The Nags

Every morning at 5:00 my cat sits on my chest and pushes things off the nightstand. One. Item. At a time. He doesn’t want food. He wants me to know he could.

Four-hour drive to Grandma’s. I kept a tally. "Are we there yet?" 61 times. "I’m hungry" 23 times. "He’s looking at me" 14 times. And once, at hour three, very sweetly: "Are we there yet, but nicely?"

"Oh, you don’t have to call. I’ll just sit here by the phone. In the cold. I knitted you a sweater, but I suppose you’re too busy to wear it." I called. I wore the sweater. In July.

Asked my husband to grab milk. Asked again. Asked a third time. He finally said, "Why didn’t you tell me?" So I put a sticky note on the TV remote. He came home with milk. And the sticky note, framed.

At 11:58 PM my wife said, "The trash goes out tomorrow." At 11:59 she said, "So it goes out tonight." At midnight she said nothing at all, which was so much worse. I was at the curb by 12:01 in one slipper.

My neighbor never says a word about my lawn. He just mows his own, very slowly, along the property line, every evening, while looking directly at my grass.