"Moo," Went the Little Couch

Your love is like   condom pie

Please buy my new book:

Congressional Ethics - a History of Oxymorons

Today I identify as  an Olympic judge, bribed by the Finland Mafia

My text alert just went off. Four times. This drives me up a tree. A very thorny tree. A tree with a lot of branches thin enough to hit me repeatedly and hurt. There are very few people who have my number, and this is on purpose. I'm just not interested. In much of anything, especially of the quality sent by people who don't have my number. Not to mention the people who DO have my number. When the texts come in in numbers, it can only mean someone sent a picture of their kid doing something, and several others replied how wonderful he looked, although you couldn't really pick him out in the crowd. The final text was Mrs. lefty saying WOW. We've been together so long that it was sad she would do this to me. The more texts come in, the more ANGRY I get. The more angry I get, the greater chance I will respond negatively in my own text. This is the reason not many have my number. Even if my phone is quiet, I sometimes make Wife silence her phone, because it's like some sort of Special symphony, constantly interrupting whatever else is going on in the Real World. She just got a text after speaking with that person. This is like when she visits her mother, comes home, calls to tell Mom she got home safe, and doesn't get off the phone for two hours.

So I like a quiet phone. And I have a quiet phone. It sits next to me all day, not making a noise while I'm in my office. Lately it has begun to take notice when I'm not near it. When I leave my office to have lunch with Wife, THEN it rings. This is obviously personal. Her doctors call me because they can't find her. They seem to think *I* can. Sometimes she's not there while sitting next to me, while we eat lunch.

This is why I set it so if I don't know you, you can't call me. The effect is satisfying. In fact, the only time the phone rings, it's for Her. Ok, that's not satisfying. I should just let her carry it. But if I did that, she'd leave it somewhere, with hers, and we'd have to use the landline to call the phones so we could find them.

• Microsoft says the internet is the nicest it's been since 2016.
• and that Windows 11 doesn't collect any of your information 

We try to be good neighbors... well... at least where the dog is concerned. If she starts barking in her yard, we bring her in immediately. Thus it's been confusing lately, when we hear her barking and think she's supposed to be napping in the house. Yes, another dog has developed a Penny impersonation. So now, in the middle of important work meetings, I have to go running to see if she's in the yard. I think my house is somehow involved in this... maybe it taught the other dog how to impersonate her.

• on Wife's sweet creamer, it says "plus artificial flavors"
• what's artificially flavored - the sweet or the cream?

I ask for so little. Really.

No snickering, please.

STOP LAUGHING.

At the end of the day, like most people, I get in bed. As far as I know, it's a pretty standard thing. It's good to know that there are one or two pretty standard things happening in my house (and life). Just one or two.

Since it's the end of the day, it's the last thing I do (duh).

All I ask is that it can be accomplished in the least difficult manner possible. You'd think this would be an easy request, and it would, in normal circumstances. But I don't live in normal circumstances.

First of all, and all men will know; like football, bed is a territorial acquisition game. We lost before we started because She Who Will Be Obeyed has all the bed. Even after she acquires the entire sleeping area, she will try for more. The life of man is to 

1. hold onto the meager sleeping space they have
2. try to get a few more inches, so his butt doesn't hang off the mattress, getting cold in the winter. Because a man is not a man with cold buttocks. Or even a cold buttock.

When you tell Spouse about this, you'll get all sorts of sympathy. This is called Alleged Sympathy, and it's all part of the Mystique. She will then make a small adjustment to make it look like you're getting something out of the deal, and your buttocks remain warm. After all, if you're not married, she may want to do something that cold buttocks makes alarming. Ahem. This doesn't matter, as the next night, cold buttocks will be back. It would be worse if you were a dog - they have no buttocks. But this is also a meaningless distinction, because even the dog has more space than you.

While doing that dance, you may find your spouse is a twirler. It's important to figure out the direction of the twirling. Mine twirls counter-clockwise, so she gets all the blanket and 90% of the sheet. This has resulted in us using two blankets and two sheets. Even then she sometimes gets the second blanket. In the morning, you discover she wins. It's like football, but uglier. And in football, you can use your strength to get what you want. Try that with a Wife - go ahead - I dare you.

