I love to garden.
In fact, right now I’m sitting on my pretty font porch at my cute little red-tile café table while my fountain bubbles merrily and splashes the purple and pink rhododendrons blooming riotously amongst the ‘fairy garden’ of blue snapdragons, red columbine and green hostas. It’s my slice paradise: colorful, fragrant and all created by my own grubby hands.
I know. Not very ‘Confession’ worthy, huh? Me admitting that my hobby is gardening probably evokes images of rubber shoes and funny straw hats. Both of which I do wear while gardening…but I also wear a string bikini. That way I can multi-task; my roses get pruned and my shoulders get a lovely tan. Plus, I’m pretty sure my neighbor enjoys the view of me bent over to pull weeds in a hot pink, teeny-tiny string bikini.
Trust me, I make gardening sexy. Each month, I receive several magazines: People (keeps me updated on the latest celebrity addicts, romances and fashions), Cosmo (keeps updated on the latest sex positions), Victoria’s Secret (keeps me updated on the best ways to display my tits and ass) and Sunset (keeps me updated on how to fight aphids and when it’s best to prune my Japanese maple). When I’m very lucky, I can combine all of this knowledge. Seriously. Last Friday night, I slid into my new lacy thong from VS, put on a sexy one-shouldered top (all the starlets in People claim shoulders are the new sexy) and lured my husband outside where we tried out a few new Karma Sutra moves (I AM a Cosmo girl!) under the trellis of honeysuckle.
Historically, gardening is very sinful. The pagans—those crazy sex-fiends-- celebrated the earth with depraved harvest festivals, the ‘birds and the bees’ are so randy we use them to explain sex to our children and a ‘may pole’ involved virgins bedecking themselves in flowers—and not much else—to gleefully wrap ribbons around a huge phallic symbol. Added to all of that, it was IN the Garden that Eve was so darn naughty!
Yesterday, I apparently got so dirty in my rose beds that the Universe delivered a missionary to my doorstep to try to save my tight little sinning ass from eternal damnation.
I was blissfully down on all fours, attacking the stupid grass that insists upon growing in my roses and not in the lawn, when I heard the staccato ‘click click click’ of low-heeled pumps marching up my driveway. When I looked over my shoulder, a woman who could only be addressed as ‘Ma’am’ was staring at me over my white picket fence, her mouth pinched so tightly her parentheses wrinkles rivaled the Grand Canyon.
Now, here’s a secret. My daddy is a missionary’s kid. Thus, I am generally fairly kind to these fanatic folk. In fact, I think my house is on every denomination’s map. Latter Day Saints in their white short-sleeved shirts, ‘non-denominational’ big churches with their hip, guitar-playing kids, Lutherans (which I kinda sorta am) with their tasteful pant suits…they all visit me. I offer them lemonade or sweet tea, let them use the bathroom and listen politely for at least ten minutes.
At least, that’s the reason I choose to believe they all knock on my door. Probably it has more to do with fact that on Sunday mornings I prefer to worship my husband’s rockin’ body, the fattening goodness of donuts and the glorious scent of fresh-turned soil while my babies giggle and roll in the soft green grass with their puppy. To me, this is God, the Goddess, Allah, Buddha and all that is Peace and Good and Love in this world.
Stuart maintains that they all visit here because he’s a jackass. This is also possible. I know for a fact that he signs John up with every single religious group. As in, the poor sweet Mormon missionaries come to our house, Stuart claims he is already very devout (he WAS a Lutheran alter boy back in the day), but his buddy John down the street has been asking to be saved. Their faces alight with joy and the missionaries hustle off to John’s house.
John retaliates by using Stuart’s name and address to call all of those ‘change your life’ 800 numbers that run on Friday and Saturday night commercials, inviting all of us sinners to remember that there is more to life—or more accurately, the after life--than loud club music and ice-cold martinis.
Whatever the reason, my house is a regular pit-stop on the missionaries’ road to salvation.
Today, it was the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Witness ‘Ma’am’ stared down at me. I was on my knees at the time, a humble position I, contrary to my blatantly-sinning demenor, assume often. I get down to tie my girls' shoes, to examine my geraniums for leaf-curl, to worship my husband....
I think she was trying to read my tattoo, which was nicely displayed just above my barely-covered butt. This is when I knew she wasn't Catholic or Lutheran. If she were, she would have been equipped to translate the Latin phrase. Of course, were she Cathloic she’d then have to do a major penance…I’m thinking at least 500 “Hail Mary’s” for viewing such blasphemy!
Abandoning her perusal of my inked ass, Ma'am demanded, “Have you found God, Miss?”
Her voice was chilly and sharp. In fact, she was so dammed bitchy I swear by all that is holy that the petals dropped right off of my Desert Peace rose. Now, normally I would respond politely in some way, but I love that rose. Stuart planted it the day Jennifer was born. It has grown as she has, sweetly entwining around the front fence and curling around the naughty little stone gargoyle that protects my gate from evil spirits. Every year of Jennifer’s life, this rose has gifted me with beautiful blooms that scent my front walkway all summer long. And now this…this Ma’am-ish creature with her nylons and black skirt and holier-than-thou attitude was causing this symbol of my youngest child’s innocence to whither and die!
I was tempted to pick up my so-tacky-it’s-cool garden gnome and bash her over the head with it. Actually, having a garden gnome is a great home-protection idea: John recently responded to a call for a guy who beat a home-intruder senseless with his army of wheelbarrow-and-bucket-wielding concrete garden gnomes. I hear the pointy little hats did especially unfortunate damage to the hapless robber’s face.
However, being the non-violent, peace-loving, daughter-of-a-flower-child earth mother that I am, I responded much more appropriately.
“I wasn’t aware it was my job to look for him.”
(*plagiarism note: this is NOT my line. I stole it from John, who is truly a God…of sarcasm)
This pissed Ma’am off. She placed her talons…I mean fat, wrinkly, in-serious-need-of-a-manicure hands...on my fence and ‘humphed’ at me. This pissed me off. I’m a non-violent person (mainly because I’m too small and smart to go picking fights I know I can’t win), but ‘humphs’ will not be tolerated in my garden.
Nature and I retaliated.
I glared at her. My Peace rose pricked her with thorns. My gargoyle stuck his tongue out at her (Ok, ok, it always has its tongue sticking sassily out, but Ma’am was definitely an evil presence to be repelled!) and Marshmellow, my silly little white fluffy dog, growled as if she were actually a huge, attack-trained K9.
“Miss, the Lord is no joking matter!”
This made me giggle. I was reminded of the scene in Arthur Miller’s satirical play, The Crucible, when Abigail claims that witches made her laugh in church. I myself have often laughed in church (sorry, but I just find the robes and the arrogance and the horrible, toneless white-people singing funny).
Actually, I think Ma’am thought I was a witch. As I giggled, the little mama starling who has built her nest in my hanging petunia porch pots for 3 years in a row dive-bombed Ma’am’s helmet-haired head. This pissed off the blue jays who nest in my flowering plumb tree and they raised a racket as only pissed-off jay-birds can. All of this set Marshmellow to barking (she has an on-going feud with the blue-jays...which began when she started eating their young. We’re quite the house-full of evil-doers, aren’t we?).
Waving one arm frantically about her head, Ma’am thrust a brightly-printed flyer--which had the 5 steps to ‘finding’ God printed helpfully upon it—at me and fled down the street. My laughter and the cacophony of my nature-bound familiars followed her.
I know, I know, all of this is blasphemous. Pastor Bob, God rest his soul, is probably despairing of me.
Actually, I’m pretty sure Pastor Bob is up there in Heaven with Sweet Little Baby Jesus, laughing his holy ass off right along with me.
It was Pastor Bob who gave me the most Holy and True answer about God I’ve ever heard. I was deeply troubled while taking my Confirmation classes (note to all missionaries: I actually am baptized and confirmed.) I couldn’t understand why everything about the Bible and God and Church was always so serious and sad and why I had to look down at prayer when I though Heaven was up. I also thought God wore pink silk pajamas, but that’s Amy’s fault—she whispered this vivid description to me at 5th grade church camp and the visual stuck.
Pastor Bob didn’t scold me for my inquiry. Pastor Bob was cool. So cool, he always kept his Super Bowl Sunday sermon super-short so we could all get home and watch the Game (Pastor Bob was a 49ers fan…and the years he was alive, the Niners had Joe Montana and Steve Young…proof of God if ever there was some!).
Anyway, the good Pastor smiled at me and told me that God loved happiness and silliness and that I could look up when I prayed if I wanted to and that I should laugh as often as I liked because the true Word of God, the true Workings of God happened outside the church doors, not within.
I haven’t been back to church since Pastor Bob’s funeral. Instead, I worship my own beliefs in the ways he taught me…out here in my lush garden with my flowers and creatures and children and family and warm sun, cool rain and generously-giving Earth.
Here, outside the stuffy walls of Man’s fear and ignorance and hate.
Out here, in the Garden, where god, or Whomever is in charge, doesn’t demand to be found.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Confession: Stu and I don't do it together.
Stu and I avoid doing things together. I mean, we do THAT, but we avoid other ‘couple-y’ things. We learned this ‘togetherness does not make for happiness’ lesson on our honeymoon. Giddy with “Just Married” vibes (ie: tons and tons of sex), we decided to take a break from our beach-bed-booze Hawaiian Honeymoon routine and tried kayaking.
Never before, in the history of honeymoons, has there been a worse idea. This is not some corny Chevy Chase movie vacation where we get washed out to sea in our tiny kayak and taken over by pirates or something. It’s much more mundane. Simply put, a former coxswain and a former rower should not share a kayak when they’ve just gotten married.
