Monthly Archives: May 2024

Jackie Wells-Fauth

I admit it, I am a small-town girl who is used to small-town roads. And when I say small-town roads, I mean roads maybe wide enough for two lanes and maybe paved with oil rather than gravel, or maybe not. This is my idea of a road; where the worst thing you are likely to face is a large piece of farm machinery in a no passing zone.

That is why attempting to drive in large cities has always been difficult for me. Imagine small town girl meets 8-lanes of fast-moving traffic and little idea of where she is going and you will be imagining me, trying to drive in Minneapolis this past month.

Possibly the worst part of the experience is the fact that my lack of preparation for such a driving adventure is really pathetic. It would be like trying to send a blind baby with one arm into the ring against Rocky Balboa and expecting a win for the babe in the woods!

I never pull out onto a two-lane highway unless all traffic is off the road and has been parked in their own driveways for ten minutes. In Minneapolis, there is never such a thing as a “break in traffic.” What they do have is, “now is the time, take your life in your hands and pull out like all the demons of hell are after you.” Even at that, if you don’t have at least three cars swerve around you with horns blaring, you have done something wrong.

When I am driving at home, I always pick a lane and remain there, even if that lane is the gravelly hump on the side of a gravel path, which forces you to drive in the ditch part of the way. You never move to the center of a road and once you have picked your lane, you stick with it like you are a cow coming down a chute with no chance to veer to right or left.

In Minneapolis, while I was driving the speed limit and fearing to move even a touch to my right or left, I was several times witness to what I like to call the “side scramble.” A driver on my left would cut in front of my car and then veer a little further over, into the next lane, then slice in front of a speeding truck to the lane after that, and on and on until they had somehow, at breakneck speed and in impossible traffic, cut their way diagonally across all five or six lanes of traffic, just so they could exit! Now, if I were to execute that maneuver, I would definitely have to take the nearest exit so I could clean out my underwear and lie down until my heart had stopped pounding into my mouth. It was terrifying to watch and it occurred over and over!

My tactic for getting through the heavy traffic was to do what I do when I am traveling on the two-lane US highway at home: I pick a lane and then never leave it. The problem with this procedure in a major city? Well, the lane you are in can be going along fine and then, while you are clinging to it like a monkey to its mother swinging through trees, suddenly, a sign will appear out of the corner of your eye that says something like: “Get out of this lane, unless you are planning to exit to a new road.” Or “Right lane closed ahead, get out of it a mile ago!” or,  “Hey, Mario Andretti, this is the east bound lane and you are supposed to be going west!”

Suddenly, that lane which had been your friend for several miles, has pulled the rug out from underneath you and now, instead of heading east, towards Stillwater, you find yourself in the northbound lane on the way for a fun-filled week in Duluth. And when you look around at the traffic to get to the exit, you know you will be spending the week in Duluth because there is no way you are going to be capable of performing the “side scramble” to get to the exit.

I am home again from my fun-filled week on the highway to hell, so that means I am once again driving under the speed limit, stopping at every stop sign until the whole road looks like a deserted apocalyptic byway and waving happily at all of the machinery I encounter in my path. I do not miss all of those cars in such a hurry to get to so many places and furthermore, I will have everyone know that I am very happy that there are crossroads and not exits on my super highway. Happy driving, everyone!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

King Charles III of England had better watch out because I think his throne might be in peril. He is about to be usurped by Socks, king of all the cats.

Socks is the elder statesman of my daughter’s two cats. He has been around for quite a few years and has established himself with the whole family as a very stable and dependable animal. He came to the family from a shelter and has survived the addition of a dog, a baby and another cat with aplomb. So his reputation as a good cat is well-established and I never doubted it.

And then, I got the opportunity to spend a little over a week in his company. That is when I discovered that Socks has truly begun to believe his own legend and has established himself as ruler of the household.

From the moment I stepped into his house, Socks has let me know that he is in charge. When I set a cup of coffee beside the chair I intended to sit in, Socks casually walked over and sat down himself, giving me the look you reserve only for things so far beneath you, they aren’t worthy of your attention.

From then on, he went about the work of establishing his rule. King Socks can let himself in and out of the house, without waiting for permission. He sits wherever he wishes, including on your lap uninvited, sitting on whatever book or paper you might have been using. Socks can also claim the back of the chair, so that he can majestically stare down on the peasants who are merely sitting on the seat.

