Note to self

You know that thing called gallows humor? I think Nordic Boy has a thing called gallows planning. That dude doesn't just plan for the small things that might happen in advance. He plans for the tsunamis in advance. And the water zombies that will swim out of the tsunami waves. And the scary zombie body lice that will infect us as they are trying to eat our brains. He will take it ALL THE WAY THERE. Right away, zero to sixty. It's weird.


Case in point. The other day, when I got home from work at 9pm and was wolfing down the dinner he had made for me, using a tv tray and staring at the wall while dreaming about the next 10 minutes when I would commence pajamification, he said this. Out of nowhere.

Him: You know, if I wasn't working right now, we have [$ x amount] in my 401k, plus I have a bunch of vacation that I could cash out. We could live on that for a while. How long do you think we could live on that? Or maybe we should sell the house?
Me: (stopping chewing and pajama dreaming) What?
Him: Well, we might have to. I just want to know how you'd feel about that?
Me: Why? Why would we have to? Did something happen? Are you quitting? Being laid off? What?
Him: (giving me the what's-the-big-deal eyes) I'm just saying.
Me: BUT WHY? WHY ARE YOU SAYING?
Him: What's wrong?
Me: Do you have a paper bag? I need to hyperventilate now.

Ok, so I didn't really say the thing about the paper bag. But I did almost hyperventilate. See, if you have been on the edge of your chair all year wondering if you would lose YOUR job, and then you find out that yay, you're not going to, and then you work a really exhausting day to where you can't really think straight, what you probably don't need is your partner all the sudden talking about LIVING ON YOUR RETIREMENT MONEY. It's just, I don't know. Bad timing.

So you know what we got around to, after this conversation went on about 10 minutes longer than it seriously needed to go? That Nordic Boy was just talking out of his ass. Just wondering aloud. And making my ticker rupture in the process.

This is like the time that he went to the doctor, and there was nothing wrong with him, but instead of opening the conversation with "hey, I'm healthy as an ox, but going to the doctor today made me think about what would happen if I really got super sick. Maybe we should check into our health insurance policy a little more closely, what do you think?", instead of that, he says: "I went to the doctor today. We should really check our health insurance to see what's covered when someone is terminal."

You see the difference? If you do, could you please explain it to my loverman, because he doesn't see the difference.

It's sudden, these weird morbid pronouncements. And they are often ill-timed. He doesn't do it often, which is good in a way because granny's heart can't take that, but bad in way too, because if you only do that maybe once very couple years or so, I forget that you do that. And so it shocks me all over again, each time.

So I am writing this out so that I don't forget again.

Part of what I think is going on is the fact that Nordic Boy and me have been together since the days of horseless carriages, which means that sometimes I think we forget that we are indeed two separate people. We know each other so well that we forget that we aren't actually in each others's minds. So he doesn't remember that I wasn't actually AT the doctor's appointment with him, and that I know he's fine, and I wasn't in his brain with him on the drive home where he started to think about more dire circumstances. I think he forgets that sometimes and skips right to the end of his thought process. We often joke about the fact that we have maybe gotten to a level of bodily intimacy where we don't see boundaries between us in physical space anymore, which is why we are constantly running into each other and accidentally sitting on each other (yep, we totally do that) and tripping each other up. Some people stay together so long that they act like each other or start looking like each other. We don't do that. Instead, we can forget that we are indeed separate entities.

Yeah, so asking me how I feel about living off our retirement without giving me any context? Irritating. And the mere fact that I am irritated is not a feeling I am used to having around him, so that irritates me even more. I don't know if it's a function of being together for a long time, or if we are just That Extremely Annoying Couple, but there isn't very much about that dude that truly irritates me. I am not an irritable person in general and neither is he, so that helps I am sure. When it comes to small irritations, we are truly too fricking lazy to get all excited about it. Being irritated takes up lots of energy. And we are tired a lot of the time, ya'll.

My friend Neighbor J and I summed it up like this. Some people are little yippee dogs by nature. They are going to yap around whenever anyone says boo to them. Other people are like Old Yeller. Old Yeller likes to sit by the fire and yawn when someone says boo and only gets up if there is really something Big going on.

I don't think I have to tell you where we fit on that spectrum.

But yeah, that one makes me crazy. And then I forget about it and a few years will go by and then all of a sudden it's Mr. Seriousface saying "I was thinking about building a panic room and moving into it full time. Will you help me make a to-do list about making that happen?" and I am all WHAT THE FUCK?

Except I won't be all What the Fuck. Because I wrote this post. And so now I'll remember that he's just full of shit on a biennial basis.

And now we shall all have a moment of thankfulness that Nordic Boy does not have a blog where he can decide to write a post about the times when I am full of shit. Aaaaah-men.