Me: “Go PORT!”
Stu: “Then PULL port!”
Me: “I am, you big over-grown bully! You have no more finesse with a paddle than you do with other large ‘tools’ that you like to get wet!”
And so it continued. Up the river, through the waterfall, around the rocks. We bickered, we fought, we paddled in little circles until I decided that I was done listening to him gripe about my form, my power, my steering and pulled my paddle out of the water to sit sullenly in the bow while he paddled us home (this led to many dead-weight coxswain comments…note to husbands everywhere: calling your wife ‘dead weight’ does NOT get you laid!).
We nearly divorced and we learned not to do sports together. We will never play doubles tennis, ride one of those stupid two-seater bikes, or make up 2/3s of a triathalon team.
Nor do we teach each other things. One year after the kayak disaster, I tried to teach him to ski. I’ve been skiing since I was six and grew up in Lake Tahoe. Thus, it seemed silly to pay for skiing lessons for Stu. Instead, I decided to teach him by playing 'ski school'. I encouraged him to ‘make a pie wedge’ and then gleefully mimicked his butt-out, poles-up, knock-kneed method as he made his laborious way down the bunny slope. When he fell, I tossed myself on the snow, too. When he turned, I turned…singing songs all the way.
All he learned from this was that his new wife is a bitchy jack-ass.
Eventually, I grew bored with puttering down the bunny hills and took him to the very top of Heavenly where the only run choices were 2 black diamonds with names that involve ‘bowl’ (translation: cliff), and one double black diamond reading ‘DANGER! Expert skiers ONLY!’ He actually made it down…after 3 hours, 1 lost pole and countless bone-jarring, limbs-flailing falls. Shockingly, he didn’t kill me (or push me off the chair lift), but he did promptly sign up for lessons. And only gloated a bit when I blew my knee out on the double black the next weekend (in my defense, I didn’t tear my ACL until the BOTTOM of the run…and anyway, the ski patrol guy was totally hot and the toboggan ride was fun).
Later, while living in South America, we took Spanish lessons. Seemed like a good idea, seeing as we were living in a Spanish-speaking country and all either of us could manage was to order beer and mimic Cheech-n-Chong. Within a week (I’m not even exaggerating), Stuart was fluent. I seethed while he and our instructor, who bore a striking resemblance to Gisele and pronounced his name ‘Essstuart’ with a sexy little accented lisp, chatted away about the beautiful beaches, the weather, her gorgeous smile and impossibly tight ass.
Actually, I have no idea what they said. They could have been discussing the Iraq war or blow jobs for all I could tell. I just heard, ‘blah blah blah…ha ha ha!! Oh, Esstuart!!”
After a year of ‘full immersion’ in Spanish (supposedly the best way to learn. Sorta like being thrown into a freezing cold, fathoms-deep shark tank is the best way to learn how to swim), I could order whiskey, buy shoes, give directions to my apartment and knew that I was ‘estupido’…which I’m pretty sure means ‘stupid’ (this is the only thing our instructor said to me in between stroking Esstuart's arm and giggling). I wish I could say Stu and I fought over this, but as he refused to speak to me in English on lesson-day (for my ‘own good’ because ‘I had to learn’), the fighting involved him speaking rapidly in blah-blah-blah and me glowering at him.
We now allow each other to wallow in ignorance. I will remain ignorant on how to fire a gun, use a BBQ or pull a trailer. He will remain ignorant on how to braid little girl hair, prune roses or tweeze eyebrows. Of course, he doesn’t want to learn any of those things in the first place. Nor does he want me to know how to fire a gun, as I may aim it at his head on the rare occasions he tries to ‘refresh’ my Spanish skills.
We don't do home improvement projects together, either. Another dicey moment from our marital past is when we decided to lay new hardwood floors in our 100-year-old Craftsman bungalow in Tacoma. We had to level the floors, which involved pouring leveler all over the antique floors. Unfortunately, ‘antique’ is code for ‘old and broken’, so the concrete promptly seeped through the ancient floor boards and onto Stu’s prized rowing machine in the basement below. Not a good moment. Somehow, the floors were laid...but neither of us got laid for about a month and we swore off home projects.
Currently, we have 1000 square feet of wood laminate in our garage awaiting installation. Actually, it’s awaiting the week I take the kids to San Diego so Stuart can have a bunch of his buddies come over to drink beer, play with power tools and lay floors without my "interference".
I’m starting to think a lot of the problem with us doing things together is me.
Okay, okay…yes, dear, I can see you smirk, roll your eyes and drawl, ‘you think?’ Fine. The problem is me.
Actually, it’s his own fault (ha!). My husband married a modern feminist. Now, before you get the wrong impression, I don’t LOOK like a modern feminist; I look like a pin-up girl. I shave my legs, wear short skirts with high heels and spend a baffling amount of time and money at the hair salon every month. Nor do I ACT like a modern feminist; I like it when men hold doors for me and am giddily pleased when one compliments me on my dress, shoes, ass…
The problem is that I THINK like a modern feminist…meaning I can be just as bossy, demanding, egotistical and stubborn as any man. I absolutely refuse to take a backseat and submit. To anything. Anytime. And, as we met and married while attending a small liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest, I expect my man to think like a modern feminist, too.
This is something that baffles both of our mothers, several of our friends and the vast majority of the conservative right. However, I rationalize it into a fairly simple formula: Stu and I both work and earn roughly the same pay (although our accountant recently informed me that I out-earned him last quarter). As such, I see no reason why, the work and money being equal, the bulk of the decisions should fall to him and the domestic duties should fall to me simply because he has a penis and I have ovaries and a (very nice) rack.
Early in our marriage, after the kayaking adventure taught us NOT to do things together, we divvied up the chores. And, while the labor is equal, it still falls along fairly traditional lines. I do the landscaping and gardening, Stuart mows the lawn and lifts the heavy stuff. I take care of the decorating and color scheme choices, Stu’s in charge of changing the oil in the cars. We share laundry and ironing. Early on we discovered, much to our equal surprise, that his skills far outstrip mine in the kitchen. As in I can sorta boil water and he prepares gourmet five course meals.
This is the reason my mother views Stu as a god and takes his side in all matters, a situation that amuses and irritates me in turns.
Once children entered the picture, the equal-share philosophy continued, although the stakes increased exponentially. I am the social organizer, he shares in chauffeur duties. I am the goddess of outfits, hairstyles, shoes and matching tights, he methodically folds tiny skirts with matching sweater sets while watching the Seahawks every Sunday.
All in all, I don’t think being married to a modern feminist is such a bad gig. We may not do things TOGETHER, but in regards to our different chores, I lay out my expectations very clearly, he follows them, and I am happy.
It was upon the issue of house cleaning that we hit a major roadblock. As all of the above evidence shows, we were not about to clean the house together.
For a while, we simply out-sourced this unappealing chore. Every Thursday we returned home to discover that, for a marginally astronomical fee, magic elves had scrubbed our toilets and dusted the shelves. However, upon the birth of our second child and the coinciding crash of the US economy, the magic elves went away and we were faced with a 2,000 sq house, three bathrooms and two small children genetically gifted at trashing the house in record time.
Sitting at our kitchen table and staring at the numbers which refused to add up differently in our monthly budget, I gave Stu The Look and he knew the ‘equal share lecture’, also known as Lecture 22, was about to commence.
So Stu tried various methods. He cleaned the kitchen, I did the rest. Unhappy wife (and dirty drip pans).
He played with the girls on the family room floor, I cleaned everything. Very unhappy wife.
Once, while I was at a birthday party for some other small child, Stuart cleaned the house. Happy wife. Or so it seemed (I may be stubborn but I know better than to criticize a man when he’s attempting to help)…until he arrived home early from work one day to discover me on hands and knees, scrubbing the bathtub. Seems my husband’s definition of ‘cleaning’ the bathroom differs greatly from mine. Mine involves bleach, sponges and lots of scrubbing. His involves taking a shower, “that gets it clean; it got wet, right?”
This Sunday, he finally hit upon the magic formula.
First, Stuart allowed me to wallow in bed for an extra half hour while he got up with the girls. When I emerged, he handed me freshly brewed coffee (more white than black, as I just drink coffee for the flavored creamer) and served all the females in the house pancakes. After cleaning up the dishes, he took the girls off to Costco for the week’s shopping and left me home to do the chores.
He later admitted he was full of trepidation: after all, he was essentially abandoning the field to wander around Man Land (any large warehouse dedicated to providing 4 lb bags of Doritos, gigantic tubs of frozen Little Weanies and 50 inch flat screens showing the Sunday football games was created with the American Man in mind).
He returned to a sparkling house and a gorgeous, smiling wife clad in tight jeans and a tighter tee shirt, stirring a pot of my famous chili and giving him That Look. That Look is the opposite of The Look and guarantees glorious, wonderful things—if we are able to convince our daughters to take naps, or at least stay in their rooms, for a 45-minute stretch.
Because when Stu earns Good Husband Points, he redeems them in the only activity we do very, very well together.
Never before, in the history of honeymoons, has there been a worse idea. This is not some corny Chevy Chase movie vacation where we get washed out to sea in our tiny kayak and taken over by pirates or something. It’s much more mundane. Simply put, a former coxswain and a former rower should not share a kayak when they’ve just gotten married.
Me: “Go PORT!”
Stu: “Then PULL port!”
Me: “I am, you big over-grown bully! You have no more finesse with a paddle than you do with other large ‘tools’ that you like to get wet!”
