She's Back In Town

The Lovely Sharon arrived back in Utah Saturday night after some seven months in Palm Desert. She came back to a cold and rainy Sunday and Monday Memorial Day weekend. I must say that it was nice to have her back. It was nice to have her walk around the house and see just how ineffective I am as a house cleaner. We had a considerable discussion about how confusing the plastic storage container and plastic lid draw in the kitchen has become during her seven months in Palm Desert. For me, finding a matching storage container and lid from the drawer, was a wonderful challenge. It took analysis, patience and visual recognition skills. Before she rearranged the drawer, the lids and bowls looked like a bunch of intertwined snakes. Now there are orderly stacks of bowls and lids. Not quite as beautiful as the mosaic of bowls and lids I had created over the winter but no doubt easier to deal with.

She has been home for approximately 48 hours and she has already cleaned the refrigerator, cleaned the kitchen floor (although I cleaned the kitchen floor right before she arrived home), and plucked the tiny weeds from the driveway cracks. She figured out what was wrong with one of the TV’s (the cable was unplugged). She threw away a bunch of the stuff in the freezer compartments of the upstairs and downstairs fridges. She threw away can soups that had expired. She asked me why I had approximate 9 unopened bottles of different kinds of barbeque sauce in the pantry (I had no reasonable answer). We unloaded her car and the six boxes of clothes she shipped home. There are now more clothes on her bedroom floor than  are hanging in most women’s clothing stores. She will be arranging and hanging up the clothes during the next week or so.

Yesterday I did a lot of manly stuff with her. We looked at makeup at Macy’s. We bought makeup at Macy’s. We look at ladies clothes at Macy’s and Dillards. We looked at ladies shoes at Dillards. We went to five different stores to look for a wedding shower gift. We ordered a wedding gift online. I feel most proud of myself for keeping her distracted so we didn’t end up in the handbag departments of Macy’s and Dillards. Once you get in those departments, you are stuck for 45 minutes or so why she inspects every purse.

We went into some type of makeup/personal care store for women that I had never heard of. She didn’t want to buy anything she just wanted to see if they carried the shampoo she likes for future reference. They did.

We stopped at Walgreens to buy cards. Father’s Day Cards, wedding cards, wedding shower cards. When I go to buy cards, I see a card pick it up, read it and buy it. Usually I don’t look at more than two cards, usually just one. When the Lovely Sharon goes to buy cards, she looks at every card; and I mean every card. She picks each card up, looks at the cover, reads the inside, and checks the price on the back page. Each card inspection routine takes about 20 seconds. Multiply 20 seconds by 75 cards and you can see that this is not an event for the faint of heart. We then looked at decorative gift bags for the wedding shower gifts. This did not take too long as she looked at only 8 or 10 bags. Once the proper bag was selected, we spent a few more minutes selecting the proper size and color of tissue paper to put in the gift bags wrapped around the wedding shower gifts.

We passed a movie theater. I asked her if she want to go see Hangover 2. She responded with a “thanks but no thanks”. But she said that she would go see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I said fine and she went into the Theater and bought tickets for the 3:10 show. We came back at 2:45 but found that every seat was already taken except for the first two rows. Those rows were so close that it makes you seasick to watch the movie. So we went back to the cashier to trade the tickets in for the 4:10 movie. That movie had assigned seats so we ended up getting two handicap seats. We went back home to kill time before the 4:10 movie. So we were at the theater three times in one day. Once to buy the tickets in advance, once to find out the seats were taken and finally to watch the movie. Frankly the movie was not that great.

After the movie I suggested dinner at a Chinese restaurant. The Lovely Sharon agreed and we headed off. Before we arrived, she informed me she preferred Indian food so we went to an Indian restaurant.

By the time we arrived home last night. I was exhausted. I headed to bed, to read and watch TV but fell asleep before doing much of either.

When the Lovely Sharon is back in Salt Lake, life is different for me. I cannot tell you how glad I am that she is back.