Bitchslapped...er Suckerpunched

Image by dawkeye via FlickrI cannot go into details... mainly because I am not going to cry and die here because it's one sided.

But ya know, it is MY blog, and I do come here to bitch, so I'll give ya enough to get the gist of the situation...

Second reason for the lack of details; I'm not putting the negative out into the Universe right now, cause I've got enough and I don't want any more of it rebounding...

See the picture? Pretend it's the guy thwackin' the girl... in actuality, it felt way more like a sucker punch.

Ok, so long and short of it, mainly short... Tx-ex, despite knowing my precarious financial situation, chose to bitchslap me in the wallet... and the face.
 

Yes, chose.

And the true kicker for me was that he told me that he had no choice, because we had agreed long ago to not go this route.

And I believed him... that was the sucker punch part.

I believed him partly because I just don't play dirty, so my mind doesn't work like that; and partly because it turns my stomach to think that I gave 5 years of my life and had an amazing child with someone who is that heartless and greedy.

Yeah, I said it. Greedy. Chew on that one as you read it, his allies, you know who you are. And as much as you want to defend him; I promise you my viewpoint is well earned. So tell ya what, in 5 years come back and talk to me about whether or not I'm accurate.

Enough of the stand and defend; God knows what He knows and He will handle this.

I have my responsibility to handle and I will. It just means a total life shift including dropping school and losing what little time I have to spend with my son, but hey, that's just how it looks right now.

I'm human and my view is limited to these options. God's view is Universal and is not bound by such things.

Anyway, this will not dim my glow. This will NOT end me. God has brought me this far and I am walking in faith here.

And I have amazing friends who have held me up when my knees went out from under me this morning. Thank you all... you're incredible and I love you.

God knows what I need, and He will send it... hopefully on swift wings; but whenever it comes, it will be at the right time.

Have a great day y'all... whenever you read this.

Until next time... blessings!

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My Version of Braveheart

Image via WikipediaMiracles never cease.

I left the California-ex (Josie's dad) over five years ago.

Shortly thereafter, I met Tex-ex, moved to Texas and found out I was pregnant with our son.

All these many years later, I decided back in February that I was going to get my divorce finalized this summer come hell or high water.

Last night, out of the blue, Cali-ex calls me up and wants to finalize the divorce.

I'm so happy I can't stop smiling, bouncing around... loving the life God has bestowed upon me...

In just a little bit of awe and amazement.

I stand tall, face painted and shout a-la William Wallace:

FRREEEEEEEEEDDOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM!!!

Finally... graced with this ending and the new beginnings it signifies.

And then God did something else... He picked me up again.

For those brief moments, sitting in His hand once again... I saw and understood it all one more time.

A reminder of when I sat in His hand while I was begging Him to let me leave Cali-ex.

An affirmation that I am in His grace always, and a reminder of why I was shown in the first place...

Thing about sitting in God's hand; you understand everything.... everything about how the world works and the why... from personal and global relationships to how photosynthesis works. And then He puts you down, and you promptly forget, because such understanding is reserved for God alone; but the experience changes you forever.

And last night, God gave me a much shorter sit... a reminder of that, a confirmation of my path, my purpose, my direction.

Amen and Hallelujah... and Freedom.

...and the happy dance!

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Twilight Zone or Sanity? Wait, Don't Answer That.

Image via WikipediaThis has been the most bizarre week... possibly in the history of my existence.

Everything that was up fell down, and everything that was down rose up.

On the first I was set to watch my son all day at Tx-ex's house. But on Monday, after giving me an awesome new haircut in the morning, I get a call from Mrs. Tx-ex asking if I can come that night because the weather was coming in and they wanted to get on the road.

Hmmmm, more time with my son, in a house I know so well, with unrestricted internet access. Oh, um let me see... YEEEEES!

It's a great night, an even better day and the weather outside is frightful when Tx-ex and Mrs. Tx-ex come home. It's late and the front had arrived leaving 20+ degree weather in its wake. So I stay the night again.

The next day, the weather is worse... and the kid and the company are even better. And there's this comfortable comraderie that grows between us all.

Jas is in heaven... and hell, cause he's now got three parental figures to love him, as well as keep his little hind-end in check.

That night, again in the 20's now with freezing rain... I'm on the couch sleeping next to my son for another night... and Mrs. Tx-ex and I start talking after the boys have gone to bed...

And she's awesome. We would have totally hit it off in the outside world had we met there... But we met here, under the circumstances we did.

She's my son's step-mother now. She's wonderful at it, and Jas loves her as much as either his father or I.

She's married to Tx-ex, and they are in genuine fairy-tale love... which is a little humbling to witness up close and personal with someone you spent over four years living with... in a relationship that he and I both knew was never like that for either one of us.

For some reason we trust each other, Mrs. Tx-ex and I... and she stops being Mrs. Tx-ex and becomes A... and the more we talk... and share... and bless each other through Universal Design... A becomes my friend.

I forgive them everything, and pray that they forgive me... but some things take time...

Tx-ex and I are still us...

So I left the next evening.

To make sure that we all stayed cool with each other and the dynamic that has unfolded before us.

Jas has three parents... because my son is just lucky like that.

And by extension, so are we.

Even if we all look crazy...

We're comfortable with that.

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Too Tall

Image by aussiegall via FlickrSo, I'm sitting at the computer... I know, newsflash... and my son, who is now 3 1/2 (which I taught him to say and sounds totally adorable) is standing still in the middle of the living room.

This is monumental for two reasons.

First, he's STANDING STILL.  Yeah, it's so he can watch T2, and shoot Robert with Arnold and Linda, but none the less.

Second, and more importantly to me as a mother, I just realized how tall he is.

As in just now.

Seriously.  I thought he was standing on something.

Normally, I'm sitting on the couch and he's trying to jump on me like a bounce house, so it's hard to gauge the height.

Plus it's summer and he's either running around in nothing, pull-ups or shorts.

Not like I put pants on him and realized that they were half-way up his shins, but if I did, they probably would be.

I feel for him. Tall is not always easy.

In grade school the other kids will think he's been held back because no normal Kindergartner is already four feet tall and out of his car seat.

And the teachers always want you to get stuff off the top shelves for the short kids, who resent you for being able to grab what they can't.

Plus you're too big for the normal kid sized toys.

Which really sucks when you want to climb into the red tube and play with all the petite little girls that even the boys think look all cute, but there's no room for you cause you take up the same amount of room as two of them.

Or maybe that was just me.

It might be cool being that tall as a boy.  As a girl it was awful.

All the cute boys wouldn't even look at me in grade school. Probably because I was always talking to their hair.

Although they didn't mind nearly as much when puberty hit and they were eye-level with my burgeoning chest.

But it seriously narrowed the dating field when I got old enough.  How could I date someone that could look up my nose?

I couldn't.

So I wound up with tall guys.

And thanks to that, my kids never fit in age-appropriate sizes.

My daughter will be 12 next month, and she's already up to my nose.  My son is an inch past my belly button.

