My Facebook status pretty much sums it up:

The best thing in the world is being married to your best friend.

Happy Anniversary to my husband. You are my rock, my gravity, and the love of my life.

I LOVE YOU!

Want a great way to learn something about the strength of your marriage?   Take some adoption classes and see how you and your spouse would answer these questions:

What first attracted you to your spouse?

What do you like most about your spouse? 

What do you think your spouse likes most about you?

What would you most like to change about your spouse? 

What do you think your spouse would like to have you change about yourself?

What would make you want or consider a divorce?

How much time during the week do you and your spouse have alone together, and do you think this is enough time?

What are some ways you spend time together as a couple?

Describe how you show the following emotions to one another as a couple: Happiness, Love/Affection, Anger, Disappointment, Frustration, Sadness/Depression, and Stress

Try sitting down and having you and your spouse each answer these questions separately.  Then share your answers with each other.  It’s a real eye opener, or at least it was for us.  

Happy 42nd Birthday to my husband, Mark.

My best friend…

My awesome, amazing husband…

My rock, my gravity, my reason for wanting to be a better person…

He is the best father I could ever hope to have for my children.

Happy 42nd Birthday, Mark! I love you!

My husband left last Friday for a fishing trip in Canada. Every year, he spends a week up there with my Dad and sometimes another guy or two. Usually, I’m fine when he’s gone and I have a good handle on everything going on.

But this year, this past week, I feel like I’m lost without him. I have been one big hot mess, constantly running in a hundred different directions.

Let’s give a re-cap of how this week has gone, shall we?

Since he left, I have:

1. sat through 17 high school softball games in SIX DIFFERENT TOWNS. Yes, you read that right. SEVENTEEN games, SIX towns.
2. Taken one of our new puppies to the vet, leaving $350 later with a CAST on her leg. (She broke her foot jumping off of the couch).
3. Rubber-banded a ziploc baggie over said puppy’s cast EVERY TIME SHE GOES OUTSIDE, because the cast can’t get wet. And of course, we’ve had rain.
4. Run youngest daughter around to two soccer practices– this all in between trying to catch those darn seventeen games. (Do I need to say again that we’re talking 6 towns?)
5. Been trying to find time to mow the yard. Hopefully today is the day.
6. to attend a surprise birthday for a friend tonight — let’s hope I get the lawn mowed first!
7. Worked full-time in addition to all this other stuff.
8. Spent every single night with 2 puppies, one dog, and one 10-year child old in my bed.
9. Still had the joy of keeping up on housework, laundry, bills, while still kinda managing to squeeze a few hours of sleep in each night.

Today is the day. Or actually, I should say tonight is the night.

He’s coming home.

Mark, I miss yo face.

(Photo Credit: His & Hers Photography)

Day 2: The person (or people) that make your world go round.

My husband, Mark, is my rock. He is my center, he keeps me grounded. He is the reason I breathe. He has provided me with a wonderful family, and is the most amazing father, stepfather and husband I could ever ask for. He is the first person I think of every morning when I wake up, and the last person I think of when I fall asleep at night. This month, I will celebrate 11 years of marriage to this amazing man, and am thankful for every day, every hour, every minute, and every second he has been in my life.

I have a confession to make.

I don’t recycle.

I know, I know… It’s good for the environment. Living green, preserving our natural resources, insuring our future generations still have space in their landfills for their garbage.

Blah, blah, blahbiddy blah.

Still, I don’t recycle.

Why you ask? Because in our house, my husband is a Recycling Nazi. And I, on the other hand, choose to rebel against any and all authority.

When I take the last of the Little Debbie Nutty Bars* out of the box, it becomes an obsession for me to get that cardboard box into the garbage can before my husband sees it. Because if he does, he shouts “Break that cardboard down and take it to the recycling bin!” with a possible outcry of “Heil  Recycling!”

I might just be imagining that last part.

Finish that bottle of shampoo? Don’t even think about sticking it in the bathroom wastebasket without checking first to see if it’s able to be recycled. Shame on you! Get it to the recycling bin!

OR, if you’re like me, you will stick it in the kitchen garbage can, as far down underneath everything as you can get it, to avoid getting caught by the recycling Nazi.

The other day I took the last of the Oatmeal Cream Pies* from the pantry, and as I was crumpling up the box to stick it in the garbage can, my husband snuck into the kitchen. He took one look at the box, looked at my face KNOWING I was going to hide it, and said “Just collapse that down and put it in the recycling bin.”

DAMN! Foiled again!

