It’s that time of year when temperatures sporadically rise and fall, and life in my home becomes chaotic.
Why? We have to get the winter clothes out of the attic because some days are freezing, but we still need our summer clothes, because some days it’s really, really hot.
Like today, for instance. The day I’m writing this, the temperature is supposed to soar to near 80 degrees.
Last week, though, I was wearing jeans and a jacket some days to fend off the cold.
So what, you may think. We’ve got a lot of clothes out at once. Who cares?
Evidently, we do. When all our clothes are out at once, my husband and I get good looks at all the stupid clothes that each of us thinks the other one is crazy for keeping.
For example, there’s my writer’s sweater. That’s what I call it. It’s a long, thick, black cardigan, and I’ve had it probably since before we got married.
And I’m not telling you how long that is because it isn’t relevant to the story.
Is not…
NO it is not…and if you knew, you might just take his side, and you, faithful reader, want to take my side because I’m the reasonable one in this story.
Am so…
Yes, I am too!
Okay, I digress—I love this sweater. I keep it in my home office and put it on over my t-shirt every day when it is cold. The problem my husband sees with it is that it’s a bit, um, shall we say, weathered.
And when I say “weathered,” that means that I have sewn up holes in it many times. Many, many times. Many, many, many…okay, you get the picture.
A couple of years ago, he was sure that he had broken me of the habit of my security, I mean, writer’s sweater. I got a new black cardigan. Brand spanking new. Beautiful.
But after trying it for a few days, I realized that it just didn’t feel like the old one. So I got old faithful out of the closet and began wearing it again.
One day my husband noticed. “Hey, why are you wearing your old sweater? Did something happen to the new one?”
Um, no…
I actually wear the new one from time to time. And if I need to go out into the world, I wear the new one. I think the old one would be too frightened to see the light of day after spending so many years either on me in my office or draped over my office chair. I certainly don’t want to go out and have my sweater begin screaming and frightening small children or folks with heart conditions or pregnant women.
Now don’t think that my husband is a snappy dresser all the time. He’s certainly not wearing anything by Ralph Lauren. In fact, Dockers or jeans on sale at Sears tend to fill his closet. I have to say that he usually looks nice.
Except when he wears these gray shorts.
Years ago, when a local store was going out of business, I got my husband a bunch of sweatpants. They had “tall,” which he had trouble finding. He was thrilled…until he tried them on.
This store neglected to say that when something was marked “on sale,” what it really meant was, “these clothes would be best on folks with six-inch differences in the length of their legs or having one leg be really big around and the other really small.”
And you all know how well that would fit the everyday guy.
Oh, and all sales were final. Surprise, surprise.
So my husband decided to use his ingenuity. He took the two pairs of gray sweatpants, grabbed scissors, and cut them off.
“Look! I made shorts!” he exclaimed, all proud of himself.
They look silly. I hate them. I’ve even mentioned, at times, about how much I despise his homemade shorts.
But then he gets a gleam in his eye. I know what he’s thinking. He’s getting ready to mention my sweater.
We both smile and keep our mouths shut. Because, in this case, our opinions are just too “clothes” to call.
Michele Wojciechowski, when she’s not happily snuggled up in her lovely writer’s sweater, writes Wojo’s World™ from Baltimore.