I'm probably going to have to stop calling them my munchkins.

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What I'm Supposed to be Doing... *UPDATED*

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I'm supposed to be writing my introduction and conclusion for my final essay in research writing. I'm having trouble concentrating because hubby is watching some horrible movie with either aliens or dead people communicating with 'normal people' and there's a whole lot of screaming and scary music. Predictably, the cop doesn't believe the victim and her world is ending.

I hate that crap.

Scary movies are not my thing.

I have trouble concentrating on writing about anything, much less the propaganda machine that is American media when I'm confronted with terrified shrieks and music that reminds me of The Shining.

That movie scarred me forever and ever, Amen.

Hotels kinda freak me out, especially if I'm the only one walking down a hallway. Rum instantly translates to redrum in my mind. And you couldn't pay me enough to go into a shrubbery maze, unless you paid me enough to buy the land it was on so I could have it torn it down while I recuperated from my mental breakdown.

Halloween made me scared to babysit.

Omen made me leery of 10 year-old brunette boys with blue eyes and doberman pincers.

The Exorcist turned me off pea soup.

Poltergeist made me set the sleep timer on the television so there would never be snow on the screen, and check all my meals for maggots.

Scream made me afraid to go out to the garage for more beer, and thankful that I didn't need to go into school bathrooms anymore.

Thanks to Silence of the Lambs, I assess the motives of anyone that invites me to dinner.

And yet, I wound up in Texas with a man that owns a chainsaw.

Hubby loves those movies.

I, however, love Godfather I & II and Goodfellas and Casino. Hubby hates those movies. He doesn't 'get' them. I understand that he has no context for those movies. I understand that movies these days require an explosion every 3.6 seconds, and by comparison, Godfather seems 'slow'. Because back when those movies came out, the storyline, the dialogue and plot progressed the story, not the number of times things could be blown to smithereens or how many of the central characters could be made to bleed or scream.

I gravitate towards comedies, because I want to fill my life with laughter and use movies as happy escapes.

Maybe if I focus my essay on how the word 'terror' was used by the media during the Bush administration I could write my essay. Or maybe I should just wait till this movie is over and insist on watching The Hangover to rid my mind of the ugliness that is currently forced upon me.

Or maybe, when he goes outside to BBQ later, I will confiscate every scary movie in the house and hide them somewhere he'll never find them... with the dish detergent.

**UPDATED** OK, not really sure what the heck just happened there, but this post disappeared and I had to re-post it~ Which is why, kiddies, you always email yourself a copy of your blog posts! Since I had to go all deja-vu this morning, I decided to enhance the post with a picture that will make your skin crawl for the rest of the day. Cause I'm AWESOME like that!

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World Gone Mad

It's a world gone mad, I tell ya.

First of all, the roommate started doing dishes. Without being asked, without our even being home. We went out the other night and came home to the roommate at work and the dishes were done, as if my kitchen had been descended by little helper gnomes that come in while you're sleeping, except that I was just out. Awesome and crazy all at the same time... I know, right?!? God may not hate me after all!

Then, for some unknown reason my son has started making breathless "Eeehh-Ooohhh" sounds that sound kinda pornographic and always make me flash on the scene in Forrest Gump where he's on the porch listening to his mama get him into regular school... Which, I gotta tell y'all, is kinda disconcerting. What's more disturbing is that I don't know where he heard it because even if he heard us (I know that's what you were thinking...) those aren't our noises, if you get my meaning... So I'm kinda mortified, but I know it's a phase, so I'm trying to ignore it... except when we're in Walmart, yeah. Or Best Buy like the other night when he kept doing it over and over and I would have paid good money to crawl under the carpet and disappear.

Image via Wikipedia

Which may have something to do with why hubby agreed to high speed internet, which I know I told y'all about in the last post, but it's like a whole new net, so I'm giddy-stupid over here with all the things I can do to this place... I mean, the fact that I can compute and talk on the land line is so major I can't even begin to tell y'all, and then there's the pictures, OMG, I fell asleep in redneck hell and woke up in the future!

Then again, maybe the gnomes need a lesson in washing dishes, cause everything I eat and drink off my freshly washed dishes tastes like soap. And the obscene-phone-call-Forrest, well that's just par for the course around here. And the internet, although rapturously speedy on day two will no doubt be a pain in the ass by day ten... although the picture thing is pretty cool.

Possibly even cool enough to keep me from killing my husband, possibly, maybe... since we're right back to normal he replaced his friggin' Playstation this week. Hubby, can you hear me now? No, because he's zoned out to an MX vs. ATV game. So,yeah, the NOT killing him thing; it's not looking so good.

Besides, I should have been wiser about getting the high speed, because Hubby only gets me what I want when he wants something, otherwise, I'm outta luck. It's true what they say, "Beware Greeks bearing gifts", or Trojans bearing horses...

So I'll just be over here zipping around the net, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

OMG What Happened To My Mother

My mother is teetering on the edge of old age. This will come as a shock to her. Just as it does to all of us when our advanced years creep up and slap us sideways in the reality place... but try as I might, I can't hide this fact from her anymore.

Mom, you're a click from ancient. I say this with all due love and respect, but it's time to face facts.

First of all, when I called my mother the other day to chat, she answered and only a few minutes into the conversation she informed me that she could only talk for a moment or two because she was getting ready to go out to dinner with my step-father. Which wouldn't be any kind of big deal, except it was 4 pm at her house.

WTF?!?

I know that until they moved to Georgia, they were Jersey natives that went to dinner at 8 pm like all tri-state residents who don't have school-aged children. They ordered take-out and delivery and if you called at 10 pm and actually caught them at home, you were interrupting the first 20 minutes of some movie. I'd get emails timestamped 2 am and they were always attending wakes and funerals of their much older friends and heading off to bunco and 'functions'. My mom went to NY once a month on a theater-day-trip with my aunt. My step-father was usually busy with the lodge. They were active-life-middle-aged-busy-New-Jersians.

Now they've got dinner reservations at 5 pm.

And my mother is constantly updating me on their garden. When friends have come to visit, they help 'in the garden'. I hear about bugs eating the parsley and what vegetables are ready to be picked. I mean, they had a garden in NJ, but I never heard about it. It wasn't the central theme in their life.

Now, it is... along with getting ready for dinner at 4 pm.

Well, the garden, the early-bird dinner reservations, and whatever my step-father is off doing with their new neighbor and his best-country-buddy Shorty. Swear. His name is Shorty. Now, instead of lodge functions, my step-father is off at tractor pulls and farm-implement-auctions and some festival that was so eyeroll-inducing that I can't even remember what the hell it was for, except that there was some tree hugger or some such shit on duty for the entirety of the festival and it was a big ass deal to be chosen.

WTF?!? *foreheadslap*

I've been in Texas for three years and I haven't been as countrified as my mother and step-father have become in under a year. Maybe it's the 5 pm dinner reservations and the turtle that was a beginning-of-the-summer-season inhabitant in their salt-water pool. I don't fucking know. I just know they've lost their urban-friggin'-minds.

