Slovenly Slovenness

You know, sometimes marriage sucks. Big balls. Sometimes. The few old couples I know who've been married for 97 years who claim it was a fantabulous century together--I don't believe them. I think they're slightly senile and have forgotten the bad bits. Like a few years after you give birth how you can't remember that it was like trying to pass a watermelon and that your body would just break in half before this happened and who the hell ever came up with this idea anyway?! (All thoughts I had just before Dante came into the world hungry. So hungry he tried to eat the doctor's thumb before he was literally half out. Nothing about that has changed in nearly eleven years. You should see my grocery bill.) You don't remember those crappy parts. You remember it wasn't pleasant, but your brain erases that part. Seriously, I read that somewhere in an important article. I'm just a bit too muggy to go look for it right now. Take my word for it. I think the same thing happens with marriages every so often.

Every so often, you look at the other person while you're sitting on the couch drinking your beer and go: "Whoa. What exactly happened here? Who thought this was a brilliant plan? I could've been an opera singer." Or some other stupid and outlandish plan that you never would've really done because getting married and doing whatever you're doing now was just more logical. And it's really true what people say who've been through a divorce: People change. But what I don't think many people take into account is that everybody changes. Or at least they should. Hell, being married when it's good gives you the base for personal growth. It's a secure place to come back to, somebody who is in your corner (most of the time). Everybody should evolve. If you stay static you become dull at the very least. The trick, I think, is to figure out how to keep adapting to each other once one of you evolves. But don't take my word for it, I've only been married for three years. I'm surviving, but it remains to be seen if I'll become extinct from the experiment.

I can't see myself married to anybody else but El Hijo. But I've definitely had the thought, "If this doesn't work, I am never marrying anybody again." (Dear, if you read this, just lol, 'kay?) Marriage was just not something I thought practical in my life, because I couldn't really see how I could get what I wanted while still respecting somebody else. Seemed simpler to do without. The bits that frustrate me now is the part I should've seen coming but didn't in the beginning--the part where you're comfortable with each other. I think this happens to everybody. I also don't think it's as bad as I originally thought it was. But sometimes the forces of life throw you into repetitive cycles, and it seems like weeks go by where you're just coordinated machines: he does laundry, I grab groceries, coordinated kid pick up, I'm working this night, his meeting is that night, I've rescheduled this to accommodate that, he's going to swing by and take care of that so that I can go do this. And then it's three weeks later before you know it. And I hate those stupid little magazine articles about bringing "zing" back into your relationship to break up the ritual of living. They seem like facades to me. It seems like the articles should really be called: How-to-make-a-here-dear-I-have-made-a-candlelight-dinner-just-for-me-and-you -even-though-we-can't-really-enjoy-it-because-the-kid-has-a-spelling-test-to-study-for
-and-the-cat-snuck-under-his-bed-and-clawed-around-and-scared-the-living-shit-out-of
-him-oh-look-your-mom's -on-the-phone-dinner. Summer helps because Dante goes and visits Kentucky, but that doesn't do anything about the work situation we're both in. It's easy to fall into rituals because they smooth the day along.

It's when you fall out of the ritual that you realize how the other betters or impacts your life.

So, El Hijo is gone to Kentucky for a visit this week. I have never really spent too much time completely by myself. Dante was born when I was two weeks off my 20th birthday. Time alone is weird. Apparently when I get time alone, I live it like an alcoholic middle aged man. El Hijo has called to check up on me and apparently the first thing to go to hell was my diet. I haven't cooked all week--no point in it. Monday I ate a rotisserie chicken from the deli and washed it down with expensive beer. "No vegetables?!" "None." I said smugly. Tuesday morning I had a cold cut combo sub sandwich for breakfast. It was good. It had vegetables, but three kinds of meat. Tuesday was our annual meeting and picnic, so I ate hot dogs and bbq sandwiches and a bunch of other things. Twice. Then I went home and changed and D/B and I closed down the local bar with cheap beer. Which on a Tuesday apparently happens at 10:45, disappointingly. They turned up the lights and had the toilet seats up for cleaning and everything. We practically got run out with a broom. I stayed up late flipping channels between Euro 2008 soccer and boxing. It was probably 1:30 before I fell asleep. Last night I had--what did I have? The other six inches of the subway sandwich, I think. Left over from Monday when I picked it up thinking I would need it for supper on Monday. Oh, and left over Italian food from Sunday night washed down with expensive beer. It's a wonder botulism hasn't set in already, but maybe the beer killed it. So far tonight, I've had a massive burrito and more beer. If I get hungry again, I'm going to cut into the leftovers of the rotisserie chicken (also from Monday) and put some A-1 steak sauce on it. With some beer. Cheap or expensive. Cooking for Dante kept me eating reasonably well, because his food intake was a priority. Taking care of somebody else apparently keeps me from becoming a walking health hazard. With nobody here to monitor me, I'd likely just eat cat food rather than go out for more groceries. The "tuna feast in gravy" did sound incredibly tasty.

I also can't sleep in a bedroom if I'm by myself. I feel like I'm really vulnerable to someone breaking in, and I hear absolutely *everything* that creaks or cracks in or outside of the house. That's residual post traumatic stress disorder stuff, but I really can't kick it. I wish I could, but them's the breaks. So I've been sleeping on my couch. Mostly in my clothes. Once I wore those same clothes back into work the next day. Hey, we're pretty much beyond business casual.

He comes back tomorrow. It would be quite the interesting experience to see what happened if I had a full month or two by myself, but that's almost too scary to contemplate. So we may be "comfortable" right now, but at least I can add "healthy" to the list when he's here. He keeps me from being even more of a burr under the saddle of life than I already am.

-- Virgil