Left of the Dial

much achoo about nothing

[I apologize for that horrible yet wonderful joke]

It really is disconcerting when I sneeze and from a different floor, and two rooms away, Top Management texts me "bless you." 

the best medicine, or just what big pharma WANTS you to think

So Top Management mentioned that she'd read a study which indicated that how often a couple laughs together is an excellent predictor of how long they'll stay together. 

"Well, dammit, there's our problem right there," I say. "So all we have to do is..." 

We look at each other. And burst out laughing. 

"Great," she says. "There's another week." 

Now whenever we laugh at something, one of us says, "Great. Now we have to stay together one more week." 

feeling not so much seen as read

I send this tweet to my good lady wife:

She laughs. "That's funny," she says. 

"Is it?" I ask. "Is it though? Or does being with such a person simply make it impossible for the, say, husband to ever win an argument against, say, his good lady wife? I'm asking for a friend." 

(Editor's note: he has no friends.) 

She smiles. "Oh, I'm sorry. I meant that's fun." 

when in Rome

Top Management and I step outside the house for our daily walk, or our Daily Staff Meeting, as we refer to it. (And which it kinda is.) It's a lovely day, mid-50s, cloudy, only the tiniest hint of a breeze. 

Suddenly, the clouds disappear and we find ourselves in blazing full-strength sunlight, not a shadow in sight. 

"What the hell's with the sun?" I say, shocked. 

Top Management laughs. "That's the most Portland thing I've ever heard." 

so THAT's where she got it

Top Management sighs the sigh of the deeply and justifiably exhausted. 

"Man," she says. "I ate so many frogs today. I ate all the frogs today." 

I look over at her. "What?!" I say, not unreasonably. 

She looks surprised that I'm surprised. "You know, the Mark Twain thing." 

"What?!" I again say, still not unreasonably. 

"You know, his thing about how if you're served a plate full of things you have to eat and you like all of them except there's also a frog there and you have to eat it, you should eat it first?" 

I start laughing. "This explains so much," I say. 

made for her

Top Management and I are watching the second season of a very good show. It's near the end of the first episode and so far it's good, maybe even very good. We're both intrigued and up for continuing. 

Until the end of the episode. When there's a twist and Top Management suddenly sits up straight. 

"Wait a second," she breathes. "Is this...is that place...a cult?!" 

And suddenly "intriguing" just morphed into Must See TV.

Sometimes I wonder about the various Roads Not Taken. And sometimes I'm very, very glad they weren't took. 

guilty as charged

It's a weekend morn and we've been lazing in bed, reading. And for an hour, we've been going back and forth, saying we need to get up, it's time to get up, we're hungry, we're starving, we should really get up. 

Finally, after an hour my very deep need for coffee gets the better of me and I roll out of bed and shamble towards the door. 

I catch a glimpse of my good lady wife and there's a look of utter betrayal on her face. 

"Traitor," she says in disbelief. 

to blaeve

To the love of my life who, after nearly 17 years together, is still the best girlfriend. 

the heart of the matter

"Hey," I ask, as I occasionally do about assorted things, "can I buy [this wicked expensive thing I really want but absolutely do not need in the slightest]?" 

"Of course," Top Management replies, as she always does. Perhaps because she knows I virtually never actually do buy the thing in question, no matter what the thing is this time. (Although it's pretty much always musical gear.) 

I shake my head. "You're an enabler." 

She shrugs. "You're more realistic and sensible with money than I am, so I figure, if you think it's a good idea, then it probably is." 

We look at each other for a long moment. 

"Seriously?" 

"Yeah. Why?" 

"Because I thought you were the one who was realistic and sensible with money." 

We stare at each other in mounting horror. 

"Well, the good news is, I think I just figured out where we've been going wrong all these years." 

innocent bysitter

So it's all fun and games when you're working in your basement studio shortly before midnight and your 22-year-old comes down with a question and the two of you find yourselves watching a cool video and laughing until the next video autostarts and this one is a giant spider and you instinctively and frankly quite reasonably yell "no!" and apparently wake your good lady wife out of a deep sleep and it's clearly all the kid's fault as usual. 

the secrets to and of mawwiage

Interviewer: You've been happily married for 26 years. How do you keep the romance alive?

