"He Can't Go Out To Play"

I was going to stay with my chronological suggestions for surviving retirement, but this week has provided me with too many instances where my own rules and suggestions just flew out the window.

After a four day fishing trip last weekend, Joe came home with a sore throat. It was clear by Sunday night that he wouldn’t be playing golf on Monday. Not only that, he lost his voice completely. The picture at the left pretty much says it all “I’m mad and I can’t go out and play and I don’t want you to talk to me because it hurts to talk back.” A trip to the doctor brought good news/bad news. Good news, it wasn’t serious; bad news, the only cure is lots of rest and plenty of liquids.

Need I say more? The “…in sickness and in health” part of the vows are not so hard when you’re faced with a major medical challenge. Joe had to have an aortic valve replacement over seven years ago and I “hung in there" for that. How could I not? It’s the little sicknesses that seem to chip away at the harmony of marriage. Men revert to six-year-olds when they can’t “go out and play”.

Creating this blog site is an outcropping of my own “confinement” because of foot surgery on March 24th. If I hadn’t had to lie on the couch with my foot elevated for three weeks, it might never have been hatched. While mentioning that I have to say Joe didn’t get an A+ when it came to taking care of me. Example: the day of my surgery…I was feeling pretty sorry for myself and I had bought a big jar of Jelly Belly jellybeans (a favorite of ours) as my “feel better treat”. I was only able to walk short distances for “necessities” (i.e., to the bathroom and back). That evening after dinner when Joe got up from his recliner, walked to the kitchen and I heard the unmistakable rattling sound of a hand grabbing jelly bellies, I thought, “How nice, he’s bringing me a treat.” Wrong! He sat back down in his recliner and I glared as I watched his clenched fist rise to as he prepared to toss a few multi-flavored egg-shaped treats into his mouth. Definitely not a shining moment! I just looked at him and held up the little bowl on the coffee table I was using to count out my 35 jelly bellies that equals 140 calories. Sheepishly he came over and emptied his fistful into my dish. (I know; that should be the worst thing he ever does….it wasn’t a “deal-breaker”.) Yes; then he walked back and replenished the fist.

Back to this week: no golf on Monday; no Rotary on Tuesday; no Old Bold Pilots on Wednesday. By Wednesday night I was ready to run away from home. Joe couldn’t go out to play.

Thankfully he woke Thursday morning and felt well enough to play golf. However, his day didn’t end as well as it began. His habit is to back into our garage because if he pulled forward he wouldn’t be able to open the driver side door because of a support pillar. As he comes around the corner where we live, he reaches up to the remote and opens the garage door. He did that and he saw the door start up as he was backing into the driveway, but then he stayed in the driveway while he completed a phone call to a fishing buddy. (He loses his wireless connection once he’s in the garage when he uses his new Ford’s Bluetooth feature.) Well, he hung up and hit the gas pedal…and then hit the garage door!

Seems the door stopped about a foot short of fully opening so the left upper corner of his SUV caught the unopened portion (lower panel) of the garage door. Neither the car nor the door came out of it unscathed. But here I have to give Joe credit for being a much better version than the Joe I was married to when he was working and stressed. He came into the kitchen and found me preparing dinner. I asked how his golf game had gone, he said, “ok, but now you have to slap me on the wrist.” He held out his hand and of course I complied but then asked, “Why?” I felt so bad for him. His beautiful new SUV was no longer “pristine”. 

The next two hours were spent a) pounding out the dent in the door in hopes of getting it to close so our incredibly cluttered garage (definitely the topic of a future blog) wouldn’t be visible to the entire neighborhood; and b) calling garage door repairmen. Seems that our door was made by Stanley and they are no longer in business (of course). So Joe was able to get the door to close….we moved my car out first in case we couldn’t open it again. But once the door is open tomorrow, it has to be manually lowered because the dent crosses the light that is a “safety feature” in case a child or animal is crossing under the door. Two garage door companies are coming tomorrow. In a perfect world, they will have a similar door for replacement so that we don’t have to replace the separate one-car bay door to the right of the main two-car door.

At the end of the day, this new “retired” version of my husband said, “Pick a nice restaurant and I’ll take you out after we get this fixed.”

“I’m sorry” can be said without the use of those particular two words. I think I like that as Rule #5.