I called yesterday as I was fixing dinner to inform my mother that she was precariously poised on the edge of old age because I started the dreaded universal female event of hot flashes. She however will not be old until my younger sister starts having them. Although, since my mom seems to be begging to be added to the old category early, when I couldn't reach her at 5:30 her time, I assumed that she was battling bugs in the garden or out at a restaurant, finishing her desert.

And yes, I said that I started having hot flashes. Last week it was hair bumps zits on my inner thighs and this week it's hot flashes. Looking like I got stuck under the sprinkler-system in Target and again at the library yesterday. Hey Body: Pick a lane, any lane!

Must be why my mother is acting so old-ladyish. It's my turn to be middle aged. 38 is a little young, but considering how I lived in my 20's, I'm luckier than a clover carrying leprechaun to be alive at all I'll take it. As long as I've still got at least a good 20 years before I have to start gardening and going out to eat at 5 pm after attending tree-hugging festivals...

I'm one up on her in the country-friend department though. My brother-in-law lives two doors down and is named Buzzy. Top that, Mom.

Sometimes You Need The Visual To Tell The Story Properly

So it is, that on Sunday, I start thinking about what I'm going to share with you on Monday. Sometimes the answer is obvious and requires less than a moment's thought, and other times... it seems that I have nothing to share and I start to worry. I don't know why it would ever concern me for one second, being a mother. I mean, ask, and the Universe provides, right? Sometimes it isn't pretty though.

Last night I was on the phone with my wonderful daughter as she was making the final preparations to fly at oh-early-thirty this morning to New Jersey to visit with my aunts. It reminded me of when she was here in March.
However, I know from past experience, both mine and hers, that she will no doubt be spoiled senseless during her visit. Because my aunts are awesome like that. There will be at least one visit to a place that Jos loves, Jekyll & Hyde Club in NYC. Along with other things that she'll tell me about and I'll wish I was doing. But I'm not even jealous, just happy for her, cause what kid doesn't deserve a little spoiling when they get the President's Award and graduate with honors from elementary school?

The only thing that totally sucked rocks, was that I was on the phone with her and she was telling me all about the website for the Jekyll & Hyde Club in NYC when I hear the munchkin playing with the microwave. I jumped up and went down the hall to see thick black smoke billowing from the microwave thanks to this DVD, which the Boo asked me if he could watch, and since it WAS Eddie Murphy Delirious, as opposed to say, Eddie Murphy as Donkey in Shreck, I said no. Boo was incredulous at being told no, and decided that the DVD needed to die a painful death. Luckily he didn't burn the house down, but it did take me almost a full hour to get the inside of the microwave cleaned out so that we could use it without it catching fire or making the food taste like hideously burnt plastic. Thanks kid.

Then, I went to go tweet about it work on the computer which included chatting with my daughter to let her know we were all OK (since I unceremoniously hung up on her when I saw the fire in the microwave) and playing 140 Mafia cause I'm totally a junkie kicking butt on that game. Mainly because I'm mean as hell when I play... I started out being 'pulls the wings off of flies' mean, but over the last 24 hours I've graduated to 'tying bottle rockets to the cat's tail' mean. And I totally needed some of that to let off steam after I realized that the other morning while I was sleeping, and the munchkin was sleeping, Dad left to go help a friend with his car. No biggie, except that he didn't tell me. So the munchkin got up and was roaming free-range for like 45 minutes unsupervised. If he'd played the DVD Crucible then, hubby would have come back to two dead people and no home. I was unwinding on the computer with the door shut cause if the kid had come in at that point, my odds of going to jail were in like the 90th percentile and hubby decided that he was going to unwind from a tough day of playing video games by going in the back to read his stereo mags... again, no warning to me, whatsoever. He straps the turbo-terror-tot into his stroller, (because that's the only way we can leave him in any room by himself unless he's sleeping) gives him a sippy cup and puts on a movie for him to watch before going to the back room to read.

I come out to find my, 'I was bored sitting here all by myself, Mom. But don't worry I found a way to play quietly' munchkin looking up at me. Dad had given him fruit-punch Kool-aid and left the room. Which, as you can see, has a less dangerous, but equally clean-up-nightmare disaster-area results. Luckily for hubby me, hubby realized that he'd made a huge mistake without my having to point it out, so he cleaned up the Boo. By his standards, the living room and stroller were fine, which by the grace of God I found out about later, after I had calmed down from the evening's *festivities*.

And this is why I should never worry about what I'm going to write on Monday.

ps. Yes, hubby and Boo are both still alive.

Nit-picky

I am not an easy person to live with. I freely admit this and make no bones about it since this is simply the way I am. After a grand total of eight years as a full-time stay at home wife and mother, I want things done a certain way. My home is like my office. And I am the boss that the administrative assistants fear and talk about in hushed tones around the water cooler, lest I come up behind them and hear what they're saying; because then I will make them cry and beg to be fired.

Thing is, after doing this for so long, I've come up with things that work in so much as making the smallest amount of time produce the best housecleaning results. So I've become picky. Then again, some things I was picky about before I ever started house-wiferey (real word)... I just didn't know it until I started co-habitating with someone else. Now my picky is nit-picky, or so I'm told.

And my husband has the memory capacity of a fruit fly. So that last night when I walked into the living room and found him lounging and sprawled out with his shoe-clad feet up on my side of the couch I kinda went stupid. In part because I've been stressing this point for a month and a half at a rate of no less than 5 times a week. And in part because this is new behavior. And lastly, I've come to find out, it's a huge, gargantuan issue for me. I blame my prior ignorance as to it's largeness on not having come across this particular sticking-point before... with an adult, anyway.

I didn't realize that, "NO Shoes on the Couch!!" would ever be something that I would have to say to a 45 year old man. I'd expect this from a child. My son is two and does this all the time. It bothers me, but I'm rational enough to realize that he hasn't heard this phrase nearly enough for it to sink into his little skull. Hubby?!? No excuse is ever gonna work on his part.

I wish to clarify at this time, that if he didn't have his shoes on, I wouldn't give a running rat's ass if they were on the couch... now, as I was saying...

I worked for Kirby vacuum cleaners as a sales person at one point, I know the things that shoes track around in a suburban/city existence ~ and for the sake of kindness and non-puke-factor, I'll spare you. But we live in the country and have, without conscious effort of any kind, become something of a wildlife refuge. We have two non-mouse-catching cats that we actually claim as ours and the rest are not ours, they're squatters, but they include: two chickens, a possum, a skunk, and an armadillo. We also get visited by several other outdoor cats each and every day, and now we have some escaped turkey wandering around as of yesterday. Not to mention any number of unwanted guests such as the local fire-ants, WTF-kind-IS-That spiders, tree roaches and geckos. I'm pretty sure there are other things out there but I am, and strive to remain, blissfully ignorant of them. So it is probably even more obvious now why I'm so bent over hubby's shoes on the couch, on top of the fact that they wind up where I always sit.

