Today is Beloved's and my thirteenth wedding anniversary. Yesterday he was in the shower while I was putting on makeup in the bathroom mirror, squinting at my reflection with annoyance.
Me: "So ... do you still think I'm hot?"
Him: "Sure. But you'd be way hotter if you handed me the new bottle of conditioner."
THAT WAS EASY.
Love you, babe!
Beloved informed me this past week that he will only be gone three of the four weeks in May.
He is home for one week and two weekdays in April. He was home for two weeks in March, one of which was our vacation and the other of which his father died. He was home for no weeks in February. I wrote about it on BlogHer when I was really in the abyss, then the sun came out, and the time changed, and the days got longer, and the little angel started to play with the neighbor kids after school again and it seemed a little better.
It is better, but it's not. Yes, he's home on weekends, but when half the family unit is gone five out of seven days, the two days he's home becomes crammed with yard work and housecleaning and laundry and errands and thinking gosh, I really like this person and everything is better when he's home and oh, shit, he's leaving again tomorrow. It's nice to see him, but it doesn't make it all better to have him home on the weekends. And the worst part is that I don't really know when this will end. The little angel doesn't have childcare the week of BlogHer, and he doesn't know if he will be home or not. I throw my hands in the air like I don't care because I am so tired of thinking through all the scenarios and how I will address them on my own. (He would say it's not on my own, and he would sometimes be right, but sometimes he would be wrong, because only the person in the situation knows the myriad things that come up and must be dealt with over the course of the week, most of which I don't even tell him about because pfffft.)
My friends ask if this is normal for his job, but he's only had it for a little over a year. The first project only had him gone for one month, not this never-ending cycle of early Monday flights and late Thursday or Friday flights, of trying to squeeze in Facetime twenty minutes after I wished the little angel had already gone to bed, of trying to explain why he's gone again and remembering to do everything that needs to be done to keep the house running after a full day of my own job and sitting down with my novel at 10 pm and crying because I don't have the mental energy to do anything I want to do by 10 pm and there is no other time in my day because all the things take twice as long when there is one person doing them and that person doing them is also the person explaining to the ten-year-old why she can't have four desserts and how to convert things to the metric system.
I try to do little things to make up for him being gone on these weeks alone with my daughter. It sucks most for her. She adores her father and by the third night is always in tears over why he can't be there to put her to bed instead of me. So I try.
Yesterday, for instance, she asked me to make her pancakes. Wednesdays are late-start days at her school, so the bus comes an hour later than usual. I didn't know where the pancake mix was, so she showed it to me. I added the water. I found the skillet. I greased the skillet. I tried to remember what temperature the skillet should be at. Super hot sounded good to me. (queue ominous music)
The first pancake ended up in the sink after I couldn't flip it at all. I remembered you are supposed to flip them when they bubble, but my pancakes bubbled instantly. I ended up scorching a spatula trying to flip my bubbling masses of chocolate-chipped destruction.
On the third pancake, I turned down the temperature, but it was too late. I started using the scorched flipper plus a second flipper to try to get the burning even on both sides of the pancakes, adding extra chocolate chips because, you know, as long as there is enough chocolate involved, my kid will eat anything. I flung the unsalvagable pancakes in the sink or really just anywhere on the stove that was not white-hot because time was of essence. I could melt polar icecaps with these pancakes, but at least they weren't burning. At last I had a plate of four kind of normal-looking pancakes, which I served my daughter.
"Um, Mama? These aren't cooked in the middle."
"Well, yeah. Maybe I should microwave them."
"Maybe."
*ding*
"Better?"
"Yeah."
(chewing)
"I'm not very good at pancakes, am I?"
"Maybe we should leave that to Daddy."
Oh, well. I'm trying.
Today my interview with my publisher is up on their website, InkSpell Publishing.
My favorite part of the interview is the reveal of THE OBVIOUS GAME playlist. The chapter titles are actually all album titles from the late eighties and early nineties for no reason other than it's my book and I wanted to and the novel is set in 1990 and nobody ever either a) figured out they were album titles or b) told me that was hokey and ridiculous and I had to take it out. I haven't actually pulled this playlist together on iTunes yet, but dammit, I should do that.
