half the fun of marriage is these silly disagreements

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Seven-ish for Saturday

Oh hey, it’s the middle of May and this is only the second time I’m posting this month.

Summer Scheduling Success

Finally, finally, I think I have summer figured out. By my calculations, Carla has approximately 20 days of summer that are currently void of Established Plans, and they are mainly spread out – two days here, three days there – with only two full weeks that she has nothing. Those two weeks are spread out, too – one in June and one in July – so we’re not talking endless consecutive days of fighting boredom and negotiating screen time. Will this be enough? No idea. But I feel much better about our summer schedule than I had. All that’s left to do is a) fill out and submit all the eight bazillion forms each camp requires, b) buy all the things that each camp requires Carla to have, and c) figure out how to fill the remaining twenty days. (Swimming? Horseback riding lessons? Dog walking? Friend gatherings?) That’s something for Near Future Suzanne to deal with, I think.

Roof Repair Roundup

Apparently I am going for an alliterative subhead thing. A large portion of my days, lately, have been spent trying to navigate my roof replacement. Our insurance company was very prompt about sending out an insurance adjuster to review our property damage, and very quick to cut us a check. Our contractor has been very responsive in addressing questions and in reaching out to the insurance company for supplemental coverage. My brain is inundated with terms I sort of but don’t 100% understand, like soffits and ridge caps and fascia and flashings. I am grasping to understand exactly what the contractor is saying, and hoping that the insurance company gives us the money he requires to do the work he needs to do. (Like, apparently you need to disconnect the soffits or maybe the fascia or possibly both from the top plank of siding if you replace or repair the siding, but the insurance hasn’t offered any coverage for that, even though they have offered coverage for the siding itself. That kind of thing.)

I pored over an eleven (11) page review of my insurance policy and the replacement cost estimate, I pored over a thirty-eight (38) (THIRTY-EIGHT) page quote and contract from the contractor, which seemed mostly clear and reasonable, except for a couple of things that apparently don’t apply to us because of reasons. And there was a whole list of potential upgrades that we don’t need unless the insurance company decides against things like “covering the disconnecting and replacement of soffits and/or fascia” in which case we will then need to decide whether to spend an additional $XXXX of our own money. And then there is something called a “punchlist,” which I now know is a list, at the end of the project, of things are incomplete or need to be readdressed, like scratches made by a tool during construction, or a half-finished something-or-other. And we need to somehow figure out how to schedule the repairs/replacements so that they don’t coincide with or overlap our summer travel. And are we going to have a port-a-potty on our lawn/driveway for weeks on end? Let’s leave all this for Future Suzanne to deal with. Man, is she going to be pissy with me.

Another Absurd Trigger of (Truly) Trivial Obsession

My husband and I got a new scale. It’s a “smart” scale. It has an app. And it measures more than just weight. Supposedly it also monitors things like your muscle mass and body fat percentage. (Supposedly it monitors these things less accurately than one would hope; my husband suggests we use it to observe trends rather than to give us exact numbers.) I am interested in maintaining and increasing my muscle mass as I age. I am also interested in seeing if my kiddo can increase her muscle mass – a recommendation from her coach. I am quite excited about the pet feature. I mean, it’s just a way to weigh your pet without doing mental math. But as I am constantly fretting about whether I’m feeding Lenny enough or too much, I am pretty pumped.

The scale collects all this information about you, via some sort of magical (electrical) currents that travel through your feet, and beams the data to the app on your phone. I know so much about technology. Then you can read all sorts of interesting slash mystifying metrics about yourself.

The one that I keep thinking about is my metabolic age. I have never once thought about my metabolic age, nor do I really know what it is beyond a hazy semi-understanding. But now that we have the scale, I’m thinking about it. My metabolic age is 44. I am 45. This seems positive, right? The scale thinks I am younger than I am.

Here’s the thing. My husband’s metabolic age is 43. He is not only also 45, he is half a year older than I am. SO HOW COME HIS METABOLIC AGE IS LOWER THAN MINE?!

