Lisa Kroese
2019 Jan 12
Updated: Feb 7, 2019
It's a Saturday Steve and I are going to our Palmdale house to paint and do more work. It's for sale. We bought it two years ago thinking he was going to stay at Scaled and our kids would grow up in it. He is asking me if I am ready yet, I am sitting on our mattress reading. I don't want to go, he's standing in the doorway between our room and our bathroom.
I start moving my pile of books around but I don't get up, "I'm missing the free repair cafe at The Armory."
"I don't even know what that is," he says.
"You bring them your broken stuff and they fix it for you. Free," I explain.
Steve says, "I do that for you."
I look up, "No, you don't. You say you're going to do it but then it sits there for three years, like Vivi's teddy bear with the split back seam that you were going to sew."
"I don't even know where that is anymore," he says.
"I got rid of it 'cause you were never gonna fix it."
"Yes, I do. I fix your necklaces. I fix toys. I fix your computer for you."
"The necklace is on the cabinet in the dining room, still broken. And you never help me with my computer. You tell me that I am asking a neuroscientist to fix my broken pinky toe. I take my computers to the Genius Bar now."
He doesn't argue, "How's that work?"
He, of course, does fix things sometimes. But I don't say that.
"They fixed my graphics card last time even though the warranty was expired. But when Mira stepped on my laptop and broke it, I just ordered a new one that time."
Steve now launches into a ten minute monologue about Bill Gates, Microsoft, Apple, Linux, Google Chrome the gist of which is that my husband doesn't care if Bill Gates is curing cancer now, "embrace and expand" was their motto but what it really was = Microsoft stole stuff and then broke it. At least Microsoft sends out a list of their thousands of new bugs that they find unlike Apple. And I really should be using Linux if I am so worried about my computer.
Fat chance, babe. Ok, I am ready to go.