Me: We forward political tweets to each other all day long

— Melissa Wiley's NERVIEST GIRL has hit the shelves (@melissawiley) November 6, 2020

Me and @melissawiley trying to figure out what to watch next.
ME: Well, we've been meaning to try...uh...what's it called...Mr...Mr...
HER: Oh, right! Ted Lasso!
ME: Yes!
[...]
ME: How did you get that?
HER: I have no idea.

— Scott Peterson (@petersonscott) November 6, 2020

timing is everything

Watching the vice presidential debate, Top Management is getting angrier and angrier. 

Finally, she turns to me and growls, "thank you for not being one of those men who interrupt women when they're mid-sent--" 

"You're welcome," I say. 

a nutter in a haystack

"I'm still hungry," Top Management says. 

She's just finished breakfast, a typically light affair. Which means despite having just consumed a whopping 150 entire calories, she's somehow not sated. Especially since by now it's noon. 

"I could make you an everything bagel with cream cheese and ham," I suggest. 

She demurs. 

"How about an everything bagel with salami and provolone?" 

She again passes. 

"Carrots and hummus?" 

She sighs. 

And then the truth comes out. 

"These are all such good ideas," she admits. "But none of them are Nutter Butters and milk." 

Message [eventually] received. 

o grant thy faithful hedgehog's boon

I am not a smart man. But even I, after nearly 50 years with the same person, learn a thing or two. Such as the insanely vital importance of never ever keeping secrets from your significant other.

Unless the secret in question is what you discovered, as you went to grab a beer sometime after midnight so you could get to work on the script you're writing, crawling up the wall next to the stairs, is your good lady wife's second-least favorite thing in the entire known universe. 

works like a (snake) charm

So when I went freelance, one of my trusted colleagues—himself a long-time freelance writer— warned me that transitioning into being home all the time would likely be extremely difficult at first, that it was nobody's fault, it was just a fact that too much proximity to another adult would be difficult, especially since we were living in a small New York City apartment, and the other adult in question (Top Management) was used to having said apartment all to herself. 

We never found that to be the case. We were delighted to have an extra 50 hours a week together and, if anything, hated having to stop talking to each other so one could leave the room to go work. And 22 or so years later, that's still the case. When it's time for me to leave Lissa's studio to go make dinner or watch Doctor Who with the kids or whatever, my good lady wife will often break into an awesomely accurate Veruca Salt impersonation, expressing her displeasure with my impending departure. 

Fortunately, I have finally, after all these years, found a solution: I begin an interpretive dance which aims to illustrate how I personally feel about leaving her, the anguish I'm experiencing, the deep love I have for her and the conflicting emotion of paternal responsibility. Occasionally I'll throw in a small aside about current events or perhaps a recap of a recent television episode, just for contrast. 

I say I begin an interpretive dance, because I rarely get more than three seconds in before she says, "Okay, you can go now." 

Sure, she sounds eager for me to leave. But she's crying on the inside. I can tell. 

Love in the Time of COVID

It's late. Well, it's not really—it's only a bit after 11pm. But Top Management likes to get up around 6 in the damn morning so she can write before The Brawn gets up—for some reason, even after 25 years of practice, she apparently finds it difficult to write creatively once a small dervish begins whirling around in close proximity. (Yeah, he's still at the age—or perhaps just One of Those—who wakes up early and is immediately Ready and a-Rarin' to Go.) 

I notice she's on her phone, so I do as I've been repeatedly instructed by her, and I point out the time. "Get off Twitter," I say, gently, lovingly, sweetly, with only her best intentions in my heart, as always. 

She puts her phone down with a literal hmph and picks up her Kindle. 

