Womb with a View

So we just passed one of the most important hurdles of the pregnancy a couple days ago, the first ultrasound… and we’ve learned that COUCH is flying solo in the womb.  In other words, COUCH does not apparently have any little extra potential brother(s) and/or sister(s) cramping its living space.  This revelation is important for several reasons:

1)      It could have been emotionally detrimental to the older kids (my stepchildren) to suddenly drop a litter of squalling newborns on them, rather than just one.  Not that there hasn’t already been a dumpster fire of changes to throw on them already, but I’d kinda like them to not despise a whole passel of furniture-themed children for the fact that during their first few formative years the rest of us were eating cardboard and shoe leather just to be able to afford diapers and formula.

2)      With two or more children, buying a new car or minivan would suddenly jump from a suggested eventual course of action to an outright absolute right now necessity.  With just COUCH, my Suzuki Reno could handle most runs that didn’t require the entire family to go along if it needed to… and there is even the possibility that we could ride squished in Reno for short distances.  (Comfortably?  Oh, hell no.  But I come from a family that was large enough that we were required to squeeze in once in a while for everyone to go somewhere.  You learn to make do.)   Not having to pay for a new car is important because:

3)      There’s that lack of money thing again.  I do realize the wisdom in what others have told me, that you will never really be financially “ready” for a child.  But by the same token, when you start looking at the cost of living day to day, even the addition of one more mouth to feed and body to clothe makes you get a nervous tic just doing the math.  

No joke—the kids are currently gone to Florida to visit their dad for a month, and my Trophy Wife™ and I went grocery shopping last week: we bought enough for us to get by for a couple weeks, and still managed to spend less than fifty dollars.  When I pulled out my wallet to pay, I unexpectedly found that it was drenched, despite it being a warm sunny day outside.  It wasn’t until later that I realized it was wet because it had been weeping tears of joy.

So this nervousness about the possibility of twins had been embedded in me within the first few days after the initial pregnancy test.  My Trophy Wife™ mentioned offhandedly that she was feeling pains that she hadn’t felt until much further along in her earlier pregnancies, and she wondered if maybe it was twins.  She even coined the name SOFA for a possible second COUCH… as in, “Sofa King Not Expecting This.” 

At first it was cute, and I treated it like the little joke it no doubt was, but slowly as time passed and facts began to hammer away at us, the idea that we could have two (or more!) babies began to take root and become a full blown paranoid delusion.  

First it was the mention that she’d read that twins often happen at the pre-embryonic level when a woman suddenly quits her birth control and over-ovulates (oh, and by the way, she did suddenly quit her birth control).  

Then the fact that women over thirty are more at risk for twins (my Trophy Wife™ is officially twenty-nine with a very slight remainder).   

Then the fact that twins run in both of our families (which I was totally and completely unaware of, not that this in itself is at all surprising… I often have to ask my mom who people are at family reunions.  My brother was mildly insulted one year that I had to ask his name).  

Then the plain and simple fact that Murphy’s Law just seemed to point at us a lot and laugh, not unlike the ever-so-slightly-mad serial killer on whatever cadaver-coroner-clone TV show is popular these days.  

I started to get so paranoid about how our lives would be impacted by twins that when the ultrasound tech said there was only one embryo, I jumped up and high-fived her like she’d just tomahawk-dunked the ball to win the game… and posterized LeBron in the process.  

Okay, no, I wasn’t that excited.  I will admit that there was a small part of me that was a little saddened by the idea that we wouldn’t be having both a boy and a girl, especially since there is a pretty good likelihood that COUCH will be our only child together.  But then again, that small part of me enjoys doing up flower arrangements, watching overly sentimental movies, petting cute little fuzzy animals and engaging in idle thought rather than looking at our skyrocketing bills and empty bank account. 

So, yes, the ultrasound.   I never realized that there even was such a thing as multiple ultrasounds until I got in there.  The tech mentioned that there would be a normal ultrasound, and then they would do a vaginal ultrasound.  (Apparently this is standard operating procedure now.  There’s every possibility it has always been standard operating procedure, and everyone simply thought I was too immature to hear the word vaginal before, so they didn’t repeat it.  Of course, they never realized I would someday hear it while watching commercials during the Price is Right on daytime TV and would forever after be scarred by mother-daughter talks.)

I blinked very slowly and was going to raise my hand and ask her to repeat that, but thankfully thought better of it.  (Seriously, if you’re male and you ask a professional woman to repeat something like that term, you are immediately earmarked as a clod, a joker or a troublemaker, if not all three.  This holds true even if the professional woman mumbles and you have a pair of hearing aids and honestly didn’t understand a word she said.)   After the initial ultrasound—which is the one I grew up knowing about, where they gel up the mother-to-be’s stomach and run the scanner over it, kinda like buttering an overripe watermelon with a travel iron—my Trophy Wife™ was asked to adjourn to the bathroom and I was left in very awkward silence in the main exam room as the tech prepared for the… other… sort. 

I swear during that time she looked at me and slowly shook her head disapprovingly from side to side, as if to say that all of this was my fault.  I had no idea what she meant at the moment.

When my Trophy Wife™ returned, the tech explained the procedure, and in no-nonsense manner, made absolutely sure that she did not blow a single iota of smoke up my Trophy Wife’s™ dress.  Yes, she said, the probe and its gel was by necessity cold; yes, the procedure was invasive and would be uncomfortable, if not outright painful; yes, it would require the whole “feet in the stirrup” position that every woman utterly loves; yes, the probe was obviously a torture device created by a male, probably one who took great perverse pleasure in making it look as much like a magic wand as humanly possible.  I must have had a case of sympathy lightheadedness for her medical procedure/borderline-violation, because I more or less blacked out after that.

Fortunately, I awoke in time to see COUCH playing hide and seek in the confines of his current housing.  Currently, COUCH is about the size of a healthy lima bean (and he or she has a tail right now, Jess was quick to point out to me), so the ultrasound tech had to point out that yes, the small vaguely-circular blob was our child-to-be and not in fact a finger-smudge on the screen.  She printed out a picture for us to embarrass COUCH with later in life, right next to the one of him/her in the bathtub and the one where I’m frantically carrying him/her away from the carpet while he/she takes offense to me changing diapers and pees on me. 

Even so, there’s something sort of awe-inspiring about seeing that little vaguely-circular circular blob and knowing you had a part in its existence… like you can’t help but look at it and have your heart melt, thinking, I created that.  We created that.   It’s pretty fucking amazing.

You know what’s even more amazing?  That something as small as that can get a loudmouth smartass like me to shut up once in a while and just enjoy the moment.  

Pregnant Pauses

So...

We're kinda having a baby.

