Sunday, January 8, 2012

A semi-retraction

My husband got a wee bit defensive about my post a few days ago. As in, I hadn't even gotten in the door, and he gave me a full daycare report with names all accounted for, and then he said he would notice if I disappeared and was replaced by some other woman.

So this is a semi-retraction. You see, in my arsenal is still the Christmas of 2006 confusion. It goes something like this. Two sets of neighbors moved in during 2006.

Cast of Neighborhood Characters Before These Sets of Neighbors Moved In:
- 50ish couple with 2 teenage boys
- 50ish doctor from India with his wife
- 50ish couple with grown kids
- 60ish couple - curmudgeonly husband who had gout and a recluse wife

Then in 2006 things got all confusing because we added:
- 30ish guy with his new 21 year old wife and a baby
- couple approaching their 40s with a boy (age 4-5) and a girl (age 6-7)

When I wasn't home one day near the holidays in 2006, a woman with a kid dropped off homemade cookies when my husband answered the door. Of course, he didn't ask the logical question of which house she lived in. He just told me later that day that a woman dropped by with a kid. The woman had ever-so-noteworthy hair of who knows what color and the kid was of who knows what age. (Of course I asked him - numerous times - without any answers.) I got exasperated because OF COURSE you should be able to tell a 21 year old woman from a late 30s woman, and even if you couldn't do that, you should be able to tell an infant from a child.

Right? Right? Right?  Or do I have special superpowers for being able to do that?

I ended up guessing which neighbor it had been. I go off to make cookies, drop off cookies because no one was at the door with my phone number on it, she calls to thank us, and then we start to get all neighborly and go over to each other's houses to eat and stuff like that.

I know, I know, I should have made BOTH neighbors (or, ideally, ALL neighbors) some cookies to cover my butt.  But I'm inherently lazy and didn't think the whole dilemma through.

And of course I guessed wrong, but the worst part was that I didn't realize my error until the next Christmas when the late 30s neighbor dropped off cookies again with her daughter. And then my new neighbor friend told me she hadn't ever made homemade cookies.

Whoops!

But this is further evidence that I should only submit a semi-retraction because my husband does kind of suck at names and faces.

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