Obviously I am now obsessed with pressing questions like, can I reduce my metabolic age? If so, HOW? And by HOW MUCH?

Possibly I need to sideline my extreme spousal competitiveness and find out what metabolic age means and if it matters.

Colonoscopy Complete!

This week I undertook my first-ever colonoscopy. I was, as some of us are, a wee bit anxious about the whole thing. The only bad part was drinking the prep. The rest of it was fine. Well, the anxiety wasn’t great, but it was preferable to drinking the prep.

A ton of different bowel prep options exist, from a giant jug of GoLYTELY to 24 enormous SUTAB pills and everything in between, what a time to be alive, and each gastroenterologist has her preference, not to mention health insurance companies only cover certain options. (That doesn’t mean you can’t ask for a different prep if you, too, have a preference.) I now have an anti-preference. My GI prescribed SUPREP, which is the only prep my insurance covers. (I don’t know why all the bowel preps have names that scream at you.) It comes in two little six-ounce bottles. I needed to mix one bottle with ten ounces of cool water at 6:00 the evening before my procedure, and drink it before 7:00. While also drinking two additional 16-ounce glasses of water. Then I needed to repeat the prep and additional water intake again five hours before my procedure. The SUPREP was ABSOLUTELY FOUL. It was salty and forcefully bitter with a very faint citrus flavor. I tried mixing the first batch with a bit of lemon-lime Gatorade powder; this was a bad idea. I will never drink lemon-lime Gatorade again, that’s for sure. I tried plugging my nose while I drank it, but that didn’t really disguise the taste (although that particular trick has never worked for me). I tried drinking it through a straw, which is supposed to bypass the tastebuds on your tongue, but I found it to be even worse. I tried adding ice to the glass, but – as my husband cautioned – that just increased the amount of awfulness I had to get down. What worked was taking two giant gulps, while plugging my nose, then following those gulps up with as much ice-cold pure fresh tasteless water as I needed. Still, by the end of the second bottle of SUPREP, I was struggling not to gag.

Let’s back up a little, because I know you want More Detail about my colonoscopy prep. I was anxious about the procedure because I have a family history of colon cancer (grandmother and great-grandmother) and polyps (parents), but also because the procedure took place within my husband’s hospital system and among people he knows and works with. Consequently, I felt that I had to be The Best Patient, or, at least, A Model Patient. So I did a pre-prep two days before my procedure (seven capsful of Miralax in 32 ounces of red Gatorade). The Miralax, which is supposed to dissolve completely in liquid, made the Gatorade slightly viscous and gave it a very very mild but noticeable Miralax flavor. Is that flavor something I can characterize more descriptively? No, it is not. It was gross, but I would drink ten bottles of Miralax-flavored Gatorade before I would do SUPREP again. This was in addition to starting a low-fiber/low-residue diet (no nuts, seeds, of fresh fruits or veggies, limited high-fat foods) four days prior to my colonoscopy, and a day of clear liquids the day before the procedure.

“That sounds excessive,” my friend noted, when I told her my Miralax-flavored plans. Perhaps. But I will say that the nurses and techs were all chatting about their own colonoscopies, and every one of them did some sort of extra prep on top of what’s required. (The concern is that your colon won’t be clean enough for the GI to see what they need to see, and you’ll have to come back… after doing the prep AGAIN. Shudder. Obviously, this is not an issue for most people, and I am not advocating that YOU do additional prep, unless you, too, are partially insane. And even in that case, please consult a doctor, which I am not, before you do anything.)

On a personal note, I think the additional measures helped make my prep easier (and less disruptive; I slept just fine both nights) while also ensuring that my colon was pristine for my procedure. You might be thinking, no one gets a GRADE for colonoscopy prep, Suzanne, and you would be right. But also, my post-procedure summary includes the glorious phrase “the quality of the bowel preparation was excellent.”

Oh and also I had no polyps, thank everything, next colonoscopy in ten years, which of course is much more important than getting an A+ on my prep.