"I can’t believe how many hot takes I’m missing right now," she grumbles. 

the facts of life

So I've been showing the two youngest—the Golden Weasel and the Brawn—an episode or two of M*A*S*H most weekdays. We started with the very first episode and have watched all but a few episodes per season—there are over 250 episodes, so skipping a few of the relatively weaker or more purely prurient or those which have not aged terribly well (and hoo boy do some of even the finest episodes have bits that have not aged well) doesn't seem like too great a crime. In this way, they're getting quite an education: they're learning some history (about the Korean War, which they'd never heard), and basic concepts such as triage, and military rank, and even some basic medical terminology. (Who knew that this was where I became familiar with the term "plasma"?)

They're also learning—or have now learned—how to watch a long-form episodic series which, to the surprise of me and Top Management, is actually something one learns to do, and is not necessarily innate; we grew up watching sitcoms from the time we were aware, pretty much, and perhaps even the occasional soap opera, so learned without realizing it. (The only time I ever watched soaps was when I was home sick from school, with the result that the sight or sound or even mention of a soap opera will sometimes make me feel slightly ill—yes, really.) 

That this is a learned thing is something we'd discovered with our oldest kids, but it was really driven home just how powerful long-form narratives can be—not exactly a revelation to either of us—when we watched the end of the third season, which as all should know, features one of the most shocking deaths in television history. We expected it to take them by surprise. We were not prepared for the fact that they were absolutely devastated. The Brawn was nearly inconsolable—"how could they do that?!" he said. "He was a main character!"—while the Weasel just went up to her room and laid on her bed, staring at the ceiling without speaking for half an hour. 

So we recently began the fifth season, a two-parter that has the unit bugging out. Colonel Potter finds what he believes is a suitable new location—there's only one small problem, and that's the house of ill repute which is smack dab in the middle, packed to the gills with ladies of the night and a madam who runs the place. 

"And that," I said to Top Management, as soon as it was over, "is how your two youngest became acquainted with the term and concept of a brothel." 

She just looked at me for a moment, then nodded. "You're really doing a great job with this homeschooling thing," she said. 

truer words

So I'm talking to Top Management about something, who knows what, but undoubtedly vitally important. What we were going to watch that night, perhaps, or the relative merits of Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs v their regular Cups. Anyhow, it was something imperative like that, something utterly central to the health of our relationship, and when it was clear we were at an impasse, we recognized that our marriage was, apparently over. (Yet again—it tends to end every few days; fortunately, it hasn't been permanent so far.) 

"Well," I said. "I guess that's that. It's been a good run." 

"Has it?" Top Management replied. "Has it, though? I mean...it's been a run." 

idée fixe

 

Idée fixe, (French: “fixed idea”) in music and literature, a recurring theme or character trait that serves as the structural foundation of a work. The term was later used in psychology to refer to an irrational obsession that so dominates an individual’s thoughts as to determine his or her actions. An outgrowth of Romanticism, the concept enjoyed its widest circulation during the 19th and the early 20th century.

I am the world's worst photographer. By every measure, I am simply terrible. Technically, I screw up the lighting, the composition, the focus, even with a self-focusing camera. I can't adjust the color later in a way that's aesthetically pleasing, and my cropping is haphazard at best. 

And yet there's one subject I'm drawn to again and again and which somehow gives me decent results, despite my complete ineptitude in all other areas. 

I call this series Portrait of an Artist at Work. 

venus v mars

I feel like this true story sums up the yin-yang of our dynamic fairly succinctly. 

 

Me: I think I'm going to hang a TODAY IS GOING TO BE AWESOME sign where it's the first thing we'll see every day @petersonscott: Funny you should say that. I set a daily Slack reminder that says REMEMBER YOU'RE GOING TO DIE

— Melissa Wiley (@melissawiley) February 8, 2020

haunted by taters of turkey day past

So I casually mention some foodstuff, and Top Management's eyes grow misty. "Oh, Marge and I used to get that all the time," she says, referring to her college roommate and eventual maid of honor. "It was her absolute favorite." 

"Really? I thought her favorite was your leftover mashed potatoes," I say, showing off my encyclopedic knowledge of her culinary history by referring to the one and only tiff they'd ever had, when Top Management had returned to their dorm room, famished, only to discover the Thanksgiving leftovers she'd brought back to school had been finished while she was in her Men's Images in Literature class. (Yes, really.) 

