The Problem With Husbands

When it comes to the topic of husbands, I know that I have little room to talk.  I have found a wonderful man who treats me the way he would treat...well, let's not put a label on it shall we?  And I'm aware that my problem with Husband is very first world.  It's like having a fridge full of food and nothing to eat.  Or a closet full of clothing and nothing to wear.  He doesn't beat me, neglect me, or limit me in any way.  I don't wear a scarf when I go out in public unless it's fabulous and matches my attire.  And I don't have to have his permission to go out.  More often than not, he encourages it in a way that makes me feel a little like the cat when we lock her out of the bedroom.  Like I should be mewling at the door.

Let me innnnn!!  I know there's something good in there!

And somehow, that can kind of be the problem.  Husband can't just be satisfied with telling me that I'm the most beautiful, talented, lovely, gifted, and pale woman he knows.  No, Husband always has to encourage.  Suggest.  Continue talking when I desire him to shut the hell up.  It's more than a little irritating.

Take for example this previous weekend.  I was baking a cake and playing video games, and apparently I looked so happy that Husband could not just appreciate that I wasn't on his case for once.  Oh no.  He had to plop down next to me and have a conversation about it.

Me:  This was a great day.  I got to do two things I like all day long, bake cakes and play video games.
Husband:  That's great honey.  I wish I could make it last.  But then once a month you'd have to bake cake and play video games.
Me:  We're fat enough.
Husband: *no longer responding, just drifting in the ideal dream world where he gets cake once a month*

This is how I imagine regular cake time going eventually.

Usually, these conversations end with him figuring out some way for me to make him extra baked goods during the month, instead of on special occasions.  So here's another problem.  Aside from suggesting things, he has to encourage extra-curricular baking.  Not that I mind baking, it gives me great joy.  But what do I do once I start baking at all times? 

Special occasions are no longer special because I can make blue velvet cake any time.  Each holiday I would have to come up with something bigger and better, and before you know it, I'm making croquembouche on a random Thursday and the next time Thanksgiving rolls around (I have to celebrate that shit twice up here) my head explodes in messy morsels of grey matter and pastry dough.

This can change depending on which cereal we buy for the week.  Stepping on Cheerios HURTS.

As I said, husbands are a first world problem.  Especially for me.  And now I need to go to the grocery store.  Tiramisu doesn't magically make its self on a Wednesday.

Eat, Drink, and Be Arrested

I wish I could say my life was a picnic.  A bright Victorian picnic where people play croquet on the lawn and wear hats that match their dresses, with blooming flowers and butterflies floating on the breeze.  I wish I could say my life was white irises on the mantle and roses blooming in the garden.  But since I can't, I'm gonna tell y'all about Husband's birthday.

I'm not particularly big on my birthday, since so many have been disappointing.  I'd rather just ignore that it's coming, and do something else.  But Husband's birthday should be a big deal, and it totally is.  Especially this year, when not a whole lot has been going well for us recently.  So I decided to throw him a party.  And I wanted it to be an awesome party.  I wanted it to be the kind of party that had talk of strippers and nights in Rodanthe and had the cops called to it.

...For the record, that last one nearly happened.  Yeah, it's that kind of story.

So being an army man and having army buddies and not particularly caring for croquet or white irises, Husband wanted to have his birthday party at a local watering hole, a wings place that had fifteen thousand kinds of wing sauce and one salad, complete with wings in it, on the menu.  But I agreed, as long as I could still bring him a birthday cake.

Look at this piece of shit cake.  This garbage destroyed my faith in humanity.  And my faith in cake.

The first fiasco was the cake.  I mean, look at this thing.  It looks like they let a legally blind marmot put that lettering on.  And the cherries used to decorate it were not dried before being put on top, so they immediately bled all over the white frosting on the cake.  I am still fighting with the company about this cake, because I'll be damned if I will accept sub-par cake at any time, let alone Husband's birthday.

As for the rest of the night, it went particularly well.  That is, until he began opening presents.  It went smoothly at first, but then we got to the final gift.  I should explain that it is not unusual at all for the two of us to buy each other toys we would have enjoyed at the age of eight as gifts nearly as frequently as we do the tube socks and jewelry thing.  Thus it was not at all odd for me to buy him the biggest Nerf gun on the market.