The Obvious Game Playlist
Chapter 1: Pride by White Lion (1987) – When the Children Cry
Chapter 2: Appetite for Destruction by Guns N’ Roses (1987) – Welcome to the Jungle
Chapter 3: Scarecrow by John Mellencamp (1985) – Small Town
Chapter 4: True Colors by Cyndi Lauper (1986) – True Colors
Chapter 5: Can’t Hold Back by Eddie Money (1986) – Take Me Home Tonight
Chapter 6: Hysteria by Def Leppard (1987) – Hysteria
Chapter 7: Nothing’s Shocking by Jane’s Addiction (1988) – Jane Says
Chapter 8: Just Like the First Time by Freddie Jackson (1986) – Have You Ever Loved Somebody
Chapter 9: Use Your Illusion by Guns N’Roses (1991) – November Rain
Chapter 10: Bat Out of Hell by Meatloaf (1977) – Bat Out of Hell
Chapter 11: Head Games by Foreigner (1979) – Dirty White Boy
Chapter 12: Faith by George Michael (1987) – Monkey
Chapter 13: Cuts Like a Knife by Bryan Adams (1983) – Straight From the Heart
Chapter 14: Double Vision by Foreigner (1978) – Hot Blooded
Chapter 15: Disintegration by The Cure (1989) – Fascination Street
Chapter 16: Poison by Bell Biv DeVoe (1990) – Poison
Chapter 17: Achtung Baby by U2 (1991) -- Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?
Chapter 18: Nevermind by Nirvana (1991) – Smells Like Teen Spirit
Chapter 19: Listen Without Prejudice by George Michael (1990) – Something to Save
Chapter 20: Out of Time by R.E.M. (1991) – Losing My Religion
Chapter 21: The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby (1986) – Mandolin Rain
Chapter 22: Infected by The The (1986) – Out of the Blue (Into the Fire)
Chapter 23: Strange Fire by Indigo Girls (1989) – Strange Fire
Chapter 24: Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos (1992) -- China
I put a three-book giveaway on Goodreads. If you use Goodreads, go enter! And if you don't use Goodreads, consider using Goodreads, because it's such a great way to discover new authors. And friend me there so I can see what you like. I think my username is Rita Arens.
Giveaway ends February 05, 2013.
See the giveaway detailsat Goodreads.
And, I've been writing a ton on BlogHer and forgetting to tell you about it. I bet you won't spot the theme!
In every marriage, there's a moment in which you get to be the one who is right. My moment came on Saturday night.
On Saturday, a series of events led to my victory.
When I realized the door had been open, I went to look for Petunia. She's never left the garage before, but she has visited it when I've left the kitchen door open, and on the night in question, both doors to the garage were open in an attempt to release the atomic air trapped inside. Since Petunia is terrified of my youngest niece, I assumed she'd be hiding out in the basement.
Halfway down the stairs, I saw something flutter. No, FLAP.
I ran back upstairs and yelled to Beloved there was something with WINGS in the basement.
Beloved: "Wings? Really? Are you sure it's not a cicada?"
I may not be in Mensa, but I know the difference between a cicada and a bird or bat (I wasn't sure which one it was at the time.) There's a slight size differential.
This is a cicada. (image credit: Gardener41 on Flickr)
This is a fucking bat. (image credit: blmurch on Flickr)
Me: IT IS NOT A CICADA.
He dropped whatever he was doing and went downstairs. Seconds later, we heard a loud crash from the basement.
Beloved: JESUS CHRIST! BAT! BAT!
(I may have allowed myself a smile)
I went to get a broom to join my knight in shining armor downstairs. He was crouched in front of the door to the half-finished bathroom, which leads to a half-finished, well, room room that we use as a tornado shelter. Nothing in our basement is finished, so we don't spend a lot of time down there.
Beloved looked back at me, sheer panic in his eyes. I could see the bat flying back and forth between the room-room and the bathroom, looking for all the world like the bat on a string you see on The Muppets.
Beloved: I think he's getting tired.
My BIL came down the stairs and I sent him for a weapon. Then I gave Beloved my broom, because the man was trying to catch a bat with a toy butterfly net. I headed up to re-arm myself when I passed my BIL storming down the basement carrying a shovel. I was pawing through the garage when he reappeared.
BIL: "He says we need something softer."
Me: "Is he worried about the bat?"
BIL: "No, he's worried about the walls."
I handed my BIL two plastic baseball bats and grabbed a bucket. As we re-entered the house, we heard Beloved yelling at the top of his lungs.
Beloved: "WHERE ARE YOU GUYS? A LITTLE HELP HERE???"
We rushed down the stairs, baseball bats swinging, to find Beloved crouched on the floor. Just the tiniest bit of webbed claw showed out from under the broom and butterfly net. BIL and I stared in shock. The bat was chittering away like a pissed-off rat.
Beloved: "GET THE BAG!"