So last night, for what seemed like the gazillionth (again, real word... thank God we're not playing Scrabble.) time of walking in to the shoes-on-couch scene after being out of the room for a quick use of the bathroom... well, I sort of snapped. Out of my mouth flew something very close to this statement; "If you don't stop putting your shoes on the *bleep* couch I swear I'm gonna run in here at top speed and jump-land on them since they're in my spot!"

Considering that scales scream and run the other way when they see me coming, this was not an innocuous statement, because were I to do that, I'd no doubt break his leg or ankles (the way he was sitting) or damage him seriously in some way. But even with that said, I'd never follow through on it! It was a hot-air threat made out of frustration, because I'm smart enough to know a few things...

One: Shoes going up my butt in a flying-anger-leap landing would damage me in ways I really don't want to consider. Two: If I break his leg, I'm going to have to cater to his every whim and if I'm gonna damage him, It would be far better for my mental health to just break out the shotgun and take him out of my misery. Three: The last time I got angry enough to want to damage my spouse, karma kicked my ass. In short, it's just bad JuJu.

However, I also knew that whatever I said about the shoes-on-couch needed to be dramatic enough to stick with hubby, because as I've said, he has the memory of a fruit fly and obviously my prior kind requests fell on deaf ears and even upping them a notch to not-so-kind requests has done nothing to change the situation. I needed to say something so over-the-top that he'd replay it in his head the next time he went to put his feet up on the couch with his shoes on, and maybe give pause, and maybe even take off his *bleeping* shoes before he puts his feet up.

So I said what I said.

And now I'm the antichrist.

And "vicious". And some other choice adjectives that I won't go into.

And...'frankly Scarlet, I don't give a damn' as long as his shoes stay on the floor where they belong... cause I'm nit-picky like that.


An 'In Un-related News' PS. On day two of mousetraps, and no catch (or sprung traps) yet... Could it be that Mister Jedi Mousy is coordinating a sneak attack?

An 'In Un-related News' PPS. I've joined Canucklehead's Scavenger Hunt and I think we should all pray for Nancy... she was pretty screwed... whatever happened with all that anyway?

More is Better

As we go into hubby's second week of unemployment, and the spring cleaning is finished and the home projects have dwindled either due to lack of money or lack of need; I have come to ponder a crucial point of relationships...

When a couple is dating, the thing that makes the relationship great is the amount of time they spend together. More is better. Talking, dining, dancing, going wherever together, hanging out, lovin'... More is better. You want more of each other. Your thoughts stray wistfully to the other person when you're apart. You surprise each other with a little gift or an unexpected call or some other Hallmark-moment-so-sweet-I'm-getting-a-cavity-you're-friends-can't-stand-you-now-cause-you-drip-honey-and-ooze-sex-OMG-I'm-gonna-cutsie-puke-if-y'all-don't-stop action that says how much you enjoy spending time together and how much you miss each other when you're apart. Yeah, fine, enjoy the fact that this person farts rainbows while it lasts.

Because, my dear, no matter who or when or how, eventually, their shit will stink like every other person on earth. Not amazingly, this is when most new couples break up. You no longer fart rainbows, and you don't go down on me every single time we have sex, and to quote Barbara and Neil ~ "You don't bring me flowers anymore". And here's another truth revealed for the unmarried masses; this is rarely brough about by a Jerry Springer reveal-type-moment. It is nearly never ended because someone is an alien or transexual or having an affair with the cat.

Usually it's brought about by just living life in the hum-drum of day to day life. Such as being wiped out after work and wanting to melt into the couch to watch something mindless and forget that you have a co-worker who's making you fantasize of many many ways to get away with murder in the age of CSI, and not wanting to have to come up with something intelligent to speak about to another person. Even if that person is someone you're in a relationship with. Or not having sex every single night you sleep in a bed together cause, here's a dose of reality, you're actually tired. Or taking the last of the *fill in the blank* without asking the other person if they want it. Or simply not feeling the 'I miss you' gnaw on your soul anymore each and every time you part. You may even forget to call the other person during the day cause you're busy.

If you manage to stay together throughout the mind-numbing-boredom-of-day-to-day-life where you budget and you grocery shop and you scrub toilets and you spend time together in silence, you may have what it takes to get married. It's possible. But realize this; when the glow of newness fades to the gray of 'normalcy', you too will have a more is better moment. Because the bottom line ~ the crucial point of relationships that I was pondering is this:

When you're dating, the quality of the relationship is equal to the amount of time you spend together, and more is better. When you've been married for a few years, the quality of the relationship becomes equal to the amount of time you spend apart, and again, more is better.

Thankful For Unmitigated Gall

So, Friday night, hubby decides that he wants Chinese. Normally this gets absolutely no objection from me, but...

Thing is, little man, who is now two and testing his boundaries and all that crap, has figured out that if he acts up or gets even mildly loud-fussy, Daddy will remove him from the premises. Hubby's reasoning is that he doesn't want to be rude to whomever else is there. However, in his consideration of others he's destroyed our ability to have a decent meal in public as a family. Mainly because I'm raising a less homicidal version of Family Guy's Stewie.

Knowing that behaving like a troll monkey will get him both attention and give him the control to decide when we leave a place has turned our son into a little bad-attitude dictator. And Daddy falls for it every time. Mama, however has had enough... btw I know I'm right in this assessment cause as soon as we get in the car, demon-child stops almost instantaneously, and the child reverts to angel status.

At this point, you're saying, "Hel-lo!?! Have ya ever heard of a babysitter? (eye roll)" To which I reply, "Yes, we finally found one (two years later, but hey, I'm a stay at home mama out in the country with no one nearby that I feel I can leave my son with)."

However, I promised the new babysitter, (out of an understanding culled from many, many years of personal babysitting experience) that I would always give her a couple of days notice. Therefore, I have reserved her services for this upcoming weekend, because I was not expecting to go out to dinner this past Friday, hubby threw me a curve ball. OK, that explanation out of the way, let's get back to the story...

So, when we left the Chinese restaurant after barely a plate of dinner ~ again~ I was ready to stab them both in the forehead with forks fit to be tied. Because not only had my dinner been ruined yet again, I knew, from prior experience, that I would not be getting my leftovers the next day... they tend to 'disappear' right into hubby's gullet when I'm not looking. Which irks me to no end, cause it's bad enough to have to endure nuked-day-old-Chinese-food, but to have none is simply unacceptable. I mean, where the hell is the courtesy he showed all the other diners in the restaurant when it comes to leaving my leftovers alone? It evaporates in direct proportion to the strength of his hunger, that's where.

Half an hour in the car to get home from the restaurant had done nothing to improve my mood. I was ticked, and determined to get my leftovers this time. When we get there, hubby is still hungry, and proceeds to eat his leftovers straight from the carton. I plate mine up, noticing that it's way too much food, but, as I said, I was still ticked and by now, thoroughly determined to eat my food, so I give it a quick warming and eat the rest of my dinner... all of it.