Okay, technically, "we" is mostly My Trophy Wife™, who gets to undergo the actual wonders of pregnancy and spend her spare time psychologically/verbally/physically abusing me for being among the gender that the great Creator didn't equip with a requisite Incredible Expanding Uterus™.  Yes, yes; point taken, mea culpa.  But still--

We're having a baby.  A fucking baby.

Yeah, I know, huh?  Deep breaths, inhale-exhale; not too fast or you hyperventilate.

I'm going to be a father.

 I swear to God I'm not freaking out.  It’s just a little overwhelming, that’s all.  I mean, I – and yes, that is to say, me, Mark, the guy who hides in his room when there are children around; the same person who willingly pays shipping costs to buy items online so he doesn't have to deal with stupid adults and squalling infants at the local stores-- am going to be a father.  A fucking father.  Okay, maybe I am freaking out a little bit.  (Surely not! What sort of world do we live in that you could expect overreaction from someone who rants over Indiana drivers, wedding planner prices and environmentalists?)

Somewhere, my own father-- God rest his soul-- is kicked back on his heavenly kitchen chair, saluting me with a cup of coffee (triple cream, no sugar) and smirking while he says, “Yeah, karma’s a bitch, ain’t it, boy?”

And I should also point out that this wasn't exactly a huge surprise or anything... My trophy Wife™ and I didn't just forget to “baggie the pecan log” or “wrap the smoked kipper” or whatever other horrible, horrible phrases you can come up with for that sort of thing.  We sat down and spoke very candidly to one another about the idea of children; neither one of us wanted more children when we first got married, but after you’ve been married a little while, there is sometimes that moment of sentimentality that stealthily creeps up and stabs you in the back of the head and makes you go, “What Common Sense?”  We took some extra time to consider and discuss if we really wanted to blow our remaining youth and always-dwindling money on a bawling bundle of shitty diapers, formula puke and financial ruin.  We even put together lists which pretty much boiled down to: 

HER PROS:

- Our home is a great environment for a new child

- The children would have a younger brother or sister, and in most circumstances this would be a good thing.

- Having a child teaches husband patience in childrearing, which may actually filter to other aspects of life.

- Mark’s mom would be ecstatic to have her youngest child give her a grandchild. 

- I can eat mountain ranges of chocolate and blame it on pregnancy.

HER CONS:

- Pregnancy = Eating weird food mixtures.

- Pregnancy = Weird hormonal/emotional whiplash

- Pregnancy = Pain and discomfort

- I sort of like sleep.

MY PROS:

- We can train the child from an early age to make sure that it is not going to grow up and be that child in Wal-Mart.  The one that you have to yell three names at to get to listen to you, and only then, because it fears for its ass cheeks’ continued lack of pain.  (Oh, yes, I tell you right now, I will be a spanker, if the child deserves it.   I’ve seen parents use the Positive Reinforcement style of parenting, which should be subtitled “Let the Child Walk All Over You While You Respond to His Misdeeds With A ‘No-No,’ and Then Wonder Where You Went Wrong When He’s Twelve and Won’t Do a God Damn Thing You Tell Him To.”  I subscribe to the old school Denis Leary School of Childrearing, which says ‘spankings = hot stove’.  A child touches the hot stove and burns themselves, you know what?  They don’t fucking do it again.  If a child commits an act and gets spanked, you know what?  They don’t fucking do it again.  And if they do do it again, they’re probably just gonna be a fucking societal degenerate and probable masochist.)

- I might be able to have a child with more than just a passing interest in sports.  And that’s not just because I want to be “that dad” who hangs around at the softball/baseball/soccer games and talks about how great his not-particularly good child is and blames the ref/ump/coach for his child’s lack of being able to run to first base without tripping over his untied shoes or going the wrong way.  I say this because sports really do teach children valuable lessons—things such as the fact that you’ll never be able to be good at something without practice, the fact that sportsmanship (being a gracious winner and not be a sore loser) and teamwork are two of the most important things you can ever take away from your youth, and that point shaving and offshore betting only work when you get past the high school level.

- Any child that combines the chromosomes of my Trophy Wife™ and I will very likely be one of the following: a ridiculous artistic prodigy, a brilliant author, a quiet and thoughtful near-genius, or the Antichrist.  It’s worth making one just to see which roll of the dice comes up.

- My wife will be too busy with a new child to realize the cat has quietly been sucked into an airplane turbine.  And she’s already mentioned once or twice offhandedly that if I saddle her with a child, we won’t get another.

MY CONS:

- I will consistently get screamed at by a yowling lungful of rage which then gives way to squalling torturous cries of pain or torture for no apparent reason I will ever be able to ascertain.  This will occur long before the baby is ever born.

- We have no money.

- We already can’t talk the kids into actually keeping our house clean (or for that matter listening to anything we might say) worth a damn… and when the baby is born, instead of being role-models for cleanliness in the house, the children will instead use the new child as further reason to not bother cleaning up-- as in, “What does it matter if I eat cherries jubilee and chocolate sauce messily in the living room… the carpet already has old baby poop stains in it.”

- We have no money.

- Instead of us laughing at those people in Wal-Mart with the horribly distempered child who screams as though his arms are being lopped off with a weed whacker because his mom won’t buy him the squirting frog toy that he saw and absolutely has to have, we will instead be those people.

- We have no money.

- Any chance we may have had of having a smidgen of privacy someday will go completely down the tubes.  Right now, at least, we have our bedroom, which is sort of a respite from the rigors of daily life (or it is, at least until Daily Life comes knocking on the door screaming that other aspects of Daily Life keeps pushing her and nuh-uh, I was just giving her a hug, and I haven’t had my computer turn yet and he’s been on there for hours, and isn’t she supposed to be on restriction for throwing the Wii Remote at me, and he ate the last yogurt and I wanted it!).  And let’s just say, if we have a child, any possible privacy would more or less be blown right out of the water, because for the first year or so, we will probably have little choice but to keep the child in our room.  I already can’t watch any cool movies downstairs because there’s a chance one of the kids might see a flashed breast or hear an f-bomb said by someone other than their mother or me, so this will mean that from now on, the closest I get to watching HBO will be the Pixar marathon on the Disney Channel.

- We have no money.

- We would totally lose the office, which was going to double as a library, game-design area, artist loft, craftwork space and aquarium refuge.  My plan was eventually to start painting in there.  With a child, My Trophy Wife™ and I will have to lock the paints in a safe for fear of everything, up to and including the cat, the fish tank and any appliances or electronics that cost over $500. 

- Oh, yeah, did I mention we have no money?

* * *

 Despite all that, we still managed to come up with a 'yes'.  As in, yes, we would not kill one another if we found we were to have a new child.  Looking back, it's entirely possible we were drunk.

That brings us around to a few weeks ago, when my wife stuck something white, plastic and a bit thermometer-y into my still-half-asleep face and said-- one could almost say accusatorially-- “Look.”