Imagining the Ideal Instruction Manual

When I made my colonoscopy appointment back in February, my doctor put in an order for the SUPREP, which I picked up from my pharmacy. I also received a packet of instructions from the gastroenterologist. A thick packet, with many pages of instructions. Listen, it was fine! Helpful, even. And yet, it could bear some improvement. Some of the instructions were in all caps. Some of them were highlighted. Some were in bullet points. Some of them were vague. Some of them directly contradicted the instructions on the Suprep box. There were lists of prohibited foods/drinks; there were some lists of foods/drinks that were allowable; none of the lists were in any way comprehensive.

As I’ve spent the past twenty-odd years writing and editing things, I’ve been thinking a lot more than is healthy about how I might improve upon this packet.

The major problem I see is attention span vs quantity of information. As any writing professional knows, people don’t read. The fewer words the better. The clearer the better. (Sometimes those two dictates are in opposition.) And yet the gastroenterologist needs to convey quite a lot of complex information, and there’s not a great way to get all of it across to the patient. (I also got two phone calls in advance of my colonoscopy, but they conveyed both less and different information than the packet did.)

As a patient, I think I would like the packet to contain these things:

1. How to prepare for the colonoscopy. Like I said, the packet from my doctor directly contradicted some of the instructions on the Suprep box. The box, for instance, said I could eat a light breakfast the day before the procedure; my doctor said NO DO NOT DO THAT. The box said orange and grapefruit juices were among the “clear” liquids I could drink; my doctor said NOPE. So I think I want to know right away, right up front, that I should ignore the box. (This was one of the highlighted, all caps sentences on the front of the packet I received, but there were several other highlighted, all caps sentences on the front, so I could have easily downplayed its importance or missed it entirely.) I think I might like to know that there are many prep options, and that I should focus on these instructions because they are specific to my prep, and not listen to my cousin who didn’t have to do a single day of low-fiber eating and who thought his prep wasn’t half bad. I think I might like some strategies for getting enough calories and protein (even bone broth only has around 45 calories and 10 grams of protein per cup), and not making oneself queasy with too much sugar. It might also be nice to have a little calendar that lays out Day 1 through Day of Procedure with brief bullets about what to do each day (“Day 1: low-residue diet; see pgs 2-3”).

2. What to expect from the colonoscopy. Before the procedure, first the nurse and then the anesthesiologist both talked to me about what would happen, but I always like to know that stuff well in advance. Like, you will need an IV. You will have to change into a gown and those little grippy socks. You will need to arrive an hour before the procedure, the procedure itself should take around thirty minutes, and you will require about thirty minutes in recovery afterward. It might be nice to know a teeny bit about the procedure itself (“the doctor will introduce a flexible tube into your large intestine; she may use water to flush your colon as examines the lining; she will attempt to remove any polyps she finds; you will be sedated the whole time”). I’d like to know that the GI will come in and give you your results right then; that might affect who I would bring with me as a driver. I’d like to know that I might feel tired for X hours after the procedure, or that the anesthesia might make my stomach a little more sensitive to greasy foods than normal.

3. A more-or-less complete list of prohibited / allowed foods and drinks. The packet I received had some lists, but they were slightly confusing. Like, on the low-fiber/low-residue diet, you shouldn’t eat fruits and veggies, but you could eat canned or frozen fruits and veggies? What? As far as I can tell, the real issue is FIBER, so, like, an apple without the skin is okay, mango is okay, but strawberries are not okay. (I did not ask about bananas.) Tomatoes are prohibited but tomato paste is okay. Cooked onions are okay, shredded fresh basil is not. On the “clear liquids only” day, green and yellow and orange Gatorade/Kool-Aid/Jell-O/popsicles are fine; red or purple or blue are not. Black coffee or tea are also fine. No milk or non-dairy creamers, though. (But what about coconut milk? Or almond milk? No idea.) Sugar and sweetener are fine in your coffee or tea, even though they aren’t liquids. (I put honey in my tea without even asking, am such a rebel.)

