Monthly Archives: February 2024

Jackie Wells-Fauth

I am fascinated by the number of different therapies and treatments and tests out there to determine whether or not two people are likely to “make it” through the harrowing years as a married couple. There is a very simple way to determine whether a couple might be suited: send them to the grocery store!

Roy and I answered questions during our pre-wedding council about hobbies, religion, family outlook, etc. But nowhere in those surveys did they ask the most important question: can you grocery shop together without the authorities being called? For us, early on, we discovered that the answer was no!

Our first and only trip together ended in disaster. And it began so well: Roy pushed the cart and I checked the list. “We should get some peanut butter,” I said, crossing it off the list and reaching for a jar.

“Why are you getting that kind?” he was immediately questioning.

“It’s the best kind,” I was amazed he had to ask.

“It’s also a dollar more than that other stuff and that would work just as well,” he said, pointing to the bargain brand. “Peanut butter’s peanut butter.” Now, there’s a philosophy that won’t stand the test of time…and neither did the bargain brand peanut butter!

From there, things just went from bad to worse. The type of mayonnaise I had always purchased was overpriced. The potatoes (potatoes, for crying out loud) were less expensive if you bought the larger bag. In vain did I argue that they would spoil before we could use them all. Three aisles later then,  I was not surprised when we bought the 25 pound bag of rice because “it’s the best deal.”

Never take an accountant with you, as I did, because this man possesses the ability to calculate how much the tuna is per ounce, per can, in his head…very quickly. It was both amazing and frightening.

For us, as the years have gone by, grocery shopping has become my job and I conduct it with all the finesse of James Bond on a mission. Rather than encourage Roy to come to the grocery store with me, I will tell him I’m off to have an affair with some man somewhere, and he pretends to believe me. Our marriage is more likely to withstand that than another conjugal grocery shopping trip!

While I’m at the grocery store, I see both men and women doing the shopping; some are even brave enough to bring their children, but seldom do I see a married couple. Even if one of them has to wait in the vehicle, most couples will do that rather than risk having the local supermarket named in their divorce suit.

I have seen couples fight practically to the death over such things as: Should we buy the more durable plastic plates or the more environmentally friendly biodegradable plates. That argument degenerated into a shouting match. They left without either one as she said to him, “We wouldn’t need plastic plates if your family weren’t such pigs,” and he replied, “This conversation is over, tree-hugger.” I’m hopeful they didn’t go straight to the lawyer’s office from there.

It’s plain to see that a true test of marriage is a trip to the grocery store, by both people. If you can survive that, and most people can’t, you can probably endure anything. As for me, I’m going to continue to be careful. Yesterday, while Roy was napping, I quietly put on my coat and grabbed my purse.

“Where are you going,” he murmured sleepily from the chair.

 “I was just going to check and see if any of the neighbor men are home and their wives aren’t,” I said, preparing to close the door.

“Oh, okay. Pick up some bread, will you? And I think we are probably low on cereal as well,” was his reply as I headed out. Yes sir, our marriage is strong, I tell you!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

Most people are aware that I have three grandsons, but I bet those same people are not aware that I appear to have two granddaughters as well.

I say I appear to have two granddaughters because at the beginning, I was not aware that this was the case. In the beginning I thought my younger daughter and her husband had acquired a couple of cats and I must admit that is exactly how I regarded them.

But in Tracie and Charles’ house, these cats, two girls named Haru and Mako, are most definitely the grandchildren of that branch of the family. The “girls” as we call them, are adopted children, joining the family one after the other. They are like most siblings in that they get along sometimes and sometimes they don’t.

I didn’t give them a lot of serious thought, however, as I entered my years as a grandmother. I know I was grandmother to Royce and then Arthur and then Emmett, but it never occurred to me that I was also grandmother to others.

It is my custom when on vacation, to send postcards back to the boys, to let them know we are thinking of them. On returning from a vacation, we were discussing the postcards the boys had received, when I was brought up short by my son-in-law, Charles. Keeping a most solemn face, he said to me, “The girls didn’t get any postcards.”

