Happily Ever After

A Good Week For Television

by Valerie Nusbaum

I find myself spending more and more time indoors in the spring. Randy and I do still take long walks around our neighborhood, but that’s usually just enough time for my sinuses to get blocked up and for my nose to start running like a faucet. Yes, these two things happen simultaneously.

Allergies were a foreign concept to me when I was growing up. As a young adult, I felt sympathy for my mother and my friends who suffered from hay fever and were allergic to grass, pollen, dander, and other things. The only thing I was allergic to back then was the occasional man who was brave enough to ask what sign I was born under.

When I met Randy, the poor guy had allergies so awful that he was forced to carry a roll of toilet tissue around with him. Oddly, right after we got married, Randy’s allergies cleared up, and he hasn’t been bothered by the sniffles since 1995. Conversely, my sinuses woke up, smelled the new man in the house, and my nose hasn’t stopped running since. It’s true. I can’t make this stuff up.

I’m rambling on about allergies so that I can segue into all the television we’ve watched in the last week or so while I avoid the outdoors. It’s been a robust week for TV viewing, with plenty of choices. Here are a few of the shows (we don’t refer to them as “programs” yet because we aren’t quite that old) that we’ve chosen recently.

(1) The Coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla

Yes, I did start watching at around 5:15 a.m. I was awake anyway. Older people don’t sleep very much. Look it up. It’s a fact. Randy joined me about a half hour into the telecast, and we watched most of the four hours of coverage. The carriages were fabulous, and we do love pomp and circumstance and anything royal. I wore my tiara (the one with the red stones, not the one with the blue), and Randy made a pot of tea; we used terrible British accents to provide commentary. My friend, Susie, was watching, too, and she texted me a photo of the scones she’d baked. Our sister-in-law, Karen, who was born in the UK and migrated here when she married Randy’s brother, texted that she was watching and eating biscuits. In all seriousness, this was probably a once-in-a-lifetime event, so we figured, “Why not?” We weren’t around for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and might not be here to see William wear the crown. Unless Randy is correct and Kate is already plotting Charles’s downfall.

(2) The Kentucky Derby

Oddly enough, the derby was run on the same day as the coronation, so that was quite a day of headwear at our house. Naturally, we wore hats during the first of the triple-crown races. My first-choice horse actually won the race, but I still lost because I’d changed my bet to a gray horse who apparently thought the finish line was somewhere out in left field. Randy’s horse may have finished the race, but neither of us could remember what number the horse was wearing. In our defense, we’d gotten up awfully early to watch the coronation.

(3) The Diplomat

This Netflix series starred Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell, and asked us to buy into the notion that a woman who neither bathed nor washed her hair (or even combed it), who was both rude and profane, and who ate with her fingers, could be chosen as a high-level diplomat and be on the short list to replace the Vice President of the United States. Nevertheless, Randy and I watched the entire eight episodes in one week, and we were aghast at being left hanging until the spring of 2024 to find out who was hurt in the explosion. We’ll likely have to re-watch the entire first season because we’ll never remember any of it after an entire year has gone by. Or maybe we’ll just forget we watched it in the first place.

(4) Farmer Wants a Wife

I swore up and down that I would never EVER watch a reality dating show, but the previews for this one were just so funny that I had to eat my words and take a look. Randy had broken something or made a mess in the house (I can’t remember what he needed to be punished for), so I forced the poor man to watch with me. How could I have guessed that he’d become completely invested in the outcome? Wednesday nights have become “Must See TV” at the Nusbaum house, with both Survivor and Farmer on the agenda. Randy is in a lather to find out if Landon, Ryan, Allen, or Hunter actually gets a wife out of this deal. At least that’s what my sweet hubby is telling me. I kind of think he enjoys watching overly bleached and coifed women (whom the farmers insist on calling “girls”) wearing barely any clothing but lots of makeup and fake fingernails prance around the farms and do chores. I can imagine Randy dreaming of his own farm with four or five “girls” to choose from as potential mates. Me? I just want to smack each of the women and gut-punch the men.

Needless to say, it will do us good to get back outside.