I had to catch a train into Manhattan from Mamaroneck, New York, where I am cat sitting a lovable senior named Archie. But I would have had to do a Part II no matter what, because that first post was already long enough. Click on Hookversary 2025 – Part I to catch up or continue onto the rest of the story . . .

THE ROSEMARY FOLDER

Oh my god, the man loved putting everything in a file folder; he was addicted to them: either a hard manilla folder or a yellow online one. After scanning science names of twenty or more file folders on that external hard drive, I stop reading when I see a folder named, “Rosemary.”

I do not know why I felt apprehension when I saw my name. This was not the first time I had to go through hard or soft files of my dead husband. Maybe it was because over a decade had passed, and I wanted to be done with having to figure out stuff. Twelve years ago when I scanned another of his hard drives to decide which files to keep and which to erase, I was not weirded out in the least. I was stressed, though. I worried that I would throw out something important, which I would not have known because most of his science work was beyond my comprehension. Also, none of those folders or files on that other drive were named after me.

Inside the Rosemary folder, there are only photos from our wedding and one word document: Rosemary.doc. I right-click once on the file to view the creation date– January 2, 2010; last edit, January 3, 2010. The dates January 2nd and 3rd were a Saturday and Sunday, which meant that Hook was on campus for his habitual weekend morning work. I can see him, poking away on his laptop in his office. I bet he was smiling while he was typing. I double-click to open the document. This is what I see:

A flood of memories rush in as a wide smile spreads across my face. I cannot stop laughing or shaking my head. After reading the list and stopping at each chapter to remember, a deep longing to talk with Hook in the flesh tears at me. I do not cry, though. I cannot. I am smiling too hard.  Except for the Fishing chapter, I understand why he chose these chapter titles.

Hook and I had a lot of nicknames for each other. I called him Honey or Dr. No (he said “No” to everything) or Baby or Doofus Brain. His nicknames for me were: Babycakes (dating), Babe (married), or Nut Job (when I did something he found baffling).

THE MEANING OF EACH CHAPTER

I’m laughing again, because Hook wrote, “in no particular order,” as if he planned to flush out the content later!

Book title: My Wife, the Nut Job

Current Chapter Headings (in no particular order):

• Passed out on our wedding night:  We celebrated our wedding luncheon at the Italian winery Trattoria Lisina in Driftwood, Texas. The only beverages available were water, coffee/tea, and wine; we all drank a lot of wine. Yeah, I passed out in my wedding dress after we checked into our quaint bed and breakfast in Wimberly. It’s not like he didn’t get to see bare breasts on his honeymoon; they just weren’t mine. I woke up to find Hook watching a movie scene from Charlie Wilson’s War where the main character is surrounded by beautiful, naked women in a hot tub. He was watching this while his hand was feeding himself from a bucket of chicken. I never did ask where he got that chicken from since he never left the room, unless he did, which I wouldn’t have known because I was passed out.

• Cold hands, hot feet: Our first married winter together, Hook used to rub his cold feet against my hot ones to warm himself up. He said my entire body was “like a little oven,” but he wasn’t so keen on that heat during the summer. This was the first time I’d heard about having cold hands, though. He called my hot feet “hot tamales,” because I was always complaining about how warm they were. If Hook were still alive, I would have driven him crazy during my menopause and hot flashes stage.

• Elbow jobs and back rubs: I used to have this knot under my scapula (I almost wrote ‘spatula.’ Clearly, I wasn’t the scientist in our family), and Hook would use his elbow to try and loosen up the knot for me. I’d yell out from wherever I was in the house, “Honey!” and he would yell back, “Elbow job?” I probably overstepped on the back rub requests. He was fond of saying, “You’re like a cat, always rubbing on me.” This was me trying to get a back rub from Hook: https://youtube.com/shorts/c0uKqtfnXb8?feature=shared

• Fishing trips: This is the only chapter that I’m not sure what Hook meant. He had a friend from the university, art professor Walle Conoly RIP, who owned a condo in Rockport, Texas. Walle, Scott, Stan, and a couple of other fishermen would sleep in an old rickety fishing cabin with no air conditioning and wake up before dawn to go out on a boat and catch the most amazing fish. Hook always returned home happy and relaxed after a weekend with Walle. Hook caught, cleaned, and cooked the fish. Me, I ate them. Maybe that’s what he meant.

• The wife’s spoiled cat: Hook babied Gatita even more than I did. I remember walking down the stairs one morning in that first month of marriage. Gatita was standing on Hook’s lap while he tried to read the newspaper and drink his coffee. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “She likes to come up here.” But his firm “No” when she jumped on our bed that first night in his house set the tone for the rest of their time together. He would not let her sleep on the bed, so she did not let him enjoy his morning newspaper. Plus, he was Gatita’s default doorman, saying as he opened the door each time, “She likes her little route.”

• Bread products: I never met a bread product that I did not adore on sight, which is why I never wanted them in the house. Hook was a wheatnivore, though (that’s not a real word). He ate a toasted bagel with butter every single morning including weekends. I sat across from him at the breakfast table and stared while he ate his bagel, shaking my head in envy and wondering why he did not pass out into a food coma like I would have because anything gluten tires me to the point of sleepiness.

