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Jon and I have this running joke about Wyoming. It started when Jon thought we had bought a bottle of vodka when we hadn’t and he wondered if I had been sneaking vodka during the day. Instead of being insulted I answered, “Yes, Leta and I drive to Wyoming every other day and drink vodka.” Why did I pick Wyoming? YOU obviously don’t know Wyoming if you have to ask me that. You don’t pick Wyoming. Wyoming picks you.

Once we were talking about movies we had seen and I mentioned a movie he thought I hadn’t seen and he asked me where and when I’d seen it. “In Wyoming,” I answered without hesitation. “On one of our trips to drink vodka.”

Now when anything goes missing we both know the explanation is that I took it with me to Wyoming. Where’s his razor? IN WYOMING. Where’d he put his keys? I TOOK THEM WITH ME TO WYOMING. Does he need to come over there right now and show me what’s what? IF HE CAN CATCH ME ON MY WAY TO WYOMING.

Yesterday in the parking lot at Costco I strapped Leta into her car seat and then jumped in the front passenger seat to wait for Jon as he took the cart back to the store front. It was muggy in the car so I took my keys and turned on the engine so that I could get the air conditioning going. Jon got back from returning the cart much faster than I had anticipated and asked me why I had started the car already.

“I didn’t know how long you were going to be gone and we were getting hot,” I explained.

“Didn’t know how long? I was only returning the cart. What, did you think I was headed to Wyoming?”

“Perhaps. Is that where your girlfriend lives?”

“Are you kidding?” He slammed on the brakes as he pulled out of the parking space. “A girlfriend? Woman, I already have my hands FULL with you.”

Alas, I could not argue. I could offer various instances when Jon’s hands are indeed overflowing with me (SEE: EVERY ENTRY ON THIS WEBSITE), but a perfect example happened just this weekend when he had to install this chandelier I bought myself for Mother’s Day. If you look closely like I should have before I clicked PROCEED TO CHECKOUT, that is not a chandelier but A LAMP which does not function at all like a chandelier but very much like a lamp.

Let me count the ways in which Jon had every right to pack up and head to Wyoming this weekend:

1) That LAMP is much more my style than his style and I had him install it in the middle of the dining room, a focal point in our house, a daily reminder that he married someone who bought a lamp instead of a chandelier without even thinking to make sure what it was before she bought it.

2) In order to install that LAMP so that it acted like a chandelier he had to slice wires and electrical outfits similar in difficulty to the mechanics behind shuttle boosters.

3) That LAMP hangs directly in front of the air conditioning/heating vent, and at 3 AM Sunday morning we awoke to the sound of windchimes in our house, loud, non-chandelier windchimes.

And he did it willingly, lovingly, expertly without even once hinting that he might take it down and drive it to Wyoming where he will lose it after drinking vodka and seeing a movie without me.