One of His Majesty’s favorite places is in the bay window containing all the house plants. He will move between the plants like it is the royal forest and then lie down in front of them as if to guard against intruders. I came in with the watering can to take care of the thirsty foliage and waited for the cat to move. He simply looked at me.

“Okay, Your Majesty, but if you stay there, you might get wet,” I warned. He turned away from me,  to look out of the window, letting me know just how important my threats were.

So I admit it, I might have been careless with the watering can, just to get back at him. I managed to “accidentally” spill some water on his back end. “Oh, sorry,” I said as sincerely as I am able, when apologizing to a cat. With a sidewise glance out of his arrogant eyes, the king flicked his tail and sprayed the water right back at me. Score one for the feline royalty.

Socks is a hardy sized cat and so he is especially fussy about his meal times. When his regular owners are there and caring for him, he is fed regularly and deigns to be content with the cat food he gets. When the babysitters are there, he is less regularly sitting down to dine, not because I’m trying to starve him, but because I am not used to it, so sometimes he must fend for himself. Since he is also an agile king, he can get himself onto a kitchen counter, to check out the dining possibilities.

I had some pieces of chicken lying on the counter, and I came into the room as he was carefully making his selection from the buffet that he, of course, assumed was there for his enjoyment.

“Socks!” I snapped, “you get away from there.” He looked up, the chicken dangling from his teeth and his eyes determined slits. “Get down, I say!” At that, he casually leapt to the floor, dropping the chicken as he went.

I assumed it was over, so I delayed picking up the chicken piece. With that, King Socks turned back, retrieved his noon repast and disappeared downstairs, where I presume he enjoyed his picnic in private.

Despite it all, he is a pretty good and mellow cat, but I have to say he is also the most self-assured and complacent animal I have ever met. And I am pretty sure he will have a lot of tales to tell about his adventures with the sub-par humans he had to deal with while his owners were away for a week.

All hail Socks, King of the Cats!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

It was a typical evening, nothing special to warn me of what was about to happen. Nonetheless, the quiet, typical night turned harrowing when my husband uttered three special little words.“What’s that smell?” he asked, sniffing the air.

“How should I know?” I replied, my defenses up. “I don’t smell anything.”

I used to think this was just a phenomenon in my household, but it seems there are a lot of married people and mere roommates who tend to make up two distinct groups: those whose noses are so sensitive that every shift in odor catches their attention and the other group, whose noses are dead to all
smells… and they are better off that way. I am in the second group; my husband is in the first. It makes for some interesting marital moments.

I may be insensitive to smells, but I am hypersensitive to worrying about whether I smell. So, when my husband says, “What’s that smell?”, my first instinct is always to sniff the various parts of my own body
that commercials tell me smell offensive, (but with their product, would smell like roses). The longer he sniffs, the more paranoid I become.

“What does it smell like?” I ask.

“I can’t really say; it’s just a not-very-pleasant odor,” is his very unhelpful answer. I immediately take a shower and change everything, even my hairpins.

An hour later, as I’m still basking in that fresh shower feeling, he begins sniffing the air again.

“Still an odor?” I ask, not troubling to mask my irritation.

He gives a long-suffering nod and walks around the room, inhaling deeply. “I think it’s
coming from the kitchen. Maybe it’s something in all of those dirty dishes in
the sink.”

Now, I recognized this ploy. He doesn’t like dirty dishes in the sink, but neither does he like to do them. If he could make me feel self-conscious enough about a smell, he could get me to do the dishes. Well,
that wasn’t going to work.

Until he actually went into the kitchen and ran his face at a safe distance, across the dishes, sniffing and nodding his head gravely and regretfully. Okay, so at 10:30 at night, I am loading and running the
dishwasher for half a load, scouring out the sinks and pouring vinegar down the
drain.

“That’s all I can do, if you still smell something–which I never did, by the way–then I can’t help you.” I tried to sound very stern and forceful, using the same voice I had used all those years ago to make our
children back down and quit arguing. That voice never worked on our daughters, and it didn’t work on him, either.

“It might not be in the kitchen, because I still smell something,” he insisted. I took out the garbage and cleaned the container.

