Maddening Matrimony

“There’re two things in this world that don’t suck enough…”

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It’s time to lay to rest a member of our family who, for the past half decade, has been doing all my dirty work—and sucking miserably at it.

I wouldn’t recommend a Kenmore vacuum cleaner. I had to go over the same spot up to three times before it would pick anything up. Granted, I probably should’ve bent over and picked up all those marbles, dice, coins, marker caps, Legos, puzzle pieces, hairbands, Barbie clothes and tiny GI Joe figurines by hand. But every time it made that high-pitched wheezing sound just before regurgitating dust, dirt and dog fur all over the floor, I wanted to take it by the nozzle, wrap the cord around it and beat it with its own hose.

Here my old friend appears just after it was violently disassembled and tossed into the garbage. Not much of a funeral, but it had to do.

As a fun little sidenote, you’ll notice in the middle of it is a photograph. It’s too small to make it out, but it’s a class yearbook picture of me during my early teaching years. That was the year my school’s photography company of choice decided to distribute 5X7, wallet sized and sticker pictures of every student and teacher in the building. You can imagine what every wall, desk, locker and bathroom stall looked like by the end of the day.

If you’ll reach into the depths of your long lost thirteen-year-old mind, you can imagine how much fun you would’ve had if you’d ever gotten hold of any of your teachers’ faces in the form of a package of stickers.

And while you’re still in the juvenile mindset, I’d like to point out that my husband decided that year to stick every last one of those pictures all over our house. And the only surviving sticker is the one you see here—just in case, he explained, there’s ever any confusion over which one of us has sole proprietary and operational rights over the vacuum cleaner.

Doug’s funny like that.

So good-bye, my friend. I suppose for all I put you through, you did an admirable job. But the truth of the matter is, I had to get rid of you not because you sucked—but because you didn’t suck enough.

Doug has a funny joke for that one, too, but I’m reluctant to share it. I’d hate to offend anyone with blatant predictability.

“This Magic Moment…”

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Doug is not what you’d call a cat person.  In fact, these days he’s not much of an anything-with-fur-claws-and-tails-person, for that matter.  So when I told him I was planning on supplementing our dog-filled house with two cats, as you might imagine, he was less than enthusiastic.

And when he laid eyes on them for the first time once I brought them home, it didn’t help matters any.

“A hundred cats to choose from, and that’s what you came home with?” he scoffed while they sniffed their way out of their carriers and tip-toed around the house, starting at every sound.  “There’s nothing special about them.  Black and white cats are a dime a dozen.  They’re like the Camry of cats!”

“But they were the ones with the most personality,” I argued.  “The one with the skinny tail jumped right in Tyler’s lap.  I think they’ll be really great for the kids!”

“The only thing they’ll be good for is target practice,” he grumbled.  “And where are you planning on keeping their litter box, anyway?”

“In the furnace closet.  Just like we did for every other cat who’s lived here over the past decade.”

“How about I put the cats in the furnace instead?”

“Stop,” I scolded.  “If we’re going to teach the kids empathy, you have to be nice to the cats.  There might even be times that I’m working late and you’ll have to feed them.”

“Oh, I’ll feed them,” was his wry response. “Right to the coyotes!”

There were a few times since then that the cats disappeared.  We haven’t yet let them go outside, so every time they couldn’t be found under beds or trapped in closets, cabinets or drawers, I eyed Doug suspiciously.  I imagined him spraying them with BB’s, chopping their bodies up for the coyotes and disposing of their little cat bones somewhere where I’d never find them.

You can imagine my surprise when I rounded the corner this week and spied him and Bessy, the skinny-tailed cat, in the midst of this most magical moment.  So tender was this moment, in fact, that it made me want to light a candle and play soft music.

The whole thing made me wonder: if a cat-o-phobe suddenly gets caught being not-so-catophobic, might this be a variation of coming out of the closet?  This would be a good thing, since there are so many skeletons in our closets there’s really not enough room for hanging out in there anyway.

As for me, I don’t really care what my husband’s newfound persuasion is.  I’m just glad none of those skeletons belong to cats.

Hot Lesbian Fantasies

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First dates always give me stress.  First playdates, that is.