Eyes which had been misty only milliseconds before grow suddenly hard as diamond at the mention of that tuberous betrayal from [does some quick math] literally 32 years ago. "Too soon," she whispers menacingly. "Too soon." 

For Once in My Death

So I'm drinking my first morning cuppa, chatting with the Bean and the Golden Weasel, the morning playlist brightening up another rainy winter day here in the Pacific Northwest. 

"For Once in My Life," by the impossibly great Stevie Wonder comes on, and I realize that whenever someone asks me what my favorite song is—something that, I recently realized, doesn't happen nearly as often once you're out of school—this masterpiece never occurs to me, and yet when it's playing, it just may be my all-time fave. 

(I mean. Right?) 

A few minutes later, I mention this revelation to Top Management. She gets a look on her face. I mean, she's always got a look on her face, but this one...this one's different. 

"What?" I ask. "I've told you that before? I've told you that before, probably, haven't I?" 

She starts laughing. "Since 1989," she says slowly, "That's the song I've been planning to play at your memorial." 

the pause that refreshes

It's a slightly unusual day. The Boy is home on a weekday, on account of a school holiday, which alters the day's rhythm for his two younger siblings, as well as his parents. I was up until after 3 a.m., finishing up a script, and since I didn't need to get up before dawn to make The Boy's lunch, I slept in. A bit after 9:30 I pinged Top Management, who's been up for hours, to let her know I was awake. 

She comes in and flops down next to me. "Ah, bed," she sighs. "Bed is so good. My back likes bed."

She looks at her phone. "All right. I have so much I have to get done today. I'm going to be so productive. Let's see: it's 9:45. I'm going to play Minecraft until 10." 

There's a pause. Then she adds, through gritted teeth, "Thirty." 

spite management

So Top Management is telling me this story about a guy who bought a spite cow. That's right: a spite cow. Which, in addition to being the name of my new Donny and Marie cover band, is a great tale of why it's rarely a good idea to get really petty with your next-door neighbor. That it would almost never turn out well for the initial instigator, and almost certainly worse. 

"I would be so good at that," Top Management says softly. 

A pause, and then she repeats. "I would be so good at that." 

A longer pause, and then a whispered, "I would." 

I suspect up and down our block, our (very nice!) neighbors felt a chill run up their spines. 

the lady beats the tiger

It's a lazy Sunday morning. I'm out in the dining room, drinking coffee, while the Golden Weasel and the Brawn eat breakfast, and the Boy makes sure everything is just so: plants waters, silverware put away, the absolute necessities of proper living. 

I pour another cup of coffee and am about to head downstairs when I make a brief stop in what the kids refer to as "Mom's Bedroom" — yes, for the record, it's also where I sleep, but that's just a detail. They know what's what. 

Naturally, the Brawn shadows me, because at age almost 11, he still hasn't come close to growing out of his mother worship yet. (For that matter, neither have any of his older siblings.) As we stand at the foot of the bed, Top Management looks up from her reading, an eyebrow raised in a way that's simultaneously imperious and fetching, with just a soupçon of amusement. 

"Only one of us can be in here," I say, glancing down at the enormous head of tousled yellow hair next to me. "Which one of us do you choose?" 

Top Management and the Brawn both laugh. 

She then smiles and snuggles down into the covers just a tiny bit more. "Me," she says. 

she knows me so well

So Top Management found out a few of her favorite creators are in town for a thing. Naturally, she got in touch to see if they wanted to recreate a mini-version of their annual SDCC tradition of Kid Lit Drinks Night and naturally they did. Since I'm friendly with two of the people, and a few of the others are comic book peeps, she very kindly asked if I'd like to join them, knowing I would, in fact, not. Still, she made the effort, and it's appreciated. 

We discussed whether she'd take a Lyft home or if I'd come pick her up, and decided it was open-ended; we'd see where the night went. "Maybe," she suggested, "you could come in and hang out for just a bit if you come pick me up?" I laughed and said, sure, maybe. We'd see. 

She pinged me just now: 

So much fun!

So loud.

You'd hate it. 

Samson and Delightful

I walk into Top Management's studio just as she's singing, "Romeo and Juliet..." She stops when she sees me. 