And so it continued. Up the river, through the waterfall, around the rocks. We bickered, we fought, we paddled in little circles until I decided that I was done listening to him gripe about my form, my power, my steering and pulled my paddle out of the water to sit sullenly in the bow while he paddled us home (this led to many dead-weight coxswain comments…note to husbands everywhere: calling your wife ‘dead weight’ does NOT get you laid!).
We nearly divorced and we learned not to do sports together. We will never play doubles tennis, ride one of those stupid two-seater bikes, or make up 2/3s of a triathalon team.
Nor do we teach each other things. One year after the kayak disaster, I tried to teach him to ski. I’ve been skiing since I was six and grew up in Lake Tahoe. Thus, it seemed silly to pay for skiing lessons for Stu. Instead, I decided to teach him by playing 'ski school'. I encouraged him to ‘make a pie wedge’ and then gleefully mimicked his butt-out, poles-up, knock-kneed method as he made his laborious way down the bunny slope. When he fell, I tossed myself on the snow, too. When he turned, I turned…singing songs all the way.
All he learned from this was that his new wife is a bitchy jack-ass.
Eventually, I grew bored with puttering down the bunny hills and took him to the very top of Heavenly where the only run choices were 2 black diamonds with names that involve ‘bowl’ (translation: cliff), and one double black diamond reading ‘DANGER! Expert skiers ONLY!’ He actually made it down…after 3 hours, 1 lost pole and countless bone-jarring, limbs-flailing falls. Shockingly, he didn’t kill me (or push me off the chair lift), but he did promptly sign up for lessons. And only gloated a bit when I blew my knee out on the double black the next weekend (in my defense, I didn’t tear my ACL until the BOTTOM of the run…and anyway, the ski patrol guy was totally hot and the toboggan ride was fun).
Later, while living in South America, we took Spanish lessons. Seemed like a good idea, seeing as we were living in a Spanish-speaking country and all either of us could manage was to order beer and mimic Cheech-n-Chong. Within a week (I’m not even exaggerating), Stuart was fluent. I seethed while he and our instructor, who bore a striking resemblance to Gisele and pronounced his name ‘Essstuart’ with a sexy little accented lisp, chatted away about the beautiful beaches, the weather, her gorgeous smile and impossibly tight ass.
Actually, I have no idea what they said. They could have been discussing the Iraq war or blow jobs for all I could tell. I just heard, ‘blah blah blah…ha ha ha!! Oh, Esstuart!!”
After a year of ‘full immersion’ in Spanish (supposedly the best way to learn. Sorta like being thrown into a freezing cold, fathoms-deep shark tank is the best way to learn how to swim), I could order whiskey, buy shoes, give directions to my apartment and knew that I was ‘estupido’…which I’m pretty sure means ‘stupid’ (this is the only thing our instructor said to me in between stroking Esstuart's arm and giggling). I wish I could say Stu and I fought over this, but as he refused to speak to me in English on lesson-day (for my ‘own good’ because ‘I had to learn’), the fighting involved him speaking rapidly in blah-blah-blah and me glowering at him.
We now allow each other to wallow in ignorance. I will remain ignorant on how to fire a gun, use a BBQ or pull a trailer. He will remain ignorant on how to braid little girl hair, prune roses or tweeze eyebrows. Of course, he doesn’t want to learn any of those things in the first place. Nor does he want me to know how to fire a gun, as I may aim it at his head on the rare occasions he tries to ‘refresh’ my Spanish skills.
We don't do home improvement projects together, either. Another dicey moment from our marital past is when we decided to lay new hardwood floors in our 100-year-old Craftsman bungalow in Tacoma. We had to level the floors, which involved pouring leveler all over the antique floors. Unfortunately, ‘antique’ is code for ‘old and broken’, so the concrete promptly seeped through the ancient floor boards and onto Stu’s prized rowing machine in the basement below. Not a good moment. Somehow, the floors were laid...but neither of us got laid for about a month and we swore off home projects.
Currently, we have 1000 square feet of wood laminate in our garage awaiting installation. Actually, it’s awaiting the week I take the kids to San Diego so Stuart can have a bunch of his buddies come over to drink beer, play with power tools and lay floors without my "interference".
I’m starting to think a lot of the problem with us doing things together is me.
Okay, okay…yes, dear, I can see you smirk, roll your eyes and drawl, ‘you think?’ Fine. The problem is me.
Actually, it’s his own fault (ha!). My husband married a modern feminist. Now, before you get the wrong impression, I don’t LOOK like a modern feminist; I look like a pin-up girl. I shave my legs, wear short skirts with high heels and spend a baffling amount of time and money at the hair salon every month. Nor do I ACT like a modern feminist; I like it when men hold doors for me and am giddily pleased when one compliments me on my dress, shoes, ass…
The problem is that I THINK like a modern feminist…meaning I can be just as bossy, demanding, egotistical and stubborn as any man. I absolutely refuse to take a backseat and submit. To anything. Anytime. And, as we met and married while attending a small liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest, I expect my man to think like a modern feminist, too.
This is something that baffles both of our mothers, several of our friends and the vast majority of the conservative right. However, I rationalize it into a fairly simple formula: Stu and I both work and earn roughly the same pay (although our accountant recently informed me that I out-earned him last quarter). As such, I see no reason why, the work and money being equal, the bulk of the decisions should fall to him and the domestic duties should fall to me simply because he has a penis and I have ovaries and a (very nice) rack.
Early in our marriage, after the kayaking adventure taught us NOT to do things together, we divvied up the chores. And, while the labor is equal, it still falls along fairly traditional lines. I do the landscaping and gardening, Stuart mows the lawn and lifts the heavy stuff. I take care of the decorating and color scheme choices, Stu’s in charge of changing the oil in the cars. We share laundry and ironing. Early on we discovered, much to our equal surprise, that his skills far outstrip mine in the kitchen. As in I can sorta boil water and he prepares gourmet five course meals.
This is the reason my mother views Stu as a god and takes his side in all matters, a situation that amuses and irritates me in turns.
Once children entered the picture, the equal-share philosophy continued, although the stakes increased exponentially. I am the social organizer, he shares in chauffeur duties. I am the goddess of outfits, hairstyles, shoes and matching tights, he methodically folds tiny skirts with matching sweater sets while watching the Seahawks every Sunday.
All in all, I don’t think being married to a modern feminist is such a bad gig. We may not do things TOGETHER, but in regards to our different chores, I lay out my expectations very clearly, he follows them, and I am happy.
It was upon the issue of house cleaning that we hit a major roadblock. As all of the above evidence shows, we were not about to clean the house together.
For a while, we simply out-sourced this unappealing chore. Every Thursday we returned home to discover that, for a marginally astronomical fee, magic elves had scrubbed our toilets and dusted the shelves. However, upon the birth of our second child and the coinciding crash of the US economy, the magic elves went away and we were faced with a 2,000 sq house, three bathrooms and two small children genetically gifted at trashing the house in record time.
Sitting at our kitchen table and staring at the numbers which refused to add up differently in our monthly budget, I gave Stu The Look and he knew the ‘equal share lecture’, also known as Lecture 22, was about to commence.
So Stu tried various methods. He cleaned the kitchen, I did the rest. Unhappy wife (and dirty drip pans).
He played with the girls on the family room floor, I cleaned everything. Very unhappy wife.
Once, while I was at a birthday party for some other small child, Stuart cleaned the house. Happy wife. Or so it seemed (I may be stubborn but I know better than to criticize a man when he’s attempting to help)…until he arrived home early from work one day to discover me on hands and knees, scrubbing the bathtub. Seems my husband’s definition of ‘cleaning’ the bathroom differs greatly from mine. Mine involves bleach, sponges and lots of scrubbing. His involves taking a shower, “that gets it clean; it got wet, right?”
This Sunday, he finally hit upon the magic formula.
First, Stuart allowed me to wallow in bed for an extra half hour while he got up with the girls. When I emerged, he handed me freshly brewed coffee (more white than black, as I just drink coffee for the flavored creamer) and served all the females in the house pancakes. After cleaning up the dishes, he took the girls off to Costco for the week’s shopping and left me home to do the chores.
He later admitted he was full of trepidation: after all, he was essentially abandoning the field to wander around Man Land (any large warehouse dedicated to providing 4 lb bags of Doritos, gigantic tubs of frozen Little Weanies and 50 inch flat screens showing the Sunday football games was created with the American Man in mind).
He returned to a sparkling house and a gorgeous, smiling wife clad in tight jeans and a tighter tee shirt, stirring a pot of my famous chili and giving him That Look. That Look is the opposite of The Look and guarantees glorious, wonderful things—if we are able to convince our daughters to take naps, or at least stay in their rooms, for a 45-minute stretch.
Because when Stu earns Good Husband Points, he redeems them in the only activity we do very, very well together.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Confession: I don't like people.
I’m ditching my 15-year high school reunion.
That same weekend, I’m also ditching my family’s annual family reunion/camping trip, my husband’s annual cop-get-together and my mother-in-law’s annual visit. I don’t know what I AM going to do--or where I’m going to go--but it’s NOT going to be any sort of annual reunion what-have-you-been-up-to Suck Fest.
It’s not like I’m embarrassed of myself or my accomplishments. Frankly, modesty aside, I’m a reunion’s wet dream: I have a satisfying career, hot husband, cute kids, nice house with a white picket fence, and I still fit into the jeans I wore in 10th grade (with the fabulous addition of big boobs…hey, look at me, I’ve IMPROVED since high school!). In addition, none of my immediate family is addicted to anything (although I worry about Kathleen’s obsession with gum), my credit card debt is lower than the national average (and the national debt) and no one I know is in jail (Stu WORKS in the jail…but he’s on the right side of the bars and gets to wear a gun belt, so it’s cool).