• Culinary life: Hook was the cook in the family, and I was the cleaner. I sort of associated cooking for a man with being trapped in a life of domesticity that I did not aspire to have. Hindsight aside, I do regret not baking something yummy for him on Saturday afternoons when he was in the backyard making love to the lawn. So really, this chapter is probably more about his culinary life and less about mine, since I did not have one—heehee.

• Passenger seat driving or Driving Miss Rosemary: Yes, I was a terrible back-seat driver, but only because Hook drove like a grandma, obeying all the signs, never speeding. He was such a rule follower except when it came to using his blinker! (I always use my blinker.), He only ever received one ticket his entire life, for speeding, while I used to receive a speeding ticket annually. Oddly, my last ticket was 11 years ago for not wearing a seat belt. I did enjoy being driven by him, because I could see all the things I missed when being the driver. I liked to point stuff out, “Hey, look at that!” He said having me in the Jeep was like Driving Miss Daisy, mostly I think because I was always on him to use that blinker.

• Computer addictions: Because Hook never brought his work laptop home with him and he did not own a private one, he was not a fan of how much time I spent on mine. If I was on the laptop for too long and he wanted attention, he would walk by while I was typing then lean down and pretend to type in an animated way over my hands. Sometimes he would say out loud in a goofy voice, *Oh I have something so important I must type it all now* which would make me laugh, which would make me stop typing, which would make me focus all of my attention on him.

• The invitation syndrome: In my early years in Austin, I was the social coordinator of events for friends, adopting a more-the-merrier for all occasions. Hook was the opposite, and probably because he grew up in a much smaller family than me (my seven siblings vs his two siblings).  We found a halfway point, though, after the First Annual Hook Wine and Cheese party. I have finally grown out of the social coordinator thing and now find it tiresome. I am morphing into Hook!

• Mimosa maniac: Yes, I was a mimosa maniac on holidays. Mimosas were the only alcoholic beverage served when I hosted as a single person and then as a married one. The mimosas usually began flowing two hours before dinnertime. Otherwise, meh, unless I was at Chez Zee in Austin. And even though I favor carbonation, Hook and I rarely had Champagne or any bubbles in the house unless it was a winter holiday season. One glass of red wine a night was part of Hook’s discipline. Red wine at home but gin and tonics when we went drove to the Texas coast, and bubbles duing the holidays (but not anymore!).

• Primitive Pete: This one cracks me up. He either meant the time I tried to use a non-hammer tool to pound a nail into the wall or the time I spilled permanent glue on the kitchen countertop (because I did not place newspaper or cardboard underneath to catch glue drips). I was working on the glue project in the kitchen instead of not in the kitchen. I can still hear him as he snatched the glue tube out of my hands, “You’re Primitive Pete! Just like our shop teacher warned us about.”

• Delicate flower: I once emailed an image to Hook on a workday morning, after we’d had an evening of debate about something that ended with me saying in a pouty voice, “I’m a delicate flower.” Although I cannot recall what we were discussing, I do remember Hook snorting his response. The image I mailed was a drawing of a green-stemmed feminine flower with light yellow wispy petals and a serene look in her eyes as she faced to the right while gently screaming, I’M A DELICATE FLOWER!’ Hook’s response back via email: “That’s about right!”

• Wheat gluten and other remedies: Wheat gluten is how Hook tricked me into a second date. I did have other simple solutions like pouring salt on ant mounds to rid the yard of pests and weeds or rubbing liquid soap on mosquito bites to reduce the itch or pouring club soda and corn starch on cat urine to eliminate the odor or swallowing a spoonful of peanut butter to get rid of hiccups. Hook was convinced that none of my remedies worked but only because he refused to try them. Except the salt on the ant mounds. He appreciated that one, because it was an organic way of eliminating an insect. My latest hack is placing avocados in a Ziploc bag full of water to lengthen the time before they overripen. Try it and thank me later!

• Empty frig syndrome: This is one that always makes me laugh, because Hook once said, “You have a warped idea of what a refrigerator is for.” And it’s true. I do not like a packed fridge; it makes me anxious, because I despise the wasting of food, the wasting of products. If a refrigerator is too full, it is difficult to see what is inside or way at the back of the shelves without having to pull everything out one by one. I like to see each container clearly on each shelf, which means there needs to be space between containers, which means there cannot be a lot of useless food in there. No fresh or cooked food stayed in our refrigerator for more than three days, and absolutely nothing in a jar stayed past its expiration date. Until Hook said the “warped idea” thing to me, I had no idea how much of a refrigerator neurosis I had.

In honor of Hookversary 2025, thank you for reading Part II. Hook was a world scientist and known entomologist, discoverer of four new species of insects, publisher of numerous science articles, and now the author of the rudimentary outline, My Wife the Nut Job. He loved me so!!!

I will share about the Hook Fellowship + Hook Fellows next month. They deserve their own write-up.

For my Baby and his sense of humor, so in line with my own . . .