I'm gobsmacked that she'd leave hanging like that. "Well?! What's the next line? Is it 'they never felt this way' or 'Samson and Delilah'?" 

She smiles and hugs me. "They never felt this way, I bet," she croons in my favorite voice in the world. 

I melt, overwhelmed by love. 

Then she sneers, "because they took the easy way out." 

And people think I'm the cynic. 

not dancing?

So Top Management sent me this just now: 

I laughed. 

She added, "I would have uttered some choice profanities at the screen but the kids were in the kitchen." 

 

not still life

As anyone who's glanced at Top Management's Instagram account knows, one of her favorite things to do is to take excellent photos of gorgeous flora. 

One of my favorite things to do is to take terrible photos of gorgeous Top Management...especially when she's taking excellent photos of gorgeous flora.

She continues to tolerate me. 

math checks out

So I'm putting stuff in the recycling. "I know," Top Management grumbles, as I pick up a Coke can. "I just wanted one, okay? I hadn't had one in a while." 

She gets a look on her face, as we both think more or less the same thing. 

"I mean, except for the one I had yesterday." 

I bury my face in her neck, overcome with adoration. "What are the odds?" I murmur. 

She doesn't have to ask "of what," because we both know I mean what are the odds that her first college would be sold to the Japanese and that we would meet half a continent away shortly after our 20th birthdays in a play in which she was amazing and I mostly knew my lines and what are the odds we'd still be together 30 years later and more in love than ever? 

"Slim," she replies matter-of-factly, then recalculates using her characteristic method of estimating something, anything. "Seven or eight miles, maybe." 

it's the little (real) things

Top Management comes up to me, smiling sweetly. "Hey," she whispers. "I love you." 

After the dozens of times she's said it, I'm still touched. "Aw, thanks. What brought that on?"

She pauses, pondering, then laughs. "I think it was the sound of you opening a Coke for me." 

25 and counting

 

The first time I saw her, across the oh so clichéd crowded room, I couldn't believe my eyes: why on earth was a junior high school student at this college party? Oh, no, I was assured, she's actually a junior in college. Her? No. Impossible. And yet apparently it was true. 

 

Then we got cast in a play together. Even though we'd never spoken, I remembered her immediately—how could I not? It was the impossibly young-looking girl from a few months back. Weird casting—she was so friendly and upbeat and it didn't seem like she could possibly fit the snotty, uptight character at all—but whatever. And then we sat down at the first table read and I was blown away to the point of total intimidation by her acting chops; there were several good actors in the play but she was an obvious step above the rest. Several steps. Several big steps. 

 

I couldn't figure it out. She was such a great actress and yet...and yet she seemed maybe a bit ditzy? She was always laughing. And if I'd learned anything in my 20 years of hard-earned wisdom it was that happy people are not smart. Grim and gritty people, they're the smart ones. The tortured souls. Not people who enjoy life.

 

And then came the night a week or two later when I really spoke with her for the first time and realized, oh...oh my. She's not just smart. She's brilliant. She's brilliant and I'm an idiot. She's brilliant and funny and talented and sweet and so out of my league. And yet...she had this one really glaring character flaw: she seemed to kinda like me. That...didn't seem possible. 

 

 

Yeah, turns it out it very much was. We've been — as far as I know — exclusive ever since that night. (I mean, we never actually had The Talk about whether or not we were officially dating, but I'm assuming that getting married means we're exclusive now?) She went back to Colorado for the summer and I went back to Connecticut but we kept talking and when the fall semester rolled around we fell right back into the whole boyfriend and girlfriend thing with long drives through the Virginia countryside. She graduated and proceeded to spin her wheels for a year, waiting for me to catch up.

 

Then I graduated and moved up to New York City to work at a job she'd scored for me and she headed down to grad school in North Carolina to be with people who were more her intellectual speed. 

 

 

And still we stayed together, talking every single night for hours on the phone.

