Another year went by as we celebrated my aging lover's birthday. He's getting to the point that not only does he get mixed up about his age, but his parents can't even remember what year he was born anymore. I guess it doesn't really matter once you hit a million anyway. As much as Bobby thinks he is still 25 (much like I do), sometimes his quickly accumulating years is as prominent as if he used a walker or needed Depends.
Birthdays are a time to give gifts to celebrate the people we love, but I hate the deadlines involved with birthday. They stress me out because I like to just buy things for people when I see something and want to give, not when I have a time constraint. Bobby is especially difficult to buy gifts for because he has everything that he wants and needs. He has been single and making plenty of money to afford all of his man toys for a long time now. I try to listen to when he starts talking about some new motorcycle or camera accessory he wants and put that information in my back pocket for later. It's never long before I am back to the drawing board though because he'll just find a way to justify even the most ridiculous items by convincing himself via "Bobby logic" that he needs the item and then he will purchase it on his own. Since I started thinking about birthday ideas two months ago he has accumulated a pile of unused items that would have been great gifts ideas. The pile includes the leather chaps he has yet to wear (regardless of my frequent requests), several never-used camera lenses and filters, and a brand new tent for his birthday camping trip in Catalina. Bear in mind that this is the same man who complained for a week about how I purchased a hand mixer for the kitchen that I use on a regular basis because we don't have room for it, according to him. Yet somehow he feels he can find room for the kayak he keeps threatening to buy.
Bobby left me no choice but to wait until the day before his birthday to shop for him so I could avoid having to return the gifts I knew he would end up buying for himself. I got him a new pair of sunglasses, since his favorite ones were stolen when he left them not once, but twice, in dressing rooms on the same shopping trip, all within the same hour. I also got him a wine aerator in the drinking spirit that I enjoy sharing with everyone with whom I have contact. Finally, I got him a gift card for iTunes and some iPod accessories in a further attempt to get him to actually use the iPod I gave him four months ago. He remains greatly intimidated by the iPod, much like my father is intimidated by texting. In addition, we planned a weekend camping trip to Catalina.
Bobby is incredibly set in his ways and not very flexible, especially when it comes to his "schedule". The schedule always includes work, the gym, various sports events on TV (e.g., Tour de France, football, Olympics) the gym, and the gym. Sometimes the schedule includes meals, errands, and sleep. The schedule never includes cooking, cleaning, calling people back, or closing cabinets and doors. In fact, I regularly have close calls with an open pantry door smacking into my head or nearly tripping over an open dishwasher door. I figure when this finally does happen (which is inevitable at this point) I will be subjected to a battle wound that is to be expected in the land mine that we call home. I know I could nag about this bad habit, but it would be in vain because any bad habits he has at his age are never going to change. It's like trying to tell a 98-year-old conservative southerner that "colored people" is no longer politically correct or at all socially acceptable. I do frequently debate picking up some bad habits of my own in a passive revenge, but I've decided that it would probably take him months to realize that I am purposely shrinking his clothes or leaving lights on. He would probably end up thinking he looked fantastic in tight mid-drifts and appreciate the convenience of never having to turn on the light switch himself. In the time frame it would take him to notice any annoying thing I intentionally started doing, I would get bored of the game plan and stop doing it anyway.
The schedule is a great concept and has worked well for Bobby in the past. Unfortunately, the schedule is based on the lifestyle of a 38-year-old bachelor living alone and straying from the schedule causes him a lot of anxiety. Everything is carefully planned. This transfers into leisure activities as well. The other day I sent him a scandalous text during the work day, to which he responded that sexy time needed to be reserved for Tuesday, Thursday, and the weekend per my new work schedule clashing with his on Mondays and Wednesdays. My bad, I'll tell my libido to take a cold shower.
In the spirit of schedules, Bobby was adamant that the Catalina birthday trip could not be postponed when my car lingered on its death bed and an issue came up at work for him that required him to work on that Saturday. He told me that I would have to figure it out when I asked how he thought I would get to work without a car because vacations cannot be rescheduled in Bobby's world. Mind you, this "vacation" required no booking since we were camping and we only put it on the schedule about ten days before it was to occur. To call him completely inflexible is unfair since the world stops for working out. I'm sure if I had told him that I needed to the gym on Saturday it would have been a more acceptable reason to postpone than if I was in a coma. However, not having a car was certainly not a worthy excuse to stray from the schedule.
This conundrum caused a series of arguments that made me understand why people kill their lovers. I didn't actually want him dead; I just wanted to lock him in a soundproof trunk without a calendar or clock until I figured out my car situation. The irony of the circumstances was that he was unwilling to help me buy a car that weekend before Catalina because he needed to install blinds, something that was already on the schedule. Whoops! I don't know how I forgot to put the car breaking down on the schedule! Imagine if I forgot to include going into labor on the calendar when I have kids someday. He'll probably tell me I should have thought about when the baby was going to come before he synced his phone to the calendar that said he was supposed to be getting his motorcycle serviced during that time slot. After many unacknowledged tears and several futile attempts to convince him that I'm not unreasonable for asking him to help me in the very first time I was ever going to buy a vehicle, I gave up and put on my iPod, something he can't relate to since he still doesn't know how to use the one I gave him, and went on with cleaning and organizing our place, working out, and cooking dinner for myself (but certainly not for him), all while he installed the excessively expensive blinds when we had lived without blinds for nearly eight months at this point.
In the end, Bobby postponed Catalina on his own accord. He then proceeded to become obsessed with looking for a new car for me, another one of his precious personality traits. He gets into research mode and can't stop until he has reached the orgasm of finding the perfect item at the perfect price. This often times drives me crazy because he'll get so compulsively fixated on something that he stays up half the night researching it and whines the next day about how tired he is. This time I was inconceivably appreciative of his OCD and delighted that I could stop complaining and avoiding the overwhelming task. I think this is what my mom meant when she said I should find a partner who compliments my personality.
We haven't made it to Catalina yet and won't for at least another month. Normally this would probably cause Bobby so much stress that his hair would fall out (if he had any), but he has so much on the schedule in the next few weeks that we can't possibly fit it in. Unfortunately, helping me look for a new car has opened Pandora's Box of obsession and Bobby has taken up the new hobby of unremittingly trying to convince me that he needs to trade in his truck and get a Dodge Challenger, but that is another story for another day.
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