I calm down after that... for a minute... until hubby tells me that he's going to bed ~ at 9:30 on a Friday night. Mind you, I haven't had more than 5 hours of continuous nighttime sleep in months now. Ticked Off returned with a friend. Turns out my lousy attitude was only out picking up his buddy Self-destructive Vengeance so they could come back to my house and keep me company. With those two bundles of ugly whispering in my ear, I made an egregious error.

I headed for the pan of homemade brownies. I cut a huge swath and poured a very large glass of my son's whole milk to wash them down with. They were de-friggin-licious. No lie. OMG they were good. But I was too full before I ate the brownies... then I angry-ate too many brownies AND washed them down with at least 20 oz. of whole milk. It was kinda the sweets version of Thanksgiving dinner. And I was hurtin'. At least I thought I was hurtin', I had no idea...

No idea whatsoever that my body would say, "Alright woman, these are your internal organs speaking. We have had enough of this reckless eating in quantities that would feed a third-world family for weeks. We are tired of bearing the brunt of your anger and non-existent self-control. Obviously, you've lost your mind. Therefore, we are staging a coup. Maybe a bit of our mutinous behavior will remind you who is really running this show."

And it would say it at 6 am Saturday morning. The spokesperson would be my gall bladder and it has one hell of a commanding stage presence. It is the E.F. Hutton of the digestive tract; when the gall bladder speaks, people listen! I spent the next three hours praying to the Porcelain God. I won't go into details except to say that if the shoes of my grandchildren had come out of my mouth I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised ~ and I don't have grandchildren ~ 'nuff said. However, surprisingly, this is not the worst part of a gall bladder attack. The worst part is the pain. Y'all, I have had two children by Cesarean section. This was worse.

My only saving grace was that hubby wound up with ten stitches a few weeks back and they gave him Darvocet. When the puking stopped, I took one and within half an hour I was pain-free enough to pass out for a couple of hours.

When I emerged from my drug-induced coma, the pain was still gone. But apparently, I'm allergic to Darvocet. I deduced this from spending the rest of the day with a throat so swollen that if I still had tonsils, I'd have suffocated to death. The swelling went down sometime that evening, and obviously, I'm still here.

But then I turn on the news this morning, and hear about the killing spree at the language center in New York State and the devastating earthquake in Italy, and the woman with the flat tire on the freeway in Houston who died after getting out of her car and being run-over several times, and the father in Oregon who killed himself and all 5 of his kids because his wife was leaving him...

I gotta tell Y'all, I am so thankful that all I had to deal with this weekend was a bad-attitude baby, and a harsh lesson from my gall bladder. Considering what was floating around the Universe this weekend, I got off light.

And how was your weekend?

Playing Well With Others

I do not play well with others. Not when it comes to my computer. I'm a greedy, selfish Catholic-school nun ready to smack your knuckles with a ruler for even letting the thought cross your mind of touching my keyboard.

And yet, with sis-n-law G, down visiting on some ugly family business, I was quick to say, "yes" when she asked me if she could use my beloved 'puter to check some email, account balances and finish the absolute-last-assignment for her college career to be over. I mean, c'mon, who wouldn't say yes to that?

I did. "Sure, G, come on, no problem!" I said enthusiastically, and with honest sincerity. Then my ego kicked in. And the longer it took, the more my brain said "Hurry Up! What is taking you so long?" Until it was finally screaming inside my head with the shrill loudness of a vexed banshee..."MINE!!! MINE!!! GET THE HELL DONE WITH YOUR CRAP AND GIVE ME BACK MY COMPUTER!!! IT MISSES ME AND I MISS IT, AND YOU HAVING YOUR GRUBBY LITTLE HANDS ON MY KEYBOARD IS LIKE WATCHING A DRUNKEN WOMAN FONDLE MY HUSBAND'S CROTCH!!! HURRY UP AND FINISH FOR PETE'S SAKE!!! ARE YOU DONE YET?!?!? MINE, MINE!!!"

Of course her hands weren't grubby at all, and she wasn't in any way being disrespectful of my 'puter, nor was she taking an exorbitant amount of time to do what she needed to get done... It was all me and my two-year-old inner child shrieking, "mine!" like any two-year-old does; even when it's holding something that is most definitely not theirs... irrationally hoarding the item as if they were a starving person in a lifeboat with other starving people and they just found a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup in the pocket of their life vest.

Two-year-olds also say, "NO!" when the answer is most obviously, "yes" like when you ask them if they want more milk... I had done the same thing in reverse, saying, "yes" when the real-me, my two-year-old self was saying, "No". Personally, I thought my inner child was much older than that. I was wrong.

Being a parent for over 10 years, my ability to give away, to my children at first, and then to others, things that I think I want has been honed to a level that is almost on par with breathing or blinking. I'm not totally out of balance, either. I have my one or two things that I'm selfish about... like watching Grey's Anatomy (don't call, don't write, don't show up, you will NOT get a hold of me when that show is on)... aside from that, I'll give most people anything that will not effect the care and well being of my children, and maybe my husband. I don't need a whole lot.

My inner-self throwing a balls-out-throw-down-temper-tantrum in my head as I worked with utmost concentration to keep the smile on my face came as a surprise to me. As we're chatting, I'm struggling with fever-pitch-jealousy because she was in my chair, and all I could manage to think was, "quit talking and pay attention to what you're doing, hurry up! Hurry UP!"

I'm starting to think that I'm going to have to go over to Craig's List and find a little cheapo used computer, just to have it on hand in case I come across this situation again. Kind of like inner-turmoil-badly-behaved-ego insurance. If my ego were a flesh-and-blood child, it would have gotten a spanking AND a time-out for the size and severity of the hissy-fit that it threw. Does anyone know how to do that; give your inner-child a good swat on the rump?

In the meantime, while I figure out how to shut-myself-up while G is here and I only have one computer and I will continue to let her check her email and accounts while she's here, I'm going to have to spend some serious time in front of the mirror... Looking at and re-shaping my inner self...and practicing my best I-got-botox-and-lost-all-expressiveness-in-my-face face.

What Shade of Crazy

Who...The...Fuck... brings a camera to a funeral?

Apparently, my step-mother.

It's true, I could not, would not make this up. I don't believe in defaming someones good name with lies... But if they do something stupid, crazy and or crass, I may pass it on, especially if it is so over the top as to make everyone else in the world go, "WHAT?!?" and get a look on their face so priceless that you wish you'd set up the camera before you popped out with the news.

Yes, this is how fucked-up my family is. A camera at a funeral. Now, people, I didn't rush to this judgment when I opened the email and saw the first four pictures of the flowers I sent and the picture table that was laid out with different pics of Gran and the family. Were those all that I received, I would have given the benefit of the doubt; that maybe someone had casually said it was a shame that I couldn't be there, or see the lovely bouquet I had sent, or the many family photos of Gran which were so touching, and then someone else said, "Well, I have a camera in the car, when the first viewing is over, I'll take some pics to send her during the break before the evening wake-session." I could understand that, and that's what I thought when I sent my step-mother the thank you email for the pics, which I thought was very good of her to send considering the strained-non-speaking nature of our current relationship....

