A few weeks ago @gimmeplants on Twitter posted a picture of an absolute abomination called "Just In Case Cookies." We talked about it on Strangerville last week. If you haven't read this recipe or heard the Strangerville episode yet, you absolutely should:
Look at this absolute abomination of a “cookie” “recipe” from a ward cookbook pic.twitter.com/j028nJdLg7
— 🌿aubreys. (@gimmeplants) January 23, 2021
Skylar no longer has time for basic news. If I'm being honest, I'm jealous of the result, but not of the means and methods to get to that result.
Medical school rotations are somehow even more miserable than my worst expectations. I'm talking about my experience with them, of course. I don't know how Skylar feels about it all, exactly. I can only make an educated guess by collecting the evidence and scrutinizing it. Bags under his eyes. His mysterious disappearance every morning before I wake up. The perpetual state of verging on tears.
He slumps into the house every evening and inhales whatever slop I've just finished cooking. "I only have five minutes," he'll say. That means he's about to take residency on the west end of the couch, put on noise-canceling headphones, and study until midnight.
"What happened today in the news?"
We decided to take the weekend off and drive down to Zion National Park. This was a risky thing to do, we admit, considering our last few attempts to visit the place.
Zion is one of the most beautiful places on the face of Oprah's green earth. The problem is, everyone else on the planet has figured this out. When I was a child we would go to Zion on a whim and have the place basically to ourselves. Now Zion sports Disneyland-like lines nearly every day of the year.
A few years back we tried to visit in March and the trails were comically crowded. Like, to the point where we were literally shuffling our feet in a four-mile long line of people for an entire day. Every hike felt like navigating the subway during the worst possible rush hour. After that trip I decided that I would never return and would instead just have to live with my memories of the park.
My husband, who art in heaven, hallowed be his name, decided to become an absolute terrorist two nights ago.
Look. He's stressed and exhausted and exhausted and stressed and I am the June Cleaver to his Ronald Reagan or whoever the hell she was married to. I cook him meals. I cheerlead him out the door every morning. Well, not literally. He leaves at like negative eleventy o'clock every day and I'm for sure not getting out of bed for that. But figuratively I slap his butt in a "good game" kind of way as he heads off to the hospital or affairs or whatever it is he does all day.
I'm the most supportive spouse of all time. I'm so supportive they should name a bra after me. A good one. One of the ones from the commercials of women jumping in slow motion where they have the voiceover from Jennifer Aniston or whoever is in charge now soothingly saying "finally, a bra for women, made by women." One of those. They should name one of those after me considering how supportive I've been.
So now that I've educated y'all on how incredible I am, you are prepared to gasp and pearl-clutch when I tell you that Skylar what's-his-bottom INTERFERED WITH MY BEAUTY SLEEP two nights ago.
"Did you have company in here today?" Skylar was asking it sarcastically, and I knew that was the case, so I guess that's why I responded "just my handful of potential suitors who won't attack me in the comfort of my own home office."
The inquisitive ambush was prompted by the five empty glasses strewn across the desk where I was was working. Skylar was already in the process of reaching around me to gather them up before I even finished playfully threatening infidelity and divorce.
I don't know how it happens, really. I don't remember bringing them all into the room throughout the day. I feel like I only use one glass, shepherding it back and forth between the kitchen and my little office to retrieve water when I'm thirsty or bored. And yet, somehow half the cast of Beauty & The Beast is huddled around me by the time Skylar wanders into the house that evening, demanding to know why I've decided to be so wasteful.
When Skylar and I got married my mother—the woman who birthed me into this world—the being from whom my body emerged through a process she has since called "a bloody massacre"—the person is supposed to live her life in absolutely loyalty to me—that mother committed an absolute hate crime against her only son.
She didn't mean to hurt me, I think, when she told my husband—the man who swore to worship me in front of all the angels in heaven at an extremely expensive party where I had to pay for napkins that must have been made of pure gold considering how much they cost—my mother gave that man advice that has resulted in a scheduled and weekly torture session for me ever since.
"Good marriages require you to be on the same page," she told him. "So I'd suggest you pick one night a week to have a planning session where you can talk about what you have going on over the next seven days, schedule quality time, and discuss any areas where your relationship might need work."
Well, Skylar what's his name frickin loved this idea. And the next thing I knew, a recurring event was added to our shared calendar on Sunday nights. "Companionship Inventory."
Skylar had just learned this phrase from some absolute monster of a person who decided to start teaching him Mormon lingo so Skylar could slip it into conversations with me at random. Within just the few weeks before this, he had told me "the Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight" and to "return with honor" when I left the house. But none of his new phrases caused me as much immediate emotional pain as "companionship inventory."
Today is Skylar's birthday. I spend a lot of time on the internet gushing about him or sharing with you the absurd things he does, like drink Pepto Bismol as a snack, or charge a karaoke stage while high on cold medication and bring the house down with a surprising rendition of "It's Raining Men."
