The Mystery of the "Man Room"

Over the past several years, I have noticed that the design of the American home is slowly evolving. While families used to gather in the den or living room to watch TV, a new phenomenon is slyly oozing into our homes and destroying these Norman Rockwell scenes of yesteryear. This architectural trend that is threatening to turn the typical family movie night on its ear and separate families based on viewing preference is called the “man room”, or “man cave” in some households.

It seems that with the invention of the massive sized television, which only men seem to truly appreciate, husbands, fathers, and boyfriends around the country have felt the need to enthrone these entertainment centers in their own special retreats. Thus, they are converting a room once designated for family togetherness into a temple singularly used for ESPN worship or action movie adoration. Now, a man’s retreat is no longer the porcelain palace, with a few magazines or a good book, but instead it is an entire room devoted to manly pursuits.

As if leaving his mark, like a bear around a tree, these rooms typically reek of machismo. Whether this is intentionally designed to keep intruders, such as significant others or young dependents, from messing with the carefully chosen program on TiVo or is simply a byproduct of a lack of hygiene and weeks of sweaty socks and gym shoes, remains unknown. Nevertheless, I believe that this odious obstacle is one tactic that residents of these chambers deploy in order to keep others out and maintain the sanctity of their lairs.

Over the years, my husband and I have lived in three successive homes that each had a living area specifically set aside for the pursuit of staring blankly for hours at whatever football game or ghost hunting show was available. After a few weeks, I would notice that our place setting and glassware cabinets were suffering a significant shortage. Sure enough, as I cautiously crept into my husband’s hideaway, I came upon a trove of missing items. Usually, they retained unidentifiable bits of former food crusted onto them or the residue of a beverage long since imbibed. Often times our dishwasher simply refused to clean these items. As much as those dishwashing detergent and their fancy scrubbing bubbles and degreasers might claim to get off the toughest messes, they were no match for the putrid plates and foul flatware extracted from our “man room”.

Another common technique utilized in discouraging others from entering a “man room” involves instilling fear about the complexity of the remote used to command the titanic television. With cable, dvr, DVD, and video game systems all synchronized onto one main controller that makes flying a space shuttle look easy, my husband made it very clear that he is the only one privileged to the secret codes and intricacies of this technological juggernaut. Usually, anyone without authorization that is espied in possession of, or worse, attempting to use the sacred device is often forced to endure a serious verbal tirade. This berating is meant to forever keep the offender from endeavoring such an outrageous entertainment coup in the future. On more than one occasion I have been chastised for failing to comprehend why hitting the “all power” button is the equivalent to opening Pandora’s box. Sure, it is in red, but why would they have put it on at all, if it was never to be used? I quickly learned to leave the TV on when my husband was not in the room, lest I mistakenly press one of the enigmatic buttons.

Additionally perplexing is the mysterious force field effect that makes the walls of “man caves” impervious to sound. In my experience, all occupants of “man caves” seem unable to hear noises and voices from those outside their bounds. While I might only be a few steps away or at the bottom of a slight stair case calling up to my husband, my efforts to gain his attention are usually in vain. I am pretty certain that I could be writhing and bleeding in agony on the floor outside of his man lair and he would only notice my crippled, tortured body if it blocked the path from his domain to the refrigerator. Dogs could be barking, space ships could be landing in our backyard and yet, while in the man room, my husband would remain oblivious to all. Maybe the obnoxiously large speakers on the television are partial responsible for this conundrum, but I truly believe there is more to this story.

Perhaps this need to maintain one’s own domain can be traced back to the time of cave men. I have noticed striking similarities between the way my husband lays out his “man room” and the way his ancient ancestors furnished their dwellings. First of all, there are always hangings on the walls to demonstrate involvement in manly pursuits. These hangings formerly consisted of the animal skins that men acquired after a successful hunt to demonstrate their strength and power. However, today, my husband hangs the flags of football teams that represent the athletic prowess of others while my husband assumes their strength presumably by television osmosis.

Secondly, food is prepared in both caves of yesteryear and today. In men dens of old, the meat belonging to the animal whose skin was displayed on the wall was cooked communally around a campfire. Today, food is delivered directly to man cave inhabitants who devour the victuals with as much rapidity as if they had in fact hunted for the food themselves.

Lastly, there is one true sign that my husband has not really evolved all that much since the time of mammoths and semi-erect postures. When comfortably established in their respective domiciles, both cave men and my husband fail to see the need for more than a very modest amount of clothing. Whether it is a loincloth or boxer shorts, these habitats seem to compel men to remove the majority of their clothes either to demonstrate their manly physiques or imply that they are in such control of their territory that they do not even need clothes to rule. Nevertheless, while my husband may not have influence over much in our household (i.e. finances, food in the refrigerator, type of toilet paper, etc.) when he is in the man room, he is truly king of the castle.

Digging for Gold

Disclaimer:  This post is a little more vulgar than my normal posts, but the conversation was so funny that I felt it needed to be shared anyway.

            There are some conversations that I have with my husband that really make me wonder whether I want to create a child with half of his gene pool.  The other day, as we were on a long car ride, just such a dialogue occurred.  The topic was nose picking.  My husband was recounting a delightful little tale about one of the lacrosse campers that he had worked with earlier in the week and the child’s proclivity for plunging his finger into his nasal cavity and eating any contents that were retrieved.  While I found this disgusting, it was far from the most nauseating story that my husband had ever told me and frankly, as a teacher, this was a youthful practice with which I was all too familiar. 

            However, then my husband innocently remarked that he had occasionally tasted his own nasal debris as a child.  He even defined the taste as slightly salty.  When he realized that I was no longer speaking and had a frozen fixed stare of complete and utter revulsion on my face, he quickly explained that this was an activity that he engaged in when he was only five or six years old, definitely not seven or eight.  As if that made a difference!  “What?  Didn’t you ever eat your boogers?” he inquired, as if this practice was commonplace among all children.  “No! I will concede to the occasional nose pick, but I never once had the urge to discover what the gooey things tasted like,” I replied.  “I can’t believe that you ate enough boogers to remember the flavor!” 