If he looked at me with this much joy, I'd assume it was because he'd figured out a way to kill me for the insurance money.

Of course, that is what started all the problems.  Because he could not wait until we got home to open it.  He had to open that Nerf gun right there in the bar, and put it together.  I would have scolded him more, but frankly, there was more joy on his face when putting that toy together than I ever saw on our wedding day, so I just let it slide.  Instead, I watched as he loaded it, and then began to unload it.

In the bar.

At people's heads.

This was supposed to be a picture of him firing on his buddies.  But I was laughing so hard that I dropped the camera.

This continued in our little corner until our waiter came up to me, having been patient with our rowdy asses for this long, and told me that should the firing of projectiles continue, we would be kicked out on our rude behinds, and the police would be called if we did not comply.  I took matters into my own hands, and took the gun away, putting it under my chair, but I then spent the rest of the night trying to keep him from going for it again until I just put it in the trunk of the car.

Not that it was not hilarious that he was pelting his friends in the face with Nerf darts, but you know, sometimes, I really want a party to be closer to white irises than a police escort home.  Just saying.

The Plague

Well I went all last week without a post, and that's mostly because I was stricken down in the prime of my life by The Plague (capitalized, as all my illnesses are).  I went to bed Friday with sugarplums and shirtless firemen dancing in my head (or whatever married women are supposed to dream about) and Saturday I woke up something else.  I was no longer a woman, I was a tissue beast with a voice like an autotuner stuffed with ether soaked cotton balls.  Husband couldn't have been more pleased.

I spent the next week switching between moaning in bed, and moaning on the couch while neglecting hygene, Husband, and cat alike and swearing that I was going to die.  Because I was pretty certain that I had THE PLAGUE AND I WAS GOING TO DIE. 

100% of the time is spent telling Husband how I'm going to DIE.

Now, don't get me wrong.  Healthy and well again, I am quite aware that I am slightly...unhinged when I am sick.  Husband, if he knew I was blogging about it, would probably say that I am unlivable and unsufferable when I am sick.  And I totally, totally am.  I go from a productive woman with books to read and games to play and blogs to write to a lump of misery that can only moan in a grating, glass grinding monotone about how horrible I feel. 

I really do feel bad about how I act when I'm sick, but it comes from having a husband who takes such good care of me when I'm on the brink of death.  Especially when he does things like he did this time, mostly because I suspect he blamed himself for bringing The Plague home with him from work.  He went and got me kleenex (with Kung Fu Panda on the box even) and orange juice.  He made me chicken noodle soup and brought it to me while I was oozing yellow stuff and touched me when the cat, smart creature that it is, wouldn't come within arm's distance of me.  I'm pretty sure she knew something I didn't.

This forest is representative of how many Kleenex I use when sick.  The EPA is why I had to move to Canada.

For some reason I imagine that she thinks that I was undergoing some kind of horrific, The Fly style transformation.  That one night my pink kitty pajamas would split open like a second skin and some freakish creature would emerge to eat her and Husband before leaving on two pairs of wings to mate with men and eat their heads indiscriminately until I was stopped by a sexy scientist and her cop boyfriend who would then celebrate by having sexy movie sex.

Yeah, I'd have been okay with this if it meant my nose wasn't runny any more.

Either way, I think I would have just been happy to not have been sick.  Dead, transformed into a bug monster, I was ready to accept any kind of Kafka-esque future as long as I wasn't dripping things from my nose any more.  I'm pretty certain that Husband would have probably been okay with it too after days of fever-induced dreams and Nyquil naps that lasted ten hours in a row.

Adventures in Self-Torture

So there I was, sweating, breathless, surrounded by men.  We're all breathing hard, the physical exertion enough to keep us glistening and tired.  I only wish going to the gym was as much fun as it sounds in my dirty, dirty mind.

I am a newbie to this whole gym thing.  I have the rhythm down, I know enough to not stare at the guys who have biceps bigger than my head, and to wipe down the machines when I'm done.  I also know enough to take my own water, and that turning up my music is not a sin when the constant clatter and whir of machinery threatens to send me into a paranoid insanity where I'm absolutely certain that they're all living death machines that survive off human pain and suffering.