The garbage can in my office is full of empty water bottles, Pepsi cans, and probably more Little Debbie boxes*. God only knows the reign of terror I would succumb to should my husband take a gander in there. My method of throwing paper on top of it all probably will be figured out eventually.

So it has become a game. How dictator-y (yes thats totally a word!) he can be, and how rebellious I can be in return. The kitchen counter next to our sink is always full of items to be taken out to “recycling nirvana” (aka the GARAGE). Spaghetti sauce jars**, salsa jars, tuna cans, Campbells soup cans, ketchup bottles. It’s a competition to see how many things can pile up before someone gets fed up and hauls it to the garage.

Him being the neat freak that he is, makes waiting impossible. It physically pains him to see those things sitting out. Me being a procrastinator and avoider of all things “housework” could wait, like, for-EVAH.

So usually, I win! Viva la garbage can! (with a mighty fist pump in the air)

Marriage is bliss.

* On a side note, why yes. In fact, I DO have an obsession with Little Debbie snacks. We will save that for another post.

** Make my OWN sauce, you say? snort, giggle, snort. You’re funny.

The weather forecast for today through Friday is not good for our state. It will start with rain, then freezing rain (affectionately called “ice pellets” by the weather people), and progressing into a doozie of a snowstorm. We’re looking at possibly another foot of snow on the ground by Friday.

With that nugget of news on everyone’s minds, all of those people that waited until this week to do their shopping for gifts and groceries? Yeah, they all lost two full days of shopping time. Today and tomorrow. This means that they were forced to be out and about Monday and Tuesday night, which did NOT bode well for me and my “quick” errand running.

It seems like while I bragged to all of you about being done with all of my Christmas shopping, that I am truly never “DONE” until its time to open gifts. Theres always one (or ten) more things that manage to pop up, resulting in more trips out in public. ACK. And did I mention I haven’t grocery shopped yet? Or baked ANY Christmas goodies?

I only needed to get a few things (the grocery shopping was going to wait until Tuesday night– I’m a martyr that way), and my oldest daughter was going to go with me. One thing needed to be purchased at Costco, and the other things could easily be purchased at Wal-Mart or Target.

Yes, you read that right. I was going to attempt to shop at a big-box retail store the week of Christmas.

Shoot me now.

Our trip to Costco went smoothly, with our only problem being a crabby driver in the parking lot. People, the vehicle I normally drive now is a Ford F-150 SuperCrew truck. It sits up high, and it’s big. Because of this, I have not quite mastered the art of parking in parking spaces, unless they are angled. Coscto, unfortunately, does not have angled spaces.

I pulled in, realized I was crooked, and attempted to back out a bit and get straightened up. Upon seeing my backup lights, Mr. Scrooge in the Chevy Silverado thought I was leaving and sat and waited for my space. After I shut the truck off and climbed out, he realized we were in fact, just parking, and not leaving. He proceeded to flip me off before peeling out to look for another spot.

I kid you not.

We got in, picked out the item we needed, and headed out. Realizing we were both starving, we decided to go the cheap and easy route and opted for Costco’s snack bar. I mean, where else can two people eat dinner for less than $4? Daughter had a big slice of pepperoni pizza, and I opted for the HUGE hot dog. We shared a pop, and the meal cost us $3.70.

Costco food FTW!

After leaving Costco, we decided we would go to Wal-Mart. It’s closer, and the things we needed were probably cheaper.

Biggest mistake EVER.

I have never seen anything like it. Wal-Mart was packed to the gills. There were no parking spaces (seriously, the lot was FULL), and there were no carts. We managed to find a parking spot way out in the next county, and scored a cart by sneaking in through the Garden Center. People were scrambling to get their shopping done, buy groceries, and get the heck out of Dodge – er, I mean Wal-Mart.

I have never in my life witnessed the sheer GRINCH in people as I did that night. People were completey oblivious to other shoppers around them, and didn’t care who they ran over with their carts. I was bumped into and shoved on more than one occasion, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. It could possibly be because that darn Costco hot dog was making the decision to come out of me in gaseous form. (Seriously, have you ever eaten one of those things? I’m sure people could smell my burps from a mile away!)

Something else I noticed? I mean, besides the smell of my burps?

People in general. They just all looked unhappy. There was no smiling, I don’t think I heard any “Please” and “Thank You”‘s anywhere. Is this what we’ve become? That we get so bogged down with a “to-do” list that we become unbearable human beings? Cashiers roll their eyes and heavy a loud drawn-out SIGH when one more customer gets in their line. People race to find the shortest check-out line, and grumble under their breath (or louder) when even that line takes a while to get through.