See, I win at the Suck Fest “watcha-been-up-to” game.
Which is why I don’t want to go. I’m shy, I don’t like small talk and I generally hate people. Seriously. I like the people I like (think about it, that statement actually does make sense) and I enjoy people-watching (people are FUCKED UP and I just love to watch them in all of their lame-ass glory…makes me feel better about myself and amuses me greatly), but I just don’t really want to interact with the majority of human kind. To those who know me, this is old news. In fact, to any who’ve ever SEEN me, this is old news.
I’ve never been picked up in a bar. For a while, I worried that this was a reflection of my lack of hotness. I actually obsessed over it. I know lots of girls who get picked up all the time…women who get hit on at the local bar, at the gym, in the frozen-foods aisle of Wal-Mart (I actually don’t envy them for this: have you SEEN most of them men who shop at Wal-Mart? Yikes!). In fact, I spent a good six months laying awake at night, concerned that I have some weird pheromone disease that makes me repel men or something.
It got the point where I decided I actually have a problem. So, being me, I researched it: Googled "I repel men”. Surprisingly, this resulted in 2,000 hits…we women are a worried breed! It took only one Self Help article to reveal my problem: I don’t smile.
Don’t go thinking I’m some Eeyore-Grumpy-Dwarf depressed Emo-type person…that’s my mother-in-law. I actually smile all the time. I laugh. I giggle. I chortle, grin, smirk, beam. I even have a polite courtesy smile if I grind my back teeth together tightly enough.
I just don’t feel the need to smile at people I don’t know. Why would I? If I smile at them, they think they can talk to me. And I don’t particularly like talking to people.
And therein lies my problem. I don’t have man-repulsing pheromones…I have people-repulsing bitchiness.
I’m ok with this. Probably because I don’t find many men attractive. I know, I know, I’m the woman who just told you that I fantasize about half of the town. This is true. But think about it….if I fantasize about HALF of the town, that means I only find HALF of the town attractive. And I’m only counting in that half the men who are approximately my age and acceptability bracket (if you think mullets, shants and the ability to burb the alphabet after a 6 pack of Keystone Light are hot, you are NOT in the acceptability bracket).
When I DO find men attractive, I smile at them. This dispels the man-repulsing bitchiness and they usually smile back and come over to talk to me.
So, I can scratch that concern off my list, but it still doesn’t solve my plural reunion Suck Fests problem.
Here’s why I don’t want to go: what the hell am I going to talk about with people whom I rarely see and therefore don’t actually like enough to talk to on a regular basis? I mean, if we don’t at least read each other’s updates on Facebook, we don’t know each other and there’s probably a good reason for that. Like we never liked each other or found each other even remotely attractive, interesting or worthy in the first place.
Therefore, I don’t really want to hear about their kid’s kindergarten graduation (Kathleen’s was fabulous, but that’s because she’s MY kid!), their husband’s job or their most recent root canal. It’s boring. My courtesy smile will make my cheeks ache and I’ll turn into a Bitch.
As a Bitch, I will stop pretending to care about some person’s trip to Disneyland and will instead start acting like a jackass. I may decide to share things like the fact that I just decided to ignore the fact that the girls plugged up the guest bathroom toilet with too much TP and shit again and am going to leave it until Stu wakes up. Or I could describe the time I drank too many frozen margaritas on an empty stomach and puked right outside the Tijuana border. Or perhaps I’ll share my favorite anecdote: the fact that the local daycare recently had an outbreak of butt-worms: oh yeah, they exist…the nasty maggot-like-things crawl out of the baby’s butt at nighttime and back in during the day, making the kid have itchy-ass. Nasty, huh? My kids managed not to catch it, but I found the existence of butt-worms in humans a throw-up-in-my-mouth fascinating little conversational tidbit.
It’s not like I don’t have appropriately amusing small-talk anecdotes to share. Of course I do. And if they weren’t amusing in real life, they’re pretty fucking funny by the time I’m done ‘enhancing’ them. I can hyperbole the hell out of any small incident. Remember Seinfeld, the hilarious show about nothing? Well, you read my blog, so you know that my life about nothing is pretty fucking hilarious.
For example, I could impress them with Jennifer’s dancing abilities by talking about her first dance recital. For her tap number, she and the other 3-year-olds were dressed as cowgirls (complete with little white boots and hat) and danced to Boot-scootin’-boogie. At the end of the number, she lifted her red-and-whited checked skirt, stood in the spotlight, and waved and blew kisses. For five minutes. Finally her teacher dashed out, picked up the little star and carried her off to thundering applause.
And, of course, I could tell some of the hilarious cop stories Stu brings home. Cops have all the best stories because they deal with the worst of humanity. I LOVE being married to a cop! Dinner-time conversation is always enlightening.
Or I could brag about my 6-year-old-going-on-20 who pointed out, very vociferously, that grown men shouldn’t wear ‘girl panties’ at the pool.
Last Spring Break, I drove my babies 200 miles through the Nevada and California desert to Palm Springs. The drive itself was fairly uneventful, interrupted only by frantic how-are-you?!? text-messages from every male cop I know (they were worried about me driving by myself with the kids through the desert. I don’t know if this is because of the super-crazies who live along 395 in half-rotted single-wides or my less-than-stellar driving skills), DVD movie changes (I had to switch movies while driving 90 MPH and swerving around semi trucks) and desperate searches for semi-clean bathrooms (at one gas station, the only option was a porta-potty that perched precariously on the side of a dirt hill…Kathleen announced she didn’t have to potty all that badly after all. That’s my girl!). Anyway, after 11 hours—we somehow ended up at the Tijuana border (look, girls, that’s where Mommy puked once!) and had to backtrack a bit—we arrived in lovely Palm Springs. Within 10 minutes of our arrival, we hit the pool where we discovered an unfortunate Spring Break 2010 fashion: men in speedos.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a well-formed man in speedos. I smile engagingly at men who play water polo or grace the cologne ads in Cosmo. However, the average Spring Breaker male college boy ought not to wear ballkinis. Worse, they ought not to wear PINK ballkinis in cold pools with their too-much-beer mushy tummies pushed up in muffin-top over the band of their skin-tight pastel panties. Not hot. So not hot Kathleen knew, at the tender age of 6, that something was very rotten in the State of California. Being my daughter, she gleefully invented the game of ‘which girl-panty-wearing-boy is most gross’. FUN! See, when you have kids, you’re allowed to be loudly rude in the guise of shushing your doesn’t-know-any-better child:
Kathleen (in a very loud, high-pitched voice): ‘Mommy, WHY is that boy wearing girl panties with a flower on his butt?”
Mommy (in a pretending-to-be-embrarrased loud voice): “Honey, shh….I don’t know why he would do that…and it’s not nice to point at unfortunate people.”
Good times.
See, I’m funny. I can small-talk with the best of them. In fact, I can steal center stage and be the life of the party.
But I don’t want to. I don’t want to go hang out with old high school people and pretend like I’m having fun. I don’t want to go camping with my family and pretend I enjoy being dirty, tired, sore and covered in mosquito bites. I don’t want to sit and stare at my mother-in-law and pretend like we can stand each other.
I’d rather wash my hair. I’d rather clean out the minivan. I’d rather run naked down main street during the Carson Valley Days parade, waving an American Flag and telling everyone I’m the Terminator…ok, that’s one of the funny cop-stories I could tell if I actually wanted to engage in small talk. Except the Terminator was a naked man who got tased in the casino arcade for his trouble. After the cop who was chasing him stopped laughing.
So, on the weekend of the multiple Suck Fests, I believe I'll load up the minivan with the kids, DVDs and snacks and strike out for parts unknown. Maybe we’ll go back to Palm Springs and see if ballkinis are still all the rage.
If you see me there, unless I’m smiling, don’t talk to me. Chances are, I don’t like you.
That same weekend, I’m also ditching my family’s annual family reunion/camping trip, my husband’s annual cop-get-together and my mother-in-law’s annual visit. I don’t know what I AM going to do--or where I’m going to go--but it’s NOT going to be any sort of annual reunion what-have-you-been-up-to Suck Fest.
It’s not like I’m embarrassed of myself or my accomplishments. Frankly, modesty aside, I’m a reunion’s wet dream: I have a satisfying career, hot husband, cute kids, nice house with a white picket fence, and I still fit into the jeans I wore in 10th grade (with the fabulous addition of big boobs…hey, look at me, I’ve IMPROVED since high school!). In addition, none of my immediate family is addicted to anything (although I worry about Kathleen’s obsession with gum), my credit card debt is lower than the national average (and the national debt) and no one I know is in jail (Stu WORKS in the jail…but he’s on the right side of the bars and gets to wear a gun belt, so it’s cool).
See, I win at the Suck Fest “watcha-been-up-to” game.
Which is why I don’t want to go. I’m shy, I don’t like small talk and I generally hate people. Seriously. I like the people I like (think about it, that statement actually does make sense) and I enjoy people-watching (people are FUCKED UP and I just love to watch them in all of their lame-ass glory…makes me feel better about myself and amuses me greatly), but I just don’t really want to interact with the majority of human kind. To those who know me, this is old news. In fact, to any who’ve ever SEEN me, this is old news.