This is what most people imagine before ACTUALLY going to the gym.  Complete with bustle.

But since the music takes care of that, I'm far more paranoid that someone is watching me at the gym.  Not because I am particularly good looking, but because I feel like I don't belong.  The gym is full of skinny women in spandex that wouldn't even make a tube top for me and men who can bench press my considerable weight without flinching.  Husband tries to reassure me that this is not the case, and conversations generally go in the direction of:

Me:  I hate that everyone looks at me.  I'm sure they're all thinking "How dare that fat girl try to come in here and take responsibility for her physical health!"

Husband:  I doubt they're thinking that at all.

Me:  But they have to be!  I don't belong!

Husband:  Dear, if they're staring, it's because you have pink hair, tattoos, and a five carat wedding ring on your hand.

...Touche, husband.  Touche.

This is fairly acurate.  I swear.

The truth of the matter is that people there are probably more concerned with their own physical fitness and their own training than they are in one pink-haired fat girl.  Nobody probably notices me, and if they do, chances are they only see camaraderie, or someone taking responsibility for their own life.  And if they're thinking something snide and mean, well, what does that particularly have to do with me?  Why the hell do I care about what one meat head thinks?

So I go to the gym and come home wheezing like a beached manatee, making the "Please, dear merciful God, if you exist, push me back out to see" whimpering noise.  It frightens the cat.  Husband has learned to just walk past my melodramatic display of agony and sea creature noises.  He'll have none of my nonsense.  Especially since he knows that in twenty minutes and a shower later, I'll be back to normal.

Today does stick out in my mind though.  Mostly because there was this woman at the gym who literally looked like she was skin and bones.  The kind of person who would benefit from an additional twenty pounds of weight or so.  But there she was, two treadmills away from me.  That wasn't the weird part though.  The weird part was that she had the treadmill at such a level that it was nearly 90 degrees into the air, and she was clinging to the display panel for dear life as she climbed it.

I began looking around, wondering if she maybe needed help, but nobody else seemed concerned.  So I broke my own gym etiquette rules, and I kept an eye on this woman with my peripheral vision.  Mostly because I was absolutely certain that she was going to miss one of her steps and go shooting off that thing like a cat on waxed counter top. 

This was not something I wanted to miss.

This is EXACTLY what I thought would happen.  If I were lucky.

My imagination ran with the news story that would obviously occur to cover a woman flying off a treadmill at speeds that propelled her through the row of elliptical machines and into the wall (oh the humanity), where I would be the only witness, and I could tell them all how concerned I was for her, so I kept an eye on her from the very beginning.  It's entirely possible that I got a little lost in these thoughts, because next thing I knew, she was gone.

I searched all around, and realized that she indeed had not flown off the treadmill, but had obviously finished her work out.  So I finished my own, slightly disappointed, and went down to the locker room to get my things to leave.  I should have never allowed myself to believe that I was going to be left disappointed.  Because there she was in the women's locker room, right as you walk in.  Butt naked.

I love it when things come full circle.

Canada Deprives Me of Debauchery

When I moved to Canada, I was aware that there were going to be some...changes.  I would have to learn to appreciate lumberjacks and moose.  I would have to start caring about hockey.  I would have to become...friendly.  I would live in a land of perpetual snow and ice, where I would chip out a single blade of withered grass from the permafrost when I wanted to do yardwork.  Basically, I thought moving to Canada would be close to my personal idea of Hell.  All that was missing was a job in retail.

For some reason, it wasn't like this at all.

What I didn't expect was that I was going to miss some things that I took for granted in the States.  Not the clashes over religion and birth control and that kind of bullshit.  I get all that medicine stuff for free up here.  It's actually kind of petty and stupid what I miss.  Okay, actually it's Husband who told me that it was stupid and petty what I miss, but what does he know?!  He's still got his supply of Tim Tam and he can't tell me he doesn't!

I love to cook, and this whole metric measuring system just screws with me.  I miss things being in ounces and cups and all that stuff.  I miss not having to convert every single recipe that I find online so that I know what to buy in the grocery store.  I find myself getting frustrated and just buying Hamburger Helper, because I know by sight what one pound of hamburger looks like.  None of this grams bullshit for me.  Hell no.