And lady in front of me in the Wal-Mart checkout line? No ma’am. You certainly do NOT have less than 20 items. But because its Christmas time, I only threw *SILENT* daggers at you with my eyes, rather than loud scary ones.

When we finally got back to the truck after our 100-mile trek through the parking lot, I sat for a few quiet moments. Repeating over and over in my head was this:

“Remember the reason for the season.”

It was about that time that I received a text message from my husband. And even though we are DONE. DONE. DONE. (did I mention DONE?) shopping for my children, he sends this message:

Go buy Courtney a pink Red Ryder BB gun.

What the hell? Off to Scheels we went. They were out of stock. End of story. My nine year old daughter will not be getting a pink BB gun for Christmas. Thank God for small miracles.

Heading home, I once again exclaimed to my daughter: “I am now OFFICIALLY DONE WITH SHOPPING.”

Out of the entire night, I can say my biggest mistake (besides setting foot in a Wal-Mart store) was the Costco hot dog, because I’ll be darned if that baby didn’t stick around for a while, making itself at home in the pit of my stomach.

Starting in October and going into January, my husband changes.

He quits being DEAR Husband and turns into DEER Husband.

Yes, that’s right. It’s deer hunting season– the time of year I become a DEER HUNTING WIDOW. For the past month, and for the next two months to come, my husband will walk, talk, sleep and eat DEER HUNTING. On the rare occasion that I do happen to see him on the weekends, he is either cleaning, fixing or playing with his gear, or talking on the phone to someone about hunting. Or talking to them about cleaning, fixing, or playing with his gear.

Just as he does not see the fascination of me spending Black Friday fighting the crowds at Target or Kohls, I don’t understand the fascination with freezing one’s ass off at 4am, sitting chained up in a tree, waiting for the possibility of a deer to walk by. And the possibility that one’s arrow will actually hit said deer.

Because oh yes, there have been a lot more misses than hits.

This year, a couple weeks ago, he did shoot one. A doe. He and his buddy came home, with Bambi’s mom laying smack dab in the middle of the truck bed. He was so excited, and wanted me to go out and see it.

I looked out the window, saw deer feet and couldn’t make myself go outside. Immediately that night, they took the deer to a friends’ house and spend the next couple hours butchering it. He got home, and he excitedly showed me a large bag of SOMETHING that he was carrying down to the deep freeze. He was telling me all about saving the bag o’meat until he got another deer. Then he would have enough meat to send down to Pella, Iowa to have it made into jerky.

I quit listening when the image of my husband personally butchering an animal kept replaying in my head.

I think I threw up a little in my mouth.

That night, I continued watching TV while he was out in the driveway talking to his friends about the deer. After a while, I could smell something coming from the kitchen. I knew there was MEAT frying in a pan.

DEER MEAT.

Like deer meat from a deer that had just been running in the woods a few hours prior.

Again with the throwing up in my mouth thing.

I walked upstairs and saw these little pieces of meat he was cooking, very excitedly talking about how good it smelled and “Honey you should really try this.”

Now I don’t care what kind of animal you are wanting me to eat. If I see the animal beforehand, I cannot stomach eating it’s meat. I can go to the store and buy ground beef, chicken, pork chops and turkey, and not think about the animal it came from. He can shove a bag of jerky in front of me, and once I proclaim how much I like it, he can spring it on my it’s DEER JERKY. I’m OK with that (and it really is quite yummy).

But it makes me feel extremely urpy to see a bleeding animal in the back of my truck, and two hours later see that same animal’s meat frying in a pan on my stove.

Again. Gag a little.

Imagine the wave of nausea that spread over me, when a few days ago, I cleaned out the refrigerator. I was emptying out containers of leftovers (which I don’t even know why we keep because we never eat them), and I stumbled onto a container that I thought was hamburger.

It was the deer meat– he fried it up in a pan, ate some, and put the rest in the fridge for me to discover two weeks later.

Seriously, this throwing up in my mouth deal has got to stop.

While I don’t always like being the Deer Hunting Widow of small-town Iowa, and I really don’t like the bloody deer and the butchering and the –urp–frying it up in a pan, I will tolerate it. There are worse things my husband could be out doing with his spare time, so for a few months out of the year, I can put up with it.

However, I will stick to pre-packaged meat, thank-you-very-much.

There are many downsides to having a husband working full-time AND going to school.  He has classes three nights a week– Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights.   He leaves the house at 6:15 every morning to head to work, and usually doesn’t arrive home until after 9:00pm at night, and its after 10:00pm on Tuesday nights.     Unfortunately, this means he doesn’t even see the kids from Sunday night when they go to bed until Thursday when he gets home from work.    He’s gone when they get up in the mornings, and he’s not home yet when they go to bed at night.

