Maddening Matrimony

The Real Thing…Kind of

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We may not remember dentist appointments or even the first names of our children, but every woman remembers every detail of the way her husband proposed.

What made Doug’s proposal so magically unexpected was that is was supposed to be his night.  I’d rented a limo for his thirtieth birthday and invited two of our couples friends to a night out in Hartford.  (Today, this could never happen.  First, because we are no longer fun enough to go out with other couples.  And second, a limo ride through Hartford would result in every window shot out and a shattered bottle of champagne.)  At some point during that limo ride, moonlight wisping against our skin and “Unchained Melody” (alright so I don’t remember what song was playing, but the Righteous Brothers seems most fitting) dripping through the speakers, he actually got on one knee, shyly pulled a sparkling diamond ring out of his pocket, and popped the question.  He swore that if I’d be his wife, it would be the best birthday present he could ever wish for.  I exhaled and said yes—and he slipped the ring on my finger.

Much has happened since that night.  Kids, bills, job injuries, never-ending home improvement projects.  Not to mention the diamond falling out of my ring, prongs now ugly and bare, lost without a trace.

Now that the kids are out of diapers and Doug and I are actually starting to like each other again, he made the beautiful gesture of taking my ring to the jeweler’s to replace that missing stone.

He plunked it into my hand last week with a grin.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“What, it doesn’t look familiar?” was his wry response.

And then it hit me.  “You got my ring fixed!  That was so…WAIT.  This isn’t a real diamond, is it?”

“Maybe.”

“YOU SPENT ANNA’S PRESCHOOL TUITION ON A PIECE OF ROCK?” I demanded.  What the hell were you thinking?!”

“Calm down.  It’s not real.  But it looks that way, doesn’t it?”

And then I pictured him there at the jeweler’s, ring in his pocket, anticipating the joyous surprise on my face, and the soft spot in my heart took over.  Yet, something wasn’t quite right.

“It’s even prettier than the diamond itself,” I gushed.  “…But aren’t you forgetting something?”

“The partridge in the pear tree wasn’t practical.  But the twelve ladies dancing are out in the car.”

“You practically threw it at me,” I continued.  “Why aren’t you down on one knee?”

“Why aren’t you down on both knees?”

“Stop being a jerk.  Why do you have to wreck a perfectly sweet moment?  At the very least, you can put it on my finger.”

He shrugged.  I held out my hand.  And he slid the ring onto my finger—until it collided with my knuckle.

“Maybe you should put it on yourself,” he suggested.

I grabbed my hand away from him.  “That’s ridiculous…(twist)…all you have to do it twist it…(twist)…like this…(twist, twist, twist)…”

And just like that, I was one of Cinderella’s ugly step-sisters, pushing my fat foot in that dainty slipper as if my life depended on it.

“Can’t you just push it on?” Doug pitched.

“Are you kidding me?!  The last time I pushed this hard, a baby fell out.  And by the way, everyone knows it’s nine!”

“Your ring size?”

“What do I have, manhands?  Not size nine!  Nine ladies dancing!  Forget it.  It’s not budging.”

“Why don’t I just take it back and have it resized?”

And that’s what he did.  Just like a doting husband (or at least, one who’s tired of his wife’s whining) should.

The ring now rests in its rightful spot, below the knuckle, in all of its cubic zirconian glory.

When Eva saw it, grabbed my hand and squealed.  “Ooooh!  It’s almost as shiny as my Cinderella sparkly shoes!”  (Which, by the way, are a perfect fit.)

“No, Eva,” Tyler intercepted.  “They’re Anna’s shoes.  Santa wrote her name on it.”

“No, they’re MY shoes,” Eva insisted.  “Mama, Tyler said my Cinderella sparkly shoes are Anna’s Cinderella sparkly shoes!”

“MY ELLA SPARKLY SHOES!” countered Anna.

“If it’s the same shoe I tripped on down the stairs this morning, it’s no one’s shoe anymore!” Doug bellowed.

Over the clatter of girls warring, a boy laughing, and an angry father stomping downstairs to the workshop in his mancave with a broken shoe and a bottle of glue, I studied the ring on my finger for the first time in nearly a year.

Funny thing is, after a decade of for better or worse, it’s more real to me now than it ever was before.

Top 10 Reasons Not to Friend My Husband on Facebook

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For more than a year I’ve tried to stifle it, but word is finally out…my husband is on Facebook.

He goes under the pseudonym “Rob Halford,” his idol from childhood to present, and quietly posts pictures of his kids, motorcycles, the wildlife, and all things that make him happy. Logging onto Facebook is a rarity, and for the past year, his presence has gone unnoticed.

Up until now.  Slowly, one by one, my friends out in Facebookland are discovering him. His list of friends has rocketed into the double digits.  My own friends are now asking, “Why aren’t YOU friends with him yet?”

