I’ll manage to get through either by being witty or silly or apologetic or whatever it takes. Plus I’ve discovered that people don’t really pay that much attention to my goings-on. Nobody’s waiting around to see what I might do and pass judgment on me.

If I could give advice to teenagers, I’d say, “Don’t let fear of embarrassment hold you back from anything you want to do.” I’d have a whole ton of other advice, too, if any of them would ever listen, which they won’t. Especially if they’re related to me.

Where’s Your Paradise?

I’m thinking the key to life is loving where you are. Where I am, or soon will be, is in the kitchen getting a fistful of chocolate cherry trail mix. Be right back.

It’s gone! I searched everywhere – in the cabinets, on the nightstand, in the bonus room, but it’s disappeared. Doggone it! Thank goodness I found a Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate bar the size of a greeting card that hit the spot. No, I didn’t eat it all, I left a couple of squares to the previous owner so they’d know they hadn’t imagined putting it in the cupboard. After all, I’m a considerate person.

Back to paradise. We were visiting friends over in Central Oregon and the sun was shining the whole time with nary a cloud in the sky. It’s hard to complain about warm sunshine after living in Portland during the incredibly cool summer we’re having (to find out why – SHAMELESS PLUG – get the global warming book I helped write called, Footprint, a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Extinction).

One morning we came out of the dark bedroom to be greeted by glowing sunlight through every window, and our host said, “Another day in paradise!”

Didn’t Jimmy Buffet sing a song about that? Somebody did. Anyway, I got to thinking about it and I concluded **** PROFOUND SAYING ALERT***** that:

PARADISE IS WHERE THE HEART IS

This might sound a whole lot like another saying, “Home is where the heart is,” but that one isn’t centered on the page and in all capital letters. I wonder if I can copyright this saying and get royalties when the world starts using it? Because, you know, paradise is sometimes where the money is, too.

Clear skies and warm sunshine might certainly be part of the formula for paradise, but I’ve had a taste of paradise when I’ve been on the side of Mt. Bachelor in the freezing cold and hit a bump on my skies that should have sent me flailing end over end but I miraculously recovered and flew weightless through the air without breaking a leg. It’s exhilarating.

Something else to ponder: Isn’t the world confusing enough without spelling skies and skies the same way? 

I’ve also been in paradise when my teenage daughter asks me to go to a movie with her. OMG I will drop anything to spend time with either of my kids because they are scattered like my Uncle Vance’s ashes in the trunk of my cousin Nancy’s car. That’s a funny story I’ll try to remember to tell one day.

My kids rarely light near me any longer than it takes them to say, “Mom, you already asked me that.” I’m not so sure I DID ask, and I certainly don’t remember what they said. They make stuff up to drive me crazy. Even so, I love when they’ll forsake their friends and hang out with me, even when I know it’s because none of their friends can do anything right that minute and also I’ll pay for their movie ticket. Still, to me it’s more of a “paradise” to hang out with them than being in the tropics sipping POG and vodka while swinging in a hammock on the beach. I think.

The point is that paradise is in our heads. If it weren’t, then everyone in warm places would be happy, and everyone else would be miserable. That may pan out in some cases, but I have witnessed many, many cranky shop clerks in those little beach stores in Lahaina. In fact, there are few things crankier than a middle-aged Hawaiian woman in a t-shirt shop packed with tourists unfolding the merchandise during the heat of the Maui summer. I’ve heard them mumble, “I got your paradise RIGHT HERE!” and though I’m not sure what that means, they didn’t sound happy.

So, gentle readers, you probably don’t need to look any further than your own back yard for your little patch of paradise. And if you find some money out there, send me some!

Too Much Spice in My Life

I just went to put something away in the kitchen and noticed a whole mess of new spices on an already overcrowded shelf.

This would not worry a normal person, and it doesn’t worry me either, but it bugs the crap out of me on so many levels that they would overflow this post like a stopped up toilet.

Don’t even say the words, “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” because I will fly right out of your computer screen and choke you to within an inch of your life.

There is already a full bottle of Cream of Tartar in the nicely alphabetized spice drawer. Who even uses it? I once had a jar of Cream of Tartar for over 20 years. It’s not in a lot of recipes, and when I needed it, the old stuff worked just fine – it was still as pearly white as the day I bought it. In fact, I only discarded it to make room for the new jar my husband bought a couple of months ago, and NOW THERE’S ANOTHER ONE!

You’re asking, “What’s her problem, so what if there’s an extra little jar of spice? What’s the big freaking deal?” I’m warning you, I am THIS CLOSE to reaching out and poking you in the eyes. It’s not just the one bottle. There are at least 15 duplicate spices in the cabinet, with fresh ones being added daily – and these in addition to the 50 that are in the spice drawer. That’s why I had to alphabetize them – there are so many I could never find the one I was looking for.