My husband and I discussed that the existing lists kind of leave patients to make their own judgment calls, which I’m sure can have varying results. The internet says that sucking on hard candies during your clear-liquids day is totally acceptable, and I feel like it probably is; it’s just sugar! But I might also think it’s okay to chew gum in the waiting room before my colonoscopy, since that’s neither food nor liquid… but it ISN’T okay. Other patients may read the lists and think those are the ONLY restrictions/allowances. A friend, before her colonoscopy a few months ago, was worried about drinking her own homemade chicken stock, because she uses celery and garlic and onion to make the stock, and celery and garlic and onion were not on the list of allowable foods.  

4. Other Important Things to keep in mind. This might include which medications you can and cannot take the day of your procedure, and that you literally cannot take even a sip of water in the three hours before your colonoscopy or they will delay your procedure, and that you can wear a bra under your surgical gown as long as it doesn’t have an underwire, and you should avoid applying lotion the day of your procedure, and that yes you really do need a driver who will wait there with you and drive you home, and that you CANNOT CHEW GUM the day of your procedure.

It might also be nice to know what to do if, say, you vomit up half of your prep. Does that mean you have to start again? Or what to do if you have a medication you take at a specific time that needs to be taken with food. I am sure there is a whole host of FAQs that gastroenterologists field on the regular that would be useful to include.

I know a packet of information that a decent percentage of patients aren’t even going to glance at cannot possibly address every eventuality. And, of course, people successfully undergo colonoscopies every day, even without all these details. But I know there are others who are as anxious and rule-abiding as I am who would really appreciate a thorough and well-organized document.

Car-Trip Compromise

My husband and I are in ongoing negotiations about our summer road trip. We have agreed on one thing and one thing only, which is the location of our First Major Stop. From there, we will make a circle to return to our starting place. But which way will the circle go? We could drive West, to a big city my husband has never visited before. We could drive East, through the mountains, and, importantly, through my best friend’s city. This is really a choice between urban and rural, city experiences vs unspoiled landscapes. It feels like a choice between him and me, our very essences, and – while both of us are being very careful and tactful when laying out our pros and cons for each option – neither of us seems willing to budge an inch. WHAT WILL HAPPEN? I am guessing that we will end up going the urban route. My husband is much more excited about that option, and our first stop – during which I hope to see another of MY friends – was my idea in the first place. I suppose I shouldn’t get to determine everything about our trip, even if I want to.

Pussy Cat Palate Cleanser

After my whole losing-the-pole-toy-behind-the-bookcase disaster, I have been storing Lenny’s new pole toys on the second shelf of my bookcases. He knows this. And he has spent a lot of time this week trying to get to them.

He has also spent some time trying out poses for the cover of Classical Cat magazine.

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Fold Your Own Way

The longer you live with someone, the more you discover about how little you know them. At least, this is true for me, when it comes to my husband. I have known this man since 2001, for over half my life, and have lived with him since 2003. And yet I have only recently discovered some things about him that baffle me completely. (Does anyone else recall the time when I learned he does not consider soup to be a meal???) 

While I am the primary laundry-doer in our household, I don’t fold everything that I wash. This is not out of laziness, Internet. Well. Not solely out of laziness. My husband is not only the Better Folder of the two of us, he has folding preferences. I am sure I’ve mentioned before that he prefers to fold his own T-shirts. For that I am eternally grateful, because I am horrible at folding, especially when it comes to things that can’t be lined up edge to edge, like a towel or a blanket or a dishrag or another piece of fabric with straight and symmetrical edges. It’s not like I haven’t tried. I have. And yet, despite sometimes extreme effort, my attempts at folding T-shirts result in such lopsidedness and extreme variances in size of end product that frankly boggle the mind. My husband, possibly due to years in his youth spent working in clothing retail, possibly due to being a normal person and not folding challenged like his wife, can fold his T-shirts with seemingly no effort and end up with a stack of perfectly identical little rectangles. This is all to say: my husband prefers to fold his own T-shirts.

