Incommunicado

Just when I was thinking about how I have absolutely nothing to say today, my mom called. She's on her way to an appointment with her dentist. Earlier, we decided that if she finds she's going to be late getting back, she'll give me a call.

That's why she called me back. It dawned on her that she didn't know how to get in touch with me. I have a cell phone, but Hubby has taken (what he believes to be) permanent possession of it. We use a dial-up Internet connection (yeah, I know), so my land line isn't usually available. If there's anything Hubby is compulsive about, it's his email. He checks that email account at least 15 times a day and he's only got until 3:00 p.m. every day to do it. You can't generally reach me on the land line; email is far too important for that. I have an upstairs land line for the Hubby computer, but I think that's hooked up to a fax machine (that doesn't work).

We have 3 computers at my house. One of them is supposed to be mine. All mine. Who gets to use it the most? That's right. Hubby. I am pretty much incommunicado. All the time. That's not generally such a big deal, because I hardly ever want to talk to anyone and everybody is well aware of that fact. Mostly I get calls from doctors, reminding me that I need to be at their offices on a certain day at a certain time.

From time to time, I need to be available. Like when my mom needs to tell me she's going to be late. I'm the mother hen type, even with my own mother, so if she's going to be late, calling is the only inoculation against worry. Which expands to panic attacks pretty quickly. We resolved that, when I get home, I'll fetch my cell phone so she can reach me if need be.

Somehow that brings me to the nature of my marriage. What's mine is yours, what's yours is mine. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be? (That's what Carly Simon said in the 70's anyway, before she married and divorced James Taylor.) In my marriage what's his is his and what's mine is his, too. From cookies to cell phones to anything else that I might be deluded into thinking is mine.

Hubby patrols. If he hears or sees a shopping bag appear in our house, he's on it. I have to hide things if I don't want him to know. (Every once in a while, I like to have at least one cookie out of the bag before Hubby motors through them and is sorry he ate them all.)

I tend to put packages on the bed until later, when the dogs are asleep and I don't have to fight them to put things away. If Hubby makes a trip through the bedroom (he has to go through the bedroom to fire up that Internet connection), I can always hear him quietly trying to dig through the packages to see what I have so that he can take it later on when I'm not looking.

If it's a thing, he'll just spirit it off and hope I don't discover it's gone. Or "borrow" it and somehow never return it. When I ask him where it is, he'll give me a look of mild astonishment that I have the effrontery to try to take something (that's mine) away from him.

If it's a food item (like cookies or chewing gum or cake), he'll eat all of it but for a tiny piece. I guess he thinks that maybe I'll think I ate it and developed temporary amnesia. Oh yeah, I ate that entire package of Pepperidge Farm Chocolate Chunk cookies except for a quarter of the last cookie and I just don't remember doing it. When I point out that perhaps I would have liked to have at least one whole cookie, he tells me he's sorry. Sorry doesn't get me the cookies back. And he would never think of getting a replacement bag. If he gets any cookies, he gets the kind he knows I can't stand. He offers me one and when I decline, he's puzzled.

The upshot of all this is that if you'd like to contact me, you can't. If you think I own anything, I don't. Even though I've paid for it. What's his is his and what's mine is his. It's an excellent basis for any marriage. Or so I'm told.