So, my girlfriend Elaine calls me up on February 28, laughing.

“You wouldn’t believe it! Our cleaning lady took our Christmas tree down yesterday! ”

Now, I should explain that Elaine had purposely left the tree up because my sister and her husband always visit them over Presidents’ weekend, which is the first chance they all have to celebrate Christmas together. They do it up big, complete with gifts, dinner, Christmas music and tree clad with ornaments and lights. This year it got postponed a bit longer than usual.

“When I came home from work yesterday, the tree was gone, the boxes were back in the basement and our cleaning lady had put all the living room furniture back where it was before Christmas!”

I was actually thinking to myself that if my imaginary cleaning lady ever did that, I’d have a fit. Then of course,  I realized if I could trade in my current non-self-cleaning house for an over-zealous cleaning person, I really could live with that.

Elaine added, “and you want to hear the funniest part?  Hank  [her husband] came home from work before I did, changed his clothes, made dinner and never even noticed the tree was gone. You know he had to walk through the living room at least four times.  When I came home and shrieked when I saw the tree was down, he thought I was kidding.”

“It’s a guy thing,” I said, thinking of the other day when….

My husband complains, “Carol, we’re out of popcorn.”

“I just got back from the grocery store this morning! Why wasn’t it on the shopping list?” I ask, somewhat miffed.

“What shopping list? I keep hearing about this mythological shopping list that lives on the refrigerator, but I never see it!”

“It’s here,” I say, pointing at the bright red and green hard-to-miss holiday-themed shopping list stuck magnetically to the front of the fridge, complete with corresponding pen.

“Well, I never noticed it before….The refrigerator’s big.”

Sometimes it amazes me that the human race didn’t become extinct with men as the hunters.

Originally written and published in the March 15, 2018 issue of Beyond the Nest Newsletter.