So I looked.  Across one little white bar there was the barest, thinnest little blue line possible.  It was smaller and less noticeable than the blue lines on a well-worn piece of loose-leaf school paper that had been weathered for a week and then used as toilet tissue.  It was infinitesimal.  I’ve seen mirages with more substance.  “And that is?”

“It’s a pregnancy test,” she reminded me.  “And there’s a little blue line on it.”

“Is that what that is?” I asked, squinting.  “So it’s negative?”

She gave me one of those looks.  You know those looks, especially if you’re married.  It’s that same look that she’ll give when she’s discussing her feelings during the fourth quarter of a back-and-forth playoff game and you ask if you can wait to answer until the next timeout.  It’s that look that says, ‘I realize that you cook and clean and are financially stable and at least marginally good looking after you spruce up for an hour or so, but remind me again why I married you?’

“No, the line means positive.”  She said, not quite in the tone you would use with a small, dull-witted child.

So I did what any red-blooded American male would do.  First I panicked.  Then I wondered if I was the father and I panicked some more.  And then logic finally took hold, and I realized that last I checked, we were married, so I wasn’t really in any trouble over this, and no one would come beating down our door and demanding I make a proper woman of her.  In fact, very likely, the Catholic Church would applaud the whole being married and having a child thing, if we were in fact Catholic. 

Of course, that moment of respite didn’t stop little niggling issues I had with the whole thing. “Wait.  Why the hell would the company that makes these do it so it’s a little minus sign if it’s positive?  Shouldn’t it be a little plus?”

“Because they’re from Wal-Mart and two lines cost more,” she responded.  “But  trust me, yes, it’s positive.”

“Look, I can barely see the blue line.”  I said.  “Maybe it’s… I dunno… marginally positive.  Like, I dunno, it’s not sure if you’re pregnant or just really ill.  A fertilized egg and a virus might look suspiciously similar to it.”

She exhaled one of those heavy exhales I hear more and more often from her as time goes on.  At the rate I hear them, by the time we’re fifty she’ll need a respirator.  “Fine then.  It is a little faint.  I’ll take another one in a few days.”

A few days later, she came downstairs as I was preparing to go to work and showed me another one.  The line was much more noticeable and much more blue this time around.  “See?”

I shook my head.  “Look, these tests are only 98% effective.  That might be a fluke.  And it’s still not a plus sign.  What’s up with that?”

“I’ll go to Planned Parenthood to be sure,” she sighed.

At work that day, I received a text message with a picture attached.  The picture was of a Test Result that listed my Trophy Wife™’s name, stating she was seen and that her pregnancy test result was Positive (they even put in the little plus sign so that I would know they meant positive) , along with an estimated date of delivery.

I called her immediately upon receiving it.  “Are you sure they didn’t mean some other Jessica Hughey?”

She hung up on me.

* * *

I kid, mostly.  Despite the fact that this is my first child and therefore there will be a lot of freaking out on my end, I have actually embraced the idea of having a little one with my Trophy Wife™.  I even lovingly came up with the pseudonym COUCH for our little bundle-of-joy-to-be because we’re more than likely not going to know its gender until the delivery room.   (COUCH stands for Cluster Of Unidentified Cells Hughey).  My Trophy Wife™ at first rolled her eyes at me when I mentioned it, but soon enough she began to get a kick out of the name and now wields it like Conan does his broadsword.

Just yesterday, for instance, after dropping the kids off, she mentioned offhandedly that maybe we ought to stop off and get a milkshake.  I joked that it was the pregnancy talking, and she slowly looked over at me, and with great calm in her voice, intoned, “COUCH demands a sacrifice of milk and ice cream.”

It was adorable, in a slightly sacreligious sort of way.  

I have a feeling the next few months are going to be filled with these little moments.  It’s gonna be an interesting next few months. 

Tales from the Wedding Altar

So, as of today, I have officially been married a month.  That would be at least thirty days, for all of you who have 28 or 29 in the pool.  Sucks to be you!

And in celebration of being married to my former Lovely Fiancée™ and current Trophy Wife™ for a month, I give you, as promised, random bits and pieces from the warped recesses of my mind.  Or as I like to call them...

Snippets, Stories and Dark, Nefarious Secrets Written in Code on the Back of a Wedding Invitation:

* * *

It's kinda funny, watching the awkward glances of everyone when your introduction song at the reception begins with, "Let's make this complicated, thinking is overrated; we're busting out of this shitty little town" as everyone realizes that your eighty-plus-year old mother is among the attendees.   To be fair to us, however, Nothingtown is sort of our song.  it was the first song I played for my Trophy Wife™ on guitar.  So now you know.  And knowing is half the battle.

G. I. Joooooooooe!

Also: do you realize how hard it is to find good wedding songs when the prospective husband and wife are most into the likes of Green Day and Breaking Benjamin?  Our first dance song was "Little Moments" by Rob Thomas, which was sort of a concession on her part, because she was originally thinking "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)", and my thought was that particular song had become so cliche over the years that it was almost two-dimensional.  We were going to have that as the song for our last dance instead, but the reception sort of just mellowed its way to an early close, so we sort of never really had a last dance.

I felt kinda bad about that.  I even offered to sing it to her while I [content mercifully deleted] on our honeymoon to make it up to her, but she politely declined.  

By kicking me.  

Multiple times.

* * *

Speeaking of awkward... yes, there was that first dance.  

I would love to tell you that we had a very good excuse for looking like we had all the rhythm of a pair of recent prosthetic leg recipients.

I would also love to tell you that we don't ordinarily dance with all the grace of flightless waterfowl.

But those would be lies.  At least in my case they are.  I don't deny that I am painfully white-- like, blinding, dazzling, Raised-From-The-Dead Gandalf Robes white-- when it comes to rhythm.  The only way you could have less rhythm than me would be to just step onto the dance floor and immediately go into cardiac arrest... and even then, there's a fair chance that you will flail around and flop to the ground with more rhythm than me dancing.

Now, my Trophy Wife™ has rhythm.  I know this for a fact.  But suffice it to say that having rhythm in a pair of jeans and a tee is a far cry from having rhythm while wearing a dress that gives you the mobility of a toddler wearing a sixty-five pound backpack. Srsly. Before my wedding, I had always wondered why paratroopers always wanted to be so quick to unhitch from their chutes after landing.  Now I know.

And knowing is half the battle.  G. I. Joooooooooe! 

* * *

After four months, the cat has finally begun to recognize me as its Nemesis.  

For a long while, it treated me as a logical extension of the Human Who Poo-Poohs Anything Bad I Do As Instinctual and Still Finds Me Adorable, or the Smaller Human Who Has Allergies To Anything And Everything Beneath the Sun and Who Nonetheless Insists on Clinging To-- and Sleeping With-- My Highly Allergen-Ridden Ass.  

