Wife

It’s Her Birthday…..Again

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It’s the child bride’s birthday tomorrow when she catches up with me again. For four months of the year, I sleep with a younger woman. It’s a curious euphemism, “sleep with” because unless it’s followed by “his security blanket” (which could also be a euphemism, come to think of it) or “the fishes” or such like, it actually means “have sex with”. So that phrase is the absolute epitome of prudery except in my case as related above, when it actually means what it says (mostly).

It’s not a particularly momentous birthday unless you’re into bingo. I just checked as I am not a bingo expert and it seems there is some form of rhyming slang for every one of the ninety number bingo alphabet. So it’s not even momentous in that regard. But we’re of an age where birthdays don’t carry the same amount of gravitas as they did when we were eight. The prospect of gifts from relatives was enough to get you looking forward to your next birthday from the day after your last one so didn’t time pass depressingly slowly. That plus looking forward to school holidays had years lasting for decades during our childhoods. Now they last weeks. It’s almost Christmas and the last one was only a month or so ago.

And we’re of an age when we tend to disregard birthdays or pretend they didn’t happen whereas in our twenties and thirties (and forties and fifties periodically) they were excuses to cut loose. Now, the brain is still more than capable of functioning like it’s 20 years old. The body on the other hand is fond of saying to the brain “not so fast mate” when one of those “hold my beer and watch this” moments comes along. The CB is the adult in the relationship so isn’t quite as reckless as me. She hasn’t moved faster than a brisk walk since about 1976 other than with mechanical assistance. So to induce frivolity I have to ply her with drink which is about as difficult as getting Madonna to flash her tits. And even then there’s rarely ever dancing on a table or preferably (that’d be my preference) table dancing.

So we acknowledge birthdays more often than appearances of Halley’s Comet but a bit less frequently than tours by your favourite bands. The Rolling Stones were last here in 2014. That’s about right.

Taking a Tumble

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If you lived in our townhouse complex you may have been privy to a quite ridiculous situation a few days ago. Let me set the scene.

The child bride has bursitis in her left shoulder and has recently had a cortisone injection so her left arm may as well be made of wood, such is its uselessness.

And yesterday, after lunch at the excellent Birches restaurant, it started to rain. Being the chivalrous knight that I am, I went down the ramp to the carpark first and towards the bottom, turned to tell Mum and the CB to wait out of the rain while I went to get the car. As I turned, I put my foot halfway onto a small step, twisted my ankle and went down like Monica Lewinsky. Unfortunately there was no Clinton of any persuasion to break my fall, only a concrete path and it was not happy to see my right shoulder, right elbow and right hip so took to them like Mike Tyson to anybody.

Consequently, today I feel like I’ve just played the All Blacks….at my age.

So, there are industrial bins for our household rubbish. The lids are at about nipple level for me and top hat level for the rather diminutive CB. With both of us being appendage challenged, as in being unable to lift our respective right and left arms more than about 10 degrees we each had to take one small bag of rubbish to the big bins. I lifted the lid with my left hand and the CB threw the bags in with her right.

In the mining game we call this double handling. In our townhouse complex it’s called pathetic if you don’t know the circumstances.

Fortunately I don’t watch football with my hip and shoulder although they do together comprise a rather brutal function in the uniquely Australian version of football (or “footy” as it’s colloquially called). You can google “hip and shoulder” to see what I mean.

And I don’t need them to drink beer either as I have a perfectly normal functioning mirror image pair on the left side of my body, not that I need my hip to get a glass to my mouth, but it does get me to the fridge.The next challenge is to see if I can slide a guitar into that 10 degree gap.

Your boundless sympathy is much appreciated.

Excuse Me While I Run And Hide

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The CB retired from teaching recently. I’ve been running my own business from home for a few years so this was the first time we had been thrust together all day every day, well most days, for……ever. As a consequence I felt it incumbent on me to give her (and females generally) some advice as to how this might work and what my future expectations would be……ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Men know why I am bent double laughing hysterically.

To try to disguise the fact it’s me speaking, I occasionally lapse into the third person. This isn’t me being pretentious, it’s my instinctive defence mechanism kicking in. Notwithstanding, here goes:

1. Working – Now that you’ve retired you will only be expected to undertake paid employment for two days a week. Beer doesn’t grow on trees you know.

2. House Work – That house ain’t going to clean itself my dear. Whilst your husband may be able to fly the space shuttle (in theory) don’t for a second expect him to understand the intricacies of a clothes cleaning implement unless it comprises a rock and a river. The same applies for that crushed wine glass shard sucking machine and the “hose in a box” that blasts shrivelled mushrooms out of pizza boxes but makes the boxes very soggy in the process. Remember your life-long aversion to lawn mowers? Chickens are on their way home to sleep as we speak.

3. Clothing – My expectations as to what you wear around the house are few. As has been the case since the dawn of time, the outside layer is irrelevant to all people except other women. And here’s a secret – no one cares if your arse looks big in it. Men are infinitely more concerned with whether other bits look big in it but you i.e. women generally, never ask that question, do you.

4. Underclothing – Now we’re talking. We know the transition from frilly and filmy to industrial strength has been happening by stealth for years but this need not happen. He does still have a pulse you know.

5. Sport – Now that you have more time on your hands you’ll be required to indulge your partner with feigned interest in pretty much every sport imaginable. The indifference of previous years, excused through pressures of work will no longer be tolerated. But keep the questions to a bare minimum. You may even learn to love the UFC. What’s not to like about two cute, diminutive, young ladies beating ten types of tripe out of each other. You could be sitting with your man right now (in between fetching the beers, sandwiches etc) watching two very average West Australian batsmen break every record in the book against the Worst Indies at the spiritual home of world cricket – Blundstone Arena, Hobart, as happened a couple of years ago.

6. Drinking – You’re still allowed to drink. This was going to be at number 1 but I wanted to make you sweat.

7. Children – You’ll like this one (and what’s not to like about the others so far). Now’s the time when your cash hoovers are replaced by a second generation of cash hoovers. The best part is that they now live somewhere else so you can hide when you see them coming up the driveway.

8. Food Preparation – Your devotion to the kitchen is very much appreciated. No, really. Now if you could only look a bit more like Nigella when you do it. But forget about the accompanying commentary.

9. Music – We know the transition from Barry Manilow to Celtic Punk has been problematic but rest assured, you’ll be humming Kiss Me I’m Shitfaced in the car before you know it. Despite the dominance of the airwaves by wimpy trousers like One Deflection and Taylor’s Wiffed (whoever they are), there is still a vast underground world of hard partying, mysoginistic, drug fuelled thrashers for your viewing and participatory pleasure. Accompanying Not Garfunkel’s next world tour should give you a taste of this enchanting world.

10. Retirement – Enjoy it. You’ve earned it.

Thus endeth my suicide note.