Okay, fine. But I can at least fold his pants, right? I fold my own jeans and leggings (the extent of my pants collection) and they make nice tidy stacks. I fold them once lengthwise, meeting one corner of the waist band to the other, so they look like a one-legged pant, and then fold them shortwise (what is the opposite of lengthwise? widthwise? I am explaining this very poorly), bringing the hem up to meet the waistband, and then fold them one last time so that the waist band touches the folded portion of the knee area. (This reminds me of that old elementary school exercise where one person has to explain step by step how to make a peanut butter sandwich and the other person has to follow each step literally, as if they have never experienced either peanut butter or jars or sandwiches before. You know: the explainer says, “Put the peanut butter on the bread” and the sandwich maker picks up the jar and puts it on the bag of bread.) What I am trying to say is that I make three folds and the jeans end up in a small square. 

Fold 1.
Fold 2.
Fold 3. I don’t know why the pocket does this but I hate it thanks.

This is how I have folded everyone’s pants since time immemorial, including my husband’s jeans and work pants. Then some years ago I found out that that my husband preferred me to simply fold the pants in half, lengthwise, and leave them at that. Okay, weird, I thought, but whatever. Saves me two folds per pants pair, clearly a significant amount of time in the grand scheme of life. But as the years passed, I wondered why he was so adamant about the single fold. Because, in fact, when he puts his jeans/work pants away in our closet, he stacks them in neat little squares just like I stack my jeans. 

It took a long time for this mild curiosity to develop into an actual question, which was, “If the end result is the same, why don’t I just fold your jeans for you?” To which he reluctantly told me that when I fold his jeans, he refolds them, and he feels bad about that, so he wants to relieve me of the initial fold. To which my response was, “WHY.” Which is when he admitted to me that when I fold his jeans/pants, I fold them backwards.

My jeans, folded my way. Still with the pocket issue.
I STILL REFUSE TO IRON.
My husband’s jeans, folded the opposite way.

This is a very, very long story to say that a) apparently people can fold jeans/pants differently, who knew, and b) apparently that can be bothersome to some people, and c) my husband and I are pants-folding opposites and I only just found out. (How do YOU fold your pants?)

(By the way, I have since been folding his jeans/pants the opposite way – although I still only make the single lengthwise fold – and it is surprisingly difficult to do! My brain has A Certain Way it believes folding should be done, and that is not it.) (It’s a feeling similar to folding your hands together differently than you normally do: if the left thumb normally sits on top of the right thumb, when you try to fold them so the right thumb is on top instead, it’s doable, but it’s weird.)

I have since kept my eyes open for other weird differences in our everyday trivialities and have come up with two others. 

One has to do with filing. Picture a filing cabinet, with folders of paperwork for things you keep track of over time – utility bills, insurance statements, tax returns, etc. I think we can all agree that it makes sense to file these sorts of things chronologically, right? And yet, to my SHOCK, there are (at least?) two ways to do this. 

When you open one of the folders, what is on top: the most recent bill/statement, or the oldest? Well, I do it one way and my husband does it the other way (the WRONG way) and that is absolutely insane to me. To make matters worse, at one point in our relationship, we maintained separate files, so some of the files use my system and some use my husband’s. I would almost rather transition ALL our files to his (wrong) system than to have two completely opposite filing methods in the same cabinet. MADNESS.

The other way we are opposites is in how we get out of the shower. Yes, I am really writing about this. Day-to-day minutiae is my favorite topic (next to food) and if you are new here, boy are you getting slapped right in the face with household nitty-gritty.

Our shower has a sliding glass door with two panels. You slide one panel over the other – so they overlap – to expose the opening to the shower. My husband slides both panels toward the front/faucet end of the shower to exit; I slide both panels to the back, wall end. I wonder if this has to do with our individual towel placement: my towel hangs just outside the faucet end of the shower; my husband’s is on the wall on the other end of the shower. Would we exit the shower differently if we hung our towels differently? Are there simply Front of Shower Exiters and Rear of Shower Exiters, just like some people are optimists and others are pessimists?

