Getting off to a Complaining New Year (Cigar Smoke 1-15-09)

Well, here we are in 2009. I thought I’d start the year off right by complaining my butt off. My butt could use a little off.

I had a terrific holiday season. We had a houseful of people I love over and one uncle who maybe I didn’t love quite as much as the others, and I accidentally put a few laxative tablets in his eggnog. I never knew that old sucker could dance like that.

As much as I enjoyed everything and everybody, I was ready for a little post-Christmas combat R&R. So when everybody left, I sighed and sat down on the end of the couch, and closed my eyes, and as my left-wing friends would say, my mind, too. But when I opened my eyes, I found something I usually don’t see. Clutter.

I pride myself on being anally retentive. It’s something I’ve worked hard at, and have annoyed people with for years. In fact, I’m not sure if “anally retentive” should only have one L in it or a hyphen. I feel uneasy right now just thinking about it, but I’m going with the damn spellchecker.

Anyway, the living room is full of guided rocket missiles that maybe could have been guided a little better, and video game cases, and the TV is turned sideways because the grandkids had to hook up their Play Stations, and there are a few orphan toy box lids around, and a some gnarly drink glasses were lying on their sides behind various pieces of furniture. And our neighbors’ cat was tied to the pool table by its tail. I told you we had a nice holiday.

So, the little lady asked me if I would mind helping her pick up some stuff because “isn’t it about time you got off your lazy, lanky, marshmallow-Santa-filled ass?” So, I helped her. And when I got through, I sank back down on the couch, and she appeared again like a genie, and said, “could you come into the kitchen and help me un-stick these plates.” Women can’t even pry a couple of plates apart. You’d think five-day-old gravy was epoxy.

So I do that, too. Cheerfully. Isn’t cheerfulness next to godliness? Oh no, that’s cleanliness —
I wasted a fake cheerful act for nothing.

Then I quietly, on little elf feet, tiptoe into another room and close the door and sit down where I think Marge will never find me. I hear a knock on the door. “Are you in there, honey?” I don’t answer. She says, “I know you are in there. I can smell your cigar reek.” So I said, “Yes, dear, me and my reek are in here. And I have a migraine. And maybe something worse if you don’t buy that. Could you come back in March?”

She laughs her Stalin laugh, and says “You know, we should take down the tree before Valentine’s Day.” The sarcasm peeled the paint off the door. “Sure, honey. I’ll hop right on it, as soon as this pounding in my head levels off.”

So, even though my left knee is feeling horrible from my recent arthroscopic surgery, and from the constant getting up and down from the couch, I say to Marge, “As the surgeon said to the amputee, you don’t have a leg to stand on.” She says, “What?” I said, “Never mind, just a little attempt at one-legged humor.”

I finished taking down the tree and I put away all the wrapping paper and name tags and bows and Christmas bags and I said, “I’m all finished, Dumpling Face.” And she said, “What?” I said, “Dumpling Face, Sir!”

I asked if there was anything else. She said there wasn’t. And paused for three seconds. And said, “Except.” (Except. Boy, that’s a killer word, isn’t it? Comes in second place, right after “you want me to do what?”) She finishes her “except” sentence, “for the guest room.” She requested nicely that “to save our marriage” it might be a good idea if I took off all the sheets and pillowcases from the beds in the guest room and put them in the washer. I sighed a really loud sigh, and said, “I don’t remember signing up for all these things when I said ‘I do’.” She said, “I do.”

I come out of the laundry room, and I pick up my car keys, and I’m walking towards the front door, and I yell to Marge, “See you in a bit. I gotta go help some charities do something.” She says, “You know, as long as you’re out, would you mind returning these shoes that Ryan didn’t want, and then stopping by the UPS store to send that espresso machine back to Amazon. It shouldn’t be too hard to wrap.”

Knowing that spousal abuse is not accepted in our culture, I said to Marge, in a soft unintelligible voice not much louder than a whisper — in a voice she could not hear — “You shouldn’t be too hard to rap, either.”

Jim Laris is for the former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.