But the above is just what everybody must go through. I mention it because each blog entry requires a certain amount of words (no it doesn't).  My life is different, while simply asking to get in bed without grief and aggravation. I spend all day fighting dragons and making sure my paycheck was deposited directly. I just want to fall into bed and go to sleep. Or, you know, the other thing. I don't even mind the dog's nighttime ritual of standing on my chest and licking my forehead until she physically has to be pulled off me. No, I get Other Stuff....

Dog toys. It started out cute... "Look, she brought a toy to bed."

Then "Why are there 4 dog toys in bed? 2 of them are buried under the sheet. On my side, of course."

"Could you please tell your dog not to leave crumbs where my feet go? I wouldn't normally complain, but the pile is 2" tall - it's like boulders."

"Who spilled something on my side of the bed?"

"Why has the mattress moved 6" and my end is hanging off?"

"I know my blanket was there last night. Oh, the dog?"

"There's a dog on my pillow... no I'm not sharing."

"I can't imagine how there is now a line of shoes tripping me, in the dark."

"Ok, who let the alpaca in?"

"I told you to park the VW Bug in the living room, not the bedroom"

Then "HONEY, THERE'S A TRAIN CROSSING in front of the bed. Did someone put a station in our bedroom?"

The answer is inevitably "Sorry!"

I strongly suspect I'm going to need a guide, with a flashlight, to take me to the bed every night. I know I'd be doing my bit for the local economy, but wouldn't it be easier to just give me a clear shot to the bed, and a place on the bed?

What do you mean NO?

I see.

• The British can look down their noses at us Colonists, thinking they've got it all together with their National Health and their bloody royals, but the manual transmission is standard there, while the automatic is standard here. We are going for progress, and are secure enough to have our gears shifted for us, even in our relatively humongous police cars.
• Suck it, Prince Andrew.

Flying AIDS News  

Abrupt end to mask mandates reflects a shifting political landscape

Boris Johnson plans to end England’s Covid rules a month early

Under pressure to ease up, Biden weighs new virus response

As states drop masking, CDC stands by guidance: “We are not there yet”

Global freedoms have hit a 'dismal' record low, with pandemic restrictions making things worse, report says

GLAM ARMY

• Meet Ukraine’s gun-toting military girls sharing videos and pictures from the front line ahead of Russia invasion
• can US troops defect?
• is there a regulation lipstick? eyebrows?

Happy V-Day, everybody.

It's a happy time for us, as it's our anniversary.

Or a nasty time, depending on moods.

We normally go out to a (her) favorite restaurant the day before or after, to avoid the crowds. I better get flowers, before they go to $100/dozen.

How many years has it been? I don't know - I'm a man. Men are incapable of remembering trivial numbers, that's why they have women. Some men are even smart enough not to say that in front of women.

It's been a lot of years. A lot of years.

She hit me like a ton of bricks when I met her.

And regularly thereafter, with a single brick.

I only found out recently we were set up by our coworkers.

Most are still in jail, so there's not much I can do.

I begged her for months to move in.

She still complains about the house.

She says there's no space.

Because of all the shoes she bought.

My pronouns are GTFO.

Hers are you(plural), they, them.

I like pizza.

She likes lobster rolls and something called rangoon.

I sleep all night.

She sleeps all day, guaranteeing a long marriage, because we never see each other.

I work in my home office.

She talks to me all day, especially during important meetings.

We fight nicely.

We keep the volume below a Metallica concert.

We will go down with the ship together.

Probably because we've been drilling holes in it.

meh - V-Day. Just another holiday created to sell stuff and make singles miserable.

And to make married people miserable, but that may be redundant.

• TikTok shares your data more than any other social media app — and it's unclear where it goes, study says

Frontier flight from NYC to Orlando makes emergency stop after unruly passenger yells that woman is trying to 'steal his DNA', threatens to kill everyone on board and has to be restrained by six other travelers

now this is the kind of plane stop headline I want to see. No more fighting over masks.