It is just baffling to me why my husband keeps buying spices we don’t need. Was there a spice commercial like this – “Did you ever go into your kitchen and whip up a batch of cinnamon cookies only to find that you are (Insert Stabbing Sounds from the Psycho Movie) OUT OF CINNAMON? (Actress with bad complexion and no makeup brings her hands to her face like she’s discovered a dead body). Then you need SPICE INSURANCE! We will send you every spice known to the free world – all for the low cost of $349. When you get ready to run out, just notify us in advance and we’ll replace your spice FREE OF CHARGE (Voluptuous blond actress holds package of arriving spice next to her overflowing cleavage). Don’t ever disappoint your loved ones again with a spiceless recipe (Sad children looking at empty plate). Order SPICE INSURANCE today! (Happy family beaming at their spices with a tray of fresh cookies in the background that you can smell right through the TV).

Ever wonder why I’m not making millions doing TV commercials? I’m a natural, aren’t I? I’d be happy to produce something for you if you’d send money in advance, along with a working video camera.

Here’s the problem. My husband likes to cook, and he likes to grocery shop. He does not like to be bothered with looking in the spice drawer to see what’s already in there. It’s easier for him just to buy a new bottle. He doesn’t care that it will sit on the shelf for the next eight years unopened. I understand that.

What I don’t understand is that we live at the virtual apex of at least 6 grocery stores – two are within a half-mile of our house. There’s a 24-hour Albertsons about a mile and a half away. Would there ever be a time that, if we ran out of a spice, we’d need a replacement faster than the ten minutes it would take to get to the store and back? Is this justification for twenty extra containers of spices taking up prime real estate space on my panty shelves?

If you say, “Yes,” even in a whisper, I will creep out of your computer late one night and pour cake batter in your favorite shoe. You’ll know it was me by the jar of Cream of Tartar I’ll leave as a calling card.

Ripped by Preparation H

In my last blog I talked about causes and cures for the bags under my eyes. In doing thorough internet research on this very important subject, I came across an article by ABC news about men rubbing Preparation H on their arms and chests to make them appear “ripped.”

I can probably figure out what ripped means, but what the heck, I might as well look it up. I’m back already, and, just as I suspected, it means torn. It also means rubbing it in that someone was an idiot to spend a lot of money, as in, “Oh man, you paid $600 for a dog? You got ripped, man. My neighbor’s got a whole bunch of those same puppies. I coulda got you one for free.”

Like so many words in this language you’re reading, there are several meanings for the same word. Thus “ripped” also means having ripples of muscles,  sometimes called a six-pack. In this case six pack does not mean beer, but those highly defined muscle groups in the stomachs of lean men who have nothing better to do than push heavy weights toward the sky and make commercials explaining how easy it is for everyone else to get “six-pack abs.”

Unfortunately, everyone watching these commercials is, at that very instant, “putting away” a six-pack. This is another example of how confusing our language is, and probably explains why we don’t see many six-pack abs in real life. No one has explained to these chronic TV viewers that the six-pack goes ON the stomach, not IN it.

I’m always amused to what lengths men and women will go in order to attract each other. It seems like the more they try, the less success they have. And they go about it in such ass-backwards ways.

A Preparation H guy wants to get lucky with a temporary relationship that lasts no longer than a few hours. He’s trying to make himself sexually appealing.

Women are looking for Mr. Right so they can become Mrs. Right. They don’t want a one nighter – they want life with no parole. They’re looking for a guy who’s sharp and stable and sweet. They’re not looking for a guy who’s practically wearing a neon sign that says, “I’m a bee yo love slave tonight.”  Guys need to dress for success, not for sex.

On the other hand, women are looking for a guy who’s ready to go the long haul. So what do they do? They dress sexy and give guys the come-on because they think this will attract a prospective marriage partner. All they end up attracting is the guy who smells like Preparation H, and they’re going to avoid him because he’s so obviously just interested in a one-time sleepover.

The guy looking for a long-term relationship is going to avoid the woman who has overdone her makeup and revealed too much skin because she doesn’t look like the mother of his children.

Seems to me that this is a no-win situation all the way around. You might as well just stay home and work on that six-pack.

What Is a Guy’s Guy?

I’m still in central Oregon without wi-fi, and continuing with my observation of men.

People say my husband is a “guy’s guy.” What does this mean? I have this vague idea that it’s someone who acts like a stereotypical guy and likes to hang around with other people of the same ilk.

If you try to define ilk, you’ll lose track of this topic, and even though more than anything I want to know exactly what “ilk” means, I have no connection to Google, the source of answers to all my brilliant questions. So I will not stray from the subject, but just this once.