I’ve never been picked up in a bar. For a while, I worried that this was a reflection of my lack of hotness. I actually obsessed over it. I know lots of girls who get picked up all the time…women who get hit on at the local bar, at the gym, in the frozen-foods aisle of Wal-Mart (I actually don’t envy them for this: have you SEEN most of them men who shop at Wal-Mart? Yikes!). In fact, I spent a good six months laying awake at night, concerned that I have some weird pheromone disease that makes me repel men or something.
It got the point where I decided I actually have a problem. So, being me, I researched it: Googled "I repel men”. Surprisingly, this resulted in 2,000 hits…we women are a worried breed! It took only one Self Help article to reveal my problem: I don’t smile.
Don’t go thinking I’m some Eeyore-Grumpy-Dwarf depressed Emo-type person…that’s my mother-in-law. I actually smile all the time. I laugh. I giggle. I chortle, grin, smirk, beam. I even have a polite courtesy smile if I grind my back teeth together tightly enough.
I just don’t feel the need to smile at people I don’t know. Why would I? If I smile at them, they think they can talk to me. And I don’t particularly like talking to people.
And therein lies my problem. I don’t have man-repulsing pheromones…I have people-repulsing bitchiness.
I’m ok with this. Probably because I don’t find many men attractive. I know, I know, I’m the woman who just told you that I fantasize about half of the town. This is true. But think about it….if I fantasize about HALF of the town, that means I only find HALF of the town attractive. And I’m only counting in that half the men who are approximately my age and acceptability bracket (if you think mullets, shants and the ability to burb the alphabet after a 6 pack of Keystone Light are hot, you are NOT in the acceptability bracket).
When I DO find men attractive, I smile at them. This dispels the man-repulsing bitchiness and they usually smile back and come over to talk to me.
So, I can scratch that concern off my list, but it still doesn’t solve my plural reunion Suck Fests problem.
Here’s why I don’t want to go: what the hell am I going to talk about with people whom I rarely see and therefore don’t actually like enough to talk to on a regular basis? I mean, if we don’t at least read each other’s updates on Facebook, we don’t know each other and there’s probably a good reason for that. Like we never liked each other or found each other even remotely attractive, interesting or worthy in the first place.
Therefore, I don’t really want to hear about their kid’s kindergarten graduation (Kathleen’s was fabulous, but that’s because she’s MY kid!), their husband’s job or their most recent root canal. It’s boring. My courtesy smile will make my cheeks ache and I’ll turn into a Bitch.
As a Bitch, I will stop pretending to care about some person’s trip to Disneyland and will instead start acting like a jackass. I may decide to share things like the fact that I just decided to ignore the fact that the girls plugged up the guest bathroom toilet with too much TP and shit again and am going to leave it until Stu wakes up. Or I could describe the time I drank too many frozen margaritas on an empty stomach and puked right outside the Tijuana border. Or perhaps I’ll share my favorite anecdote: the fact that the local daycare recently had an outbreak of butt-worms: oh yeah, they exist…the nasty maggot-like-things crawl out of the baby’s butt at nighttime and back in during the day, making the kid have itchy-ass. Nasty, huh? My kids managed not to catch it, but I found the existence of butt-worms in humans a throw-up-in-my-mouth fascinating little conversational tidbit.
It’s not like I don’t have appropriately amusing small-talk anecdotes to share. Of course I do. And if they weren’t amusing in real life, they’re pretty fucking funny by the time I’m done ‘enhancing’ them. I can hyperbole the hell out of any small incident. Remember Seinfeld, the hilarious show about nothing? Well, you read my blog, so you know that my life about nothing is pretty fucking hilarious.
For example, I could impress them with Jennifer’s dancing abilities by talking about her first dance recital. For her tap number, she and the other 3-year-olds were dressed as cowgirls (complete with little white boots and hat) and danced to Boot-scootin’-boogie. At the end of the number, she lifted her red-and-whited checked skirt, stood in the spotlight, and waved and blew kisses. For five minutes. Finally her teacher dashed out, picked up the little star and carried her off to thundering applause.
And, of course, I could tell some of the hilarious cop stories Stu brings home. Cops have all the best stories because they deal with the worst of humanity. I LOVE being married to a cop! Dinner-time conversation is always enlightening.
Or I could brag about my 6-year-old-going-on-20 who pointed out, very vociferously, that grown men shouldn’t wear ‘girl panties’ at the pool.
Last Spring Break, I drove my babies 200 miles through the Nevada and California desert to Palm Springs. The drive itself was fairly uneventful, interrupted only by frantic how-are-you?!? text-messages from every male cop I know (they were worried about me driving by myself with the kids through the desert. I don’t know if this is because of the super-crazies who live along 395 in half-rotted single-wides or my less-than-stellar driving skills), DVD movie changes (I had to switch movies while driving 90 MPH and swerving around semi trucks) and desperate searches for semi-clean bathrooms (at one gas station, the only option was a porta-potty that perched precariously on the side of a dirt hill…Kathleen announced she didn’t have to potty all that badly after all. That’s my girl!). Anyway, after 11 hours—we somehow ended up at the Tijuana border (look, girls, that’s where Mommy puked once!) and had to backtrack a bit—we arrived in lovely Palm Springs. Within 10 minutes of our arrival, we hit the pool where we discovered an unfortunate Spring Break 2010 fashion: men in speedos.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a well-formed man in speedos. I smile engagingly at men who play water polo or grace the cologne ads in Cosmo. However, the average Spring Breaker male college boy ought not to wear ballkinis. Worse, they ought not to wear PINK ballkinis in cold pools with their too-much-beer mushy tummies pushed up in muffin-top over the band of their skin-tight pastel panties. Not hot. So not hot Kathleen knew, at the tender age of 6, that something was very rotten in the State of California. Being my daughter, she gleefully invented the game of ‘which girl-panty-wearing-boy is most gross’. FUN! See, when you have kids, you’re allowed to be loudly rude in the guise of shushing your doesn’t-know-any-better child:
Kathleen (in a very loud, high-pitched voice): ‘Mommy, WHY is that boy wearing girl panties with a flower on his butt?”
Mommy (in a pretending-to-be-embrarrased loud voice): “Honey, shh….I don’t know why he would do that…and it’s not nice to point at unfortunate people.”
Good times.
See, I’m funny. I can small-talk with the best of them. In fact, I can steal center stage and be the life of the party.
But I don’t want to. I don’t want to go hang out with old high school people and pretend like I’m having fun. I don’t want to go camping with my family and pretend I enjoy being dirty, tired, sore and covered in mosquito bites. I don’t want to sit and stare at my mother-in-law and pretend like we can stand each other.
I’d rather wash my hair. I’d rather clean out the minivan. I’d rather run naked down main street during the Carson Valley Days parade, waving an American Flag and telling everyone I’m the Terminator…ok, that’s one of the funny cop-stories I could tell if I actually wanted to engage in small talk. Except the Terminator was a naked man who got tased in the casino arcade for his trouble. After the cop who was chasing him stopped laughing.
So, on the weekend of the multiple Suck Fests, I believe I'll load up the minivan with the kids, DVDs and snacks and strike out for parts unknown. Maybe we’ll go back to Palm Springs and see if ballkinis are still all the rage.
If you see me there, unless I’m smiling, don’t talk to me. Chances are, I don’t like you.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Confession: I lost myself.
Somewhere between the second and third row of my minivan, I lost myself.
I didn’t even realize it until I received one of Hot Navy SEAL’s short little e-mails, “Thanks for the update”. It made me cry. ‘Update’ sounds so cold, so impersonal, so chatty and shallow and Christmas-letter-y.
He didn’t mean to make me cry. The rest of his e-mail (all 3 sentences of it), responded to the personal details I had ‘updated’ him on in sweet and attentive fashion.
The problem was, those details had nothing to do with me. I re-read my message, all 10 paragraphs of it. And it was chatty and shallow and impersonal. Of course, it was also witty and funny and well-phrased--I’d settle for nothing less when my audience was a man missing his home while fighting overseas--but between the talk of the kids, and Stuart, and the kids, and the kids’ activities, and the kids, and the kids’ friends, and Stuart, and Marshmellow the dog—for God’s sake—there was nothing of me. I fear there IS no ‘me’.
Sure, I know that I'm in there, in the way all Mommies are ‘in there’. Behind the scenes, the facilitator, the manager, the costume-carter and dinner-maker and carpool-driver and picture-taker.
Look at any family home. Notice the snapshots scattered around. I guarantee you’ll be hard pressed to find many with Mommy in them (unless they are the requisite family portrait). Why? Because Mommy is behind the camera.
I don’t know why this bothers me. I put myself there. I actually LIKE being there…watching my little family thrive, knowing (or at least hoping) that my efforts are helping them.
And it’s not like I’m a martyr. I’ve never been able to be the martyr type. Too selfish, I guess. It’s one of the reasons I work (besides monthly mortgage and car payments and the annoying necessity of food); at work, I run the show. It’s me, in front of the classroom, making it all happen.
But then, teaching is just Mommy-ing on a bigger scale. Because on the day we realize the fruits of our labor—graduation day—we are behind the scenes, taking the pictures, straightening the ties, watching those whom we supported and nudged and helped and pushed fly. You can’t MAKE anyone learn, much to everyone’s constant frustration and frequent chagrin.
Perhaps the Update occurred because it’s Summer Break, that magical time of the year when I get to be a full-time stay-at-home. That time of year that I am in full-time Support Mode. When it is natural that I take on more of the housework—because I’m home—and the childcare--because the kids are home—and the cooking—because I’m home and doing the shopping.