            This man, whom I had kissed on more than one occasion, was now nonchalantly proclaiming that through those lips he had voluntarily ingested the same items that our body hopes to rid itself of through sneezes and nose-blowing. I thought I was going to be sick.  Were we seriously talking about procreating?  I was no longer certain that I wanted the gene for nose scavenging and consuming to be passed along to future generations, especially my own.  I was pretty sure it had to be chromosomal because our taste buds were surely something that got donated by our parents, although I don’t think that either of my parents would claim to have anything to do with my vegetarianism.  I did not want to take the chance that the propensity for “digging for gold” was a recessive trait or only appeared on the Y chromosome. 

             I could barely look at my husband without feeling ill.  Rationally, I knew that more than a few little kids picked their nose and ate it, but did my husband really have to be one of those, let alone one of those who thought it was o.k?  I also realized that this was, thankfully, not a trait that he currently possessed or otherwise I’m sure our relationship would not have progressed this far.  Nevertheless, the words “sperm donor” did briefly flashed before my eyes as I imagined my poor, socially awkward child, standing alone on the playground, enjoying the pleasures of his proboscis, while other kids pointed at him from afar. 

            On the other hand, I was glad that we had this conversation before we had children. In the event that my child was one of “those” kids, at least I could be somewhat mentally prepared and maybe even develop some sort of small talk about the nastiness of the habit and preempt the entire phase from even occurring.  However, I now feel like we need to take a few more long car rides together to determine if there are any other sordid habits from my husband’s past of which I need to be aware, not just for my sake, but also for the sake of our unborn children and their future attempts at happiness.  

Grand Canyon Adventures

Long days of hiking through rocky terrain. Sleeping in a ridiculously small tent. Port-a-potties filled to the brim. For most people, these three experiences do not scream, romantic second anniversary trip, but then again, my husband and I are not most people. In seeking out this year’s excursion to celebrate our blessed union, we wanted to have an adventure, perhaps a final adventure for a while, before we possibly embark on the much grander escapade of producing children. Thus, since neither my husband nor I had ever been to the Grand Canyon, we chose a four-day, three night guided tour of the Havasu Falls area. While I’m certain that many other couples would be perfectly capable of going it alone into the canyon, I was traveling with the same man who once threw a complete conniption, I’m talking arms flailing, feet stomping meltdown, when I took him on a surprise trip and, in jest, told him to bring a towel and tooth brush. Why the meltdown? He feared that we would be camping. Although, he did consent to this trip and even professed to be excited, I was not taking any chances. In addition, I tend to walk abnormally fast and I wanted to make sure that there was someone to keep my spouse from being consumed by coyotes if he fell behind. If that isn’t true love, I don’t know what is.

After months of carefully accumulating all of our camping necessities and checking off each item on the list provided by the tour company, we were ready. We made certain to pull all of the tags off our new items and get a little dirt on our belongings, lest we seem as completely inexperienced as we actually were. Upon arrival in Phoenix, we boarded a long shuttle to Flagstaff. The trip was made interminable as we were seated in front of an old woman who continuously berated her equally elderly husband for the duration of the trip to the point that I think his lack of hearing was actually a finely honed act. I hoped that this was not a prophecy of what our marriage would look like in fifty years.

Later that evening, we met with our intrepid tour guides who went over a few last minute details and checked our gear. We also were introduced to the family who would be embarking on the journey with us. It turned out that they weren’t the creepy family in matching yellow t-shirts that I saw at the airport, but instead were a nice, down to earth couple from Kansas and their 15-year-old son. While the son did not appear as excited about our impending exploits as we all were, he seemed willing to be a good sport about it anyways.

Early the next morning, we’re talking 6:15 am, we were picked up at the hotel and began our drive to the Grand Canyon. Two hours later, we arrived at the very crowded parking lot where we would commence our journey. Mules, along with their loads and riders, and the pungent smell that these pack animal provided, as well as the cars of other travelers filled the area. With our shoes tied, water bladders full (that’s hiking lingo for those cool plastic water sacs that are attached to a straw-like tube that you clip on to your back pack), and daypacks stuffed with carbohydrate-rich snacks, we started our ten-mile descent.

I was a bit nervous about the distance that we would be traveling that day, not for myself, but for my significant other. Vivid memories of practice hikes flooded my mind. For the entire last mile of these treks, the repetition of the phrase, “Are we there yet?” like the whine of child on his way to a Disney vacation, was emitted from my husband’s mouth. Those hikes were only four miles long, thus I had no idea what to expect from a walk more than twice that distance. Surprisingly, and maybe it was due to the presence of other people and his desire to seem macho and rugged, I didn’t hear one negative, complaining statement out of my husband. He was a total trooper. Several hours later, and with relatively few blisters, we arrived at the campground.

Rather than get into the nitty-gritty, play-by-play details of the rest of the trip, I figured that I would simply describe some of the better highlights.

The Tent:

Being relatively new to this whole “roughing it” experience, we were not in possession of our own tent and, frankly, based on my husband’s previously professed aversion to camping, I wasn’t sure it was a wise investment. Thus, we asked the tour company to provide one for us. We were grateful that they were able to do this; however, they clearly chose our tent before they met my husband and me. The tent was more like a one-person tent for someone my husband’s size or a two-person tent for someone my size. Therefore, with both of us in there, it didn’t quite even out. My darling took up about three quarters of the tent, leaving me the slightest sliver, smashed up against the pea green, nylon wall.
That first night was long. According to my husband, the guides had set the tent up on a slant and that was why he repeatedly rolled over into my limited quarter of the tent in the middle of the night. In addition to the fact that my sleeping pad was little more than the equivalent of an airy yoga mat, I now had a 260-pound human shoving me into the tiny crevice of our camping casa. He claimed that due to the incline, which you would have thought was a forty-five degree angle based on the way he was carrying on, he simply couldn’t stay on his side of the tent. Sorry. Needless to say, we did reposition the tent the next night and, miraculously, the rolling ceased.