Now it has slowly excised me from that and now has begun to rightfully recognize me as the Human Who Absolutely Loses His Fucking Mind and Chases Me With Pruning Shears or Small Appliances When He Finds Me On The Furniture.  This is a good transition. You can sense it now, in the early mornings, when I come downstairs for work, and it hears noise from its resting place, and curiosity overcomes it.  It makes its way downstairs and slowly creeps into the living room and sees... me.  

And there's that moment, when it realizes that it is the only other living thing in the room, and that it wants to be anywhere else in the house except alone in a room with me.  The fear is there.  It is palpable, in the air.   Like the tension in the moments just before something horrible happens and the buckets of red paint start flying in a slasher flick.  

So when I take a step, no matter what I'm doing-- and whether that step is even toward it or not-- the creature bolts like I've set its metaphorical nuts on fire with conductive static electricity.

Now, if I can just instill this sort of mindset in the children, I'll have it made.

* * *

Ahem.

Yes, that above is what we in the profession call a "joke".  It is a "take" that is not supposed to be taken "seriously."

Please remove yourself from your huffy moral high horse or I will be forced to sic Jesus on you.

What?  I mean, surely, that's got to be a Born-on-Christmas perk, right?  There has to be something to offset the years of massive suckmonstrage from getting combo presents, after all.

* * *

We got our wedding pictures back from the fine folks at Cheeky Chic Photography, and I was surprised to note that the professional photos were very beautiful.  Cause, for starters, a great many of them had me in them... and that usually does not equate to anything near beautiful.  

But moreover, the pictures gave me an insight to what it looked like in the bridesmaids' suite as they prepared for the wedding.  And it was nothing like I imagined.  And I did imagine it.  I mean, there was such a big mystique about the whole thing-- I couldn't even see my Lovely Fiancée™ the day of the wedding.  I couldn't sleep at our house.  I had to confab with her clandestinely just to make sure we didn't arrive at Blanton House at the same time.  Hell, she was worried that when I called her I was tempting the fate of our marriage or something.  So i could only imagine what was happening in that room across the hall from where I was changing into my tux.

So, like I so often do, I filled in the blanks.  My Lovely Fiancée™ had been indoctrinated, I decided.  By some sort of shadow cabal.  I even had a name for it.

The Cult of the Bridesmaids.

Insert musical sting here.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I found that the pictures were actually pretty tame.  There were absolutely no scenes where my bride-to-be was eating a human heart or dousing herself in cattle blood.  There were no pictures where she stabbed a young Cosmo model to signify her dismissal of the norms of dating and her ascension into the realm of married life.  There was not a single picture of her prancing around in her never-mind-thats in a paean to the Fertility Mother for asking for a prodigious womb (or, more hopefully, forgiveness for agreeing not to have any).  

I did not see her, her maid of honor Jennifer, or her daughter (our junior bridesmaid and now my stepdaughter) Journey, or Chloe or Hannah (the ring bearer and flower girl, respectively) or even her friend Shannon (who was there helping the girls do their hair) tossing chicken bones and runestones to augur what our marriage would be like.  There was no carving their names into lead tablets to bury beneath our flower bed so that I would be crippled if I tried to start an argument, or doing up a doll made up of bits plucked from my hairbrush to make sure I didn't bolt from the ceremony.

I was bummed.  It would have been a rare slice of life, like a National Geographic exposé into the women's bathroom at the local bar-- the one they gang up to enter.  But it was not to be.

Sigh.

Of course, you know, the photographer was female, too.  She might be sworn to secrecy, too.

Hmmmm.  Perhaps the Cult of the Bridesmaids lives on.

* * *

I'm apologizing, right here and right now, to my lovely Trophy Wife™ for anything I said aloud while we were waiting for her to come down the aisle.  Seriously, I'm a nervous talker.  You wouldn't think so, as often as I'm quiet, but apparently-- especially in front of a large group-- I just apparently feel like something needs to be said.  

So we've-- we in this case being myself, my best man Bob and my brother Dennis, the third groomsman-- stepped up to the front of the assemblage, and are standing there as the processional music begins, because it's actually nearing half an hour past what the wedding was slated for.  And the music plays through once.  I am not concerned-- I know that most brides have last-minute issues, and given the way my wife's hair usually causes her grief, it would not have surprised me to hear that her hair had to be talked out of a suicidal streak by feeding it ice cream and shots of Jagrmeister.  So I'm exhaling, I'm mellow, I'm at peace.  

And the music begins again.  And we stand there, joking around a little, and beginning to feel a little on the awkward, goofy side.  

And then the music begins again.  Now, bear in mind, we did not pick little two-minute waltzes for the processional themes.  These were fullblown orchestra pieces.  Three times.   I'm losing it...  I'm starting to nervously talk about how it was like this at Gen Con, too...

Hey, honey, we have a 10:00 game, and it's 9:25.  Just sayin'.

Honey, it's 9:35.  Don't wanna rush you, but we do kinda have to drive downtown, and park and, you know, walk.  

Honey, it's 9:50, and instantaneous travel won't be perfected for another twenty years yet.  

Honey, just take your time and let's try to make the 1 PM panel discussion, because we obviously didn't really want to play that game, anyway.  

(An aside: see, one thing I have noticed now that we've been married for a little while is that if we are going to arrive anywhere by any sort of scheduled time, I am going to have to stretch the truth by moving our supposed arrival time up by about thirty minutes, because I can see now that if we're not made late by hair or makeup or traffic or the kids, it will be by life in general.)

So yeah, by now I'm yea close to the line of freaking out.  I'm beginning to look at my watch and wishing I had my e-cig with me, and wanting to strangle Pachelbel and his fucking Canon, and am about a step away from telling Bob to go retrieve her.

(Another aside: I laugh at some people who chose their best men without considering the fact that they may actually have to perform the old, traditional best man rituals, such as bringing the prospective bride to the altar (in chains if need be!) and protecting the groom long enough for the wedding to go off without him receiving a knife in the gut.  I think these things out.)

And I have no doubt he would have done so.  He might have picked up every one of the bridesmaids and brought them out in curlers, and if I remained alive to our fiftieth anniversary, I would have never, ever, ever lived it down.

But fortunately, none of that happened.  At that point the bridesmaids arrived and the imminent cataclysm was narrowly averted.

* * *

Finally (for now), I want to bring up something and, again, let you take it with the grain of salt most things that I say are taken with.  I do realize their place in the grand scheme of things, and I do know it is not only a necessity of wedding decorum, but a polite thing to do.  And yes, we are still working on ours, so they will go out to each and every one of you.  But still:

Thank-you card writing is fucking murder.

Seriously, decorum is that you do not type a thank-you card, you handwrite it to properly show that it means that much to you, and to allow the recipient to know that you did not do a mass writing in Microsoft Word and only change the appropriate lines where necessary.  You personalize it; you leave a nice personal message to the recepient telling them thank you for showing up at the wedding, or for the gift, or anything of the sort.  You have the freedom to be creative.

