A Couple of Things

Now that Conscious Uncoupling is a bigger trend than quirky quizzes on FaceBook,  I can’t help but compare the ongoing battle of the stars to the one the Captain and I would have if we ever called it quits.  We're both easygoing folks, and nobody's going to go all white around the kitchen cabinets over who gets custody of the microwave. But sooner or later somebody's going to lay claim to the last jar of fig preserves in the cupboard, and the fruit will hit the fan.  Contentious points in our settlement would include:
 

1. Custody of the dictionaries. We’re word people.  This makes for a tough battle.  The air will be thick with nouns, and adjectives will cover the walls. There's not a stain remover on the market that will remove ground-in adverbs.
2. Responsibility for cleaning the kitty box corner of the marital mill house.  I’d rather take out fire insurance and torch the place. Danger Cat alone is the reason our coat closet is filled with HazMat gear.
3. Subscription to Mental Floss magazine.  This one is in Bill’s name. It doesn’t look good for Albert Einstein finding a place in my new pad.
4. Custody of the recipe for Apple Bread.  Bill makes bread that Sunbeam would open a new division for, so I wouldn’t demand physical possession of the recipe.  I just want visitation of the results.
5. Responsibility of the marital Computer Tech to repair and update all estranged computers for free.  Because the blue screen of death makes me sad.
6. Ownership of the Disney videos.  I brought 101 Dalmatians into the marriage and I’m not leaving with less.
7. Continued relationship with the extended marital family.  Captain Keyboard has fixed my family’s computers, arranged for repairs on everything from telephone lines to plumbing, and initiated emergency garbage runs to the dump during the great fruit fly outbreak of 2001.  My sisters would pack my belongings in a steamer trunk and set me adrift off the coast of Charleston with a bucket of shark bait before they would let him get away.
8. Proprietorship of the family fortune--a three liter plastic jar once bursting with cheese popcorn, now awash in pennies collected painstakingly over an eighteen month period.  There would be more, but we keep digging into the stash for important life-enhancing substances like candy corn and Easter peeps.
9. Three McDonald’s Monopoly game pieces, two of which were good for a free order of medium fries in 1998.
10. The cast iron frying pan.  Seasoned by years of campfire cooking and bacon grease massages, it makes the best gravy in the continental United States, outlying territories, and Arctic ice floes.  In the Southern United States, the family’s cast iron frying pan is passed from generation to generation with the same care as the family silver.  I’d sooner part with the children than the frying pan. The frying pan requires less maintenance and doesn’t ask for allowance.

But after careful deliberation, we've decided to stay together.  Neither one of us is willing to take custody of the cats. 

Danger Cat Communicates with the Mother Ship.