Living Retired — ‘Salad Queen Meets Muffin Man’
Living Retired — ‘Salad Queen Meets Muffin Man’
By Gary Chalk.
Over the years Jan and I have used different names that we affectionately call each other.
Some names I call Jan include ‘Dear,’ ‘Honey,’ and when I want to upset her ‘Janice.’
A few of the names Jan has called me include ‘Gary’ and well, hmmm, that’s pretty well it unless you include “Gary what the hell did you do that for?” Or “What were you thinking?” However, these names are so commonplace I don’t consider them special.
Last week we came up with some new names for each other. It happened as we were making a special dinner to celebrate our anniversary…
Jan was chopping vegetables for the salad when she suddenly proclaimed, “Gary, I like that I am the Salad Queen.”
Before I had a chance to respond with, “Janice what brought this on?” Alexa awoke and said, “Okay, playing ‘Dancing Queen.’”
‘Friday night and the lights are low, looking for a place to go, where they play the right music, getting in the swing, you come to look for king, anybody could be that guy.’
Just like that our kitchen was transposed into an Abba concert! Jan is dancing at the cutting board scooping avocados and dicing tomatoes. She is in full Abba mode! If I closed my eyes, I could see her in bell bottoms and platform boots! Any minute she will be flicking the pot lights overtop the kitchen island! It is disco night. Alexa is pounding…
‘Ooh you can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life, ooh, see that girl, watch that scene, digging the dancing queen.’
Seriously though, Jan is the Salad Queen. Her sliced carrots are cut on a perfect diagonal. Her lettuce is mouth-size. No matter how you slice it my cut vegetables end up like, well, Bob Villa attacked them with his Dewalt reciprocating saw.
For our anniversary dinner I made some special muffins…
“Jan you may be the Salad Queen. But you must admit I make mean homemade muffins. I am the Muffin Man. You have muffin on me!”
“Gary, what’s homemade about your muffins? You stir a cup of water and an egg into a package of Quaker muffin mix and put them in the oven.”
Jan is correct, sort of. What she didn’t explain is when Muffin Man cooks it inevitably involves me making a mad dash to the smoke alarm to frantically flail a towel! It was no different for our anniversary dinner.
Salad Queen screamed, “Gary, are you baking muffins!” Muffin Man was speechless.
The morning after our anniversary dinner, Jan screamed from our bedroom, “Gary, the smoke alarm is deafening. Are you baking muffins again?”
“No dear, I am making toast!”
“When you finally get the smoke alarm quiet, please, come to our bedroom. We have a problem.”
When I reached the bedroom it was obvious that Salad Queen had set up to do the ironing: ironing board, iron, a glass of wine in one hand, the television remote in the other.
“Gary, do you notice anything different? Can you see my problem?”
“Hmm, Jan your wine glass is only half full?”
“Gary don’t be foolish. The ironing board won’t stay at the correct height. It keeps lowering down towards my knees.”
A few hours later I returned from the store with a snazzy new ironing board. I didn’t dare say “Happy Anniversary Salad Queen” because Muffin Man was pressed for time.
Living Retired is written by humour columnist Gary Chalk.
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