It’s frustrating.  I become a single mom on those evenings, juggling the kids’ activities and dinner time, still making sure to take care of two dogs, a cat, and let’s not forget the kids’ homework and MY HOUSEWORK!     It’s certainly not shocking that I blame all of this on the reason I never get anything done!  This does not bode well considering I am married to the NEAT FREAK OF THE CENTURY. 

Sadly for him, he married the Queen of “I-Could-Live-Out-Of-A-Laundry-Basket-If-You-Let-Me“. 

I kinda feel sorry for him.

Because my husband rarely sees our house in the daylight several days out of the week, we tend to not worry too much what the house looks like when the girls and I leave in the mornings.    I don’t make the beds, and I don’t have the house picked up when I leave, because we scramble to pick it up in the evenings.  There are many a times when a load of laundry in the washing machine has to be rewashed because I cannot–for the life of me– remember when I washed them.  

I work well under pressure, yo.

Last Wednesday, my husband had to run home during the day to get something he had forgotten, and of course, stumbled onto the nuclear bomb that had gone off in my home that morning.  Clothes strewn about, cereal bowls still sitting on the table.    Dog toys scattered all over the house, twenty-seven (I’m guessing) pairs of shoes piled up by the back door.   Lights sometimes get left on, and there is almost always globs of toothpaste left in the bathroom sink.  

Have I mentioned my kids are messy, too?

And I won’t even mention the litter box– that thing down in the basement that we have a habit of forgetting about until it smells like someone pooped in every corner of my home.

All of this translated into one of those “I’m OK if you yell at me, because I’m not there in person feel the full wrath of your pissed-offness.”

I got a stern  talking to from my husband, insisting that I can’t complain about being so busy that I am never home, but still manage to be home long enough to mess it the hell up.   
 
Touche.
 
I’ve been exposed.    I had the kids stay home that night, forgoing their usual Wednesday night activities, and we stayed home to CLEAN THE HOUSE.   We vaccuumed, we dusted, we got laundry washed, dried, folded AND put away– which I NEVER do all in one night.    With my mad laundry-doing skillz, it’s not unusual for a load of laundry to have a 3-4 day journey from dryer to actually getting put away in someone’s dresser or closet.
 
People, he’s figured me out.    He has caught on to the numerous hours of TV watching that happen when I should be tackling my to-do list.  He has figured out I spend more time writing blog posts than folding laundry.    He has realized he did not marry Suzy Homemaker.  He married ME, the person who procrastinates and fights her way out of any household task that doesn’t sound fun.  Which is, really– ALL OF THEM.
 
And the worst part of all?
 
The text message I got from my 14-year old daughter this past Monday morning, after I had left for work:

“we need to clean the house tonight after gymnastics… its getting messy and I don’t want the same thing to happen this week that did last week.”

Clearly, she has made the move to the other side. 

Traitor.

 I see something brewing in my house.

Trouble on the horizon.

It’s a time when all hell breaks loose in my house. We’ve lived here almost 18 months now, and I knew it would be happening soon.

What’s the problem, you ask?

It’s my husband.

He mentioned since we have a free weekend coming up, he thought of a great idea.

Bow-chicka-bow-wow.

NO, not that.

He wants to paint. As in, the inside of our house.

Let me give you a little background on the whole debacle that makes up any home improvement project in the 10 years we’ve been together.

It’s agony.   Seriously, I kid you not when I say that every time is like we’re going through a divorce. Several years ago, in our last house, we decided to paint the living room.  We went from white walls to a beautiful burgundy.  It was gorgeous. 

But in the weekend it took us to paint that beautiful living room?   I think husband got pissed and walked out of the house at least three times.  We threatened each other with divorce, and there could very well have been paint throwing and maybe a little name-calling.

I’m serious, people.   He and I do not mix when it comes to any kind of home improvement project.    We have known since we moved in that the walls need to be painted, but as you can from the pictures above, my living room is decorated, yo.  It’s done.   And the sheer thought of having to take everything down, spackle, tape, paint… well, I would rather spend an afternoon at the dentist sans Novacaine. 

Yet that glorious living room you see above? 

It shall be painted this weekend.   And since we live in a split level house, that same paint has to go all the way up the stairs and down the whole upstairs hallway.  

*sigh*

I should probably put my lawyer on speed dial now.

On the upside, should we survive, I will be able to check one more thing off my LIST.