I periodically like to remind people of the time my husband showed up in sweats, high on medication, and forced himself onto a karaoke stage. pic.twitter.com/Kfy7uGZDGR
— Eli McCann (@EliMcCann) January 10, 2021
There are surely people who follow me here or on one of the six thousand social media accounts that is currently rotting my brain and who start to roll their eyes the dozen times a day I start a tweet with "MY HUSBAND." I don't blame you. If I wasn't me I would totally follow me just to to make fun of me.
But I can't help it, and you wouldn't be able to either if you were fortunate enough to be married to Skylar.
Skylar is turning 31 thousand, or so you'd think the way he complained about his aching "dainty ankles" today when we went snowshoeing for a few hours in some mountains 40 minutes from our house.
We decided to retreat to this place after Sky's parents found an absolutely adorable treehouse turned into an airbnb here and gave us a gift card for it. It's Sky's birthday this coming weekend so we booked the only two days available for this place in the next many months to come and headed eastward on Tuesday afternoon.
The treehouse is truly off the beaten path. Far into the snowpacked back canyons beyond Park City. The instructions on how to get here, as provided by the owners, were essentially, "do not use gps, for the great explorers of our time have yet to chart this corner of the earth. Drive east until you see a large tree that looks like a bear then take the second star to the right, straight on til morning."
A couple years ago my friend Anna got Duncan a little stuffed animal hedgehog. She called it "Hedgy" and this quickly became Duncan's very favorite toy. My little man was obsessed with Hedgy. He would carry him everywhere he went. One time Sky and I were out of town and Anna was watching him; she sent us a picture of Duncan and Hedgy sitting on the front porch looking off into the distance together.
When that first Hedgy started looking worse for the wear, not at all helped by the fact that some of Duncan's friends got ahold of him and ripped his guts out, Anna got Duncan a replacement Hedgy. We tried to get rid of the first Hedgy carcass, but Duncan flipped out when we attempted to take it away from him. He would go stand in front of the garbage can, somehow aware that that's where we had thrown it, and cry. He loved the new Hedgy, but he loved the old raggedy one, too.
Just a few days ago Skylar and I decorated gingerbread cookies. With sweat at my brow, I mixed and rolled the dough and then I carefully baked them with love. We covered them with colorful frosting and other decorations. It was so damn cozy and lovely.
"What a wonderful husband I am," I thought to myself about this magical experience I created for Skylar. "And now he'll have these delicious treats to munch on for several days."
I even put them on a Christmas plate my mother gave me.
Look. You know me. You've been reading this site since you were mumble mumble years old. Since back before the war. Since the days of Blockbuster and Myspace. You used to read this site gulping a Surge and listening to Alanis Morissettes's's's new album.
We go way back, you and me and you and so forth. We go back so far we need a chiropractor to fix it. That joke probably doesn't make sense, but we are so bonded together that you didn't even question it and in fact found yourself suddenly ready to fight anyone who planned to come at me in the comments. And we're so tight that you don't even care about that fact that I censor that crap and don't allow negative comments here because I'm blogger's deep state.
So, since we are so bonded together, you are 100% ready to side with me in my absolute rage at my husband, who, as you know, swore on his eternal soul to worship and serve me, and he swore it IN FRONT OF THE PEOPLE WHO USED TO CHANGE OUR DIAPERS at the most expensive party we've ever thrown and which "we can totally do all of that within budget" but which we absolutely did not do within budget.
My husband. Skylar whatshisname. That man. That mannn. Yesterday. He was at the grocery store, and he called me and said "what do you need? I'll grab what you need while I'm here, if you'll tell me."
I thought, wrongly, what a thoughtful husband I have and deserve. I shall communicate the most basic of all messages at him and surely there will be no problem and he'll do exactly the right thing.
A couple years ago I found this film about dating and marriage produced by BYU in 1956 and I talked about it on Strangerville when I did the four-part series on old Mormon films. Well, I finally built up the stamina to recap it, with screenshots so you can see how exceptionally hot one of the protagonist's suitors was.
You can read this real doozy of recap here. Also, shoutout to Josh Fowlke, our artist at The Beehive, who once again created the perfect piece of art for this recap.
In other news, my husband, the man who vowed before God to love and worship and support and never criticize and always agree and suffer in silence for me, attacked me out of nowhere the other night.
There's an ongoing debate in my home about whether or not I'm a bad "finder." Skylar includes "good finder" at the very top of his list of positive qualities he believes he possesses. This topic comes up every single day.
Skylar: Will you please hand me the cumin?
Eli: I don't see it.
Skylar: Did you move stuff around?
Eli: I don't have to because it's not here and that would be a waste of time.
For the past several years, Sky and I have basically been the only house on the street to put up Christmas lights. We're frustrated about this because if you go a block in pretty much any direction it's like you've entered the North Pole.
Our street slopes down into a hill at about the midpoint, which is exactly where our house is. As a result, the east side of our property is about six feet higher than the west side. Because we sit at this spot, our house is very noticeable. So when we erect our lights, they really stand out and represent our neighborhood.
"Why doesn't anyone else get into the spirit?" we lament every November as we line our walkway with ground-level lights and fasten together a rainbow tree that Skylar begs me to leave in the box because "it's hideous."