Whenever I am confronted with a dilemma, I sit down and gather all the pros and cons.  Coming up with the cons was the easy part.  I’ll narrow my list to ten.

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The Top 10 Reasons Not to Friend my Husband on Facebook:

#10:  Facebook is this little piece of cyberspace I visit when I wish to squelch my reality.  Enter the man I raise kids and pay bills with, and the party’s over.

#9:  No more sarcastic blog posts about bunkers, critter cams or the institution of marriage.

#8:  He will constantly try to one-up my jokes. Most of the time, he will succeed. But when he doesn’t, he will attempt to take credit for them.  Copyright wars will ensue all over the dinner table.

#7:  Shortly after I come home late for work and blame it on the eighth-grade graduation ceremony, my colleagues will post compromising pictures of me and the Dos Equis cardboard cutout guy at Rivals. Covers blown all over the place.

#6:  His mockery about the time I spend on Facebook will now be substantiated with written proof.

#5:  He has access to some really bad photography, and it’s only a matter of time before he figures out how to tag it.

#4:  Doug has serious homonym and subject/verb agreement issues.  Bad grammar in the spoken word is one thing.  But the sight of it in print will surely be the end of us.

#3:  No more inappropriate banter with my male Facebook friends.  No more winking at Jonny Mang or “the Shiek.”  No lesbian/ Barbie boob talk with Randy. Even the back-and-forth derision between me and Beach could be grossly misinterpreted as flirtatious.

#2:  My deep-seated fear that someday I will compose a post like this:  “Happy Anniversary to the best friend I ever had.  Here’s to twenty years of tongue-down-the-throat, blow-wedding-cake-out-the-ass marital bliss!  I love you, Baby!”

The #1 reason I shouldn’t friend my husband on Facebook will take a bit longer to divulge.

Doug doesn’t understand how social media works, nor can he be persuaded how to comment accordingly.  Case in point, a headless photograph of me on the right and my friend Antonella on the left—a result of my four-year-old daughter Eva’s amateur photography.

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Antonella tagged me and Doug in the picture, and Doug posted a most colorful comment.  Here is an excerpt of the phone conversation that followed:

Me:  “Take down the comment.  Take it down now.”

Doug:  “Why?  It’s funny.”

Me:  “You wrote that Antonella and I are giving head.”

Doug:  “Get it? Your heads were cut off from the picture!  That’s funny!”

Me:  “Not when you write, ‘Get it? Your heads are cut off from the picture!’  Pointing out why it’s funny negates the funny.   TAKE IT DOWN NOW!”

Doug:  “What about the part where I said I was the invisible man in the picture with the huge penis?”  (Note: the anatomically correct terminology was not actually used.)

Me:  “You know who probably didn’t think that was funny?  Your mother.  My mother.  Both your sisters.  Parents who drop their kids off for playdates.  And all my colleagues at work.”

Doug:  “Why the hell would they see it?  It’s not on THEIR walls.”

Me:  “Look. You can keep some of it.  The part where you said, “I’d bang the broad on the right” was kind of cute.  But the part where you wrote what you wanted to do to me in Vietnamese dialect has to go.”

Doug:  “You can’t tell me what to write!  I’m my own man on Facebook!  I write whatever I goddamn please!  I don’t care if you don’t like what I put up on your wall. I’ll piss on your wall.  I’ll piss on all your friends’ walls.  I’ll piss on Mark Zuckerberg’s wall!”

Me:  “I’m asking you nicely to please delete your comment.”

Doug:  “But Antonella didn’t get to read it yet.  And I worked hard on it.  It took me twenty minutes just to type that out on Joe’s phone.  I’ll delete it tomorrow.”

Me:  “Listen, f*cker. Take down the f*cking comment.  Take it down right this f*cking second, or I’ll go Lorena Bobbitt all over your ass.”

Doug:  “I can’t.”

Me:  “Why not?”

Doug:  “Cause I’m still at Joe’s, and his phone’s dead.”

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To friend request or not friend request?  Is it really the question?

To be fair, I said before I make a final decision that I weigh the pros and cons.

There is exactly one pro I can think of that might tip the scale.

If I were to become Facebook friends with my husband, the left side of my page would feature a heart with the phrase “Married to Rob Halford.”

At a fleeting glance, I can be the woman who turned the legendary homosexual Metal God straight.

Friend request pending.

Please, give us a hand (or two)

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Handprints, kindergarten, 1978.  You’ll note Doug’s (top) is to this day almost perfectly preserved, while mine (bottom) is cracked and faded to its pre-painted color. If this is a chilling premonition of how the aging process will unfold between the two of us, Oil of Olay’s ass is getting sued.