Maybe I’m just too hyper to stay home. I find myself looking at my kids—who are happily playing their own elaborate Kid Games and become annoyed when a Grown-Up tries to play with them; ‘Mommy, you play wrong!’ But I want to play. Not just because I like my kids, but because I don’t know what else to do with myself. The house is clean, the shopping is done. The laundry is done. Why? Because I’m on warp-speed from being Working Mom.
On Mother’s Day, my mother told me to ‘settle down and relax’. I don’t know how. I’m hyper. I’m driven. I’m Type-A, neurotic, OCD, perhaps ADD, and definitely a Control Freak. The only therapy is to stay busy and pursue perfection.
I’ve never found this to be a bad thing. I would worry that my pursuit of perfection would harm my children, but because I worry about that, my new idea of perfection is raising children who don’t pursue perfection. This is a complicated little dance, but seems to be going well. They are much more Type B, happy-go-lucky than I have ever managed to be…even after several glasses of wine.
I've always wanted to be happy-go-lucky. I have several friends who are. They float through life, genuinely happy with whatever Life gives them. ‘Sweet T’, my soul-sister friend since we were both conceived, used to literally live in a van down by the river. She recently traded in that van for a shiny new Honda Odyssey for her baby boy, but she kept her waist-length dreads. And “Big Dave” left a lucrative job in international finance to wander aimlessly around South America. Along the way, he perfected the art of drinking matte, had several unfortunate ‘chaffage’ issues, caught a nasty intestinal parasite and met a gorgeous woman from the Rio de la Plata region (picture Gisele, only hotter). They and my other ‘Dude, yyyeeeaaahhhhh’ friends smile good-naturedly at me as I plan and perfect everything. Their houses aren’t neat, their living rooms lack focal points and their Life List is written, if it’s written at all, on a cocktail napkin, a piece of hemp, or in the sand by the water’s edge.
My Life List is neatly typed into an Excel spreadsheet, color-coded and meticulously examined, cross-checked and revised every year on my birthday.
I’ve tried ‘letting go’. It drives me insane. I think this is why I so admire Stay-at-Homes. They are Zen. They have mastered the art of ‘letting go’. And I cannot. Working gives me structure and structure helps me thrive.
I LIKE being a perfectionist. I like making lists. I LOVE crossing things off my lists. I like being a little bit rushed. I get a swell of pride whenever I manipulate and plan my schedule just right so that everyone arrives at their respected appointments, practices, jobs and fun at the right time. Color schemes give me a thrill and filing turns me on.
Perfectionism gives me a sense of accomplishment. And I know that many say it is unhealthy and wrong, but others also say to love and know yourself. Well, I am a Hot Minivan Mom and I am a Perfectionist.
Frankly, I just don’t understand why someone wouldn’t strive for perfection. If I can’t be perfect at it, I don’t want to do it.
The funny thing about admitting and reveling in this rather neurotic quirk of mine is that by indulging my need to be super-organized, clean, etc., I can then relax. If my house is perfectly clean and tidy, I love to have impromptu dinner parties of ‘what are you making and does it go well with what I’m making so come on over’. If my schedule is laid out in my head (and on my phone, which is synced to my husband’s phone and the computer Outlook calendar), I know that I have time for an unscheduled Ice Cream stop or a random park visit. Because my clothes—and my children’s (Stu wears a uniform, so he’s easy)--are chosen for the week and laid out in labeled Day drawers in each closet, I can go a little crazy with a new hairstyle or accessory without upsetting the morning’s schedule.
The only place I am not perfect is in my minivan. The thing is a dump. Seriously, I think it’s a health hazard. I try to keep it clean, I really do. But I have never met a real, live, Hot Minivan Mom who doesn’t have a few stray cheerios, a couple McDonald’s fries, random toys, socks, school papers and all of the other flotsam and jetsom of childhood scattered around the van floor. And many of these women are impeccably groomed at all times (even for 8 am swimming lessons) and run homes that are immaculate. But the Van cannot be controlled, the Van cannot be tidied, the Van cannot be perfect.
It can start that way. Mine does, at least once a month. Or sooner, if the debris pile on the floor reaches ankle-deep. I don’t even clean it out: I go to the local no-touch-car-wash and pay up for the deluxe. The one with ‘shine rinse’, coconut-scented fragrance and 5 teenage boys making minimum wage to shovel out my car. I tip big and tell them to not even ask about whatever they find: just toss it. On more than one occasion, they’ve found lacy lingerie under the third row.
It feels so good to drive home in that clean, tidy, beach-scented car. I vow to keep it that way. I wonder why I can keep my own pantry neatly organized and all the socks in my home matched, yet drive a van that is, frankly, an embarrassment and potentially the next SuperFund site.
But 30-some-odd school drop-offs and pick-ups later, 4 weekends of parties and beaches and parks and playdates and dog-dates, 15 some-odd dance practices and golf lessons and soccer games and 50 Starbucks runs…and the Van is a disaster.
Sometimes, it sucks valuables into the morass and then, like Indiana Jones into the dreaded snake pit, I must go and find it.
Last night, the Van ate Jennifer’s tap shoe. Her tiny, size-6, custom-ordered, Daddy Spit-Shined for Tomorrow’s Recital Pictures tap shoe. I had hoped it had not gone into Van Land. I turned the house upside down, searched under the beds, tried all of the known places, but I knew. I knew I had to go.
And so, at 10 pm, I slid open the cargo doors, grabbed Stu’s cop flashlight (the big one, with the bright are-you-drunk beam and the heavy steal body..you know, to scare off any rodent-like squatters or alien creatures who may be in residence under the seats) and crawled in. I found:
4 little post-its with “JJJJJJ” printed proudly all over them.
1 paper butterfly, made out of Jennifer’s handprints.
2 shoe laces, tied neatly in a bow by Kathleen’s hands; a major feat for a left-handed Kindergartener.
My 2nd best pair of sunglasses, only slightly scratched.
A Daily Report, dated 4 months ago, from Jen’s preschool teacher praising her for saying ‘yellow’ clearly.
A journal entry from Kathleen reading, ‘my mom is cool’.
One of Stuart’s little love-notes that he likes to put in the girls’ lunches when he has to work swing shift and can’t tuck them into bed.
Another of his notes that he likes to put in my lunch when he works graveyard shift and can’t tuck me into bed, either.
A piece of my gardening shoe with Marshmellow’s toothprints all over it.
A black lacy Victoria’s Secret thong from a date-night tryst with my husband in the parking lot behind the Dairy Queen.
One tiny, size-6, custom-ordered, Daddy Spit-Shined for Tomorrow’s Recital Pictures tap shoe.
And me. Because there I was, right where I had left myself, strewn about the floor between the second and third row.
I didn’t even realize it until I received one of Hot Navy SEAL’s short little e-mails, “Thanks for the update”. It made me cry. ‘Update’ sounds so cold, so impersonal, so chatty and shallow and Christmas-letter-y.
He didn’t mean to make me cry. The rest of his e-mail (all 3 sentences of it), responded to the personal details I had ‘updated’ him on in sweet and attentive fashion.
The problem was, those details had nothing to do with me. I re-read my message, all 10 paragraphs of it. And it was chatty and shallow and impersonal. Of course, it was also witty and funny and well-phrased--I’d settle for nothing less when my audience was a man missing his home while fighting overseas--but between the talk of the kids, and Stuart, and the kids, and the kids’ activities, and the kids, and the kids’ friends, and Stuart, and Marshmellow the dog—for God’s sake—there was nothing of me. I fear there IS no ‘me’.
Sure, I know that I'm in there, in the way all Mommies are ‘in there’. Behind the scenes, the facilitator, the manager, the costume-carter and dinner-maker and carpool-driver and picture-taker.
Look at any family home. Notice the snapshots scattered around. I guarantee you’ll be hard pressed to find many with Mommy in them (unless they are the requisite family portrait). Why? Because Mommy is behind the camera.
I don’t know why this bothers me. I put myself there. I actually LIKE being there…watching my little family thrive, knowing (or at least hoping) that my efforts are helping them.
And it’s not like I’m a martyr. I’ve never been able to be the martyr type. Too selfish, I guess. It’s one of the reasons I work (besides monthly mortgage and car payments and the annoying necessity of food); at work, I run the show. It’s me, in front of the classroom, making it all happen.
But then, teaching is just Mommy-ing on a bigger scale. Because on the day we realize the fruits of our labor—graduation day—we are behind the scenes, taking the pictures, straightening the ties, watching those whom we supported and nudged and helped and pushed fly. You can’t MAKE anyone learn, much to everyone’s constant frustration and frequent chagrin.
Perhaps the Update occurred because it’s Summer Break, that magical time of the year when I get to be a full-time stay-at-home. That time of year that I am in full-time Support Mode. When it is natural that I take on more of the housework—because I’m home—and the childcare--because the kids are home—and the cooking—because I’m home and doing the shopping.
Maybe I’m just too hyper to stay home. I find myself looking at my kids—who are happily playing their own elaborate Kid Games and become annoyed when a Grown-Up tries to play with them; ‘Mommy, you play wrong!’ But I want to play. Not just because I like my kids, but because I don’t know what else to do with myself. The house is clean, the shopping is done. The laundry is done. Why? Because I’m on warp-speed from being Working Mom.
On Mother’s Day, my mother told me to ‘settle down and relax’. I don’t know how. I’m hyper. I’m driven. I’m Type-A, neurotic, OCD, perhaps ADD, and definitely a Control Freak. The only therapy is to stay busy and pursue perfection.
