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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
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