Skylar has been begging me to get a new phone since before the war. I don't know how long it's been since I've upgraded, but apparently "too long," or so he told me recently when he held my current one up and pointed out that it was cracked all over. "You even shattered the back? I didn't know you could do that!"
So he finally got on the internet the other day and ordered me one. Some fancy shmancy new iPhone that is exactly like my previous iPhone, as far as I can tell, except now I have to put in my passwords, none of which I even remotely remember, on all 600 apps I use.
The phone was supposed to arrive in mid-December, which was fine with me, but Skylar was not satisfied because "I want to play with it!" So he did some research and found out that if he ordered it through Verizon instead of Apple, it would show up more quickly, somehow.
He cancelled the original order and bought the damn phone again through Verizon and told me I'd be getting an email from the company saying it was ready for pickup at the store near our house.
Two days went by and my husband, who is apparently not patient, called Verizon to ask them if they had one in stock that I could just come and get, even though they hadn't yet emailed me.
My phone starts buzzing. It's Skylar. It's 4:00 PM. The fact that he's calling me at this time probably means he finished his rotation early today.
I answer.
"She didn't really explain what that meant and AHHH I just realized I forgot to pick it up what time are you going to be there and do you know yet what we're doing for dinner?"
He starts every phone call like we're in the middle of a conversation already and he expects me to understand what the hell he's talking about.
"I have no idea what anything you just said means. I'm not inside your brain," I remind him.
The disconnected thought vomit gets worse toward the end of the week as he seems to be in his most exhausted state by then.
"Nevermind," he says. "Your turn. Tell me about your day?"
He requests this as though he's already given me a coherent account of what he's up to.
When I moved into my house in Year Of Our Lord XIIBV, one of the first things I noticed was that all the walls were beige, which I didn't love.
"I'll paint them later," I optimistically promised myself. And then I moved all of the crap I've ever owned into the place.
Look. Let me give you some old man wisdom from this old man. Listen carefully. What I'm about to tell you is one of the most important things you'll ever hear in your life: if you buy a home and it is not the color you want it to be on the inside, do not move your sh&t into it. Leave your sh$t out of it. Paint the d@mn place first.
I bleeped out all of my swears for my mother.
The point is, painting an empty home? A pain. But a manageable pain. Painting a home full of your life's worth of hoarding? An unmanageable pain.
Do not do that to yourself.
I give this advice knowing full well that I could have never followed it myself when I was young and dumb and so excited to sleep under my own roof and start saying things like "are we heating the neighborhood?!" whenever someone left the door open. I couldn't have forced myself to wait several days to get the painting done before moving in.
Ok nobody panic but I changed some stuff. I know. I know. We're not supposed to change things. Change is not a thing we handle. There's a reason we're all still here hanging out on blogger in 2020.
TWO THOUSAND TWENTY YOU GUYS.
But we're all still living in 2006 over here. The only thing that could make this site more 2006 is if I inserted one of those widgets that automatically blasts a Jack Johnson song every time you visit Stranger. Don't worry. I'm not going to do that. Because lazy.
I changed things because our super talented artist at The Beehive, Josh Fowlke, messaged me and was like "you do realize you have like 19 different and conflicting brandings you're using across all of your various projects, right?"
Then he sent me some new images and fonts and I had to go in and do stuff with internet code and dark magic and I think I may have accidentally launched bombs at Thailand at one point but eventually everything ended up looking how it looks now. Which is good. I think. Probably.
I'm so very tired right now. Skylar woke up at negative 3:00 AM screaming. Then he flew out of bed and started running through the house in a full panic. Duncan and I were going to follow him to see what was going on but we didn't because lazy and tired. Eventually he came back into the bedroom, climbed into bed, and whispered "the house is secure."
I'm sitting at my kitchen table. The fire is going. Duncan is perched in front of the front door staring out at a snow storm. Skylar is in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher and quietly singing something to himself. Taylor Swift? I don't know. It's probably Taylor Swift.
We walked around the neighborhood this morning to get coffee and breakfast. As we walked, we talked about our favorite Nevada memes from this week. Like this one:
Skylar's latest rotation is in dermatology, which I've been looking forward to because of a baseless but immovable assumption that it would give him access to an entire ocean of free botox that he will urgently funnel into every crevice of my body.
So far that hasn't panned out, but I've at least been able to corner him every evening for a full consultation about every suspicious growth I've ever discovered but haven't gotten checked out because I've always assumed I'd be married to a very gay dermatologist one day and could deal with whatever at that time.
"What about this one?" I say, pointing to some crusty bump at my hairline. "I don't know man. Go see a doctor or something," he responds.
"I thought that's what I was paying the GDP of a mid-sized country for you to be!" I yell at him as he slumps away and disappears behind his laptop to study until midnight.
The third year of medical school is not great, in case you're wondering. I felt very emotionally prepared for the first two years. Sure, he studied all the time, but he was also home nearly all the time. Skylar and I have been steamy lovers (not sorry) for over half a decade and his first year of medical school was far and away the period in our relationship when we spent the most time together, apart from the first couple months of These Unprecedented Times of Uncertainty when he was stuck at home with me.
