Rock query

My wife is fiddling in the kitchen and I’m sitting in the living room. I stand up and begin walking to my bedroom. My wife notices me heading somewhere and that sparks her need to ask where I’m going. There aren’t a ton of options of places for me to go. Im guessing for all she knows I’m headed to Alaska via the bedroom portkey or possibly to flush myself down the toilet and out to the ocean where a fish awaits my help to find his son. I stop, turn and tell her that I’m going to get a naproxen. “Oh, ok.” She replies. She’s satisfied with that, for now, unless I don’t return within 41 seconds and then a marital home APB will put out. It’ll be unleashed like hellhounds looking for the lost souls of sinners. They’ll arrive knocking on bathroom doors until the I’m found and interrogated sufficiently through keyholes and door jams. My whereabouts and intentions will be discovered and recorded. If necessary, the little ones will be called upon to stick fingers and arms under doors to gain intelligence. The small ones have repetition on their side. They won’t leave until questions are answered, “Are you on the potty? Are you getting in the shower? Are you getting out of the shower? I can see you. Why aren’t you wearing clothes? What’s that thing? Mommy doesn’t have one of those.” Their beady eyes leering at you from the space betwixt floor and door. Moms stand back and laugh knowing their begotten will not be ignored.
As I step into my bedroom, In my head I still hear, “Where are you going?” It interjects my thoughts and bounces around in my empty head, knocking over the carefully placed nothing rocks. (All men have stacks of nothing rocks decorating the inside of their minds. They fall over and we stack them back up. Fall, stack and repeat.)
I can’t get away with anything. Not that I’m trying to get away with something, but it’s eerie how she always knows everything. I bought a new pair of pants recently and had them stuffed in a bag with a plethora of various items. I was carrying everything from the car to indoors. You couldn’t see the pants, it was just a bag of stuff. It was my bag, that I’d packed and I didn’t even know what all was in the bag. She didn’t know I’d been shopping, but when I walked in the door her head popped around the corner and she asked when I bought pants. It’s some sort of female magic. It often makes me feel guilty when there is nothing to feel guilty about and honestly I believe that may be part of the magic. The magic is there to keep us from being more stupider than we currently are. A progesterone packed system of checks and balance. It’s a level of discernment that is both scary and awe inspiring. A woman has the ability to peer into a mans soul while pretending to not have a clue what he’s talking about and there never has to be a reason for it. We (men) have the ability to forget our names when you ask us a question. Many times in a row. I’m pretty sure it’s a defense mechanism for us but I haven’t a clue what it’s defending us from.
I enter our bedroom and walk straight into the bathroom and proceed to blow my nose. I catch a glimpse of an old man with a lost look on his face standing behind the sink and I just stop and stare at him. It’s quiet in here. I watch him as I attempt to stack some of my nothing rocks back up. That old man over there has lost some more hair. He just stares at me, grins and then pulls his own finger. “What a goober,” I say, and laugh at him as I leave the bathroom. I have a pull up bar mounted between the bathroom and our bedroom. I stop under my pull up bar, reach up and grab on. I hang from it. I count to 50 but it’s really only 45 because the last 5 were rushed into 1 second. I didn’t have to tell you that but my wife will know the truth and she may one day decide to tell you. It’s best to always stick with the truth. I tried, just now, to think of another truth to tell you but I can’t think of anything. My workout has become hanging several times a day from a pull up bar. This is due to my joints arguing and pitching fits whenever I attempt conventional workouts such as pull-ups and pushups. It works better than nothing I guess. Soon I’ll be able to hang from things for hours at a time but not be able to pick myself off the floor. Middle age is a lot of fun so far. I’m gonna add planking soon. I like exercises where I just stay in one spot for as long as possible.
After a vigorous hanging exercise I leave the bedroom and walk back to the living room where I can see my wife canceling the APB. I can tell she’s wondering why she hasn’t seen me in 33 seconds. I make it all the way back to my chair and as soon as my butt meets the seat, I remember I never got a naproxen. -insert audible dad groan- The nothing rocks tip over in my head and clatter around. I can tell my wife heard them and stops what she’s doing. I roll back out of my chair and make a new trip back to the bedroom to get what I originally went for. My wife is now on high alert because she presumes I’m definitely up to no good because I’m just walking aimlessly around the house. I have no plan nor call to action. I’m simply wandering for no good reason. Only ne’er do wells, sociopaths and slackers do such things and she won’t have that mess in her house. I can feel her eyes and ears following me but I have to ignore that and just keep repeating naproxen over and over again in my mind. Naproxen, naproxen, naproxen I chant as I instead pick up a bottle of melatonin and come really close to taking it. “Pay attention,” I say. I need to get some more melatonin as say as naproxen, naproxen chants inside my mind like “my captain, my captain.” I used to have a Greek fisherman’s hat a good friend gave me years ago and I wonder where it is now. Now I’m sitting on the side of the bed digging in the nightstand for naproxen, naproxen, naproxen. There it is! I quickly take one without anything to drink. If I don’t take it now it’s gonna be another trip and the wife is gonna call the cops on me. Speaking of which, I look up and see she’s standing in the doorway of the bedroom talking to me. The first words I make out are, “Hello, why aren’t you responding to me? “What?” I reply. Her eyes keep from rolling and she says,“I said what are you doing?” I look at the bottle in my hand, “I was getting naproxen.” She steps closer to see what’s in my hand, “No, that’s what you said you were doing earlier, I mean what’re you doing now.” Putting the bottle back in the nightstand I swallow again because the pill feels like a lie stuck in my throat, mocking me, “I forgot to get it the first time.” Then I step by her and walk out of the bedroom and back towards the living room. I can feel her pride in me being rationalized in her mind and her repeating , “He’s an idiot, but he’s my idiot. I can fix this.”
So when I sit down in my chair I vow to show her I’m still valuable and have useful skills and that I don’t mean to be this house wandering boob she’s becoming more accustomed to. I do this by writing this short story about the hidden inner workings of male and female minds, the mechanics of marriage and the effects all of the above have on sanity and the ability to hold on to it. Men stack rocks and women peer at us with questions that may or may not have answers. I’m pretty sure it’s the circle of life. When my wife finds my hiding spot I’ll ask her to make sure.