Whenever one of my kids makes a friend at school, it pretty much means, like it or not, I’m going to make a new friend, too—that kid’s mom.

It’s not that I have anything against making friends. It’s just that as far as our kids’ friends’ parents go, it’s a forced friendship.  Once you start having kids, you realize they start picking your friends for you.  And when it comes to meeting parents for the first time, you’re expected to bond with them faster than their kid can say “Do you want to see my room?”

And the thing is, my type of people can’t normally be found in Simsbury.  I like the straight-talking, foul-mouthed, messy-housed, noncookie-baking, parent-blundering kind of mom, and if I want to find that, well, I need to raise my kids back in Torrington.  And who in their right mind would want to do a thing like that?

And so when Tyler had a playdate for the first time with his friend Brian, the first-playdate jitters set in.  Would it be rude to drop him off and leave?  Or should I hang around for small talk and tea?  Could I bring his little sisters with me?  And God forbid…should I bring cookies?

As it turned out, as far as this playdate was concerned, cookies and tea were the least of my worries.

Brian’s mother’s name is Kate, and she is a kind, dainty, soft-spoken woman who might as well be captain of the soccer mom league, assuming Dinomites Pre-K soccer qualifies her.  She spoke of the glorious weather we’re having, how she hasn’t missed a night of reading to Brian and his brother since they were born, and how she adores the “Love and Logic” method of discipline.  Her house was immaculate.

Clearly, we weren’t going to be besties.  But Kate was friendly and easy-going, and I liked her.  The boys were busy bouncing balls on a miniature basketball court, and our two four-year-olds quickly bonded at the playscape.  There was a batch of cookies in the oven, but it was the premade kind that came in a tube.  Everything was going to be just fine.

Outside the window, a woman on a ladder was painting their house.  Her house, Kate explained, was built in 1920, and she was making renovations.  When she’s not busy raising two boys only thirteen months apart and working on home improvements, she is an attorney.

Seeing how our four-year-olds were about to enter kindergarten, I asked her if she’d been to the orientation.

“Yes, I was there with Laura,” she said, then added, “my partner.”

The only excuse I can offer from my next question was that I was still on the law firm mindset, and my mouth beat my brain to the punch.

“Your partner?  From your law firm?”

I actually said that.

“No,” she explained.  “The woman out there painting the house.  We’re gay.  We’ve been together now for fourteen years.”

I felt my face get hot.  Not because I’m uncomfortable in the presence of lesbians.  But because it was 2013, and I’d actually made her clarify.

I went into some babbling explanation about how I thought we were still talking about law, but she would take no apologies.  “It’s OK.  Really,” she coaxed.

She’s been at this for fourteen-plus years.  Apparently by now, she’s used to stupidity.

After that first hurdle, things went back to normal.  We compared notes about the kindergarten experience.  Once Laura was finished with painting for the day, she joined us long enough to tell me she is a mail carrier and, if you want to talk about small worlds, she’s been delivering mail to my house every Monday for the past three years.  I asked her if either of my dogs ever ripped a hole in her pants.  We shared a laugh.  They told me about the agonizing five years that it took to conceive their two children with in vitro fertilization.

What I noticed most of all was how they had this parenting thing down pat.  When one kid starting wailing because he got a splinter, one mom jumped up to get a needle and Band-Aids, while the other ran to rescue another kid on a tipped scooter.  While one raced to the kitchen to pull cookies out of the oven, another darted after a basketball that rolled out of bounds and across the street.  While one gathered the empty plates and cups from the picnic table, the other bustled inside to busy herself with the task of making dinner.  It was like a well-rehearsed, perfectly synchronized Broadway musical, where no one had to remind the other of a forgotten line, and no one missed a single beat.

At the crack of dawn the next morning I was at the kitchen counter making math worksheets.  (I can’t simply photocopy one that already exists, because that wouldn’t be nearly anal retentive enough.)  Just as I was finishing it, Doug emerged, glanced over my shoulder and said, “Whacha doin’? Making hypotenuses?”  (Of his entire academic career from high school, community college and the police academy combined, the only math term he retained is “hypotenuse,” and he insists on using it even when there’s not a triangle in sight.)