I’ve never found this to be a bad thing. I would worry that my pursuit of perfection would harm my children, but because I worry about that, my new idea of perfection is raising children who don’t pursue perfection. This is a complicated little dance, but seems to be going well. They are much more Type B, happy-go-lucky than I have ever managed to be…even after several glasses of wine.
I've always wanted to be happy-go-lucky. I have several friends who are. They float through life, genuinely happy with whatever Life gives them. ‘Sweet T’, my soul-sister friend since we were both conceived, used to literally live in a van down by the river. She recently traded in that van for a shiny new Honda Odyssey for her baby boy, but she kept her waist-length dreads. And “Big Dave” left a lucrative job in international finance to wander aimlessly around South America. Along the way, he perfected the art of drinking matte, had several unfortunate ‘chaffage’ issues, caught a nasty intestinal parasite and met a gorgeous woman from the Rio de la Plata region (picture Gisele, only hotter). They and my other ‘Dude, yyyeeeaaahhhhh’ friends smile good-naturedly at me as I plan and perfect everything. Their houses aren’t neat, their living rooms lack focal points and their Life List is written, if it’s written at all, on a cocktail napkin, a piece of hemp, or in the sand by the water’s edge.
My Life List is neatly typed into an Excel spreadsheet, color-coded and meticulously examined, cross-checked and revised every year on my birthday.
I’ve tried ‘letting go’. It drives me insane. I think this is why I so admire Stay-at-Homes. They are Zen. They have mastered the art of ‘letting go’. And I cannot. Working gives me structure and structure helps me thrive.
I LIKE being a perfectionist. I like making lists. I LOVE crossing things off my lists. I like being a little bit rushed. I get a swell of pride whenever I manipulate and plan my schedule just right so that everyone arrives at their respected appointments, practices, jobs and fun at the right time. Color schemes give me a thrill and filing turns me on.
Perfectionism gives me a sense of accomplishment. And I know that many say it is unhealthy and wrong, but others also say to love and know yourself. Well, I am a Hot Minivan Mom and I am a Perfectionist.
Frankly, I just don’t understand why someone wouldn’t strive for perfection. If I can’t be perfect at it, I don’t want to do it.
The funny thing about admitting and reveling in this rather neurotic quirk of mine is that by indulging my need to be super-organized, clean, etc., I can then relax. If my house is perfectly clean and tidy, I love to have impromptu dinner parties of ‘what are you making and does it go well with what I’m making so come on over’. If my schedule is laid out in my head (and on my phone, which is synced to my husband’s phone and the computer Outlook calendar), I know that I have time for an unscheduled Ice Cream stop or a random park visit. Because my clothes—and my children’s (Stu wears a uniform, so he’s easy)--are chosen for the week and laid out in labeled Day drawers in each closet, I can go a little crazy with a new hairstyle or accessory without upsetting the morning’s schedule.
The only place I am not perfect is in my minivan. The thing is a dump. Seriously, I think it’s a health hazard. I try to keep it clean, I really do. But I have never met a real, live, Hot Minivan Mom who doesn’t have a few stray cheerios, a couple McDonald’s fries, random toys, socks, school papers and all of the other flotsam and jetsom of childhood scattered around the van floor. And many of these women are impeccably groomed at all times (even for 8 am swimming lessons) and run homes that are immaculate. But the Van cannot be controlled, the Van cannot be tidied, the Van cannot be perfect.
It can start that way. Mine does, at least once a month. Or sooner, if the debris pile on the floor reaches ankle-deep. I don’t even clean it out: I go to the local no-touch-car-wash and pay up for the deluxe. The one with ‘shine rinse’, coconut-scented fragrance and 5 teenage boys making minimum wage to shovel out my car. I tip big and tell them to not even ask about whatever they find: just toss it. On more than one occasion, they’ve found lacy lingerie under the third row.
It feels so good to drive home in that clean, tidy, beach-scented car. I vow to keep it that way. I wonder why I can keep my own pantry neatly organized and all the socks in my home matched, yet drive a van that is, frankly, an embarrassment and potentially the next SuperFund site.
But 30-some-odd school drop-offs and pick-ups later, 4 weekends of parties and beaches and parks and playdates and dog-dates, 15 some-odd dance practices and golf lessons and soccer games and 50 Starbucks runs…and the Van is a disaster.
Sometimes, it sucks valuables into the morass and then, like Indiana Jones into the dreaded snake pit, I must go and find it.
Last night, the Van ate Jennifer’s tap shoe. Her tiny, size-6, custom-ordered, Daddy Spit-Shined for Tomorrow’s Recital Pictures tap shoe. I had hoped it had not gone into Van Land. I turned the house upside down, searched under the beds, tried all of the known places, but I knew. I knew I had to go.
And so, at 10 pm, I slid open the cargo doors, grabbed Stu’s cop flashlight (the big one, with the bright are-you-drunk beam and the heavy steal body..you know, to scare off any rodent-like squatters or alien creatures who may be in residence under the seats) and crawled in. I found:
4 little post-its with “JJJJJJ” printed proudly all over them.
1 paper butterfly, made out of Jennifer’s handprints.
2 shoe laces, tied neatly in a bow by Kathleen’s hands; a major feat for a left-handed Kindergartener.
My 2nd best pair of sunglasses, only slightly scratched.
A Daily Report, dated 4 months ago, from Jen’s preschool teacher praising her for saying ‘yellow’ clearly.
A journal entry from Kathleen reading, ‘my mom is cool’.
One of Stuart’s little love-notes that he likes to put in the girls’ lunches when he has to work swing shift and can’t tuck them into bed.
Another of his notes that he likes to put in my lunch when he works graveyard shift and can’t tuck me into bed, either.
A piece of my gardening shoe with Marshmellow’s toothprints all over it.
A black lacy Victoria’s Secret thong from a date-night tryst with my husband in the parking lot behind the Dairy Queen.
One tiny, size-6, custom-ordered, Daddy Spit-Shined for Tomorrow’s Recital Pictures tap shoe.
And me. Because there I was, right where I had left myself, strewn about the floor between the second and third row.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Confession: I need Mom-Porn.
When I was a younger woman, my needs were complicated. I needed individuality yet a co-dependent partner. I needed the independence of a modern woman yet the comfort of being ‘kept’ in the manner my parents had supplied. I needed education and fun and seriousness and beauty and fitness and happiness and fulfillment and world peace and to save the spotted owl and the cute little baby sea turtles. I needed Dior dresses, Coach handbags and Prada shoes and a hybrid car and a career that satisfied and saved the world yet left me with weekends free.
Now, I have some of those things and would still like all of those things, but the only thing I really need is my man.
When I was younger, I needed to impress my man by appearing worldly and educated and deeply passionate about the ‘important’ things. I used to try to educate myself on world affairs and would spend hours researching Iran and why it was unstable.
I have since accepted that I’m not going to figure it out for several reasons: 1. I teach English and am more comfortable in the political intrigues of Mr. Darcy and Hamlet than the modern ones. 2. I lack the super-high security clearance Hot Navy SEAL has and 3. I just don’t understand the whole international chess game of politics. This is why we have people like SEAL boy, the CIA and Tom Clancy. They worry about Iran. I worry about, well, other stuff.
I need to worry about other stuff. It’s important stuff, like Jennifer’s lisp, Kathleen’s obsession with Rice Krispies, the hard-water-ring around my toilet bowl and why grown men wear shants out in public (you know shants: they’re too long for shorts, too short for pants and ‘shan’t’ be worn because they’re too hideously gross).
This is probably why I work as a high school English teacher, spending 7.5 hours a day trying desperately to get teenagers to care about commas, Shakespeare and compound-complex sentences. Not only am I actually geeky enough to be passionate about those things, I also realize that, in reality, we’re all more interested in how many kids Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are going to have.
Sure, people who worry about world affairs usually drive cool sleek little sports cars. So what? I don’t need a fancy car. I drive a baby-blue Dodge Grand Caravan. I win. After all, my minivan has two sliding doors, captain’s chairs so Jennifer and Kathleen can’t hit each other, a DVD player, surround sound and 10 cup holders. What more does a modern mom-on-the-go need?
Besides regular sex with Matt Damon, that is.
Last night, tho, I needed more. In fact, I was at my most needy. Stu was working, of course, so I sought to fill the void by fetching ice-cream, putting on my comfiest nightie and clicking on the TV.
Holy Shit. The Bourne Identity. Mom-Porn!!!!!
I’ve never really understood the attraction of watching two naked people bang away at each other to cheesy music, but put Matt Damon on the screen in a tight black tee-shirt and I’m good to go.
And all HMMs need porn. Or, let me qualify: all Moms who have husbands who are frequently gone need Mom-Porn. Women have needs. These needs do not disappear after children. They may change, as mine did (really, who needs Prada shoes anyway? They’d just sink into the grass at soccer practice). But the basic need for your man does not always understand Grave Shift or Working Late or Business Trip.
Those of us left alone often at night need something to fuel our fantasies and fill that empty, aching, hollow void. Some women turn to affairs, but affairs are a very bad idea…for SO many reasons (really, need I list them?!?) Beyond the horrible betrayal, one of the big ones is that an affair, by its definition, is the epitome of game-playing between men and women: the lying, the sneaking, the wondering and questioning and inherent dishonesty…
I do not like playing games.
Board games, card games, ball games, they all suck. One of the reasons I had two kids was so that they could play Candyland for hours together, thus absolving me from acting interested and entertained by being stuck in the stupid gumdrop mountains. again.