So I started writing them with my lovely Trophy Wife™ a couple weeks ago, before the fan and the shit started shaking hands and forced us to put off a lot of things.  And I immediately found out two things:

A) My hand muscles are not nearly limber enough for long-term penmanship.

And, B) when I write, I am most notable for not knowing when to shut the hell up.

So an hour and a half in, my hand feels like I've been playing racquetball with it, using a lead-filled ball.  My fingers are contorted and tight and achey and completely fucking unused to writing anything longer than my name.  And I feel like such a spoiled little wuss kid in detention, shaking my hand every sixth or seventh word to get feeling back in it.  

I look at the writing on a couple cards I've done with a practiced, artistic eye: it starts out in my nice, tightly rounded and beautifully legible handwriting at the top of the card, and then slowly it work its way past teenage "have better things to do than write this report" penmanship, until it finally devolves into cuneiform by the bottom.

So, I would like to point out to anyone lucky enough to get a note from me... that thing at the bottom that looks like a sea monster should actually read "Thank you again!"  Or some variation thereof.

And yeah, we'll get those out soon.  Promise.

Hopefully sooner than my next blog.

Then There Was That Marriage Thing...

"ooo... I'll have to give you a watch.  Your pictures are not just stunning but have a sense of storytelling to them.  I'll have to come back and give your gallery a thorough ransacking."

- September 16, 2005

These were the semi-infamous words that first brought me into contact with Jessi, my one-time co-conspirator, one-time Lovely Fiancee™ and one-time Wife-To-Be, way back a little more than six years ago.  Little did she realize at the time that at some point in the unforeseeable future, she wouldn't be able to pry me away from her with a crowbar, axle-grease and a hydraulic lift.

On October 2, 2011, we drew ourselves to the culmination of everything that began way back when, as she and I were officially married in a beautiful outdoor ceremony at The Blanton House in Danville, Indiana.  This whole event has been something that has been very long in coming, and there's a lot of people to thank for it coming to fruition, not the least of which is my former Lovely Fiancee™ and current Trophy Wife™.  I think we both knew when we started talking to one another that there was something there, but I don't know if we have ever realized how magical and wondrous it was until recently.  So behind all the goofy jokes and the sarcasm and the sometimes fervent desire to drop the damned cat off at a live landmine field and be done with it, I want to make sure that you know that nothing in my life has ever made me happier than being with you.

Those of you who are used to the standard rambling and ranting and are doing the internet-meme "TL;DR" bs, give me a few more moments, because there's a lot of people I want to thank for the weekend that just passed.  Or if it really upsets your delicate sensibilities to read me waxing nice over people, you can skip ahead to the next blog entry (eventually), while I call you a big bunch of instant gratification digital ADD pantywaists, because-- fuck you-- even if I'm married it doesn't mean I'm not still a prick.  XD

But for those of you who can read more than two paragraphs without coming down with cold sweats because there's no interrupting pictures of cutesy kitties or explosions (or cutesy kitties exploding, for that matter), I give you

THE BIG EFFING LIST OF GRATITUDE

So, first and foremost, let me say that this list is in no way to shirk the marital responsibilities of proper Thank You notes (I have checked with my Trophy Wife™ about all the esoteric and sometimes mystical rites that we're supposed to observe when it comes to the wedding, the week before the wedding, the honeymoon and the first year of married life.)  Nor is it meant to be a convenient and cheap way of expressing our gratitude for everything these fine people have done to ensure that we got married and didn't choke the life out of one another. Cause left to our own devices, that might have happened.  Someone from the Indianapolis CSI would have come into our house and said, "Look, husband- and bride-to-be, strangled by one another's hands. Open and shut case.  That means..."

And then he'd put on his sunglasses and say, "...there's uneaten wedding cake."

YEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Now, in the interest of keeping some anonymity-- because, let's be honest, some of you probably would prefer not to have your names paraded around in connection with me, after all-- I have included as few last names as possible.  So in no particular order (which is a catchphrase that means, "Go ahead.  Feel free to take offense, because that just gives us ammunition to leave you smarmy remarks on your next few birthday cards.") we want to offer our sincerest, wholehearted thanks:

...to Bob, my best man, who spent months previous to the wedding jokingly asking me if I'd changed my mind yet. (Every time, I answered no.  Until the point that Jessi was walking up the aisle, when I leaned over to him and just as jokingly whispered, "I changed my mind."*)  On top of that, he spent the last two weeks utterly freaking out about having to give the best man speech, saying it was going to be horrible, insisting that he might accidentally puke on the wedding cake if he was forced to do it.... and then rattling off a great speech like it's something he did every day   For fun.  While cooking awesome chili and juggling children and puppies and flamethrowers.  And yawning.

...to Jennifer, the maid of honor, who did some of the most unspeakably wonderful things that a sister could do in the week before the wedding,  She helped with everything, from just flying up here and making sure Jessi had a familiar face at the wedding, to helping spearhead everything from the rehearsal dinner to the decorations to helping us get to our honeymoon destination okay. And for being so pleasant in the face of godawful amounts of stress from a couple whose usual happy-go-luckiness had been pretty much turned into plastic smiles that barely concealed hideously frazzled nerves and an obsessive need for happy-drugs.

...to Dennis, who managed to take every one of our "Oh, we've made a change, here," with a shrug of the shoulders and a "sure thing," like it was of absolutely no consequence whatsoever that at 12:40 on the day of the wedding, we decided to switch off the sides of the location we'd planned for wedding and the reception because we couldn't center the tent.  And for being a total He-Man when it came to being at the Blanton House early to help to set up, and being there late to help clean up.  Because seriously, I was so on medications that I'm surprised I didn't come to you the next day and go, "Wait. I did what again?"

...to Teri, who helped with the wedding, reception and honeymoon more than any one person could have hoped to.  After giving us a night in lovely (especially in the fall) Nashville as an early wedding present, she eagerly took on the task of decorating the ceremony and the reception, even realizing that meant that she was over at our house almost constantly, asking questions, working on ideas and taking my Lovely Fiancee™ out to the wedding site and craft stores and bridal shops and florists and god-only-knows-where-else to help get everything prepared and ready.  And then, upon arriving and finding out the groom had made a sudden change to which side of the site the reception and wedding was going to be, she somehow managed to not completely go insane.  Mostly.  Well, any more than usual.  XD 

...to Annette and Darlene, who went out of the way to enfold my Lovely Fiancee™ into the family from her very first moment here, and then both helped to arrange a huge wedding shower that blew away anything we could have possibly ever imagined, had we even imagined a wedding shower in the first place.  (And to be fair, having never been to any sort of shower in the first place, had I been asked to imagine it, I  would have envisioned some weird ritual thing with scented candles, bakeware and wine that involved things only spoken of in women's bathrooms.  Like an anti-sports-bar or something.)  