 

 

She graduated and moved up to work in publishing and then we got married and had a kid and then another and then another and moved to Virginia and had a few more and then out to Southern California—the one place she swore she'd never live but needs must—where we had another and I worked a terrible, terrible job and then went freelance so I could be home with them again, since that's all I ever want to do. And now we're up here in the Pacific Northwest and it's the best fit we've ever had, with great food and gorgeous volcanos and so many people with purple hair and somehow as of today it's been almost exactly half my life I've now been married to her. It doesn't seem possible. And yet math doesn't lie, no matter how much one tries to convince it to. 

 

 

She's still the one with whom I want to share every dumb or fascinating or infuriating or helpful or mildly humorous thing I read. She's still the one I want to curl up on the couch and binge-watch shows with. She's still the one who grabs my hand when we go out for a walk, if I haven't already grabbed hers first. (I'm positive I almost always reach out for her hand first and she's sure she always initiates. This is perhaps the only disagreement we have ever had about which I am absolutely right.) She's my best friend, my favorite writer, my favorite singer, my role model and the hottest damn thing in the world. 

 

 

Every night I do all the little closing up of the house things: make sure the basement lights are off, the porch lights on, doors are locked, the water in the fridge is refilled, that she's got water on her nightstand, all that. And then I get in bed and I'll read for a few minutes before I hear her book softly hit the mattress as she falls asleep. The sound of the book falling usually wakes her up just enough to grunt grumpily—every night, the act of falling asleep annoys her, as it means she's not going to be able to read or sing or garden for while and what a waste. And I'll look at that face, still impossibly adorable, still impossibly young looking, even as the first greys have started to show in her still magnificent hair, and I'll think I can't possibly be this lucky, she cannot possibly still like me—maybe this is it, maybe this is the day my luck runs out and she'll wake up tomorrow and the moment I've been waiting for since we first started dating will be here, and she'll finally be tired of me, and wonder what on earth she was ever thinking. And if so, well, I smile as I watch her breathe in her sleep, the corner of her mouth doing that little twitch it sometimes does, and I think, hey, I had a good run. 

 

And then the next morning rolls around and she comes in from her early morning writing session to wake me up so I can make The Boy's lunch and she smiles at me with that same incandescent smile and I think, well, nope, I seem to still have at least one more day as the luckiest guy on the planet. After 25 years it still doesn't really seem possible. And yet. 

 

 

And yet. 

 

guilty as charged

So Top Management is doing that thing where she looks in the fridge, she looks in a cabinet, she looks in the freezer, she looks in another cabinet, she paces. I sense she's searching for something, perhaps food of some sort. 

"I've been really craving something savory," she grumbles. "Salty. Crunchy." 

I have to head to the store to buy stuff for dinner, so I pick up broccoli. It's crunchy and it can be salty. Wisely, I then also buy Doritos. 

I pop into the studio upon my return and hand her the bag. Her eyes light up. 

"You're the devil," she gasps. 

I try to pull the bag back, but her claws are sunk well in. 

"But you're my kind of devil," she adds. 

very much pro-creation

There is almost nothing in the world that makes me happier than walking into her studio and seeing Top Management writing.

Unfortunately, if I'm seeing it, it usually means I just interrupted her and I only realize it when she slowly looks up at me with eyes that are a thousand miles away. 

Whoops. 

(And experience has taught me that frantically whispering "go back to writing! go back to writing!" isn't nearly as helpful as you might expect.) 

[image stolen from an ebay listing which seems to have been taken down long long ago]

mean girl

I'm heading downstairs when Top Management says, "you're going to be so mad at me when you get to your computer." 

I am, obviously, highly dubious. We've been together for [quickly does math and comes up with either 21 or 37 years and either seems plausible] some time now and I've not once been less than overjoyed with every single aspect of her (with the obvious exception of her bank account which is not nearly as overflowing with doubloons as I'd anticipated one belonging to a poetry major would be). 

And then I get downstairs. And she was right, as usual. 

I'd sorta kinda expected to see some delicious yet terrible for me treat to be awaiting me. 

Instead, I saw these photos in my inbox. 

I remember when I once loved my wife, five minutes ago, before she reached into my chest, ripped out my heart and slapped it onto the floor, cackling madly as she danced in its gory remains. 

(It's possible I do not care for the passage of time, in general.)