Barbara, Those Flowers Weren't For You.

This is AWESOME.

Barbara, it took you 30 years to realize you were boring Jim to death? He may avoid things, but you're just kinda clueless. *I* attribute it to your hairstyle.

Let's cut Jim some slack, shall we? 

He's worked 16 long hours of immeasurable stress all day, while you were playing bridge and shopping, riding your bike with your dorky helmet on, and perhaps working a few hours a day, and I guess, if you have kids, unless you're so passed out from exhaustion, & you'd let them write on the walls in crayon when they were little & considered it postmodern posterity, it now it looks unacceptable, so the painters have been in/out and they're all like strapping and strong. (Yet, the whole time, Barbara's silently criticizing the painters for being so blue collar, with their splattered steel-toed boots, baseball caps, and Nascar t-shirts. Well, fuck you, Barbara. My grandfather's whole family were house and bridge painters.)

Wine will just make Barbara more sleepy. If she takes another Xanax, she'll be flippety-floppity.

Vivarin! Super! Barbara gets this bright idea that instead of taking more downers because her own day has driven her apeshit & she should hit the sack early, she augments her pill-popping regiment with some Vivarin! Super! 5:00pm is a SUPER DUPER time to take speed. 

Most wives were beginning to take downers (barbituates, chiefly, now it's more benzos like Xanax) in the 50's because living with short-tempered, workaholic guys like Jim and all that social planning were driving them apeshit batnuts. Then, after the wife cooked Jim's dinner, ready and waiting for him when he got home, while the wife did the dishes, Jim had a chance to loosen his tie, took his shoes off, poured himself a Chivas & channeled Barbara's blahbety-blah out of his ears because yes, he was trying to read a book or watch TV.  (Oh wait. Barbara doesn't really cook a lot. Jim'll either whip something up on his last legs or stop and get a salad. By 9pm, Barbara's kind of fucked up.)

Except Barbara doesn't shut up. Why not? SHE'S TANKED ON SPEED! She's not "more exciting." She's high. She yickety-yacked asking him questions and rambling lamentations, like "Did you pick up the case of cabernet at Binny's for the BBQ with the Douchebags on Saturday? NO? What the crap? I ask you to do ONE THING. I didn't get your dry cleaning today, and the car insurance is due in 3 days, and I think I should have this skin tag removed. It's so irritating. The eggshell white we picked out for the hallway looks too white. I don't like it. And hello? I took a ruler and our lawn is 1/3" longer than the Richardsons' next door, God, mow the lawn!" 

In his head, Jim's thinking, "BARBARA, SHUT YOUR TRAP. I don't even *like* the Douchebags. They're *your* friends from the Farmers Market. But yeah, fuck, I do need to go to Binny's. For lots of stuff. And square way Mum. And pay bills. And book flights to wherever the fuck we keep going, and for fuck's sake, my little junkie insane paramour is blabbing about our private lives again. I really should have a more stern talk with her."

By this time, Jim's trounced upstairs to the boudoir closet to try and find one more clean dress shirt and that last pair of pants he has where the zipper doesn't keep slipping down the crotch. He foregoes the soak in the Jacuzzi in favor of another Chivas and Barbara escapes somewhere...I don't know....and by now, Jim's on edge, but doesn't feel like running, so he checks in with the junkie & (in the junkie's mind) secretly wishes they were dangling from a trapeze, if she wasn't ALSO a yickety-yacking female.

Lost, tired, and ready to doze off downstairs, Jim comes across an old newspaper clip the junkie sent him. 

"Damn. Damn. Damn. This GUY LIVED WELL," he says to himself. "Barbara can blow me, not that she ever would."

I want fetucccine alfredo and champagne in the hot tub! Fucking A!

Jim lovingly remembers one thing, but forgets something crucial. After fighting tooth and nail with the little junkie, they reconcile and they make plans for a vegan dinner. Not realizing Barbara was due home early from her Bible study, while he's changing into hip duds to make his exit, he leaves a bunch of flowers with a card in the vestibule he planned to take with him. Barbara whizzes in unexpectedly.

Before you know it, there goes Jim:

About time he went on a getaway with the little junkie.