(As an aside, I would also like to admit that yes, that is a very 1950's viewpoint.  I realize and understand this.  And unlike the 1950's, everyone in my family-- regardless of gender-- likes football.  So the sports bar analogy is a lost cause.  

(Also as an aside, the fact nearly everyone in my family likes football frightens the hell out of my Trophy Wife™, as she thinks now she will actually have to learn things like holding calls, pass interference, or where the weakside linebacker lines up in the 3-4 defense... or else possibly face ostracism.  I promise I have not fostered this belief by giving her daily quizzes with questions like, "Name three college teams Lou Holtz coached, or two reasons he is revered in our household**," or "Under what conditions does the half not end when the game clock reads zeroes?")

(Not much, anyway.)

...to Christy, who made an unbelievable cake that went beyond our wildest dreams.  Seriously, when she started talking to us about our ideas for a wedding cake, we were honestly going to be thrilled, even with something that looked like the illiterate Wal-Mart bakery clerk made it, with borderline burgundy icing that read: "Hapy Weddng, Marc n Jesse!"  So when she put together a fall-themed tiered cake that looked as professional as it did, we were almost sad to cut it.  Hell, looking at it, we very nearly peed ourselves with delight.  And trust me: in a rented tux, that's really, really uncool... especially for whomever has to take it back.

...to Bob, Casey and Chloe, for never having a cross word to say while spending an entire weekend in a house that was as ill-prepared to have houseguests as ours.  And then on top of everything else, for being so wonderful before, during and after the ceremony... Bob was such an awesome help setting up and tearing down and just being there whenever we needed a hand, Casey was a perfect gentleman usher, and Chloe was a perfect little ring bearer.  People usually have such awful things to say about in-laws... I have never been more sad to realize that I may only get to see them once or twice a year. 

...to Angie, who not only helped ensure Jessi and I could make it up to Indiana in the first place (and once our finances get themselves out of the sewer, we plan on giving her some really nice payback for that!) but also has overwhelmed us with gifts.  The simple honest truth is that we were astonished by her generosity-- not because it's out of her character or anything... we were actually astonished by everyone's generosity.  The tongue-in-cheek joke is that Angie bought too much wedding wrapping paper and just bought gifts to use it all so she wouldn't have to pack it away and try to find it again for the next wedding, but that's just us.

...to Amanda and David, for allowing us to borrow Hannah for the flower girl.  She had the most adorable moment of trepidation as she walked up the aisle, but like the pro she is, she troopered on through (with a little help from Grandma!) and brought smiles to everyone's faces.  Which was all we could have possibly asked!

...to Tim, who probably has as much right as anyone to be cheesed off at us.  After he-- very considerately!-- offered to gather up a huge amount of acorns for our fall themed decoration, we couldn't even break away to go visit him and pick them up.  I apologize, man... sometimes we're a couple f***ing ingrates. 

...to Crystal, who nudged us to a couple of her friends who do wedding photography for a price we could afford (which was especially helpful when we saw that some professional photogs were doing weddings for something like the Gross National Income of Uganda), and to Katie and Brandy, who-- if the preview photos are to be believed-- somehow managed to make me look photogenic.

(Okay, you can close your mouth now.  Yes, that's a feat, but it's not Jesus-level-loaves-and-fishes or anything.)

...to Brian, who made that trip all the way from Arkansas that I still wish I could have made those few years ago, when it was him walking up the aisle.   It is honestly the one time I have actually actively hated being on any prescription drugs.

...to Shannon, who stepped in the bridal room and immediately took on as many difficult jobs as possible to free Jennifer and Jessi up so that they could focus on everything they needed to.  Which may have even involved elaborate and dangerous bridal rituals, for all I know (see the Shower Thing, above.  And wouldn't marriage be more fun if the rituals included things like the Dance of Daggers, or The Ritual Battle with the Broken Champagne Bottle, or something like that?)

...to Michelle and Jamie, who went out of their way over the course of the two months or so prior to the wedding to give help where they could, and then went out of their way to make our big day all the more awesome by setting up and helping to run the music.  The whole idea of pulling someone from the audience to play the songs over an MP3 player through a cheap set of computer speakers sounded really good until I realized how big the place was.  I couldn't have asked for a better couple friends to jump in when everything was as hectic as it was for the two of us.

...and to everyone else.  And I mean everyone.  From my Mom to Bart to Bob and Ellen and Susie and Rita to Aunt Alice and Aunt Hazel to David and Journey and everyone-- every single person-- in between.  I mean that sincerely.  And completely without joking (for once), there is no way we can possibly express how much each and every one of you touched us with your presence, and how emotional it made us both to see everyone together for our big day.  I wish I could throw a paragraph here to everyone, but there's no way I could possibly thank everyone like that without making this blog last more or less forever.  

Well, more forever... because anyone who has read this long has my profound respect: either they're a glutton for punishment or they're expecting this blog to get better as it goes and are in the process of being horribly disappointed. So pat yourself on the back.  And give yourself a hug.  

Hurry.  Before the giddy smiles of the happy wedding memories wear off.

I have a lot of those to relate, too.  But that's a story for another time.



* - This entire exchange was done tongue-firmly-in-cheek.  If you didn't know that, shame on you.

** - We would accept any of the following, and more: Notre Dame's 1989  National Championship win over West Virginia, Notre Dame defeating Bobby Bowden's Florida State team in 1993, any victory over Miami, and beating the tar out of #2 USC 27-10 in 1988.

*** - uck.

Environmentally Unconscious.

While talking to my Lovely Fiancée™ last night, the two of us both got into a fairly snarky mood.  It happens; we have that whole artist mentality going for us, where neither of us can admit we're wrong... so it makes for a nice healthy bit of usually good-natured friction here and there.  (Yeah, once in a great while, we'll pick at a scab a bit too much and cause a small micronuclear explosion... but it's never yet been anything that love, understanding and hazmat suits can't overcome.)

At any rate, we were sniping at one another from under the cover of thick sarcasm last night-- this is no small exaggeration, either... many of our conversations spread out the sarcasm the way an inattentive McDonald's cook dollops on the Big Mac special sauce.  I forget how the idea came up, but we were talking about her family using those reusable metallic water bottles, because it's unsafe to reuse plastic ones-- I should probably point out I washed, refilled and reused the same 1 liter Mountain Dew bottles for the better part of a year, and that probably explains a lot about my lack of mental focus-- and she mentioned that one of the models kept water cold for something like a day.  I was intrigued.  And I looked at the price of it and was flabbergasted.  It cost more than most pairs of shoes I buy.

"Why not just get a Thermos?"  I asked.

