It was 47 degrees today in Roscoe Village, that is, at 5:55am. (I need every spare moment in the morning, but love hitting snooze. Hence, a totally random time. If I set it for six and hit snooze for ten minutes I’ll be half an hour late. I can’t explain it either.) In fact, it was a double hoodie morning. You do that too, right? The hoodie for your outfit and then the hoodie for under your jacket? A commutie. Okie doke.
That said, it’ll be 20 below in a matter of weeks and the number of hoodies will increase exponentially. You see if they don’t.
And now, for your reading pleasure, A Slice of Life at the Schoeny Household On a Night Where Nothing Is Overdue. Keely comes home from work with groceries, excited that Nothing Is Overdue and she can cook an actual dinner. P.J. calls to say he’s finishing up stuff at work and will be late, no biggie. Keely starts an alfredo sauce, pours a vodka and ginger beer and watches the last 20 minutes of a Law & Order episode from the early 90s. (Uncle Jerry!)
P.J. calls and says for real real he’s leaving now, when he called before and said he was leaving he was just kidding. Keely could care less about dinner and quiet evenings, now that she’s gotten an email about a play that she THOUGHT was due next Wednesday in rough form, and is in fact supposed to be a finished second draft. And emailed a.s.a.p. So she calls P.J. and panics, simultaneously sauteing chicken for the sauce, which is thickening nicely. P.J. talks her down, but is therefore delayed an extra half an hour as Keely had called him on his work phone.
Keely puts on a second hoodie (see? It’s not just for traveling!) as it’s freezing in the house and a new Law & Order has started that she’d like to see. P.J. gets home just as the pasta and peas are done (Keely has been cooking during the commercials, you see) and P.J. asks where they should eat dinner; dining room or couch?
Keely chooses the couch, for P.J. has a habit of falling asleep during movies and she KNOWS he wants to watch a movie. But since it’s early enough (7:40pm) she thinks he’ll pull through. They watch The Fall, a lovely though slightly disturbing fairytale starring Lee Pace. Keely joneses for Pushing Daisies the whole time. The dinner is fabulous. The movie is trotting along. Halfway through, P.J. looks sleepy. Keely offers to make tea or something slightly caffeinated. P.J. accepts and mentions a coffee drink he has in the fridge. Keely happens to let slip that the coffee grinder doesn’t seem to be working. P.J. is ON IT.
The next thing Keely knows the movie is indefinitely paused, P.J. has dismembered the coffee grinder and he’s asking her to look up the manual online. He calls out the product code from the other room. (Keely wonders where he’s gettin’ the product code from and hence doesn’t pay attention to her typing. Her fingers are cold, too.) She gets it wrong. He repeats. The manual comes up and they discover that the grinder isn’t intended for flavored coffee beans. (Attention KitchenAid: If you’re telling me that I can’t have freshly ground cinnamon hazelnut coffee each day then I don’t wish to live in your America.)
P.J. informs Keely that the grinder is broken. Should they go finish the movie? But at this point Keely has let the guilt and fear of an unfinished (heck, let’s be honest- UNSTARTED) new play get the best of her. What can P.J. do to make her feel better, he wonders? Keely suggests popcorn. P.J. drags out the ancient popcorn popper and Keely warms herself on the burning hot gusts of heat shooting out of the machine. Keely briefly wonders if this is a fire hazard but dismisses it. This is the first time she’s been room temperature all evening.
The movie proceeds. Keely is cold again. She reaches for the blanket on the couch. P.J. points out that poor kitten Bean is sleeping on it. She moves him. P.J. consoles Bean. (He was sleeping ON it, not WRAPPED in it. I’m not a monster, people.) The popcorn is great, the movie finishes…and P.J. is beginning to doze off. Success!
As Keely falls asleep she tells P.J. something that she believes is the bastion of romance. It is her tiredness talking. (I can’t recall what it is now, it was like 2am at that point.) P.J. responds with hysterical laughter, which is his tiredness talking. Keely huffily exclaims that when she was a little girl, this was JUST how she imagined she’d be told goodnight by her husband. “No one told me it was this wonderful to be married!” She inflammatorily informs him.
“No one told me it was this funny to be married!” P.J.’s exhausted laughter is contagious and Keely also laughs like a loon.
They drift off to sleep until Bean walks on P.J.’s radio, turning on NPR at volumes not usually heard at 3am. Keely puts on another hoodie, for now it’s REALLY cold.
The End.
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