I sprang from my seat, noticing the time.  “You’re not going to use the blender, are you?” It was time for my morning shake, and every morning we battle over who gets to use it first.

“Hurry up.  I’ll make my coffee first,” he said—but just as he finished his sentence, he was growling into a near-empty pot in the refrigerator with an inch of black tar on the bottom.

He glared at me like he was caught on the pot with an empty tube of toilet paper.

“What?” I asked most nonchalantly.

“You couldn’t make more coffee?” he demanded.

“Looks to me like there’s still a full cup in there,” I shrugged while gathering my final ingredients in the blender.

“It’s all grounds!” he snarled.

At least, I think that’s what he said.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear him.  After all, I was running late for work, and I had no choice but to flick on the blender.

“Hey, I just remembered, Tyler has a doctor’s appointment at 4:00,” I said as he counted scoops of coffee, then gritted his teeth and shook his head when he lost count.

“I won’t be home from work until five,” I continued. “So we have to figure out how to get him there.”

“I didn’t know you spoke French,” was his wry response.

“What do you mean?”

“You keep saying ‘we.’”

And thus began a Monday morning for two non-Monday, non-morning people sharing a blender, an address, three kids and a pot of coffee.

On the way home from work that day I couldn’t help comparing Brian’s parents to me and Doug.  How is it that a couple who has relationships and child-rearing down to a science isn’t allowed to be married, but then there’s straight, bumbling couples like me and my husband, and it’s all perfectly legal?

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I ranted to Doug when I got home.  “We suck at this.  Yet, not only did they let us get married and reproduce, but no one’s even asking us to renew our license.”

He responded with his usual grunt, which said “I’m pretending to be listening.”  I assume he had more important matters to think about, like which side of a right triangle was the hypotenuse.

I sighed.

“I’m having hot lesbian fantasies,” I confessed.  “I don’t want a husband, I want a partner.  Women are more empathetic, better listeners, and far more helpful around the house.  Not to mention, they’re prettier than boys.  The only useful thing about men is they get paid more.  Is it too late for me to change my mind?”

I wasn’t worried about offending him.  After all, he wasn’t listening to a word I was saying.

Then again, sometimes my husband surprises me.

“If you’re trying to come out of the closet, you have my full support,” he said.

“Really?”  I asked.  “You’re going to let me go that easily?”

“I didn’t say that,” he said.  “If you want to go out and find yourself a girlfriend, she has to live right here with us.  She has to sleep in bed with us.  And she has to be really, really hot.”

And with that, my hot lesbian fantasies fizzled to a pile of smoldering embers.

How to Squash (and Resurrect) a Marriage

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In case you’ve ever wondered how to squash a marriage, there are exactly two systematic ways to do so, and only one way to resurrect it.

Squashing method #1: stay home together with three small children for two and a half years.

With Doug out on injury and I opting for the stay-at-home mom route, here is an excerpt of a typical conversation between us:

“It’s almost time to pick up Eva from school.”

“Why don’t YOU pick her up?”

“Because it’s your turn.”

“Do you like to eat?  Because in case you haven’t noticed, I’m pounding a chicken.”  (At this point I should probably mention that there was a mallet in my hand.)

“I can’t even hear you. What is she (Anna, shrieking like a woman from behind the shower curtain in a horror movie) screaming about?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you go find out?”

“Because you’re her mother.”

“And you’re her father.”

“Guys aren’t good at consoling babies. It’s not in our nature.”

“Since you love nature so much, why don’t you go pitch a tent and live in it?”

“Why don’t YOU go pitch a tent in my pants?”

How to turn a losing argument around: distract the opposition with a lewd sexual comment that doesn’t even make sense. There was a time I thought this quality in my husband was endearing. Now it just made me want to drive a tent stake through his vitals.

Then something funny happened. I got a job.

It was a sweet little part-time gig, tutoring math in a charming elementary school ten minutes away from my house in Simsbury. I would pull one to four polite, suburban kids out of class and play math games with them. There were virtually no papers to correct, no elaborate lessons to plan. The kids were always excited to see me. Next to my decade teaching math to 150 unruly inner city teenagers in Hartford, I’d found my own little piece of pedagogical paradise.

