It’s a testament to the hubby’s learning curve that last night, when I was preparing for a little tea-and-empathy gal pal get-together in my kitchen, he just responded "Okay" when I called out to him upstairs to “Please, please don’t use the dish towels.”

The “just for show” towels I put out, sporting a vintage-like motif in my impossible-to-find gray color scheme, were souvenirs from my Vermont getaway. Once my friends left for the evening, the regular old dishtowels went back to their usual place on the stove’s towel bar, the better to mop up any future messy tomato sauce spills.

Unbelievably enough, throughout this entire bait and switch scenario, the hubby never said a word. Wow, I thought, maybe you can actually teach a not new (old sounds so harsh) other half new tricks after all. Or maybe, come to think of it, that other half was just tuning me out, mumbled a whatever-you-say-dear kind of perfunctory okay and never even glanced away from the TV screen. Whatever. Still works for me.