Skip to main content

I might need a price check

So my husband Chris works three days a week in America, and I’m trying not to take this personally.

He’s commuting Monday mornings on the 6:30 ferry over to Cape Cod, where he works at an upholstery shop in Hyannis, the Mattydale of Cape Cod, for all you Syracuse readers. I stay here and hold down the fort, cooking up a cocktail of frozen pizzas and mac n’ cheese weeknights for my poor Danny. Chris comes back late Thursday night, all giddy over toilet paper prices and quotes on cheaper rent.

No, no, no, and more no I say. I can’t possibly leave all this off-season quiet and high-priced laundry detergent. There’s no convincing me to leave no matter how many times Chris points out that there’s a Trader Joe’s “over there.”

I want to stay here until I miraculously win on one of those $5 scratchers and can buy my own house here. The difference being that I feel confident that I will someday scratch my way to freedom while Chris thinks we’d be smarter to look into a nice rental “over there.”

I’m trying to put a spin on this new way of life, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. There is something to be said for the fact that I do get excited on Thursdays, thinking about Chris coming back home for the weekend. He looks awfully cute to me now, fingers all bandaged from his time stripping furniture on the mainland.

We’re sort of stuffing his time here full of trips to the dump and to the post office for stamps, and a stop at Dairy Queen now that it’s open. “See,” I say, “we’ve got a Dairy Queen here.”

“Well I can get Big Mac over there,” he says. Damn.

And I believe they’re still selling shamrock shakes right now too.
I’ve got no answer for such significant arguments. I only know that this crazy tourist-filled at least three-months-a-year place becomes more and more my own with each month that I live here. I can’t say that it’s rational, and I can’t even say it’s a good idea. All I know is that it feels like home for now. But who knows, I have a pattern; every five years I like to rethink my options. I got my sights on Nova Scotia.


Comments

Deb said…
Puck Chatterson and I LOVE us some Nova Scotia. We've been the past two summers. Kind people, seafood chowder, beaches, and no Trump. No Trader Joes, but we can live without it.
May 4, 2017 at 3:58 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Splitting Hairs

    I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned my hair a few times. I think we need to delve into it a bit further. You see, when it takes a $200 trip off-Island to get a haircut, or new underpants for that matter, you take a haircut seriously. Besides, when you’ve got the broad shoulders and the wide hips, you rely on your hair as a sort of aphrodisiac, if you know what I mean.                 I’ve been thinking about a haircut for about 8 months now. Did I mention life chugs along pretty slowly around these parts, giving me plenty of time for watching paint dry or the grass grow? Anyhow, I came to the decision that I should go ahead and do it even though more than one woman here told me she left her last appointment at the hair salon in tears. Hey, it takes more than a crappy haircut for me to turn on the waterworks. And naturally I consider tears over a haircut pretty much wasted. There are so many o...
5 comments
Read more

He sells sea shells, I wish

   So now rather than being obsessed with fake fingernails I can’t afford, I’m becoming obsessed with checking this blog. I’m pretty sure all 52 views were made by either me or my husband.   That leads me right into the current situation at hand. We need friends. We’re desperate for them. I’ve started handing out my telephone number to people I meet while doing my meager freelance work. They think it’s for the story I’m writing but really it’s in hope that someday they’ll find a reason to call and then I can hit them with, “By the way, do you play cards? Bingo? Gin Rummy?” If I wasn’t so arthritic I’d throw Twister in there.    It’s not so much for me, it’s my husband who likes to have people around. I have become hermit-like since moving here while he has become convinced we could die here and not be found for months. He had friends back in Syracuse but he chose to stay home at night with his loving wife. Now all of a sudden I get the impression he’d h...
6 comments
Read more

Be Careful What You Wish For

                 I have married myself. I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to meet the male version of me, right down to the weight insecurities and the penchant for fart jokes. Between us our combined age is somewhere around 19.                 This brings me great joy.                 I had decided after many long distance phone calls from my sister that I really wasn’t going to meet a nice guy by sitting on the couch in my living room. I needed to get out. “You’re not getting any younger,” she egged me on. “You know, those kids are going to grow up and leave you and then what are you going to do?”                 So one Saturday night I let the kids help doll me u...
4 comments
Read more