She replied that it wasn't really the same thing, and she preferred having cold water over the course of the day without putting the water back in the fridge, where sometimes the kids grabbed them, so just keeping the plastic bottles was out of the question.  She needed something that would stay cold out of the fridge for long periods and that the kids could be responsible for.

"So why not just get Styrofoam cups?"  I asked.  "You can mark them with your names.  And for the price of that thing, you could probably get a year's worth."

At this point my Lovely Fiancée™ said something that resonated with me.  Well, first she called me obstinate, incorrigible and a few other adjectives I probably shouldn't relate here.  Then she said something that resonated with me.  I should note that this is probably paraphrased, because it is currently seven in the morning and I have yet to ingest any worthwhile drugs:

"Sometimes I think you are so intent on being anti-Green that you're willing to cut off your nose to spite your face."

At the time, I huffed and scoffed and shook a fistful of righteous indignation at the whole idea.  But as more time went on, I came to the conclusion that there was more than just a nugget of truth to that.  Her son-- my soon to be stepson-- is very environmentally conscious.  I am more like environmentally comatose.

Now, I am not always rabid anti-environmentalist or anything like that.  Our new house is Energy Star efficient, and we're using CFL bulbs and energy-efficient appliances, and drinking purified water in bottles with just enough plastic to make it like drinking water out of a stiff zip-lock bag.  So I'm not all about filling Mother Earth with nuclear waste, non-biodegradable plastics and Styrofoam landfills, but I think that there is sometimes way too much of a press put on by people to be green. 

A lot of the things on the Green Initiative agenda are, in fact, very noble, well-founded and helpful at first glance.  Take recycling.  On the surface, it sounds wonderful.  And it is, if you have the time, dilligence, extra space and money to do so.  So, in effect, if you are rich enough to be able to afford the space to keep a bin for your aluminum cans, a bin for your clear plastics, a bin for your non-clear plastics, a bin for your paper products, a bin for your corrugated cardboard products,-- and yes, I work somewhere that recycles, so I know they will not accept those last two mixed, as silly as it sounds-- a bin for your organics, a Sharps container for your recyclable syringe needles (we'll assume that, like me, you only keep those for medicinal or experimental purposes), and a trash can for whatever is leftover.  And have the time and the lack of things to do to spend your time sorting your trash. 

And on top of that make your kids do so... because, after all, they are the ones who are most benefiting from it.  And probably like most kids, my stepson-to-be is probably going to be all about being environmentally friendly until it gets to the point that he has to actually do work.  Like when he has to lug six separate bins to the curb instead of the one trash bin.  Then somewhere, I'm sure, my Lovely Fiancee™ and I will be informed about scientific studies that say that recycling really doesn't help all that much, and may, in fact, be harming the ecosystem of the Southeast Asian Archback Tern or something.

I also have a serious problem with every online biller sitting there and spouting off about how I could be more green and environmentally conscious by receiving all my billing statements via e-mail.  I get this from my phone company, my bank, my credit card sites, my insurance companies, my utilities, and at least four of the porn sites I hit on a regular basis.  And they ask me every time I go to pay.  Like the past thirteen months have meant nothing, and this time around, I've had some sort of Saul-of-Tarsis-sees-the-light-and-becomes-St.-Paul conversion after a lifetime of abusing trees.  Even though in my preferences at all these sites, it says, "Yes, I want a paper copy of my bill."  Even though I have repeatedly told customer service agents that most spam filters are notoriously inept at low levels and at high levels will find a way to 'learn' that a bill reminder is spam and delete it-- and oh, by the way, I'm sure your collection agency and their repo man Enzo will give me a pass on that one.  Even though I'm sure that all the Green Agenda by all these big-name businesses-- which have now suddenly gained a Green conscience and are spearheading "Save the Earth" measures-- has absolutely nothing at all to do with the fact that they are shaving thousands, if not millions, off their budget calculations... meaning that their CEO's can now worry just a little less as they hit that seventh hole on the Palm Springs resort they're golfing at this week.

Yes, even though, I am subjected to that same smiling "Don't you want to be environmentally friendly and only get a bill via e-mail" reminder every fucking month.  And it's led me to respond in this way:

"No.  I don't want to be environmentally friendly.  I want to be environmentally hostile because you insist on asking me this every time I'm here, regardless of my answer last time.  Yes, I want a paper statement.  You know what?  I want a paper statement made out of wood pulp from a seven-hundred year old Sequoia!  Wait, you know, fuck that!  I want my statement on parchment-- parchment made from the flayed and tanned skin of an endangered Long-Haired Spider Monkey, and written with an ink made from a mixture of Humpback Whale oil and West Indian Manatee blood!  And I want an old-fashioned fucking stamp put on it, too!  The ones with the lead base in the gumming!  None of that pre-stuck or pre-printed crap!  And yeah, put the whole thing in a Styrofoam envelope, too, you buncha malcontent fucks."

Ahem.  I have been told that given the right set of circumstances, I can get road rage without even driving.

And I do cheerfullly admit that I am the sort of person who naturally bristles and bucks back at being told I need to do something, like some dull-wit or child or slow pet.  So when I hear stuff like, "you need to recycle," or "you need to be more concerned about the environment," my first gut, kneejerk reaction is to come back with "Bullshit.  You need to come up with a system of sorting trash and removing recycleables at the trash facility, and then pay top dollar to create jobs to do so, because then you could help kill two birds with one stone."

Metaphorically.

Cause, I mean, you start insinuating about killing animals to some people, and they'll lose their fucking mind.

(And again, the author feels that he should point out that he loves his Lovely Fiancee™ like nothing else on Earth, and any 'spats' you see here have been very much embellished for humorous effect... and he thanks her for being such a good sport.  He would also like to point out that this post has been made using environmentally-safe fonts on an energy-efficient monitor, and some of the jokes have been recycled.) 

Decoration of Independence

Let's get this out in the open right now.  I love my Lovely Fiancée ™ like nothing else I've ever known.  I love her unequivocally, without reservation, without any sort of foreseeable end.  I have never been this sure about wanting to marry someone... and that includes any and all TV crushes I may have had during those awkward years of puberty, when-- possibly like most other guys on their first brush with percolating hormones-- I was known to fall hard for a good medium-range camera shot of cleavage or a hot step-aerobic instructor's bare midriff.  With my Lovely Fiancée ™, I can honestly say I have never been with a woman who makes me feel so happy, so content, and moreover, so able to feel comfortable just being me... quirks and flaws and warts and all.  (And I'm sure she's happy to hear about the quirks and flaws and warts, too, especially since I have taken such exquisitely careful pains to hide them during our dating life.)

