Leather Bow Ties o’ the Day have been counted in The Tie Room Census, and here they are—all 2 leather critters. I got the blue one in Monterey, CA when we vacationed there two years ago. I found the brown one on Etsy.
Since Suzanne has been working from home, I have had to adjust some of my daily routines just a tad. Fortunately, the biggest adjustment I have had to make has been in the area of my usual eating habits, which is kinda more like grazing.
About the time Rowan ventured out on his own to be a fine adult, Suzanne did a switch in her diet which requires she eat nothing tasty. (Yes, that’s really what her diet requires.) Well, what was the point of me cooking anymore? I was free from cooking! That freedom unleashed my inner grazer, which has allowed me to live off a handful of cereal, a half-dozen times a day—with a Junior Mint here, and a potato chip there, and a bowl of ice cream everywhere. And usually a steak for dinner. And so on. Oh, happy snackin’ me!
However, eating in such a manner throughout the day while Suzanne’s home seems just plain rude of me. I mean, she is ALWAYS right here in the same realm. Our house is bigly, but not bigly enough that we can avoid each other all day. How do I get my munch on? Let’s just say that if I could tally how many times I have spent time in the garage over the 7 years we have lived here, it wouldn’t amount to the number of times I’ve “had to” visit our garage in a single day, each day, for the past 6 weeks. That’s how many times I’ve been sneaking in there to “eat” from my carefully placed stash o’ not-so-nutritional food—just so Suzanne won’t see me. I don’t want to get her jealous of my too-much-salt-and-sugar foods, causing her to be swayed from her healthier diet. That would crush me.
It’s been really quite simple to keep Suzanne out of the garage for the last 6 weeks. I keep all the COVID-19 stuff in there: Used rubber gloves; re-usable shopping bag; masks which need washing; shoes I wore in the grocery store; etc. I disinfect the groceries in there. I out-and-out forbade her from going into the garage, for her own good. For once, she has done (not done, in this case) what I told her.
I don’t like being sneaky and secretive about anything. And I don’t delude myself about my current skulking around: I know Suzanne knows exactly what I’m up to. But she also knows I am, in my own way, trying to be kind. In fact, eating yummy stuff in front of Suzanne is probably more my issue than hers. She says it doesn’t bother her if I eat goodies when she’s around. I beg to differ. To me, it’s rude to eat pie when Suzanne’s eating a piece of Keto toast. Maybe, in the end, I really go through all of this surreptitious, spy-like behavior for myself—to prove to myself I can be nice on occasion. If that’s true, I’m actually being selfish by being kind. But my selfishness also says I care about Suzanne’s feelings. So am I selfish, or selfless? Both, or neither? Or am I simply writing a post which has somehow meandered from leather bow ties and The Tie Room Census, through my pandemic garage, across sugary and salty non-nutritional foods, over a theory of politeness, to this very last question mark?