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.

 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.