Why "Linguini on the Ceiling"?

In the book Good Faith by Jane Smiley one of the characters, a middle-aged married woman with two teenaged sons (hmmm, sound familiar?), explains why she is having an affair by describing this scenario: She had arranged some flowers in her favorite vase and was just placing it on the mantlepiece when a football flew over her shoulder, breaking the vase and spilling water everywhere. This, she feels, sums up her life: "I live in a frat house."

Now, I don't have a mantle (yet...more on that another time). But I do have this:


Yes. That's what it is. Linguini on my ceiling. Why?

Good luck with that one. But, you ask, who...?

I asked the same thing. Who would put linguini on my ceiling? The answer I got?

Silence.

So you see, I'm supposed to believe a total stranger entered my house, sneaked past four dogs, flung a strand of cooked pasta onto my ceiling, and sneaked out.

Heir 2 later fessed up. Heir 1 was highly insulted that I even considered him, claiming flinging macaroni is not his style.

This, however, is:


This was facing the commode in our bathroom during a party, with a caption I've cropped out. Rumor has it that it has faced the commode in a local Walmart and a few local fast food places. So don't dare suggest that Heir 1's humor is as juvenile as that of Heir 2....

So according to Jane Smiley or, rather, Jane Smiley's fictional character, I'm permitted an affair, something I pointed out to my husband. He laughed.

Seriously. He laughed. The man whose food I fix, laughed.

Now, I could go around the house and photograph every hole in the wall explained away with the excuse, "I didn't throw him that hard." I could write a lament for the broken mattress I still am forced to sleep on that couldn't take the strain of celebratory jumping during a Virginia Tech rout over UVa. I could list the anniversaries, birthdays and Mother's Days I spent at Little League baseball games that went into extra innings.

Instead, I leave the linguini on the ceiling. In fact, next time we paint I'm painting right over it. I have this vision of decades from now, when I'm long gone (not dead -- just to Ocracoke), someone preparing the kitchen ceiling for repainting, coming across the linguini and wondering...

Besides, I'm too damn tired to have an affair.