Six years.
Six years is a long time.
Six years is hardly anything.
Six years is everything.
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My husband and I have had a not even remotely fairytale story from the very beginning. At the point in history when my father decided to run my then-boyfriend off, we had been dating for about a year.
Now, as a little background TheMan was my first serious, lasted-more-than-a-few-weeks boyfriend. And he didn’t go to our church. He was Lutheran and we were quasi-Baptists. AND his mother owned a bar.
And we were boinking like horny bunny rabbits suspected of engaging in less than pure activities.
So there was, at the time, very little love lost between my then-boyfriend and my dad.
One day, shortly after my parents developed the aforementioned suspicions, TheMan invited me out fishing, with the guys.
I, being a young teen girl who was madly in love, chirped, “Oh, that sounds fun! I’d like to go!“ And then spent the next hour or so, until his planned arrival, picking the perfect outfit for fishing with the guys.
I see his truck pull up to the farm, and I grab my jacket. In the amount of time it takes me to grab a jacket and walk downstairs, he had already backed out of the driveway and onto the road.
This, of course, led to an ugly scene with my dad. But that’s a story for another night!
Later, I found out what had happened, according to TheMan.
Note: My dad was/is a farmer. This is important to the rest of the story.
Dad had been out doing chores when TheMan pulled in. Feeding something or other, or mucking out some building, or something like that. Farmer stuff.
Then TheMan pulls in. TheMan. Who has (possibly) sullied his sweet (and willing) daughter. To take her out, on a boat, on the river.
Oh, HAYUHL NO. So he marches up to the truck, and he informs TheMan that he needs to get gone. About 30 seconds ago.
Now, what TheMan SAW was an angry father, coming up to the truck, yelling and carrying a pitchfork!
Now, he could have taken the time to drive forward and pull around, because my parents driveway makes an awkward loop. But. Pitchfork.
So instead, this 18-year old version of TheMan chooses to back that truck, which is towing a boat, down the long driveway as fast as he can.
And he does. Hauling butt, with a boat attached, he gracefully backed down that long driveway, and onto the road. With nary a wiggle, or misplaced wheel.
What can I say? His driving skills charmed me.
*****
Many years after this, I mention the story to my dad. He gave me a funny look and says, “I was carrying the pitchfork? Huh. That explains why he backed up so fast!”
And then he walked away chuckling.
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My husband has long been intrigued by the idea of canning. Food. In jars. At home. Which I understand the practicality of it, and the idea of having the convenience of canned, with the yumminess of home-made is alluring. Truly.
But from what I remembered from my childhood, I thought the process would involve a lot sweat, tears and maybe even some blood. But he REALLY wanted to make his pickles, so fine, let’s make some pickles.
It didn’t go entirely smoothly. Example? We may have failed to consider how we were going to get the submerged jars OUT of the boiling water.
But it wasn’t too bad. So my husband starts talking about how he’s going to do it “next time”, and won’t it be great to have our own food in cans?
I ask him, “So what are you going to start home-canning?”
“Well,” he tells me, “We could do sauces, soups, veggies…pretty much anything you normally buy in cans.”
And so. I turn to him. And I say, with all sincerity…
“Oh, like tuna!”
….
The poor man.
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“This post is part of SOYJOY‘s What brings you joy contest. Learn more here”
The question up for consideration is, “What brings you [me] joy?”
Well, my wonderful, goofy, family is probably tops in that department. But I’m betting most people would say the same. So lets assume that I’ve listed the many reasons my family is a source of joy, and move on to….
Zombies.
Zombies bring me joy.
Well, not zombies themselves, because brain-dead rotting flesh walking around trying to munch on you is not particularly conducive to happiness.
But zombie stories, and zombie movies? Apocalyptic doom and gloom, end of the world as we know it, and we’re left to survive as best we can with what we have?
For whatever reason, these are the things that give me the warm and fuzzy feelings.
Luckily, I married someone who is as interested in surviving the Zombie Apocalypse as I am. And if he fails?
Well, at least he’ll be a hot zombie!
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We’re in the kitchen. We’re trying a new brand of breaded processed frozen fish, but have discovered, alas, that we are out of tartar sauce.
No problem, we’ve both cooked for a living before, and have faced down worse situations on Friday Fish-Fry night. (Running out of tartar sauce? Hah. Try running out of fish!)
So we gather the needed ingredients (mayonnaise, relish and lemon juice), and pull out the trusty wooden spoon.
After inquiring about how long we have owned said spoon, and why it might, after six years, be time to buy a replacement spoon, and also discussing what is the correct size of the handle and the appropriate curvature of the bowl of the ideal wooden spoon…AFTER this….
My husband turns to me and says something about how wooden spoons are green. I ask “Oh, like recyclable?” He goes on and says something about renewable resource blahblahblah.
And after this thought-out theory on his part, I come back with, “Well, yeah. But you could recycle a wooden spoon, right?”
