Nothing starts a dreary Monday quite like a toothache. This tooth has been giving me trouble for some time now, but it's gotten worse. Every touch of warmth or coolness sends a shockwave of pain through my jaw. Oddly, I've had a root canal and crown put on this little devil. Maybe I don't understand what a root canal is, but I was under the impression that the nerves would be killed off and that I would become pain-free. Did they leave one alive accidentally?
Unhappily, the weather is taking a turn for the worse, and Esteemed Spouse (on Spring Break) is out with one of his golf buddies. They are enjoying themselves at a heated driving range, followed by a lunch somewhere. Meanwhile, temperatures are falling from the forties to the twenties, complete with ice and more snow. Yesterday, much of the snow melted (about half of it). So I'm groggy, in pain, and unwilling to cope with ice and snow. But I'd have to be in labor with twelve-pound twins to get that man to put an early end to a golf date. He might cut it short if I had a heart attack or a stroke. Maybe.
Yesterday (not for the first time), I accused him of becoming more like his father as he aged. Now, don't get me wrong. I adored my father-in-law. He was a good man in many ways--hard-working, stoic, cheerful. But he was also touched with a little obsessive-compulsive disorder. As he got older, he got so obsessed with following rules and timetables that he'd drive everyone nuts. One summer I was at his house, and he noticed that my car inspection sticker would expire at the end of the month. (It was early in the month--plenty of time left to go.) He kept on, and on, and on, and on, until finally, I took money I really couldn't spare and got the car inspected, just to get him to shut up.
So how is Spouse like his father? Yesterday, I put some clothes on to wash and then I went downstairs. After a short while, he started harping about the clothes. "I don't hear anything. I think the washer has finished. Do you want me to put them in the dryer for you?" On and on and on. It never seemed to occur to him that I knew the clothes were in the washer. I knew the washer had finished. But I also knew that they weren't going anywhere. I wasn't going to forget them and let them turn stinky and moldy (as he has done a time or two before). I just didn't feel like racing back upstairs (as if I could ever race upstairs, with my arthritic knees!) to accommodate some inner timetable that he seemed to be feeling. As much as I love the man, and I dearly do love him, if he starts getting nitpicky naggy like his dad, I'll be forced to get postal on him. Even worse, if he starts using the word "outfit" seven or eight times a sentence, which my father-in-law had done, I'll set up a neurological check-up for him. We had noticed that my father-in-law, a good ten years before his death, seemed to resort to using the word "outfit" whenever he couldn't immediately come up with whatever noun he wanted. I suspect that he had the beginnings of Alzheimer's or some other sort of dementia. Even though the cause of death was ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), or so the doctors said, I have often wondered. As good as the man was, he was always a rigid thinker, always saw the world in black and white, never really one to ponder anything philosophical. He was a doer, not a thinker. He didn't stretch his mind with any new thoughts.
In that latter way, though, my husband is much different from his father. He is much more curious and open-minded than his dad. If only I could get him to stop treating me like a child who needs moment-by-moment guidance! I really don't like being nagged as if I don't have the forethought or common sense to handle my own daily affairs, and while I don't think he really feels that way about me, I think there is this compulsion within him to micromanage everyone like his dad did. It's kind of a passive-aggressive controlling urge, and it makes me want to do the exact opposite of whatever he wants me to do. So maybe the problem is mine, not his. (Isn't that a typically female reaction?)
Meanwhile, I've got to get ready to see the dentist. I hope it's Dr. Ted and not his wife. He's sweet and good-natured. She's all business, Dr. Efficiency. I wonder if she nags him about the smallest things? It wouldn't surprise me. Dr. S.
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