While sharing this tent was clearly going to test our marriage, watching my husband try to extract himself from this limited living space definitely put a positive spin on the situation. We referred to this time each day as the metamorphosis. This process began with my husband’s head poking itself out of our camping cocoon to look around and see if others were awake. Then, he would twist and wiggle in order to allow each broad shoulder ample room to emerge from the curved door flap. Next, he would unwind his torso and legs slowly until the rest of his body was able to stand up straight and step out into the world. For just a brief second it looked like he was wearing the tent on his butt, preparing to shed this final layer of skin. It was truly a sight to behold.

My second favorite activity involved watching my husband try and enter our two and a half foot high tent. This process was more like a swan dive through the door flap, but not nearly as graceful, more like a crow with a broken wing. He usually landed head first with feet still flailing outside. I learned early on to either scramble far into the corner of the tent before his arrival or remain outside in order to avoid getting inadvertently head butted or landed upon with the full force of his entry. While the hiking was amazing, some of our funniest moments involved simply getting in and out of the tent.  

The Creatures

One aspect of my husband’s personality that I discovered long ago is that if you provide him with too much information, it never does anyone any good. This attribute became all too evident as we were sitting around the picnic table after our first dinner at the campsite. Our knowledgeable guides whipped out some small pamphlets about the rock types and animals commonly found in the Grand Canyon. So, with nothing else to do before bed, we thumbed through the provided reading. As we made fun of certain animal and plant names, my husband innocently asked our leader about the scorpions. Rather than stating that we had nothing to worry about, our guide, who I learned later enjoyed making people nervous, nonchalantly explained that the scorpions like to hide in shoes and under tents. I immediately knew that this information, so breezily stated, would not be so easily forgotten.  

Sure enough as we wedged ourselves into our nylon nest that evening, my husband insisted that we put all of our shoes inside with us. When I asked him why, he vehemently reiterated the guide’s warning about scorpions in the shoes. While I tried to explain to him that if the scorpions were truly a serious issue the guide probably would have warned the others in our group, he simply didn’t want to hear it. Being the shorter occupant of the tent, of course the shoes were placed in my already scant section. Needless to say, we never encountered scorpions in our shoes; however, neither did any of the others who dared to leave their shoes exposed to the dangerous canyon critters.  

Picture Time
I am always jealous of those people that have pictures of every wedding they have ever been to or even those candid snapshots of nights out with friends. My husband and I are not those people. We usually bring our camera with us, but odds are good that it won’t ever take a single picture and we’ll be driving home realizing too late the opportunity that we missed to forever capture the event we just attended. As a result, when we take our yearly trip we are always determined to take as many pictures as possible.  

For example, our marriage almost did not make it past the honeymoon as my husband was so intent on taking a picture of every relic at the Vatican that he neglected to pay attention to his bride. He was constantly getting lost in the throng of tourists that threatened to trample him at every single photo opportunity. With some thinly and some not so thinly veiled threats, we managed to save our marriage even if it meant a few less pictures of Italy.  

Nevertheless, we knew that we certainly did not want to miss the chance to obtain pictures of this grand adventure of ours, but yet again, my husbands zeal for finding that perfect shot occasionally got the better of him.  

Since this was the Grand Canyon, there was a great deal of hiking and climbing involved in our daily activities, not always ideal for taking pictures. Yet, when we found a safe place to stand or were on solid ground, we usually attempted to grab a few scenic shots. However, one day, our tour guides decided to take us down a 200-foot cliff beside a waterfall. Our only sources of support were some metal poles, the occasional chain and two short ladders. The rest of our descent was composed of slippery rocks that we were to use as foot and hand holds. As the keeper of the camera, I was repeatedly asked during this perilous climb to pull it out and take a picture of my husband, who was scaling the wall just above me. It made me question what he valued more, my life or that shot of him climbing down a large canyon like he was Edmund Hillary on Mount Everest.

Throughout the journey, whether we were dangling precariously over a rushing stream trying to get to the other side or standing in the middle of rapidly moving water, my husband always seemed to decide that it was a prime moment for a photo op. Fortunately, as the custodian of the camera, I did retain final say over all photographic endeavors and was able to keep my husband’s picture passion under control for the safety of both of us.

Eating
Although my husband professed a strong desire to get in shape before our Grand Canyon escapade, and he actually could be seen walking on the inclined treadmill at the gym several times a week, those dastardly chicken wings and beer continued to thwart his earnest efforts. However, since we would be confined to the bottom of a canyon for four days without a beer tap in sight, and exercise would be our only form of activity, I figured my husband could not help but reap at least a few health benefits from this journey. I was mistaken.  

Incredibly, my husband managed to find a way to rationalize overeating even on this athletic, health conscious endeavor. Due to the intensity of our daily activities, our guides were constantly reminding us to take several carbohydrate-filled snacks with us to eat throughout our adventures. Needless to say, my husband took full advantage of this opportunity to consume. Every time I turned around, there he was, eating a granola bar, beard growing in creating a scruffy frame of his face like a true outdoorsman. In addition, each night at dinner, our leaders also reminded us to refuel, to which my husband excitedly exclaimed, “This is great! This is the only place where I’m encouraged to eat more!”  

I had finally discovered the secret trick to persuading my husband to go camping with me, food. I should have known. A few granola bars and food cooked over a gas flame and I’d have him eating out of the palm of my hand in the future, literally.