He looks me, and shrugs, “Yeah, I guess you could recycle it. You could sharpen it and make it a zombie shank, I suppose.”
Of course. Zombies.
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The husband and I don’t generally talk about where we met. Most people assume that, since we’ve been together since high school, we must have gone to high school together.
Yeah. Not so much.
I was working at McDonald’s. Drive-thru diva extraordinaire. He was hired on as a grill boy. Burger flipper. Not exactly a romantic venue to meet in. No locking of the eyes across the crowded room here thankyouverymuch.
I couldn’t remember his name for 2 weeks. We flirted back and forth, every time we worked together, for about 6 months or so.
Reluctant, we were.
Okay. I was reluctant, and socially awkward. So he wasn’t sure I was interested.
I wasn’t sure I was interested. I take that back. I was mostly definitely interested, with all the emotionality and physicality that 16-going-on-17 year old hormones can muster. But I thought I shouldn’t be interested.
I was on the cusp at that point. Dancing the line between hard-core religiousity, and wild child syndrome. I saw him as a “bad boy”. And perhaps, compared to the other members of my Sunday School class, perhaps he was.
Okay, compared to them? Yeah, he was a bad boy, a rebel, a wild card. But he really wasn’t THAT much of a badass.
So. Met at McDonald’s. Flirted for six months. AND I bailed on our first date (oh yes, I was at least as smooth then as I am now. At least.)
It’s no wonder he married me.
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This story is told in jest, I am not really upset (anymore) by anything that happened today.
I’ve told you before that I’m not a very social person. But I’ve also said that’s one of the things I want need to change about me. So when Mo’* and Curly* invited me to go tubing down the local river, I braced myself and agreed to leave the yard.
It was…an adventure? No, really, it turned out alright, and it was fun in the end. But oh, there were moments!
So first, we have three of us, and we manage to scrounge up 4 tubes. Awesome, the cooler and goodies can have their own tube! Yay!
Except that after LITERALLY 20 minutes of poor Curly and Mo’ passing this tube back and forth, trying to inflate it, we discover that there is a ginormous hole. Attempts to perform magical repair procedures with packing tape were unsuccessful.
We’re not about to let a little thing like that stop us! So after paring down supplies to the bare essentials (one bottle of sunscreen, one bottle of bug spray, some snacks, the booze and drinks AND ONE CELL PHONE <–will be important to remember later) we tie the cooler off behind us, and Mo’ (who has snagged the biggest/best tube, which fair enough, she brought it) is carrying the semi-waterproof bag of stuff.
After retrieving Curly’s flip-flops from the current the first time, off we go for real. Until we didn’t.
We totally started off at the wrong spot. There was mere inches of water. And it was rocky. Not sharp jagged rocks or anything, but not pleasant to walk across either. Or drag your ass on.
I don’t think Curly has been tubing in a very long time, if ever. She’ll have to correct me if I’m wrong, but girlfriend was tripping with a capital TRIP. No one likes tubing in inches of water over rocks. Understood.
But Curly was just having a bad time of it. She seemed to catch on every rock we passed. But we’re determined. So we break out the booze and decide to have at it. Everyone has about a shot’s worth of whiskey, and the bottle gets passed to Curly. Who promptly drops it. Into the river. It about the only spot we’ve encountered so far that is deep enough for this to be an issue.
I’m sure some 15 year olds will find that when they go fishing. Now we’re contributing to underage drinking. Thanks a lot Curly! Also? We’re now reduced to the bottle of Apple Pucker. Which I’m pretty sure I haven’t had since high school.
At some point, the flip-flops are lost for a second time. There is also a lot of on the tube, off the tube, switching tubes, falling off the tube and so on drama. And dropped sodas. And spilled booze.
While Curly manages to get stuck on every rock we pass.
Now here’s the WTF part of this story where Curly does something stupid (no offense to Curly. I think she realizes it NOW). We are a few miles from where we started now, and more than a few from where we’re ending. There are no visible landmarks, and we don’t know if we are still parallel to the road, or not.
When Curly stands up, declares that she is done with this and heads for shore. Shore which may or may not consist of swamp land, deep woods or farmland. Mo’ and I, dumb-founded, are fighting the current to stay in one place as we try to convince her to come back and just get on the darn raft. Wait for a landmark, we say, and we’ll call someone to come get you. Give it a little longer, it’s sure to get deeper! We’re not going in after her, if she leaves she’s on her own, we threaten.And so on…but no dice.
Curly is determined. She hollers over her shoulder, “Call my boyfriend, and tell him to pick me up!” Um. Okay. Except we don’t know where exactly we’re at. Somewhere along the 10-15 mile stretch of river. And possibly, and possibly not, near the highway. Oh. And we don’t have her boyfriend’s number.
Which we tried to tell her, but it was too late. Curly had disappeared into the woods with her flip-flops.
