Cheating, Unhappy Wives, and Eating Together – Thoughts from November 25 and December 2, 2024

November 25, 2024

I’ve never cheated on Patti, and I never will. I’m sure I’ve had opportunities, but I’ve probably missed them by being clueless to such things. If someone was willing to cheat on Patti with me, I wouldn’t want to be with them anyway. My flirting game is virtually nonexistent. I never really dated anyone in the traditional sense. Even Patti had to put up with my non-romantic stylings when we first started hanging out. We didn’t date so much as we went places together. Patti has put up with so much crap from me; there’s nothing I would want to do that would hurt her.

You may be asking yourself why I started talking about cheating in the previous paragraph. Is there something I need to confess? The real reason is that I’ve been listening to Cher’s autobiography. Many of the men in her life cheated on her or other women in her life. As far as I know, my dad never cheated on my mom. They both talked about other people at their jobs who were cheating with other people at work. I remember going to the house of a man who was cheating on his wife. He had what I thought of at the time as a smoker’s laugh. He disgusted me. I was glad I wasn’t an adult, so I didn’t have to talk to him. The only positive thing about him was that his life expectancy was low. Eventually, his wife would be without him and might find a better person.

Back in my songwriting days, I mentioned a wife well before I was married. It was mainly when the character in the song had a wife. In Goodbye to My Soul, I said, “Could it be this hard to earn a salary? I love with a card. My wife’s in therapy.” I guess I always pictured myself with a wife. There was no plan for getting one. I just thought I would probably have a wife someday. Admittedly, most of the wives in my songs weren’t happy, but they were unhappy because of the characters in the songs. One early song was about a man whose wife passes away, and he goes to a prostitute. He feels guilty even though his wife has passed away. You might think he was feeling guilty about going to a prostitute, but it’s about cheating on his wife.

December 2, 2024

We just had Thanksgiving. I had four days off in a row. On Thanksgiving Day, Patti and I stayed at home because no one invited us to their house. We don’t have a working oven right now, so we couldn’t have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Patti made some things for herself, but I had my regular meal. We rarely eat the same or even similar things. Eating at the same time is the closest we come to dining together. Neither of us came from families who ate at the dinner table regularly. Patti likes it when we can do it, but we have less and less that isn’t a major compromise for one of us.

Today, I cut my hair before I went into the shower. Yesterday, I looked at my hair in a mirror at work, and what I saw disturbed me. The hair in the back of my head was out of control. It was on its way to being a mullet. I looked at my hair in the mirror today and it shocked me how good it looked. Occasionally, I like what I see in the mirror and today was one of those days. I would still want to look away if I saw myself in a full-length mirror. A haircut can only do so much. It will not improve my posture or make me walk normally. I always think my walk is normal until I see myself walking in reflection. The entire picture just disturbs me.