It was after I sent this email that I opened the last picture, and friends, this is what convinced me that someone over there, if not all of them have completely gone over the edge of reason... Forgive my bad taste in posting it, but I couldn't possibly describe it, you'd swear I was lying! And here is the more scary-to-me-than-anything-else part, ready?-- My sister and I were discussing the pics, and we realized that they were taken at the Actual Funeral, and it still took us a few minutes to deduce how completely jacked that was. It wasn't in any way an instant reaction, it had to dawn on us. Now that was quite a OMG-Wow (and not in a good way) on our part. Then again, we were raised around these people...

We are in the same dye-lot... we are a similar shade of crazy.

As the conversation progressed, we started laughing so hard that we could scarcely breathe. I mean the choices were: to laugh about it, OR, to off ourselves and my children to make sure these genes were not allowed to propagate and infect the rest of the world with this top-shelf-level-of-crazy. Seriously. Baring issues like incest and living in a meth lab; I'm pretty sure snapping shots of a coffin about to go into the ground which contains your mother-in-law of 28 years who you were on Good Terms with and sending the pic to your step-children while none of the 5-grown-actual-blood-children of the dead woman, who were all in attendance said anything about how crass, crude, and absolutely, unbelievably fucked-up even having the nerve to do flash photography at a funeral is... pretty much lands us in the top 10% of crazy families in the US, if not world-wide. I know I come from this crazy-lot, but I'm pretty sure this would have been stopped by any other family even if the daughter-in-law and mother-in-law were on bad terms. I'm just guessing, obviously, I Don't Know.

What I do know, is that despite the level of insanity, this family functions very well in regular society. Houdini & Copperfield have nothing on the illusionists in this family. We hold good jobs, have very nice homes, and in general, seem like upstanding members of the community. But we're crazy enough to allow cameras at funerals. We deserve a 10 page color spread article in Psychology Today.

It got me to thinking about the spouses we attract. And if this degree of crazy can attract and maintain long-term marriages with their mates, then the mates must be crazy too. And the more I thought about it, I came to deduce that everyone is crazy; just in their own way. And maybe we attract people to us that are at or about the same level of crazy as we are. That may be how long-term relationships are able to work, both people involved are operating at the same level of insanity brought about by their genetics and upbringing. Then again, I'm not sure if that's comforting or disturbing...

But, hey, the next time your spouse or family does something embarrassing and crazy and you want to never again have to admit that you are related to them, remember this...

At least they didn't bring a camera to a funeral.

Sickies

"I cannot go to school today
Said little Peggy Ann McKay
I have the measles and the mumps
A gash, a rash and thirteen bumps...
.........
...What? What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is... Saturday?
Goodbye, I'm going out to play."
partial quotation from the poem, "SICK"
available in full in the book,
Where the Sidewalk Ends
by Shel Silverstein

Hubby is home from work today. He is having some follow-up blood work done from when he was sick a few weeks back... I want to know, WTF is it with men when they're sick?

They go from being strong, generally-self-sufficient, adults to... well... pathetic. A glass of water becomes too difficult to navigate. And somehow, whether they are suffering from a stomach flu or an ingrown toenail they manage to get the sniffles and watery eyes, making them look all the more pitiful as they gaze up at you with their new-found-puppy-dog-eyes and ask you to close the curtains so they can die peacefully in their deathbed because they have 'no energy'. If they could talk you into bringing them a bedpan they would. Groans and other poor-me noises emanate from wherever they are lying prone to let all others in the house know that they are feeling absolutely miserable, and if they survive, it will be a miracle worthy of the Pope. "Pray for me in my time of hideous suffering", the whimpers seem to say...

Now, I'm not heartless. Really, I'm not. I understand wanting some comfort, compassion, and maybe even a little 'babying' when you're sick, but men have it down to an art form that would be the envy of Michaelangelo. Almost like they had graduate-level-classes on how to play it up. And hey guys, we want some of that 'babying' too! Where did you come up with having the monopoly on playing the sick card?

Because, when women get sick--especially if those women are mothers-- it is an entirely different story. They still have to get out of bed and change diapers, make their own coffee, and do some measure of housework. They can go through an entire box of tissues in 12 hours, cough so hard they throw-out their backs, puke up everything they ever ate in their entire lives as well as their shoes, and have dark circles under their eyes that extend down to their bra, and they will get no extra compassionate anything. They're lucky if their partner actually 'sees' them and makes a comment like, "Wow babe, you look like shit!" Which makes us think something along the lines of, "Gee thanks! You heartless, thoughtless jerk."

We may get out of doing laundry or not get some sort of comment about us going back to bed. If we're really lucky, they'll turn down the TV so our heads don't explode from the bass as something gets blown up in the action movie they are watching. If they order take-out and spare us from cooking dinner, it will very likely be more from not wanting to get whatever you've got, than actually trying to help your sick-ass out.

I'm sure not all men are this bone-headed when their women are sick or as whiney when they are the sick one. I'm sure there are some men who are compassionate and considerate of their ill partners, or don't expect to be waited on hand and foot with the dedication of a prisoner-servant to the sadistic dictator in a militia state when they're laid-up... I just know that I've never been married to one.

Jumbled

Things today, for me, are jumbled.

While I find writing to be as cathartic as an activity has the possibility to be, I am no longer writing in my private-tucked-away-under-the-mattress journal where I can be angry or hurt or simply rant about shit without fear of censure from the eyes and opinions of another. And while I have put some personal things into this blog, when I'm here, for some reason, I'm able to put emotional distance between myself and the subject I'm writing about...OK, well sometimes. But those that I'm not distanced from are issues that I've already dealt with in the private, enough to take the edge off the heartache or the anger or whatever other emotions I go through to write about a particular subject.

I can't say that about all that is going on today. It's fresh. Some of the emotions are brand new, even if the situations are not. Odd, isn't it, how that happens sometimes. I've been going through over a year of...how shall I put this tactfully... Delusional Bullshit with my father. Throughout the year, I was hurt and saddened over the situation, but in a resigned, wish-you-well-sorry-you-think-that sort of way. I was surprised that he had come to the conclusions that he had, and suspected that he may be in the beginning stages of dementia. I understand that those suffering this mental disease tend to feel persecuted, may make up conspiracy theories, and cut themselves off from others by way of being hostile to the point of belligerence and yet, even as their theories and conclusions make perfect sense to them, make no reasonable sense to those around them... (this is my understanding anyway, if you've had a different experience or have more knowledge, please add your insights in comments, it would be appreciated.)

This is not a new situation, as I have said. I was side-swiped with this particular Mack truck right around Christmas last year. In the time since, I have accepted that he wants no contact with me. I can not get behind the reasoning, which is the opposite of accurate. (So much so, that latest reports have a completely different line of reasoning for my alienation, though it still ends up with the same result.) What I do get is his way of dealing with it, I understand how my father is. I am cut off because I am Satan. Luckily for me, I am not alone, my sister is also Satan for completely different reasons. Her story, to hear her side of it, was a misunderstanding that has been apologized for repeatedly. To hear the opposing side, she is the most vindictive, malicious human being to ever walk the earth and her name is not mentionable--since downright execution is currently unavailable for her transgressions.