(After 15-20 minutes we receive a text that says she’s safe, and managed to make it back to the car to get her own phone.)
Which is great, except she’s our ride at the end of the trip. So we sent a text, and decided to just go with it, we’ll work it out when we get that far.
The rest of the trip is not bad, and is fairly drama-free. I only fell out of the tube once.
We near the public boat landing that isn’t too far from my house. And by not too far, I mean a mile and a half down the road.
We call the husband of Mo’ for a ride, because Curly has seemingly bailed on us, and half-way through explaining what happened and where we are the. phone. dies.
So we are barefoot, with three big tubes, a cooler, a bag and a dead phone. A mile and a half from the nearest source of booze shelter.
Luckily, my brother-in-law’s truck was in the parking lot at the boat landing, so we stacked our stuff (except the nice tube and the bag) up next to that, hoping he’d think to grab them, since I couldn’t leave a note or send a text.
And then we started walking. Barefoot. Down the road. Towards my house.
Luckily Mo’s husband thought to call her dad, who lives in town here, and go “This is what I know, can you tell me how to get there??” And we had got about half-way when he showed up.
And all is well that ends well, but damn, can you see why I don’t leave the house?? 
*Not their real names, because, well, would YOU want YOUR name in this story??
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Hello dear friend and former constant companion,
I was wondering where you’d been. I expected you to pop in awhile ago, to be honest.
And while we’re being honest here, friend, I have to admit that I wasn’t exactly looking forward to you coming back around. I think “dreading” would be a better description of how I was anticipating your visit.
I knew you were coming, of course, because, sooner or later, you always do. You show your ugly face at my weakest moments.
Tonight, it was just unfair to everyone in the house for you to show up. My husband asked if I minded if he went out for a bit. Now, I know WHY you choose then to show up. It’s because of past issues we’ve had. At the start of this mess, when we were both angry and depressed. And his reaction was to be gone All. The. Time.
But.
That was then. This is now. It’s not like that now.
He’s been here damn near every night for the last year. I honestly cannot remember when the last time he DID go out sans me. I know this isn’t the start of any “slippery slope” bullshit, despite what you’re saying.
And yes, I hear you whispering in my hear that now that I’ve said that out loud, I damn well better knock on wood, knock on whole forest, or else it’ll come back to bite me in the ass.
And this is the part where I tell you to piss the heck off, Insecurity.
I don’t need you here. There is no reason for you to hang around, and there is no room in my head for you.
Love,
Me
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Today’s Girl Talk Thursday topic is the upcoming holiday of lurrrrve, Valentine’s Day. Boon to card manufacturers and retail stores; bane of your average person’s existence.
I have mixed feelings on the V-Day issue. I’m not a hater, but I don’t really go out of my way to make it SUPERDUPEROMGZZZ special, either.
Yes, it’s very nice to get a big fuzzy teddy, or a large, expensive bunch of flowers. It makes me feel all warm and squishy inside.
But how many stuffed bears does a girl need? And flowers die. I like them, I do, but dude, we’re in the middle of a RECESSION! Instead of buying me flowers, how ’bout you pay the water bill? I’ll promise to think of you whenever I take a long hot shower. And that’s way sexier than a bunch of dead flowers on my table.
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And I’m married. I might, if he remembers am nearly guaranteed to get something, from someone if he expects to get “something” in return.
What about those who aren’t permanently stuck with someone married? The agonizing over whether or not to get someone something….have we been going out long enough? What can I get that says I care, without saying I care too much? What if I get the wrong thing?
See, when you’re married, it’s not as much worry. If TheMan gets me the wrong thing, no worries…he knows I’ll just take it back and get what I REALLY wanted. There’s no more pretending that you’re thrilled to get a roadside emergency kit <--true story when you’re married.
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And lastly, what is it with Valentine’s day and schools now? Apparently, my kid isn’t supposed to put her classmates’ names on the cards anymore? When did that become a no-no? And why? I mean, she already knows their names. I’ve heard their names, and spoken to many of them. What exactly is the concern?
I’m not following, here.
___________
Well, I guess I came down a little harder on V-Day (by the way, I still giggle like a twelve year old boy every time I see the letters V and D side by side….) than I thought I would.
I want to know, what do you think about Valentine’s Day? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
Or, if you’re feeling particularly wordy today, click the button on the top of the post, write your own, and link up to participate in GTT.
May your weekend not suck too much!
Love,
Jen Thepsychobabble
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I have fallen in love.
Oh, no worries TheMan is still, well, the man. But my new Blackberry Curve?
True bliss. Plus it doesn’t argue with me, and for the most part it does whatever I tell it to.
Today, I downloaded a WordPress app, which I’m using right now.
What can I say? I wanted to try it out. And what better excuse than to tell you about my new love affiar?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to light some scented candles and spend some quality time with my new love.
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