I had no idea what he was talking about, and neither did BIL. Then I noticed a paper bag behind BIL. I tried to hand Beloved the bucket, as it seemed way more useful and user-friendly than a paper bag, but Beloved had gone to a place that doesn't hear reason. He is not fond of bats.
Finally BIL handed Beloved the bag and they got the bat out into the yard, where PETA will be glad to hear it was released. I admit at the point at which I heard it cursing us out in bat language, I wasn't too keen to kill it, but I was also thinking CHILDREN RABIES CHILDREN RABIES CHILDREN RABIES, as mothers are wont to do.
The next morning, the bat was gone, so we believe he lived to tell his story on his own blog.
AND I WAS TOTALLY RIGHT. Not a cicada, honey.
NOT A CICADA.
Today is Beloved's birthday. And today a crew of twenty or so men showed up at our house at seven in the morning to begin replacing our roof.
The roof is wood shake, which is the worst kind of roof ever. It's expensive, it's flammable and it rots. Ours is crumbling to bits and got slammed by the hail earlier this summer to the point that we were getting water stains on the ceilings. The first insurance inspector who came said it wasn't bad enough to replace. Beloved was livid, so was the roofer, a readjustment was arranged, and lo and behold, the second adjustor agreed: New roof! Paid for by the insurance company!
I've been in a half stage of shock since Beloved told me we were getting a new roof. We've been through a lot of money and broken house issues in our ten years of home ownership, and really, I've stopped expecting insurance companies to replace anything. I'm all GET OFF MY LAWN about it in a way I never thought I'd grow -- so jaded, just like my father when he talks about parking in Omaha. I'd accepted when the sweating man huffed his way up my stairs and examined the water stains located right above my winter sweaters (is there anything so vulnerability producing as having a stranger perspiring all over your wardrobe?) that we were screwed, there would be no insurance money and we'd probably have to take out some sort of horrific loan we don't qualify for or have buckets in every bedroom to catch the water when it rained. This is my best talent: catastrophizing. I don't even stop for the mid-level crises; I go straight to the bone splitters.
The longer we've been together, the more I've ostriched about money and house-related problems. After a while, I -- feminist still -- relinqueshed the checkbook and all the balancing and math that goes with it -- to Beloved. Every time I see him sit down with a stack of bills I half-heartedly offer to help and pray he says no, which he always does, whether he wants to or not (I'll never know). When I see those numbers fluctuate, I am suddenly incapable of seeing the big picture and become positive we will be living in a van down by the river in forty days. I don't know why. I just do.
Beloved taking over the checkbook and bill balancing put a roof over my head, a layer between me and the harsh outside world. I'm fine with shouldering all things parenting, with scheduling haircuts and dentist appointments for my daughter, with knowing her shoe size at all times and exactly how many minutes it takes to pick her up from wherever, where all her friends live and with whom she's allowed to go past the end of the cul-de-sac. I can be a big girl about my career and my health and my extended family. But that one thing for which I really do need a roof is money.
I'm sitting here listening to those twenty men ripping the house apart -- literally -- and trying not to think of them punching a hole in something or falling off and landing on the cement or dying of heatstroke or smashing my tomato plants. Beloved told me to go work at Panera or the library today because it would be so loud. I'm sure he understood that I wouldn't leave because I have a sick need to think it'll all be all right as long as I'm here while it's happening. But the truth is I wouldn't know what to do if something went wrong.
There are things in life that I know how to handle and things he knows how to handle, and I hope that I am his roof sometimes. My family always told me to marry someone I secretly think is better than I am, and I did.
Happy birthday, Beloved. Thank you for being my roof.
From my BlogHer Book Club review of The Kid: Read, then, so we will make better choices than the characters in The Kid. That we will pause and consider what a person might have been through before we judge. That we, at least, will not see the world in black and white, because it is never, ever black and white -- which is the message I took away from The Kid, a story in which the main character never really even knew his name, never knew if he was crazy or sane, never knew who his father was, never knew who was related to him, never knew anything for sure except that pancakes tasted good and dancing was a release and that he could teach himself to do the splits with practice and discipline. Read the rest.
Dear Beloved,
I had this great plan. Well, my first plan was that we would go back to the beach where we got married and, you know, renew vows and eat cake and drink champagne. Only that sort of didn't happen.
Then I told all my girlfriends I was going to have someone take a picture of me in my wedding dress, you know, sort of arty snapshot thing, that I could give you, only I would look okay in it, not totally thrown together. I had it lined up and planned for the day you were going to be working, but then you didn't work. Oops.