See?  It even uses an evil font!

What I really miss are the gut-destroying, diet-smashing, artery clogging messes that are available only in America, because let's face it, unless something is trying to get affordable birth control or fair treatment in a prison, we don't give a fuck how bad it is for us.  For those of you disagree, I put before you the Double Down from KFC, Hardees, Four Loko and Easy Cheez.  Because none of these things are available in Canada.  They're ILLEGAL HERE.

All of the good stuff that I hoped one day to be able to triumph over by holding my nose high and saying "I'm better than this, because I don't eat it anymore." is all gone.  I suppose I can still go to McDonalds and order five Big Macs if I really want to do something that bad for me, but it's not the same.  It's not the same as conquoring your personal addiction to Double Stuf Chocolate Creme Oreos because they're not available here!

I hate you Canada.  I hate your desire to make me skinny, and your warning labels on cigarettes that take up the whole package and would be really annoying if I smoked.  I hate your lack of Cherry Pepsi and your inability to provide me with hookers riddled with disease.  ...Okay, maybe not that last one.

But I still hate you for not having liquor inside grocery stores, forcing me to make a second stop and knowing that I'm not going to friggin' do that.  I'm too lazy to even kick the cat off me when she's biting my feet, what the hell makes you think I'm going to drive in my warm, gassed-up vehicle with it's comfortable bucket seats the additional twenty yards to the liquor store right next to the grocery store?!



I make a valid point here.

So shape up Canada, or I'm going to start going to some other country for my hedonistic needs.



Remembrance Day = A Knee in the Gonads

So how does today equal a kick in the jewels?

Well, it began as I expected.  Husband got up a half hour before me, not so he could prepare himself for the day, but to play fucking Fallout.  So when I finally ambled downstairs in a grumpy ball of grump, he was sitting there, pretending like he didn't have boots to polish or brass to shine and a tie to find.  Thus, I got into the shower, already tense, knowing we were going to be late.

I should be used to being late, right?  Because my husband dawdles.  He's a DAWDLER.  For a man who has to be on time or get into trouble, he sure as shit doesn't seem to have any sense of urgency when we're going to be late for something.  I personally would rather be on fire than be late for something, but he doesn't seem to have that freaking problem.  Oh no, not my dawdler.

Anyway, we get into the car, me in a suede skirt and kimono top, him looking dashing in his uniform, and all of a sudden he changes his mind over what ceremony we're going to.  Now anyone who knows me knows how OCD I am, and how changing plans at the very last minute drives me nuts.  So this is pretty much how the conversation went:

Husband:  Let's go to the ceremony at Kingsway.

Me:  No.

Husband:  But that other ceremony in St. Albert isn't really a parade or anything.

Me:  You made your choice, we're going to fucking St. Albert.

Husband:  But that's not a ceremony!

Me:  (this is the point where my head explodes into a mess on the windshield)  And if we go to Kingsway we'll be fucking late and miss everything and have to walk three fucking blocks to get to this fucking ceremony that is outside.  OUTSIDE.  IN CANADA.  IN NOVEMBER.

And yet, we fucking went to Kingsway.  We then got lost, asked some guy who didn't speak English where to go, got lost again, and finally got there just as the parade ended.  Mike wanted to hold my hand.  I staunchly refused, standing in the parking lot about half a mile away from any of the parade stuff. 

And guess what.

We were late.

We missed everything.

We had to walk three fucking blocks.

Anyway, after all that, we went to Smitty's and got some breakfast and I decided when we got home it was time to bury the hatchet, and not in Husband's skull.  So we went upstairs to have "Super fun grown up time" together, and just as we lied down on the bed, apparently I kneed him right in the junk.

Of all the times I have wanted to knee him in the junk, and yet I never got the chance, and I would do it when we were trying to get along.  I tried really really hard not to laugh too.  Like, really hard.  Like I smothered it beneath the choking noises he was making as he rolled over in agony.

I guess we're all going to associate Remembrance Day with a kick in the family jewels now.

This was funnier in my head.