Most of my friends like to have 'game night'. Due to my social neurosis (and need for adult interaction of any kind), I attend. And drink heavily. And then try to distract everyone from whatever stupid-ass, humiliating, childish version of 'charades' we're playing by being funny, tempting them with food or taking my clothes off.
The last one is 100 percent successful, if a bit mortifying the next morning. Still, better than miming that I'm a fucking duck or something to get people whom I used to love and respect to say the word 'cracker'.
I do like watching games. I love attending any form of professional sports. And why not? The food is heart-attack-inducing goodness, the alcohol is expensive but somehow yummier for being served in cheap plastic cups (invoking fond college-kegger memories perhaps?) and I am guaranteed some awesome tight-ass man candy...baseball is my favorite. I like to sit down by the outfield and ogle the left-fielder's ass. Football is OK, but I'd rather watch the cheerleaders’ bouncing breasts than the center's bouncing belly.
I also like watching the games men and women—or girls and boys—play. It is endlessly fascinating to observe the drama, the fights, the pure intensity of emotion and twistedness of the human sexual drive.
However, I thank god that I’m not dating. I understand there are all sorts of complicated dating rules. Things that involve math (dates must be requested 72 hours before the actual date, phone calls cannot be made until 48 hours have passed), money (he pays first, she pays second, ‘going dutch’ is something which, apparently, does not involve wearing wooden clogs) and sexual expectation (the number 3 seems to be magical…something I thought was only true in hotel-room porn).
I don’t think I’d be good at the dating game. I met my husband at a drunken college party when I was 18. ‘Dated’ him at more drunken college parties. At some point, I stumbled back to his apartment instead of my dorm room and, bam!, a relationship that blossomed into a successful marriage was born. I didn’t worry about rules about calling—my roommate was always on the phone, anyway, so I would just find him after class. Texting didn’t exist—in fact, I didn’t have a cell phone (GASP to my young readers who can’t imagine such a pre-historic hell). Sex was easy and fun without rules beyond the basic one which we still follow: “do not play with others”.
I wouldn’t be good at the games now. If I want to talk to someone, I call them. If I want to send them a quick message or let them know I’m thinking of them, I text them. If I want to see them, I invite them out or go to their house.
The games all just seem elusive and silly and deceptive. For that reason--and the obvious I'm-not-a-whoring-bitch-slut-homewrecker--an affair is out. Instead, as we all know, sometimes I fill my ‘needs’ with my vivid imagination (thanks, Crushes!). Sometimes, I reach into the ‘goody drawer’. It’s the top drawer of a very tall dresser, so I have to stand on tip-toe and reach in blind…kinda like a kid picking a prize out of a basket...pretty fun to see what my hand closes on. Ooooh, pink or purple tonight?
However, that’s only when my ‘need’ is pretty desperate. Usually, I fill my needs with Matt Damon. He always satisfies. After all, the man sings. He dances. He went to Harvard, won an Oscar, has only been married once and has tons of kids. And it helps that he is yummily gorgeous, self-deprecatingly funny and will never leave the toilet seat up, the bed unmade or his nasty workout shorts on the living room floor.
Because, you know, he’s a fantasy. And in my fantasy, he saves me from bad guys, sings me love songs, draws me a bath, rubs my feet…
And then I go to sleep, still needing my husband but with vows unbroken. Because in the Game of Marriage, I’m playing to win. I need to.
Now, I have some of those things and would still like all of those things, but the only thing I really need is my man.
When I was younger, I needed to impress my man by appearing worldly and educated and deeply passionate about the ‘important’ things. I used to try to educate myself on world affairs and would spend hours researching Iran and why it was unstable.
I have since accepted that I’m not going to figure it out for several reasons: 1. I teach English and am more comfortable in the political intrigues of Mr. Darcy and Hamlet than the modern ones. 2. I lack the super-high security clearance Hot Navy SEAL has and 3. I just don’t understand the whole international chess game of politics. This is why we have people like SEAL boy, the CIA and Tom Clancy. They worry about Iran. I worry about, well, other stuff.
I need to worry about other stuff. It’s important stuff, like Jennifer’s lisp, Kathleen’s obsession with Rice Krispies, the hard-water-ring around my toilet bowl and why grown men wear shants out in public (you know shants: they’re too long for shorts, too short for pants and ‘shan’t’ be worn because they’re too hideously gross).
This is probably why I work as a high school English teacher, spending 7.5 hours a day trying desperately to get teenagers to care about commas, Shakespeare and compound-complex sentences. Not only am I actually geeky enough to be passionate about those things, I also realize that, in reality, we’re all more interested in how many kids Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are going to have.
Sure, people who worry about world affairs usually drive cool sleek little sports cars. So what? I don’t need a fancy car. I drive a baby-blue Dodge Grand Caravan. I win. After all, my minivan has two sliding doors, captain’s chairs so Jennifer and Kathleen can’t hit each other, a DVD player, surround sound and 10 cup holders. What more does a modern mom-on-the-go need?
Besides regular sex with Matt Damon, that is.
Last night, tho, I needed more. In fact, I was at my most needy. Stu was working, of course, so I sought to fill the void by fetching ice-cream, putting on my comfiest nightie and clicking on the TV.
Holy Shit. The Bourne Identity. Mom-Porn!!!!!
I’ve never really understood the attraction of watching two naked people bang away at each other to cheesy music, but put Matt Damon on the screen in a tight black tee-shirt and I’m good to go.
And all HMMs need porn. Or, let me qualify: all Moms who have husbands who are frequently gone need Mom-Porn. Women have needs. These needs do not disappear after children. They may change, as mine did (really, who needs Prada shoes anyway? They’d just sink into the grass at soccer practice). But the basic need for your man does not always understand Grave Shift or Working Late or Business Trip.
Those of us left alone often at night need something to fuel our fantasies and fill that empty, aching, hollow void. Some women turn to affairs, but affairs are a very bad idea…for SO many reasons (really, need I list them?!?) Beyond the horrible betrayal, one of the big ones is that an affair, by its definition, is the epitome of game-playing between men and women: the lying, the sneaking, the wondering and questioning and inherent dishonesty…
I do not like playing games.
Board games, card games, ball games, they all suck. One of the reasons I had two kids was so that they could play Candyland for hours together, thus absolving me from acting interested and entertained by being stuck in the stupid gumdrop mountains. again.
Most of my friends like to have 'game night'. Due to my social neurosis (and need for adult interaction of any kind), I attend. And drink heavily. And then try to distract everyone from whatever stupid-ass, humiliating, childish version of 'charades' we're playing by being funny, tempting them with food or taking my clothes off.
The last one is 100 percent successful, if a bit mortifying the next morning. Still, better than miming that I'm a fucking duck or something to get people whom I used to love and respect to say the word 'cracker'.
I do like watching games. I love attending any form of professional sports. And why not? The food is heart-attack-inducing goodness, the alcohol is expensive but somehow yummier for being served in cheap plastic cups (invoking fond college-kegger memories perhaps?) and I am guaranteed some awesome tight-ass man candy...baseball is my favorite. I like to sit down by the outfield and ogle the left-fielder's ass. Football is OK, but I'd rather watch the cheerleaders’ bouncing breasts than the center's bouncing belly.
I also like watching the games men and women—or girls and boys—play. It is endlessly fascinating to observe the drama, the fights, the pure intensity of emotion and twistedness of the human sexual drive.
However, I thank god that I’m not dating. I understand there are all sorts of complicated dating rules. Things that involve math (dates must be requested 72 hours before the actual date, phone calls cannot be made until 48 hours have passed), money (he pays first, she pays second, ‘going dutch’ is something which, apparently, does not involve wearing wooden clogs) and sexual expectation (the number 3 seems to be magical…something I thought was only true in hotel-room porn).
I don’t think I’d be good at the dating game. I met my husband at a drunken college party when I was 18. ‘Dated’ him at more drunken college parties. At some point, I stumbled back to his apartment instead of my dorm room and, bam!, a relationship that blossomed into a successful marriage was born. I didn’t worry about rules about calling—my roommate was always on the phone, anyway, so I would just find him after class. Texting didn’t exist—in fact, I didn’t have a cell phone (GASP to my young readers who can’t imagine such a pre-historic hell). Sex was easy and fun without rules beyond the basic one which we still follow: “do not play with others”.
I wouldn’t be good at the games now. If I want to talk to someone, I call them. If I want to send them a quick message or let them know I’m thinking of them, I text them. If I want to see them, I invite them out or go to their house.
The games all just seem elusive and silly and deceptive. For that reason--and the obvious I'm-not-a-whoring-bitch-slut-homewrecker--an affair is out. Instead, as we all know, sometimes I fill my ‘needs’ with my vivid imagination (thanks, Crushes!). Sometimes, I reach into the ‘goody drawer’. It’s the top drawer of a very tall dresser, so I have to stand on tip-toe and reach in blind…kinda like a kid picking a prize out of a basket...pretty fun to see what my hand closes on. Ooooh, pink or purple tonight?
However, that’s only when my ‘need’ is pretty desperate. Usually, I fill my needs with Matt Damon. He always satisfies. After all, the man sings. He dances. He went to Harvard, won an Oscar, has only been married once and has tons of kids. And it helps that he is yummily gorgeous, self-deprecatingly funny and will never leave the toilet seat up, the bed unmade or his nasty workout shorts on the living room floor.
Because, you know, he’s a fantasy. And in my fantasy, he saves me from bad guys, sings me love songs, draws me a bath, rubs my feet…
And then I go to sleep, still needing my husband but with vows unbroken. Because in the Game of Marriage, I’m playing to win. I need to.
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