How silly! To think I would be expected to send postcards to a couple of cats, one of whom hides herself when “Grandma and Grandpa” are visiting and the other who guards her resting spot on her cat tree with a swift hiss and a set of fine claws. The girls wanted a postcard?

Okay, I went home, picked a couple of postcards from the local drugstore in Miller, filled them out (“Having a wonderful time here in Miller, wish you were here,”)  and sent them to “the girls.” The proud parents were happy. They took the postcards, taped them to the cat tree and photographed the girls with them. While “Mom” and “Dad” were satisfied with the postcards, the looks on the cats’ faces were more expressive of boredom or indifference. However, I was assured that the girls were thrilled and everything was good.

The following vacation, I simply bought five postcards and filled them out. I didn’t allow “Cat Grandpa” to fill the girls’ out because he thought it would be funny to give them a picture of a coyote and tell them it would eat them, or a picture of a panther and tell them that was their real mother and they had been kidnapped at birth. I don’t know if they would have been traumatized by it, but I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad would.

This last Christmas I bought inexpensive Christmas music boxes for “the boys” and Tracie got that same serious look on her face and said, “The girls like music.” Okay, that’s ridiculous. Are you telling me those cats love music so much they would like a music box? What, do they go out and carol to the neighbors at Christmas?

So, I bought another Christmas music box, knowing the girls wouldn’t care. And you know what? They liked it. They didn’t break into Christmas carols, but both showed great feline interest in the music box.

Okay, I give up. I have become grandmother to two cats. However, that will be where I draw the line: three boys and two cats. When I saw my older daughter Stefanie’s dog, sniffing around the music boxes, I set her straight at once. “Oh no, poochie, I may have two cats in line to inherit the family silver, but I draw the line at dogs. Enjoy your doggie treat and be happy.” You have to be firm with these four-footed family members!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

I went to the dentist a week ago and something very weird happened. The hygienist looked in my mouth and said, “Good job! I don’t see any issues here.”

I nearly had an emotional meltdown all over her dental cleaning tray. That hasn’t happened before.  In fact, my association with dentists has not been a pretty one.

And if you look at my teeth, you can see why.  Years of dental neglect have given me battle scars:  fillings, crowns, implants and sadly missing teeth. This monument to dental carelessness is sobering.

Keep in mind that a woman my age started going to dentists practically back in the days when you went to the local barber and let them yank out a sore tooth. Okay, okay, maybe not that far back, but I will say that the first dentist I went to  (at the age of 18) pulled a tooth for me with very little pain medication and using a method that I like to call “put your knee into the patient’s shoulder and then lean back on all your own weight to get that stubborn cuss out of there.” That method resulted in the dentist pulling the tooth—or at least most of it. Suffice it to say I avoided the dentist after that.

For several years, my visits to the dentist were only when I had a toothache so bad that it lifted the hair off my head and made my eyes water and cross at the same time. Even today, when I try to describe some pain or other to someone, I inevitably say, “You know how it feels when you have an abscessed tooth?” Most of them don’t because they took care of their teeth, but some of my favorite sleepless nights were spent walking the floor promising God anything if He would just make the toothache stop. Usually His reply was, “Brush your teeth and you shall be saved.”

Finally, after years of neglect, I resolved to do a better job with my remaining teeth. I went to a dentist and I was set up with a hygienist. She looked in my mouth and said, “How long exactly, has it been since you had your teeth cleaned?” My reply? “What does that mean?”

For better than an hour she scraped, dug and scrubbed to try and clean years of neglect off my teeth. I have heard that some torture experts use dental equipment to extract secrets from their enemies. I think that hygienist trained with them.  I would have told her anything she wanted to know if she had just stopped!

And then she made a critical mistake: She said, “I think we should give you a break. Come back in a week and I will clean the other side then.” The other side????? You guessed it; that week stretched into a further five years at which time I was forced back to the dentist for another abscessed tooth, on the side that hadn’t been cleaned.