There was only one teeny, tiny little problem. At the end of a good week, I was lucky if I cleared $300. I was penniless.

Which brings me to the second way to squash a marriage: take each other by the hand and stand on the brink of financial ruin.

For a year I scrimped. But I never saved, because there was never anything left over. When my colleagues ordered lunch, I pulled a peanut butter sandwich out of a Spiderman lunchbox. My kids were the only ones in Simsbury who couldn’t order 95-cent books from Scholastic book club. When the Girl Scouts came to our door, we turned off the lights and hid.

The thing about rock bottom is I don’t mind when I hit it. Because every time I do, some miracle always bails me out.

Case in point, another funny thing happened. Out of the blue, the principal of the school I taught at in Hartford called. I got my old job back.

Suddenly, my suburban sweethearts morphed into profanity-spewing, gangsta-rapping, algebra-dodging creatures of the city. My hours doubled. My ten-minute commute was replaced by a 90-minute drive through highway traffic. Every night I came home with a bag stuffed with papers to correct and lessons to plan. But I didn’t mind, because now I was making in one day what it took me all week to earn in Simsbury. Doug’s staying at home amounted from being an annoyance to free childcare. When I went to sleep at night, I no longer dreamed of strings of electric bills and mortgage statements coiling themselves around my neck.

For a solid two weeks, to say I splurged would be an understatement. I brought out my wish lists on Amazon.com and triumphantly clicked “checkout.” I finally replaced the dinosaur of a TV on our kitchen counter with a flat screen. I bought cute little jackets with matching boots for every season. I ate so many Girl Scout cookies I grew my own merit badge. Whenever my kids wanted something at the store, I said, “Sure, throw it in the cart!”

When Doug began to comment on the number of boxes arriving from UPS, I transformed into Daffy Duck on Loony Toons, stuffing a genie back in the bottle after uncovering a Saltan’s treasure. “IT’S MINE, UNDERSTAND?! ALL MINE! DOWN DOWN! GO GO! IT’S MIIIIIINNNNNE!”

That’s when something else happened, but this time, it wasn’t so funny. Doug, who wasn’t too keen on being a stay-at-home dad, made a miraculous recovery. His two-plus-year hiatus was over. It was time to go back to work again.

This didn’t mean an extra money, mind you. We’d been collecting from workman’s comp all along. Nope, this only meant one thing. We had to hire a nanny.

Our nanny has a nose ring, a tongue ring, and tattoos. Her name is Ashley, and she is anything but Mary Poppins—but then again, I’ve never clicked with the conventional type. Out of nearly a hundred applicants, I chose her because she was the one I could sit down and chat with like we were old friends, with no phoniness of hyped-up sales pitch or awkward silences in between. Even though she confessed she’s not the world’s best cook and at twenty-three, not the most experienced house manager, she got right down on the floor and played with my kids. She even let Eva give her a manicure. Anyone who will let a four-year-old paint her nails bright yellow is OK with me.

There is an instantaneous sigh of relief when a woman finally accepts that she can not do it all by herself and allows someone else to do it for her. Every day for the next week, I came home to a clean house, dinner on the table, and happy kids. And the funny thing about clean houses, ready-to-eat dinners and happy kids is they make your spouse, sitting admidst it all, suddenly attractive again.

Which brings me to how to resurrect a marriage, in case you haven’t figured it out. Hire someone else to do the cooking, cleaning, and baby-sitting.

Suddenly, it was as if someone put a Band-Aid on all my problems. The mortgage company stopped sending me hate mail. I could walk through my house without getting a sports injury from leaping over toys. Turns out Ashley can cook. I stopped staring at Doug and wondering why I married him in the first place. For one magical moment frozen in time, every facet of my life was working out all at the same time.

At the end of the week, I sat down and wrote out Ashley’s check. I subtracted it from my paycheck and noted the difference.

After paying the nanny, I make less than I did at my cushy part-time tutoring job in the suburbs, and I’m dining out of a Spiderman lunchbox again.

It’s my life. Someone’s got to live it.