I believe the truth to lie somewhere in the middle of the two sides, since in my experience, that is usually where it tends to be. I've come to conclude through my years that fact and perception rarely line up together in relationships. However, considering the other 'view point conclusions' my father has been making, after they have been mulled over as featured topics of the conspiracy-evolutionist-discussion group (consisting of my father and my step-mother) and the fact that there is always a 'base reason' and then a host of other not-necessarily-related reasons that someone has sprouted horns and become lower than an untouchable in India, I tend to see his reasoning, and that of his newly appointed mouthpiece, my step-mother, as *ahem* somewhat skewed. At this point, I feel the need to tell you that up until my expulsion from their lives, I considered my step-mother to be one of my best friends, so this view of her is brand new and based on conversations that have occurred over the last year with me as well as other third party translators...

OK, so getting on with the story... yesterday morning, I received an email from my aunt (NOT my father, but my father's sister, if you hadn't guessed that part already) informing me and my sister that my grandmother, who has been in the hospital for over two weeks now, was being moved yesterday from the hospital to hospice. As positive as I'd like to be about her condition, factoring in the that she was not going home, but to hospice... well, to be honest with myself about the situation, I have to admit that she's dying, and soon. I have been somewhat poised for this news since I found out that she was in the hospital in the first place. My grandmother, although in her 90's, doesn't go to the hospital unless it's major. She spent her professional life as a nurse, and with age, she's gotten a fair bit stubborn about her own health. Readily admitting some things, like the need for hearing aids, and in complete denial about others like taking vitamins not specifically prescribed or recommended by the doctor. That said, I knew her being in the hospital overnight at all was a huge red flag. I immediately started doing distance reiki treatments on her, and I knew that she was ready to be done with this particular life experience because she told me so, but that is a whole other post...

Despite all of this, the hospice thing hit me kind of hard, and made me look at some reality crap, like my inevitable soonish visit to NJ for the funeral. My sister was relieved that I have decided to be there despite our disowned state with my father. She was mostly relieved because she wasn't sure that she could hold her tongue in such close proximity to our father. As evil as he perceives us, she has been doing a lot of introspective-therapy-type stuff and has a large amount of her own anger back at him, and several issues that stem from it. Over her four (plus goodness knows how many) years of alienation from my father, she has gone from trying many avenues of reconciliation and communication to utter disgust at the thought of him. Basically, hold her tongue is my polite way of saying that she wants to rip his head off and spit a loogie down his neck.

So, I took a nap yesterday to get a break from the swirling-family-tornado-waiting-to-happen (that and I was up way too late reading a good book). I was not expecting the angry indignation toward my father that I woke up with. I had felt many emotions over the past year toward him and the situation, but this was a new one. I had my soap-box-conversation with him in my head (because the person you're talking to can't interrupt your litany this way) while I was folding laundry. I made several good points concerning all of the accusations leveled at me by their particular hanging committee. When I was finished, I was unsure if I would be able to contain myself at the funeral, let alone talk my sister down.

With the dawn of a new day, the red-hot anger is gone, so I am confident that I will be able to keep my composure. Those many valid points may never get made to the appropriate person, but I can work them out and heal my own emotional wounds without behaving like a total ass. My grandmother deserves much better than to have her funeral remembered for an uproar worthy of the Hatfields and McCoys.

One thing that I do know for sure is this, everyone is simply trying to get through their days to the best of their ability. I have a feeling that I'm going to have to adopt this as my mantra for this difficult time... and I'm going to need to take A Lot of deep breaths.

Renaissance Faire

We are not organized people. We are three Pisceans in one home...in other words, we generally swim by the seats of our pants. We will see a billboard or advertisement for some event and say to each other that we really should go to that...before we know it, three months have passed, we drive by the same billboard and realize that we missed the event entirely. This is simply our way. Unless some more organized person enters our world, makes plans and is good enough to ask us to join in those plans. Then, we're there. It gets marked on the calendar, even if that calendar is only in my head, and we show up come hell or high water.

This is how we managed to attend the Renaissance Faire on Sunday. Our friends D & D invited us to go with them along with D's sister R and her new boyfriend W. I teased D & D that they only love us for our stroller, because, let's be honest, this is one of the major perks of having a kid--the ability to load every last scrap of your belongings into the bottom basket of the stroller so you can walk around with your hands relatively free without looking like an overloaded pack mule. Not that I minded one bit, I was just happy to be out of the house and among adult conversation like a big person.



So out our little group of seven plus stroller went into the teeming throngs of seed pearls, plaited hair and chain mail interspersed with the modern-day folk milling about. One of the stand workers we talked to was a girl in a beautiful velvet and leather dress with hand sewn beading at the neck. Hubby asked her how much she paid for it and we all picked ourselves off the ground when she confided that she'd spent close to $700 on it--the entire season's worth of her pay. If this was indicative in any way of the cost of the real Renaissance, I no longer have any questions about why there were beggars during the era, except for why there weren't more of them.



We watched the parade that signaled the official start of the day, and showcased the many different types of costumes we would be witnessing throughout our wanderings. We watched a show or two, the favorite of the men being the belly-dancer-singer, not that she was in any way the only naked navel of the day. There was quite a bit of eye-candy for the men as many of the bustiers provided eye-popping cleavage and some of the chain-mail wearing women wore their metal bras without anything underneath them. Hey, there was plenty of eye-candy for the women as well with muscled men in loin-cloths and plenty of tights. But we women had the good sense not to take pictures that could result in our sleeping on the couch.




We got a couple of pictures with the executioner whereby hubby got down on his knees and got his neck axed by me for a photo op. I'd post it here, but well, I was amazed to see in full color exactly how huge I am. Wal-mart mirrors are one thing--fleeting shocks, but to have it for advanced review in a picture... OMG! It's bad enough that I have to see it, I won't subject your eyes to permanent damage. However, I've decided that I need to wire my jaw shut. Speaking of my jaw, I put all manner of greasy fare into it and we all spent far too much money on food and drinks (it should be illegal to charge $2.50 for a 20 oz soda and an extra $1 for a cup of ice!)

Hubby re-proposed in one of the chapels they had, and we all took pictures there. Some of which I don't have yet, because there were three cameras in action that day. I'm sure we walked at least 5 miles from car exit to car re-entry. We were there for 8 hours and all of us wound up slightly sunburned.

Before I close my commentary, I must Must MUST comment on the bathrooms. WOW, they were fantastic. Really clean! Every single bathroom was clean AND there were plenty of them about, you didn't have to hunt for them. Seriously, the sinks and the stalls and the changing table were all clean enough to not warrant any misgivings about using any of them--which is something I do almost everywhere... Another shocker--No Line for the ladies room... Ladies you know what I'm talking about; the bathroom sitch was tantamount to saying you went to the moon for lunch. And from one of our friends, I was told the men's room was just as clean and accessible. That in itself is worth the price of admission.