A Beautiful Mind

I’ve come to the conclusion that my husband’s mind makes that of Russell Crowe’s character in A Beautiful Mind appear simplistic. What goes on inside that massive head of his should be the subject of medical documentary series on TLC, like the man whose skin has turned to wood or the lady with the huge goiter on her leg. His brain is equally as intriguing and I’m sure that with the proper MRI, doctors would be mystified by the way each section of his brain lights up the scan in response to select stimulus. I know that personally, the connection between one thought and its aftermath has perplexed me on more than one occasion.

For example, one day, my husband and I carried on a perfectly logical discussion about the dogs’ needing haircuts. Nothing abnormal was stated, nothing to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I left the discussion satisfied that I would schedule an appointment with the groomers in the near future. Thus, you can imagine my surprise when I returned home the next evening to find that my husband, with no prior experience in dog styling, other than lopping off one of Farrah’s toe nails in the clipping incident of 2003, had taken it upon himself to shave both dogs. Knowing we had no proper grooming tools in our possession, I was further horrified to learn that he had used his own electric shaver to complete the transformations. It is not as if our dogs already had short hair and this was a relatively small undertaking. No, our dogs are both long-haired beasts with thick undercoats. How he used a man’s electric razor was beyond my imagination.

However, the shock did not end with the realization that my husband had perilously attacked our dogs with a personal grooming device. While Farrah appeared to have endured the shearing unscathed and still resembling my beloved dog, Reggie was an entirely different story. In true male bonding fashion, my husband gave Reggie a mohawk. On his sides, his ebony black fur was now buzzed to reveal the pale pink skin beneath, but down the middle of his back, extending from his head to his tail, was a much thicker line of fur, making our dog look more like a hyena than the pitiful black lab/something mix that he was. All I could think about was what the neighbors would say as I walked my freak of a dog down the street. Sweet. Of course, my husband thought the mohawk was the best thing since sliced bread and was very paternally proud of his creation. His now otherwise wimpy dog with attachment issues was now cool enough to join a biker gang or at least hang with the pit bulls at the dog park. I guess I learned my lesson in this situation though: Don’t give your husband any ideas of which you might not like the consequences.

Unfortunately this mohawk style became a pattern around our house for a while. Soon after the dogs received their makeovers, I sent my husband out to mow our lawn. A short time later, too short a time, he was finished. “Are you done already?” I asked. “I have other things to do, I’ll finish the rest of the lawn when I get back,” he replied. Famous last words. As I peered out the window onto our lush green lawn, his handiwork again took me aback. He had proceeded to only mow the outer perimeter of our lawn, which was already beginning to resemble a jungle with tall grasses and an excessive amount of small wildlife seeking shelter in its shade. Inside this perimeter, the savannah still remained. Great, now both my lawn and my dog look like remnants from an ‘80s hair band, I mused. Needless to say, he did not return later to finish the lawn and we were those neighbors for a while. Fortunately, that was the end of the mohawk phase for a while.

Another incident where one innocent situation turned into a full-fledge mental subterfuge occurred on a recent trip to Nashville for a family event. Upon arrival my husband noticed that he had failed to pack an adequate number of socks for the festivities. As we discussed the predicament, I completely expected him to rewear a pair when necessary. Little did I know what he actually had in mind.

On the final day of our trip, after all of the socks had been worn, and my husband was still in need of a pair, he appeared to have a brainstorm, or a brain cloud like Tom Hanks in Joe Versus the Volcano. Either way, the next thing I knew my husband had mentally transported himself back to the 19th century to solve his problem. With the tap running, the mini bar of soap provided by the hotel in one hand and his white athletic socks in the other, he attempted to wash his footwear in the sink. For a man who struggles to put his own dishes in the dishwasher, the vision of him physically cleaning something made me a bit light-headed. However, he was quite proud of his idea. “We have to leave in 30 minutes. How are you going to dry those,” I asked, eyeing his soaking wet socks. As he squeezed excess water from his foot covers, he simply picked up the hairdryer attached to the wall in response. While I tried to explain to him the pitfalls of placing a water soaked item on top of an electrical device, he refused to listen.

Nevertheless, as soon as he placed the ankle of the sock over the front of the hair dryer, the machine immediately shorted out. Surprise! But my husband was not to be defeated by the properties of electric conduction. He simply squeezed out some more water, hit the reset button on the blower and tried again. This time his contraption worked for a bit longer and then cut out. With tunnel vision focus, my husband persisted with his work.

Finally, he was able to convince the dryer to work consistently with his sock firmly attached to the front, blowing like a kite in the wind. Confident that he was now successful, my husband walked away to finish getting dressed. Unfortunately, when he returned to check on his innovation, he discovered that he was now slowly burning a hole in his sock with the heat. He quickly removed the sock, but the damage had been done. Like a true man, he did not throw those socks out and wore them as planned that day. Every time he wears that specific pair, I can not help but giggle when I observe the brown burn mark on the ankle and remember my husband and his single minded belief that he could be his own Laundromat in the bathroom of our hotel room.

A final recent incident that made my mind swirl like a tornado in Kansas, involved the Passover holiday. Every year, I always stage a Seder to celebrate the event regardless of whether we have any Jewish friends of not. This year was not going to be an exception and as I gathered my recipes and made my grocery list, my husband decided that he wanted to have brisket this year. Being a vegetarian, brisket had not entered into our celebration in the past, thus I was surprised by his new suggestion. However, he was adamant. After he chastised me, “What kind of Jew are you that you don’t have brisket for Passover?” I’d had enough. “The vegetarian kind,” I responded. “I’ll make you chicken or fish, but I don’t do briskets.” As I had learned by then, once my husband had an idea in his head, there was nothing I could do to purge it.