So then I started trying to think of back-up ideas, and the pressure of the ten-year anniversary gift started to freak me out every time I thought about it. You know how much I like ritual. I wanted something kind of formal and fantastic.
Then, just now, as I was getting out of the shower at 3, which I know is an extremely endearing quality about me, much like my inability to get out of bed and the fact that my feet stink, I decided to just take it. I didn't even wait for my hair to dry.
Only I forgot I got sunscreen on the lens of the phone camera at Worlds of Fun and didn't realize how heinously blurry these were until I emailed them to myself and opened them up, and dammit, I have a conference call in a half hour and then I have to go get the little angel, and you know this is how it is, this life thing that keeps happening while I'm planning the fabulous things I'm going to do for you.
But the carpet almost looks like the sand we stood on.
And the little beads still remind me of stars.
I couldn't get the whole dress no matter how I stretched and thus gave myself double chins. Another endearing quality: I have really freakishly short arms.
Maybe if I leaned over? Nope. Not going to happen.
Baby, I love you. I really wanted to get you something amazing, something heartfelt, but I realized I do have this blog, and maybe telling the Internet how lucky I am, how amazing you are, how astonished I am that our lives turned out so perfectly after these ten years, how much more comfortable I am in that dress than I was that day when I was so worried about the details and the sand and our relatives and friends, that today when I put on that dress all I thought about was us, and you, and how there's no one I'd rather see at the end of every day and when I first wake up and when something bad happens and when something good happens and when nothing happens at all.
I love you. Happy anniversary.
I had this post all composed yesterday, but then a bunch of stuff happened, and I ended up having to shut down my computer without saving it. I'm kind of bummed, because that post was better than this one, or at least more sappy. It wasn't done, though, and there is no fast way to write a post about seven years of marriage.
Yesterday was my anniversary. Today is my parent's anniversary. Happy anniversary, Ma and Pa!
Seven years ago, my husband and I stood on a white sand beach in St. Pete Beach, Florida, and exchanged vows. We were 27. At the time, that seemed old to be getting married. (I live in the Midwest, remember.) Now, I can't believe anyone let me DRIVE at age 27, let alone get married. My generation gets married older, has babies older. My parents got married when they were near the same age, but for their generation, they were OLD. Funny how times change. Maybe by the time the little angel grows up, kids'll be getting married right out of high school again - why not, when you can download your college degree onto your iPod?
I remember when we first got married, after a weekend spent driving to Iowa and back (there were many more of them then than there are now), we'd have to each go our separate ways for a few hours on Sunday night. Too much togetherness. We got on each other's nerves. That doesn't really happen as often now, and I think it's because we've had to learn not to annoy each other, because with the little angel around, we have to be together more often. There is no more running off to the gym or sinking into an entire afternoon of napping and sports on TV when we're feeling pissy. There is no more avoidance. We've learned to make adjustments so coexisting is easier. We've learned to step out of the way in the bathroom proactively instead of bumping into each other and swearing.
There have definitely been some hard times, recent hard times, but the hard times overcome make the relationship sweeter. I knew when I married my husband that he was funny and smart and strong and kind, but I didn't realize he would be so resilient, so handy, and so comforting.
Yesterday I had a bad day. There was a bad conversation, followed by a big dose of stress and a bunch of things left unaccomplished. I started leaking tears on the way out of work. S. and The Editor Across the Aisle sent me home instead of to a birthday happy hour that I wasn't supposed to attend anyway, because I was supposed to go home for my anniversary dinner, but I was feeling guilty about missing the birthday and feeling guilty about the bad conversation and not getting my beloved a fabulous anniversary gift even though we said we weren't going to and did I mention I'm always a little upset about things during the ides of the month?
So I drove home. Made a few calls. Cut off my beloved to take a call from my best friend, who I know is better at listening to me vent than Beloved is (he is great, but he IS a man). By the time I got home, I thought he'd be pissed, because instead of being in a great and loving mood on our anniversary, I was strung out and stressed. I pulled in to see him and the little angel getting out of the car, carrying roses.
Seven years ago, he would've been pissed. Yesterday, he recognized that I was just having a bad day and in need of a little pick-me-up. Of course, I melted, and felt bad that I hadn't gotten him anything.
"Ha ha," he said. "I won." And he walked outside to light the grill.
Seven years. Some itchy, some not. Getting better all the time.
----------------------------------------------------------
Julie won the Build-a-Bear gift card giveaway and you can enter to win free Lee Jeans capris or pedal pushers at Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews.