“Maybe it’s in the bedroom,” he speculated. I washed all the laundry in the hamper.

“Could it be the bathroom,” he wondered aloud—loud enough to be heard.

“I just cleaned the bathroom today, so unless you used the corner instead of the toilet, no it’s not the bathroom.”

We never did track down that phantom smell, because he quit making suggestions, mostly because he could now smell the smoke coming out of his impatient wife’s ears. Peace reigned once more…except for his occasional sniffing of the air around him.

Thanks to this, one of our most long-standing marital activities, the house is very clean and so am I for that matter. However, I am not fooled. I know that sometime in the not-too-distant future, I am going to
be relaxing on a peaceful summer’s evening and he’s going to utter those three little words again…and I don’t mean, “I Love You!” May your home smell like roses and your nose always be too stuffed up to smell it or anything else!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

The seasons have rotated at our house, as they do every year. Oh, I don’t mean we’ve moved from winter to spring; no, no. At our house, we rotate from tax season to marriage reality season. And sometimes the adjustment to having the other partner around much more can be tough on us both.

Being married to an accountant, I have always known that tax season can be rough. It is Roy’s season to shine, but it requires quite as many hours in the day as a farmer at the height of harvest. And since it lasts for several months, I have a tendency to slip into a somewhat slip-shod, self-centered, single mode of living.

During tax season, laundry only has to be kept up so there is a reasonable amount of underwear and clean dress clothes available. No need to wash all those pesky everyday clothes, since they are not likely to be used right now. They accumulate in a pile behind the washer and Roy is too busy wearing business clothes to the office to notice.

 And during tax season, it is possible to be very lax on what passes for a meal—it’s consumed so fast and in such a state of distraction, that I believe I could serve peanut butter sandwiches and Milk of Magnesia and it wouldn’t cause comment—at least until the Milk of Magnesia kicked in!

I get very used to my television during tax season as well. I adore my re-runs of Monk and Murder, She Wrote and every feel good, snot-inducing, sentimental overload movie there is. And there is no one in the house (who is awake) to make gagging noises and rudely mock the main characters (Roy does an imitation of Jessica Fletcher which would be amusing if it weren’t so annoying). But during tax season, Jessica finds the killers without the running, derisive commentary from the accountant.

Tax season, however, has faded into the season, which I like to call marriage reality season. This is where we remember that there are two of us in the house and our views on living with another human being don’t always jive. Take the other night; I really wish someone would!

Roy came home all excited. “I’m going to fix that water head in the toilet and hang the new curtain in the kitchen, but before that, I’m going to go out and mow and fertilize the lawn.”

“Maybe you should pace yourself,” I respond. “You don’t want to run out of fun too quickly.”

“I am ready for something besides taxes,” he says, rubbing his hands together as he stands before the dresser, searching through the clothes. “Where is my green plaid shirt? You know, the one I wore when I spackled the basement? I want to use that to work in the bathroom.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s clean,” I remark, kicking it further into the pile behind the washer.

“But I spackled the basement last fall,” he protests.

“Exactly, what was the rush? And while we’re at it, the kitchen and the bathroom are none too clean right now. I was meaning to get at that this month, but I was distracted.”

“By the frozen pizza we’re having for supper?” he said, checking the oven.  I think he was trying to make some point there, but I refused to get it. So, he became more direct. “There’s a lot of hamburger in the refrigerator, maybe you should use that up first?”

“I had a busy day,” is my excuse. “And I don’t need you to be a back-seat driver when I’m cooking.”

“Jessica Fletcher and Monk too busy repeating their accomplishments finding the criminals?” he asked, adding sarcastically, “Or maybe you spent the day using up kleenix over the Hallmark channel. By the way, the timer’s going off on the pizza. Looks like a gourmet meal tonight.”

When I next went into the living room, he was not watching Murder, She Wrote, or Columbo. No sir, he was flipping the television back and forth between the Timberwolves, who are just getting ready to wrap up their basketball season and the Twins, who are just getting started on the baseball grind. Nothing in anything he was watching made me think, “Aww, what a fun evening of television we have ahead!”

Yes, indeed, the seasons march forward. And when I am in the midst of marriage reality season, cooking actual meals and washing all of the clothes every week, to the background sounds of a Twins game gone wrong, I always wonder, “What was it about tax season I didn’t like, again?”