“I’ll make a brisket then,” he announced. This was the same man who said that he didn’t make me dinner as a romantic gesture because he took me out instead. Other than the occasional grilled cheese sandwich and DiGiorno oven pizza, I didn’t think that I’d ever seen my husband cook an actual meal during or time together. A brisket seemed a bit more than his limited culinary skills could handle, but his mind was made up. So, he made the necessary inquiries on the internet and via a phone call to my mother and obtained a recipe. Sure enough, the next afternoon what appeared to be an entire side of goat or lamb or whatever brisket is made of, appeared in my fridge. For a vegetarian you can understand how a six pound slab of meat covering an entire shelf in my fridge was a bit disconcerting, but he was determined to have his brisket, so I wasn’t going to protest, too much. However, I did remind my husband that since the brisket was his Passover project, I bore no responsibility and would not offer any sort of assistance in his endeavor other than to pull out the fire extinguisher if necessary, and I was certain that it would be.

As the Passover preparations began, we took a closer look at the brisket recipe and it seemed to call for continuous supervision, something that my husband could not provide during his time at work. As previously stated, I refused to baste or rotate or saturate his meat product; besides, I had kugels and tzimmes and what felt like eight five apples to prepare for the rest of the meal. Fortunately, Lipton onion soup mix came through for us. Randomly, they provided an easy, stick-it-in-the-oven and let it cook recipe that allowed my husband to make his brisket and me to stay true to my word.

In the end, my husband had his Passover brisket and while it wasn’t like Nana used to make, it was edible and a few diners at our Seder even had seconds. I have now learned better than to intervene when my husband has an idea in his head, however ludicrous it sounds in the beginning, unless it threatens someone’s safety or national security. Will we have a brisket again next year? I hope not, but I wouldn’t count it out as a possibility.

Clearly, my husband is a man of Rainman like focus and persistence. Anyone who has ever seen the classroom-sized white board on the wall in our home office, with his lists and ideas all organized in different columns and differentiated by color, can attest to this. I am slowly discovering that it is better to go with the flow when he has one of his brainstorms as well as choose my words carefully because I never know how my husband will interpret what I have said. I am not sure that I want to entirely understand how my husband’s mind works, as I am certain that I would be a bit terrified at what I would find. Nevertheless, his ideas definitely keep my life interesting and for that I am grateful, even if I won’t admit it at the time.

Bonnie and Clyde? More Like Lucy and Desi

For the most part, I consider myself a fairly honest, moral, and upstanding human being. I am a teacher for goodness sake, shaping the lives of tomorrow’s youth. That is certainly not a job for the ethically corrupt (at least not for long). Perhaps the most morally ambiguous action in which I have ever partaken involved sneaking into the movie theater as a teenager, and really, at those prices, who could blame me? I hold doors for the elderly, let people with small purchases go in front of me in the grocery store, and I even bless strangers that sneeze in my vicinity.

However, this fairly squeaky clean, do-gooder attitude is exactly the reason why the events of a few nights ago have so appalled me and shaken my entire sense of self. Of course, I was not alone in the series of events that I am about to explain as my husband also participated in the succeeding act of delinquency. I should have known that, at some point, this man would get me in trouble with the law, maybe not to the extent of the Craigslist killer and his devoted fiancé, but maybe a car chase or parking violation at least. It was only a matter of time.

The evening of our impending wrongdoing started off very positively. We had purchased tickets to see Dane Cook live in Baltimore and since most of our exciting nights usually consist of going to dinner and then watching tv in separate rooms, this was a monumental night out. As we arrived at the parking garage near the arena, the lady in front informed us that we could either pay ten dollars then or use a credit card upon exiting. Like most members of our generation, we don’t carry cash and selected the latter option. We found a decent spot and headed in to enjoy the show.

After a night filled with laughter that sometimes brought us to tears, we contentedly made our way back to our vehicle. Then, the night began to take a turn for the worse. Immediately upon entering the car, my husband proceeded to get a violent nose bleed. Blood was everywhere and he looked about as competent at handling this situation as a three year old. He just sat there and let blood pour out of his nose like water from a faucet. It was disgusting and after I repeatedly explained the whole pinch your nose with the Kleenex procedure, he finally caught on. However, the damage to his wardrobe had been done. Now, instead of attending a comedy show, it appeared as though we had come to Baltimore, unfortunately like so many others, to participate in some sort of mass murder.

As the blood bath abated, he shed his outer button down shirt and was left with a slightly less bloody undershirt while I was left with a car full of scarlet paper products. At this point, I knew that our blissful rendez-vous had drawn to a close.

Finally, we were able to join the endless line of cars snaking down the parking structure. Twenty minutes later we had not edged any further toward the exit when we noticed that some automobiles were headed towards an alternate point of departure. Thank goodness. As we followed this new path, we observed a sign that read, “Credit Cards Only”. Perfect, I mused to myself, since that was our intended payment plan from the start of this evening. Unfortunately, I had counted my chickens before they hatched.

Upon pulling up to the gray ticket machine and sliding in first my parking ticket and then my credit card, the feeling of hope and promise that we would be leaving soon began to disintegrate. “Bad Credit Card” the machine stated. What does that mean? I tried the whole action again while behind me, cars continued to line up like anxious contestants for American Idol. Again, my credit card was denied. Now, I started to panic. There was no way out. I certainly couldn’t ask hundreds of people to back their cars up so I could find another route, and I couldn’t drive forward as the bright yellow and black electric arm stood blocking my path. I was trapped and I could tell that the people behind me were starting to get restless.