If you want to define how a guy acts, I suppose the list of characteristics would be someone who scratches his privates and spits (as in a baseball player), farts and belches and is comfortable walking around in his underwear (as in Will Farrell), and someone who likes to drink beer and see something naked (as in Jeff Foxworthy – he does this really funny comedy routine about what a guy is thinking. He says, “Ladies, if you want to know what a guy is thinking, it’s simple. All we think about is two things, and nothing else. These are the two things: I’d like a beer and I’d like to see something necked”).

Guy’s guys verge on being uncouth, but they’ve been taught socially acceptable norms. They know how they’re supposed to behave; they aren’t totally white-trash clueless. They just choose to default to the lowest common denominator of behavior, allowing their bodily functions to be the boss of them, and finding great amusement in others who do the same. There is also a laziness in their actions – they will choose to do the easiest thing. Not in all situations – they can be very hard working, but in social interactions they’ll do what’s easier. For instance, it’s easier to look at someone and find a flaw rather than finding something to compliment. They’ll say, “You’ve put on a little weight,” rather than, “That dress is pretty.”

These are stereotypes, yes, but they fit the vast majority of people I’d call guy’s guys. They’re perfectly happy sitting and watching TV, commenting on the stupidity of the plot/actress/Democrat/female politician/woman driver/feminine hygiene product commercial and so on without actually conversing. They like hanging out with other guys and watching TV while doing all those same things. Other comments are generally “what an idiot” or “man, that thing is HUGE” or “look at the tits on her” or something along those lines.

Phil, our host over here in central Oregon where, again today, the sun is shining, does not seem to me like a guy’s guy. I can hear him again in there right now trying to make conversation. There have been long stretches of quiet, but when there are words being said, he’s the one who’s starting them. He’s the kind of guy who takes pictures of his daughters and puts them together in a slide show for their birthdays. He will sit and talk to you about any subject and not act like he’s just putting his time in until he can politely say, “I have to go mow the lawn now.” My husband does this all the time when women are around. Sometimes he’ll mow grass that he just mowed to get out of a conversation with a woman.

In looking at this whole guy’s guy thing under a microscope, I see lots of interesting things – some of which look like cooties. There appear to me to be 3 different kinds of guys. Your guy’s guy as described above (perfect example is Al Bundy in “Married with Children”), and, at the other end of the spectrum, there’s the girly guy, who is gay and is a girl in a man’s body and loves doing things girls love to do, like chitchat, shop, gossip, decorate, flirt, exclaim “OH MY GOD!” every few minutes, and so forth. And then there are men like Phil – cultured, polite, sensitive, romantic, couth, but who also like beer and have, perhaps on rare occasions, passed gas, but only on accident and never in front of guests (I hope).

My question is, what do you call these guys – the not gay guys and not guy’s guys. Let’s all ponder this for a day or two. If you have ideas, please send them in along with your surplus money.

What Guys Talk About

I am over in central Oregon right now without wi-fi. If you are reading this it means I found some somewhere, but if this is not on the post day, then it means I found some but not until I got back home.

Finding wi-fi is not always easy. At my own house I’ve looked under the sofa and behind the dresser and couldn’t find it. I’m not even sure what it means. I think the “wi” stands for wireless. So does the the “fi” stand for fireless? These questions weigh heavily on my heart right now.

Here in central Oregon it is sunny, as opposed to western Oregon where the rain drove ANOTHER slug into my house. I put the “another” in all caps to show that it wasn’t the first, and so you could hear the exasperation in my voice. But the weather is not the subject we will be looking at this morning. We’re going to talk about guy’s guys.

We’re staying at a friend’s house, it’s 7:30 a.m. and I’m in the bedroom blogging while my husband and our host are in the living room. I can hear them talking, and they’ve so far touched on the stock market and sports. These are what I’d call typical “guy” subjects.

My husband doesn’t go in for a lot of idle chatter. He uses words functionally. He says things like, “I’m hungry,”or “you’ve told me this before.” The rest of the time, he’s either quietly observing the world or asleep with the remote control clutched in his hand. Our host, however, is a salesperson and used to talking a lot. He’s chatty.

What’s interesting is that women always wonder what men talk about. At least I do. I’m always saying to my husband, “Are you this quiet around your guy friends? When you’re golfing with them for 4 hours, do you just walk along side by side without talking?”

He answers, “We talk when there’s something we need to talk about.”

Right now these guys don’t know I’m awake listening to everything they’re saying. I’ve noticed that Phil has initiated the conversation in every case. He says, “How about those Ducks?” or “Can you believe the stock market?” My husband responds with the obvious comment, like “yeah, can you believe it?” then Phil responds back and they have this little back and forth until that subject is exhausted about 45 seconds later.

So ladies, if you want to know what guys talk about, I can vouch for these two. They aren’t talking about anything worth listening to.

Since I’m having a little vacation, I think that’s enough blogging for one day, but tomorrow I think I’ll blog a little more about men.

PS: I did not find wi-fi, though I looked in every nook and cranny. I’m back home now. Sorry for the lapse in posting.

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