It was a really good day with lots to see and buy and gawk at. And really good company to share it with. So a huge thanks to D & D for being organized enough to make the day happen!

The next yard of strawberry daiquiri is on us!

A Failure to Communicate

"What we have here, is a failure to communicate." (Sorry, with the passing of Paul Newman, I had to start there.) It's as relative to love relationships as ever a line was uttered or written, even if the original context is way off base...

What do women really want in a relationship? It's a loaded question with answers so complex and contradictory that they would give Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Alfred Nobel all migraines in a matter of minutes.

Obviously, I can't speak for all women. We are each different and completely separate entities with needs and wants more varied than the selection at Amazon.com. Add to this, that as life progresses there will be things that change within our own claims of what we want. It's clear to see that women should not be a category in and of itself, all lumped together, except say, as the title of a website with hundreds of thousands of subcategories available within that site. And 'what we want from a relationship' is more difficult to pin-point than a single frame of a kaleidoscope with a 3 foot diameter...it evolves continually and without a discernible set pattern.

After discussions with many of my friends for many years, I will share with you some of what our small subset of women is looking to find in the qualities of their partner. If you agree or disagree, feel free to leave a comment...either way, you prove my point.

Honesty is huge. But it has to come with a healthy dose of tact. This is especially important when broaching subjects that are difficult for whomever you are talking to. Sometimes the tact is optional, just get to the point, don't meander. The honesty is non-negotiable, but the tact factor is completely dependent on the situation and the woman.

Wishy-washy on a partner is always unattractive. If you can't fully commit to a single point of view, how can we ever trust you to fully commit to us? This behavior, if not worthy of an immediate rejection from us, will definitely get you into the 'short term keeper' file. Changing your mind after thoughtful consideration however, is attractive and appreciated nearly to the point of being applauded. We love a man that can admit that his original point of view needed review and change for whatever reason, but you need to have a reason, to avoid the wishy-washy category previously discussed, or the 'Yes Man' syndrome whereby you agree with us and do whatever we want nearly every time. It may be a little refreshing and somewhat heady at first, but eventually, you will be seen as an indecisive pussy. Yes men will also find themselves in the disposable category, because of the next thing we want...

We want you to be our rock. When the seas of life become too rough and tumble, we want to be able to hold on to you to keep from drowning. Like a rock, you must be stable on your own, sturdy enough to weather what life and your woman will throw at you, and have just a few cracks to allow your real emotions to come out and be seen by your woman. An occasional tear-up or bout of insecurity that we can talk you through, not a gaping chasm that sucks every scrap of our energy dry to keep you from bawling like a hungry infant. Those cracks also allow you to give us the emotional awareness that we need from you... like just coming up and giving us a hug when you know we've had a bad day, instead of only giving us one when we come to you first. That is emotionally closed, and will be seen as rejection; which will hit your woman harder than you know, and will spell the end of your relationship, even if it takes years for the final split.

We want to be your friend. But, we don't only want to be 'just one of the guys'...someone you punch in the arm out of joy because your team just scored. We do want the part of the friendship that has to do with respect for the other person, and cheering them on and having their back even if you think they're making a mistake. You'd do it for your buds wouldn't you? But, we want to be your Best Friend...just like grade school. We want to see the soft side that as your woman, only we get to see, and if you've gone so far as to tell us that you love us, then we want some mush. Not total mush, that's repulsive to most modern women. I mean good mush. That would be the look of respect and adoration that you have when you look at your woman. That would be reaching out and holding your woman's hand for no reason whatsoever, except that you want to be a little closer to her. Then there's the kind of conversations that you only have with your woman, since she's your best friend...

Whatever type of conversations or communications you have with your woman, she needs to know that her words and opinions are as important to you, as you want yours to be to her. Not just soap-boxing and expecting her to listen like a cult follower. Also, you need to demonstrate this point (of her opinion being important) by saying some of the most needed-by-a-woman words you will ever learn to utter: "What do you think about that?" The qualifier to that is this; you also need to give her time to answer you fully, not just thinking in your head over everything she says so you can inject it the second she takes a breath, thereby cutting her off, negating the 'your important' progress you almost made, and diminishing her self esteem and her desire to stay in the relationship with you. If you don't think she's important enough to listen to, then what the hell is she doing there? I guarantee you that she will eventually start asking herself this question if you negate her voice to fill the air with the sound of your own on a regular basis. And when she is passionate about a course of action, you may want to consider doing it her way. If you ask for the opinion and decide to go another way, at least acknowledge whatever valid points she made. Deciding on the course of action before you even talk to her makes her opinion a moot point, she will know it and resent that more than if you never asked her opinion at all.

And yes, as Carrie Bradshaw once put it, we want the "Za-Za-Zoo". In this respect, I'm not going to lie; we want the fairy tale, combined with the XXX rated movie. We want the 'stolen' little (slightly inappropriate) touches that no one else sees, even though there are other people there. It makes us feel that we are appealing to you and that will go a long way towards getting sex from us later on when it's more appropriate. A little look, or a private joke or a little frisky teasing throughout the day will also accomplish these things for you, because you will keep her desirability to you in the forefront of her mind thereby making her feel sexy in her own right. And when you do have sex, make sure it's physical intimacy that concentrates a goodly portion of it's time on pleasing and fulfilling the needs of your woman, not only getting your rocks off in the quickest time possible. A once in a while quickie is one thing and can spice things up considerably, but when that's all she's getting, she'll get colder than the Arctic very, very quickly.

And if the shoe is on the other foot, and you aren't feeling all hot and bothered for whatever reason, you can't neglect the sexuality of your woman. If you do, she will neglect it as well. Legs and other parts of her anatomy will get unattractively hairy, she'll stop doing sit-ups and start using the time to learn how to make home-made donuts. Soon she'll be out shopping for a wardrobe in a larger size. Getting the point? You will start a cycle that you will not want to be party to once you get past whatever is causing your mental-E.D. Remember this, your woman always wants you to treat her like you want her sexually. If her man doesn't see the sexy in her, she will, subconsciously, do away with the sexy so that No One can see it, even herself; that is if she sticks around...

There is so much more... but those are large ones that I wanted to convey. And yes, I do realize that we are a lot of work... I know we are confusing as fuck. I get it. But you are what you are, and we are what we are. Neither of us can help how we're hard-wired and everyone is just trying to get through his or her day the best way they know how. Besides, the women I know aren't all running around trying to figure out their man. Most of us figured out our man within the first week, it comes naturally to us--like blinking our eyes. Men, however, tend to be vocal about their extreme confusion when dealing with their female counterparts, so I thought I'd help y'all out. Which, in turn, helps us out. See how that works?

Now men, when you finish reading this, have your woman read it. Then ask her what she thinks, listen to her answer and look at her like the most succulent rib-eye steak wrapped in bacon that you've ever seen as she answers you. Be honest but tactful when you tell her that she is different from the girl you first met, finish with how you love her more now than ever before and whisk her off to bed...

Are we communicating yet?