Since then, I have gone to the dentist semi-regularly and there is usually a long list of things to correct. Dentistry has come a long way in my lifetime and they do everything they can to make it easier. But all the soft music, eye covers, and bubble gum flavored medications do not help when you hear that drill start up. There is no pain like the pain you get when you have a shot of Novocain delivered into the nostril (oh, yes, I’ve had that), and the only reason I let them put a needle in my mouth is because having dental work done without it is unthinkable. Those poor people who had their teeth pulled by the barber!

After years of playing Russian roulette with my teeth, I have finally learned the benefits of regular cleaning, brushing and flossing. Those teeth that are missing are the brave soldiers who gave their lives so that the rest of us could wise up and live clean.

So when I went to the dentist this past week, it was a heady feeling for the whole appointment to take about 15 minutes, for the hygienist and dentist to tell me what a good job I had done and for there to be no list of additional work that needed to be taken care of. A weird sensation? Yes, but one I really liked!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

It was supposed to be simple. My passport is coming due this year and although I don’t presently have plans to be out of the country, I thought it wise to get it renewed. Little did I know the process might make it so I have to flee the country!

For those who have never been so foolish as to do this, to get a passport, you must fill out a lot of paperwork, give the State Department an inordinate sum of money, and best of all, have a very specific picture taken. I presume this is so the guards at the borders have something to laugh at and break up their day!

I accept that my pictures on official identification are never going to get me a spot on America’s Top Model. My driver’s license picture always makes me look like a thug working for Al Capone, but the passport pictures! My expiring passport had a mediocre picture at best, but we must understand that they weren’t working with prime material. So I would like to state right here that I was not expecting a lot. But I was hoping for reasonable.

It seems that when you take passport pictures now you don’t wear your glasses. Without my glasses, I couldn’t see from where I was sitting to the camera. She took the first picture and announced, “We need to try again, you look uneasy.” That’s my natural expression whenever I have to take a picture, especially without my glasses!

Her camera was “acting up” according to her, so it was taking pictures not just when she pressed the button, but at random times as well. She got one of me picking something out of my teeth, looking down because I noticed my shoe was untied and rubbing my forehead because the whole process was giving me a headache. I presume it was doing the same for her!

She told me, “Do this with your eyes.” And she proceeded to pull her eyes wide open with her fingers. I wanted to get done, so I did the same, which caused my eyes to water. “You’re squinting in this one. We have to try again.” Of course I was squinting; I couldn’t see a foot in front of me and I pulled my eyes open and made them burn!

“We have to get a picture with some of the whites of your eyes on all sides,” she explained to me. So, I concentrated on holding my eyes wide open. “Shut your mouth,” she said. It’s not my fault, I can’t hold my eyes wide open without hanging my mouth open too!

“You’ve a terrible frown on your face in this picture, that won’t work,” she said, snapping three more as I attempted to hold my eyes open, not squint and not frown.

“You need to hold your eyes wide open, but have a natural expression,” was her next instruction. By that time, I was afraid she wouldn’t want to see my natural expression, but I kept trying.

Finally, on about attempt number 55, she said, “Well, that  one’s not too bad, we’ll use it.” The picture she felt was “not too bad,” has me, holding my eyes wide open, looking like someone just shoved something up my rear. “Not too bad,” for me was extremely bug-eyed. I’ve never looked so surprised in my life. However, the good news is you could see the whites around my eyes!

I paid $15 for the picture which was $14.75 too much and took it home to show Roy. “Don’t laugh,” I said, and he truly tried, but within seconds, he was holding his sides and snorting water out his nose. Yep, it was that bad!

I sent the picture in with the form, and I figure the people at the State Department had a lot of fun that day, which makes me wonder what using that passport is going to be like. The border guard is going to say, “I can’t tell this is you. Take off your glasses and bug out your eyes.”

I will end this sad saga by stating that I did not take this picture locally and I will not be including that picture with this article. Suffice it to say, however, that with that for a passport, I may need to leave the country permanently!