UPDATE: An Affair to Avoid

So, I’m in the gym locker room yesterday getting dressed the woman I wrote about in “An Affair to Avoid” walks into my locker area.  At first I didn’t know if it was her because, you know, she was moving around getting ready to work out and staring is rude. She was only 5 feet from me! Fairly certain it was her, I wondered what she was doing at the gym if her membership was supposedly canceled after February.

I’m applying some old Kate Spade body lotion (“Beauty,” discontinued) when she turns to me and says, “That smells amazing! What is that?”

As I am telling her the name of this product, I am freaking out inside. First of all, no one and I mean NO ONE talks to me at the gym. I am always alone and people rarely if ever strike up conversation. Second, no one strikes up conversation with someone half naked! And there we were, discussing body lotion with me in a towel.

No, I didn’t ask her about her affair and how she managed to slide by the front desk and get in to the gym anyway. And how ironic my one authentically nice interaction at the gym is by the woman who’s misfortune turned into my good fortune.

Next time I see her, I’ll have to say “hello.”

Not the Response I Was Looking for, Redux

My marriage is in a bit of a rut.  Nothing inescapable, nothing worrisome, but on track toward problems.  Our evening habit is: put child to bed, turn on television to something neither of us is interested in, put computers on our respective laps to surf social networking sites, and drink cheap wine until one of us decides it is time to go to bed.  Night after night.  Once and a while we get a babysitter and go out, and it is nice.  But also expensive and we don’t have the cash for that kind of event to get us out of our rut.

I suggested to my husband (we’ll call him J) that we need to come up with something we can do together.  A hobby or a sport – used to be golf until he hurt his shoulder and I don’t play well enough to be at the driving range without his encouragement.  (We also played Scrabble, years ago, until I surreptitiously studied a Scrabble book and whipped J’s butt.  I admitted my lying and then we both started reading the book.  By that point, whomever was behind in points would simply quit playing , and that just got stupid.)  J has fishing, which doesn’t interest me, and I have politics, which isn’t much his bag, either (at least, not the organized kind).  Thus, the rut.

“Think of something we can do together,” I told him, figuring if J came up with it, he would be more likely to participate in it.  He agreed.

A week later, J starts out a sentence with a funny grin on his face, like he knows what he is about to say is crazy.

“I thought of something we can do together,” J says.  “How about going to the shooting range?  You can learn to use a shotgun.”

Um, okay.  Not exactly the kind of “together” activity I was thinking of.  Basically, a random activity.  Sort of.

See, J thinks that our society is going to decend into chaos pretty soon, what with the financial crisis, health care crisis and general fear for survival these days.  We have been preparing by stock piling food, batteries, flashlights, etc.  In the event of riots, J would like to have a shot gun.  I would like to NOT have one.  That is the impasse we have been at – no fighting, just a difference of opinion.

Now he wants to take me out to shoot guns.  As a date, apparently.  He’s done it before, says it is fun.  Kind of odd, a bit scary.  But interesting?

What do you think?  Should I take my husband up on his offer, simply because he thought of it – you know, made the effort?  Or should I pass and then make an equally insane suggestion, like going out for a late-night pedicure?

(Why “Redux”?  Because the first version wasn’t exactly family friendly.  I mean, my family.  Same issue though, without the snark.)

UPDATE:  Given the overwhelming response (from 5 people, two from the previous post I deleted), I am going to go for it!  I will write a new post about the experience once I go.  Thanks for the support!