Now, I am normally the problem solver in our relationship, the calm, collected one who fixes mistakes and gets my husband out of trouble, so when I shouted “Get out of the car and lift up the arm,” in a tone resembling Zul the gatekeeper, I think he began to realize the gravity of the situation and the extent of my anxiety. However, his immediate response was less than I had hoped. “I’m not getting out of the car, I’m covered in blood,” he growled back angrily. But, as my voice increased in both volume and frequency and the intensity of my glare began to burn into his skin, he finally realized that I was serious. This was not a topic for discussion.

In my head, I envisioned my husband lifting up the mechanical arm so that I could drive my car underneath. However, he clearly had an alternate interpretation of events planned out in his own mind. As he raised the mechanical blockade, I started to drive my car forward, but my husband did not seem to be moving out of the way. Then, rather than step aside, he suddenly became the incredible hulk and bent the mechanical arm in half and tried to shove it out of the driving lane. Needless to say, mangling the device did not exactly solve the problem and probably created new ones. While the arm retracted at first, and my husband dove back into the car, it began to rebound as I drove forward, gently, lamely, hitting the windshield as I continued to make my escape.

Suddenly, we were Bonnie and Clyde, but not nearly as nonchalant about our criminal activity. The fact that Baltimore on a Friday night is ridden with cops due to its impressive crime rate did not help to ease our anxiety. “I can’t believe we just did that,” I wheezed, barely able to breath. My heart was beating with the speed of a snare drum. I could not even process the events of the previous few minutes. “Where there cameras?” My husband inquired frantically. “I didn’t see any, but I was busy trying not to pass out from fear, so maybe,” I replied, now realizing the implication of having driven my vehicle to the concert. While my husband was observed by the throng of cars behind us dressed like a serial killer, any images on video would be of my license plate.

As reality set in and we hurriedly tried to maneuver our way out of Baltimore, we quickly called my husband’s best friend and the only lawyer we knew. We needed to determine the severity of our actions. While I was pretty sure we could make a good case for having to go through the ticket area without paying, I was fairly certain that massacring the mechanical arm would require a bit more explanation. Fortunately, our friend was able to reassure us that the consequences of our actions, if there were any, would be minimal and we wouldn’t lose our jobs or chances for future employment. Nevertheless, each police siren nearly sent us into catatonic states of shock. We couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being followed and it was only a matter of time before the long arm of the law found us.

So far, we have managed to elude the police, probably since Baltimore has greater issues than a couple of parking garage payment violators. Although our quiet evenings of separate television viewing originally seemed monotonous, perhaps we were safer on our couches than attempting to venture out into the real world. The previous time we traveled outside for a night on the town, we went to an ‘80s cover band concert and ended up being pulled over dressed like Madonna and Don Johnson. Apparently, nightlife is just not for us. I have come to the realization that I would much rather be watching an episode of Law and Order than becoming one.

Future Soccer Mom On The Loose

We’ve all seen those parents that push their children a bit too hard in a bid to turn them into the next Mia Hamm, Sammy Sosa, or Kristy Yamaguchi. They might yell a bit too harshly at their own kids or perhaps even at someone else’s in the heat of a sporting event. They’re the ones with the Gatorade and Powerbars for their little superstars after the 5-6 year old soccer match, even though no one is keeping score and their kid spent most of the game picking dandelions off the field. Other parents might view them as overbearing, anxiety causing, ulcer creating authority figures who will only too soon learn that living vicariously through their children will ultimately result, not in an expensive contract but, in expensive therapy.

Nevertheless, each year new crops of soccer moms and football dads rise again. However in most cases, these people actually do have a child playing a sport. In my situation, the person being pressured to succeed in the high stakes world of high school lacrosse is in fact me, an adult. My pushy parental figure happens to be none other than my own husband. I have now become my husband’s latest lacrosse protégé, in spite of my numerous protests.

My situation began when the women’s lacrosse team at my husband’s high school needed an assistant coach. While I have logged my fair share of hours at many a high school and college lacrosse game, I have no formal training in the sport. Up until a few days ago, I had never even picked up a lacrosse stick. I enjoy watching and can yell at the players and the referees with the best of them, but that is where my experience and tactical knowledge ends. However, this seemed to be enough qualification for my husband to offer me up to his athletic director as a viable candidate for the position. Clearly, standards were low.

To say my husband was excited about my opportunity to enter his claustrophobic little lacrosse world would be an understatement. This is a man who checks and rechecks the lacrosse web sites every few hours and feels broken up with when a recruit chooses another school. Thus, he viewed my foray into the world of lacrosse coaching as a great chance for us to bond, share trade secrets, and apparently cozy up to lacrosse videos. He was so certain that I was going to enthusiastically embrace his beloved sport that before I even went in for the interview the next morning, I caught him on the computer with a list of women’s lacrosse videos displayed on the screen. There were six of them. Six. “What are you doing? Those had better not be for me,” I contested.

“Sure they are. We’ll watch them together,” he replied with a satisfied grin on his face, eyes glazed over, lost in the zone of lacrosse.

“I’m only coaching for a month,” I reminded him. “I’m not pursuing a career in this and I am certainly not going to watch six lacrosse videos. Don’t buy them it is a huge waste of money.” After a few more minutes of attempting to explain that my brief stint as a high school assistant lacrosse coach probably wouldn’t parlay me into a full time career move, he reluctantly downsized his purchase order to only three videos. Then he wouldn’t budge, insisting that I would never be a good coach if I didn’t take time to learn the game. At this point, I conceded defeat and agreed to possibly watching the videos at some time, knowing full well that I wouldn’t do anything of the sort unless duct taped to my couch. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be an effective coach, it was simply that I felt a huge disconnect with this sport that I had never played and couldn’t quite find a way to muster the same level of excitement that my husband clearly felt.

A short time later, I was sitting in a small, cinderblock room with the women’s head lacrosse coach and the high school athletic director being interviewed for a job where I was really the only true candidate, due to my flexible schedule. How could I say no when I had nothing else better going on and at least it was a reason to leave my house in the afternoon? So, without ever having played lacrosse in my life, I agreed to part with my afternoons of Ellen and Dr. Phil and do my best to help coach.