Understand that we have very similar attitudes, very similar tastes, and very similar artistic natures.  So there is an awful lot of subjects that we see perfectly eye-to-eye, and a small boatload of others that we share fairly compatible views on; if we're not on the same page, we're at least in the same chapter.  But in the long run, it will be those topics which we disagree upon that will be sure to keep this marriage interesting.

And when I say interesting, I mean the definition that has roughly the same meaning as volatile. Or incendiary.  Or mildly atomic bomb-ish.

You already know about the whole sordid cat thing.  To her, a cat is a compatriot... a family member... a stalwart friend who just happens to not have opposable thumbs.  To me, a cat is a potentially disease-and-allergen-riddled vermin that has absolutely no redeeming value unless you have rodents in your house... it provides no protection, it scares no potential burglars/muggers/murderers, it carves up furniture we can't afford to replace, it stinks to high hell, it does not differentiate between places it is supposed to go and places that are off limits. It's a very slight difference of opinion.  Yesterday, she was cooing about the fact that a feral cat in her neighborhood had kittens on her porch because it felt safe there.  While she was doing this and going on about it, my thoughts wandered more or less to these subjects:  1.) Potentially, they could have Rabies.  2.) Potentially, they also have fleas.  3.) It would be very ironic to drop them into a pond with carnivorous fish in it, and  4.) Oh, sweet mother of fuck, don't let the little bastards fucking imprint on her and force her to give me the "But they can't live without me, and the kids just love them, so I can't just leave them there alone" bit later.

(Believe it or not, that is actually pretty unfair of me.  I'm sure that my Lovely Fiancée ™, knowing how apoplectic the thought of even one cat is making me, is almost certainly not giving any sort of thought to bringing in others.  And yet, there is always that niggling little bit in the back of my head that always adds, yes, because cat-lovers are so well-known for their entirely rational and logical thought processes-- especially when it comes to kittens-- aren't they?)

So we knew all things feline was going to be a big stumbling block to the Utterly Perfect Saccharine Marriage.

What we didn't know was that window treatments were going to be another one.

Part of the problem, of course, is that we're both artists.  And as such, we consistently exercise our God-given artistic right to assume that we are never wrong.  This is sometimes also referred to as Artistic License-- which more or less says that reality is actually fluid and varies from artist to artist, and in fact the cold hard facts of reality have absolutely no place in artistic vision unless the artist says it does.  Artistic License in small dollops is a good thing.  But like so many things, it can be downright dangerous when it goes uncontrolled.  Artistic License can allow an artist to paint a vague shape and say it's a dog when in fact it looks like a smoldering heap of unwashed socks and elephant shit.  Artistic License can lead someone into honestly believing the bible told them to create a Jesus Theme Park complete with the Crucifixion Log Ride and the Loaves and Fishes Gift Shoppe.  Artistic License can delude people into believing that Facebook games ending in -Ville are actually constructive uses of time.  Artistic License means Lady Gaga wins.  Artistic License leads to well-intentioned but ultimately disastrous Artistic Visions... like when someone decides that they should get their new car in purple and puke orange to make it stand out.

And sadly, My Lovely Fiancée ™ and I are exhibit A in the case of Bad Shit That Happens When Those Carefully-Cultivated, Seemingly-Artistic Visions Collide. 

It started innocuously enough, when we were searching through web pages for designs for our windows.  For most of the windows in the house, we'd come to the decision that mini-blinds would suffice, because A) mini-blinds are cheap, and B) we are about tapped out of our money.  However, there were a couple windows, like the front room picture windows, where we both felt something more was called for and were willing to spend a bit more on.  So independently, we looked at a few options. I took a more classical route: I preferred the functionality and understated style of Roman shades.  So I fired off some links for her to check out, and told her excitedly how we could even get motorized ones that would raise by remote.

Her response to those over the phone was simple and to the point: "Really?"

And it wasn't a response to my enthusiasm, like "Really?  We can do that?  Oh, honey, how wonderful!"  No, it was one of those Really? tones that only women can make, the sort that generally precede something like, you seriously want to put your genitalia in the vacuum hose?, or, you honestly think a shirt that says 'Hooter Inspector' is an appropriate gift for a five year-old?  The kind of tone that makes you immediately feel small, uncultured, and on a mental par with the smarter breeds of flowering shrubs.

"Well, yeah."  I said, unperturbed.  "You don't like it?"

"No, I don't think I do."

"Why not?"  I pressed.  Because, as a guy, I am used to having a reason why I don't like something, even when it comes to style, you know... the color sucks, or the flow of the whole thing is wrong, or it's too expensive, or it just doesn't go with a damn thing we own.

There was a long silence.  A long and possibly pointed silence.  "I really just... don't... like it," she said, with an odd sound to her voice... most likely because she was swallowing words like "Loathe", "Repugnant," "Hideous", and "Vomitous."

"So what do you have in mind?"  I asked.

She sent me a link, which I dutifully followed.

There was an equally long and poignant silence as I took it in.

"Did the link work?"  She finally asked.

"Uhm.  Yesssssss," I said.

"Aren't they nice?"  She asked.

I looked again.  "Uhm.  Is that a fucking scarf over the top of the whole thing?"

"Yes," she said, probably able to tell that I was not as impressed as I was supposed to be.  "They call it a scarf valence."

"It's well named... it looks like it belongs over some rich old woman's neck.  It's freaking gauzy, too."

"That's the way it's supposed to be.  It suffuses light."  She said.

"Aren't drapes supposed to block out light instead of just filtering it?"  I asked.  "I mean, I could just put up toilet paper if we wanted to only kinda block out light."

An exasperated noise-- one that I am slowly becoming familiar with-- came from the other end.

And things pretty well spiraled down the toilet from there.  It was a case of Classic vs. Nouveau, which is something like Mac vs PC for people with an over-aggrandized sense of their own interior decorating worth.   I think I called one of her choices snotty and over-embellished, and she said that one of my choices looked like it belonged in a nursing home.  I told her that a more classic style emphasized the Roman look of our doorway, and she said that the design of the house demanded something that didn't scream 50 years old.  If we'd been in the same room, the eye-daggers might have been flying every which way.

Finally I took a deep, irritated breath.

"So.  Mini-blinds?"  I grated.

"Fine."  She growled.

"Cheap."  I grunted.

"White."  She snarled.

"Perfect."  I rumbled.

So I put up a pair of nice white mini-blinds in the living room and we have managed to survive phone calls since then without incident.  And we have a very nice house that is waiting to get a full drapery treatment until we can go out together and actually see if there is any sort of window treatment we can both enjoy without getting nauseous every time we enter a room and see it.

And until then, we are living happily ever after.  At least until we start having to pick out towels.

(The author would like to point out that the argument above has been embellished and dramatized in some portions for the sake of effect. In reality, Mark and Jessi are not nearly so coarse or filled with invective, and would never say most of these terribly hateful things to one another. Thank you.

...Okay, except the cat thing. That's 100% legit.)