These are some of the very silly, inconsequential differences between us that are as charming (to me, at least) as they are perplexing. All of us are weird in our own weird ways. And I’m delighted to still be learning new things about this man I’ve loved for nearly a quarter century.

There are lots of other ways that he and I are Very Different. Some of them I know and accept: for instance, he is a Laundry Basket guy, and I am a Pile Clothing Into My Arms And Drip Socks All Over The Floor gal. But maybe (probably?) there are things I am yet unaware of. I hope we have time to discover all of them.

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Two Kinds of People: Socks Edition

Elisabeth’s post earlier this week spun me on a sock tangent. She wondered whether people put their socks on before or after they put their pants on. (Go read her post to find out!) (I sometimes put my socks on first, sometimes once my pants are on. Depends on the pants.) But the more pressing question, in my mind, is HOW you put your socks on: Do you stand or do you sit?

I stand. I balance on one foot while I put one sock on, then balance on the other foot to put the other sock on. My dad does the same thing, as we discovered over Christmas. That’s the kind of riveting discussions we have around here. 

My husband and daughter sit to put their socks on. 

Based on this very small sample size, I’m extrapolating that there are two (primary) types of socks-putter-onners: sitters and standers. 

The only time I sit is when I’m putting on tights. Which aren’t socks, but are similar enough that I’m mentioning them here. 

Which camp are you in?

While we’re on the fascinating topic of socks, I have some other sock-related questions. 

Do you prefer fun socks or plain socks? When I met my husband, he wore pretty much only plain white athletic socks that he bought in a multi-pack from Target. A few years ago, I started buying him fun socks from Sock Fancy and Bomba and Happy Feet, and now he has a drawer so cram-jammed with fun socks that he cannot fit another pair in there. (Nonetheless, he got FIVE PAIRS of socks for Christmas.) 

I have experienced the opposite trajectory. I used to love fun knee-high socks in all sorts of patterns. But these days, I stick to a multi-pack of athletic ankle socks that I get from Costco. It’s just so much easier! I can rummage around in my sock drawer and grab a ball of socks and know it’s going to work.  

Speaking of balled socks: are you a baller or shot caller, I mean a person who doesn’t ball their socks? I ball my socks up with wild abandon. Yes, I have read that doing so puts additional stress on your socks, and can stretch them out. But I have never once had an issue, so I have decided it’s worth the risk.

My husband REFUSES to ball his socks. He will carefully tuck the top of one sock into the folded-over top of its mate and that’s as much as he’s willing to do. When it comes to his (now small) stash of athletic socks, he stacks them on top of one another. He is much neater than I am.

My daughter prefers a secret third option, which is to throw all her socks, unpaired, into her drawer and then complain to me that she doesn’t have any clean socks when I ask why, for the love of tacos, did she come down to breakfast YET AGAIN without her socks on. 

Do you wear socks to bed? My husband does not. I used to be firmly anti-sock while I slept. But since dealing with plantar fasciitis, and needing to wear shoes at pretty much all times, it’s just more convenient to sleep with socks on. Then I can shove my feet into my sneakers when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I also tend to moisturize my feet overnight, and I wear socks while I do that so the foot lotion doesn’t get all over my sheets. Ew. Lotiony sheets.

However, I vastly PREFER having bare feet while I sleep. It just… doesn’t work out that way, these days. Sometimes I end up ripping the socks off in the middle of the night and flinging them into the dark.

How many pairs of socks do you own? I tend to get sick of socks and then buy new socks without getting rid of the socks I already own. My husband, as I mentioned before, has an entire drawer of fun socks… and a separate drawer for athletic socks. (To be fair, the athletic socks take up a small portion of the second drawer.) That’s a lot of socks!

I did a very brief internet search for how many socks a person SHOULD own, and the answer seems to lie somewhere between 7 and 16. I started to count my socks and then gave up, but I think it’s at LEAST 20 pairs. That’s probably a very conservative estimate.

Now tell me all your sock-related quirks.