After my first few days of practice, I decided that I would in fact actually have to pick up a stick and play catch if I was to truly understand that with which my players were dealing. So, one sunny, Saturday afternoon my husband and I found ourselves in the Sports Authority. Surrounded by sporting equipment from hockey pucks to hacky sacks, we eventually made our way over to the two shelves designated for women’s lacrosse, stuck between bike helmets and those super tall, green rubber boots used for fly fishing or whatever they do in Howard’s End. Clearly, this was a booming athletic industry. With about eight sticks to choose from, I made the logical choice and picked the thirty dollar one. It seemed sturdy enough with a blue head, crisp, clean white laces, and a strong metal handle. My husband, on the other hand, selected the ninety-dollar version. With total disbelief I turned to him, “I’m not going pro. I’m not even playing. I just want to play catch once or twice.” My explanations were fruitless.

“Don’t you want the best one? What if you decide to join a women’s league?” he asked, puzzled as to why my lacrosse dreams weren’t loftier, my aspirations weren’t higher.

“For one month and two outings of catch, I think this thirty dollar version will suffice,” I calmly elucidated. This blew his mind. He continued to try and sell me on the merits of the more expensive implement, but I put my foot down this time. Enough was enough. I might be unemployed but I wasn’t going to be my husband’s little Chinese gymnast. While I agreed to help out the team, I was not going to embody his vicarious dreams of a lacrosse-coaching dynasty.

Every night for a week, my husband attempted to wrangle me into watching those essential lacrosse videos. One night, I gave in. First of all, they were not a half an hour long as he had promised. Secondly, they were definitely not worth the thirty- dollar price tag. While I don’t doubt the merits of the coach providing the instruction, I do think he had quite a racket going. These videos were clearly filmed in his back yard or at least at the park in his very nice subdivision, another clue that the low budget-high priced films were benefiting his bank account. In addition, the players in the videos could not have been over the age of 16 and one of whom I suspected was his six -year old daughter. After a half an hour of lacrosse tutelage, thirty minutes of my life that I would never get back, I felt sufficiently more prepared for practice. Against protests from the lacrosse potato seated next to me, I wrestled the controls away and managed to turn off the video, although I did have to promise to finish watching at a later date. Let’s just say that I haven’t held up my end of that bargain yet.

As my first season as an assistant lacrosse coach draws to a close, I am willing to say that I have learned a few things and gained a newfound respect for the game of women’s lacrosse. I did actually use my fabulous thirty-dollar stick to play catch once and I wasn’t atrocious, although my self-esteem was diminished by my difficulty catching the ball. However, I blame my husband for some of my struggle, as his shots at my head did nothing to build my confidence.

More important than what I ascertained about the world of women’s lacrosse is what I discovered about my husband. If he became this immersed in his wife’s athletic coaching pursuits, who knows what role he will play in our children’s sporting futures. At least now he’s on my radar so if I spot him sneaking Gatorade into the water bottle of one of our children headed for t-ball or buying an athletic cup for our four year old, I can hopefully mediate the situation. Credit cards will be closely monitored for expensive athletic purchases and mysterious father-child ventures on the weekends that might result in excessive tutoring will be heavily supervised. I suppose it could be worse and he could show his love with food or expensive and outrageous gifts, but instead he uses athletics. While I agree that it is important for children to be active and healthy, is a lacrosse stick for an infant really necessary?

More Life Lessons From My Husband

5. If something isn’t working correctly, you don’t need it anyway.
I have learned over the years that there are times when, in spite of our best efforts, neither my husband nor I is Bob Villa and This Old House is simply that. Occasionally we call in professionals to fix our problems, while other times a more immediate response is warranted.

My husband has taught me that if something isn’t working correctly, you don’t really need it anyway. Apparently, I was under the mistaken impression that there are some things worth fixing when they break. I guess I was wrong.

This life lesson developed after my dear husband decided to make me pancakes one morning. It was a fabulous, heartfelt gesture until the smell of acrid smoke and charred pancake started to permeate the first floor of our townhouse. Since we live in a delightful (cue the sarcasm) row of townhomes, for the time being, the smoke alarms are highly sensitive, lest we take down our neighbors in a blaze of glory.

Thus, after the high-pitched, incessant beeping began to make our eardrums bleed, we tried the age-old trick of waving a magazine in front of the detector. Just as it shut off, much to our delight, another one began. This commenced a vicious game of whack-a-mole between beeping smoke alarms. Even taking the battery out did not stop the bleating. While this was probably a necessary precaution against arson, it was nevertheless extraordinarily aggravating under the current circumstances.

With few options left and that obnoxious humming that usually only occurs after a loud concert filling our ears, my husband reached up and yanked the offending alarm right off of the ceiling. Needless to say, that stopped the noise. However, while it solved our immediate problem, we might run into a tiny predicament in the future when our lease is up or if perchance our neighbors set fire to their domicile. Yet, I did learn a valuable lesson about life from this experience. If something doesn’t work correctly, it’s apparently better not to use it at all.

6. It pays to know a lot of people
My husband is the epitome of a social butterfly. He makes friends everywhere he goes and knows people from all walks of life. It is impressive but sometimes this overt gregariousness and social involvement can be troublesome as we go out to eat and five people in the restaurant come over to talk or he feels the need to obsessively check his Facebook account with his millions of friends. I consider his desire to continuously beef up his friend numbers the equivalent to making him a Facebook whore. Nevertheless, his popularity has helped us out during at least one worthwhile occasion.

While leaving a Black Crowes concert late one night in Atlanta, GA, we discovered that one of the tires on my husband’s car had completely deflated. As the crowd dispersed rapidly and we had to return to Nashville that same night, we were in a huge bind and this was not an area of town in which anyone would aspire to get stranded. Apparently by law or sheer obnoxiousness, the police weren’t allowed to help with our predicament beyond the obligatory flashlight holding and snide comments. So, while my husband tossed tire irons in frustration, those sworn to protect and serve did neither.

So, we found ourselves in a shady part of downtown Atlanta at midnight, trying to change a tire. While we did receive many kind offers of assistance for the local homeless population strolling the streets like it was Dawn of the Dead, we insisted we were fine and kept working.

One of the neighborhood “locals” decided to just start helping anyway. Although he did try to read the directions, upside down, we did need another hand on deck. A few minutes later, when the man and my husband finally stopped to look up, it turned out that they actually knew each other. What are the odds that on this dark, deserted street far from Nashville, my husband would, of course, find a homeless man that he recognized from his volunteer work in the Music City? Fortunately, this man proved to be a great help and soon we were on our way again.

It just goes to show you that it pays to know and be nice to everyone that you meet because when you need help you, just never know who will show up.

Life Lessons That I've Learned From My Husband

1. Honesty is not always the best policy.
There are times when men are wise to tell a little white lie rather than come out with what may be an awful truth. Women are familiar with many of these and we’ve come to expect them. When we ask if our pants fit correctly or we say that our butt looks bigger, we don’t really want the truth, we want to be told that our pants look great and our rear end is more muscular or actually shrinking.

But all of these types of lies are usually restricted to the confines of our home, while my husband has shown me that honesty is not always the best policy in the real world as well. I learned this lesson one day after my husband’s cell phone buzzed its way into the toilet. Apparently he had created a ski jump like slope in the bathroom consisting of a three ring binder and a precariously positioned portable phone. After several buzzes, the phone slid down the jump and into the watery abyss below. Upon discovery of his waterlogged communication device and the realization that if he did not extricate it himself, no one else would, my husband removed the dripping and miraculously, still buzzing phone from the toilet. For my husband, the phone is a lifeline, something semi-permanently attached to his ear that he would be lost without.

So, following some surgeon like hand washing and the removal of the Sim card, we rushed over to the AT &T store to obtain a replacement device. When the generous man, who allowed us into the store five minutes after closing, asked what happened to the rest of the phone, as we had only brought in the Sim card, my husband convincingly told him that it had fallen in the tub. The man heaved a sigh of relief as he stated, “Good, because I don’t touch phones that have been in the toilet.” My husband reassured him it was definitely the tub, with a straight face that almost made me question other things that he may have told me with similar conviction in the past. He proceeded to buy the new phone without further fibbing and left the store.

Thus, I learned that in some instances, honesty will get you nothing, such as a new cell phone, whereas a slight fabrication will get you exactly what you want.

2. Table manners are still important:
Emily Post would be rolling over in her grave if she ever met my husband. All those years of teaching people the value of manners and their purpose in society and it appears to have gone by the wayside with some members of my generation. With the world changing so rapidly, technology advancing our world to unexpected levels and possibilities, it is hard to keep up with it all, let alone the tiny, time worn tradition of social respectability.

During the planning of our wedding I received a glaring, neon signal that there are people out there who do still value manners. Unfortunately, it was due to my husband’s actions that this fact was brought to my attention.  

As we sat around the long, ovular, white linen covered table at the hotel where we were to be married in just a few short days, the wedding planner, my mother, my husband and myself were gathered for a final sampling of the delicacies we would be serving to guests at our reception. This event and the cake tasting were probably two of my husband’s favorite parts of the wedding preparation. Our favorite waiter, Alex, who had endured our shenanigans through out this process, delivered the first course. It looked delicious; a three tiered red and yellow tomato structure layered with creamy white mozzarella cheese and drizzled with sweet, dark, balsamic vinaigrette. He gently set the appetizer in front of each of us and stood back as we took a bite. It tasted as good as it appeared.  

While my mother, the wedding planner, and I discussed the dish, my husband apparently had some issue with one of the tomatoes, but rather than deposit it on one of the adjacent butter dishes, he placed the offending item directly onto the crisp, white table cloth. I don’t think I’ve seen three women levitate so quickly and speak in such unison as the three of us at that moment. I thought that the sheer force of our simultaneous motion would surely knock my husband to be out of his chair with the strength of a gale force wind. “What are you doing?” we all shouted at him. “Why would you do that? You can’t put the tomato on the tablecloth? Were you raised in a barn?” We inquired with perhaps more vigor than we really felt.

We tried to make a joke out of it quickly after as we realized that we had probably really embarrassed my future groom. However, the damage was done. Clearly, etiquette, at least in my family still reigns. Believe me, from that moment on, I too was very careful not to put my elbows on the table and to make sure to use the appropriate silverware item, lest I be censured in a similar manner.

While I do occasionally remind my husband where to dispose of unwanted food items, purely in jest, I have yet to see another inappropriately placed food particle since. While our tactics may have been a bit more confrontational than necessary, I think that Miss Manners would be proud.

3. It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing as long as you’re holding a diamond
While this isn’t really a lesson that pertains to my future endeavors, or me, I thought it would be helpful for any boyfriends, husbands, or relationship wannabes out there.  

For many men, the proposal, that moment where you seal the deal, you bite the bullet, you take the plunge, requires a huge amount of planning. Everything has to be just right, from the music, to the location, to the attire. Some men prepare for this moment in intricate detail, analyzing the pros and cons of each option, weighing the benefits of doing it on a jumbotron at the Lakers’ game versus in front of the lion cage at the zoo, etc. We’ll forgive the man whose fiancé swallowed the ring that he had placed in her Wendy’s frosty as a freak accident. Nevertheless, this is a life-changing event that should be done with care and consideration.  

I’m sure that all of these thoughts were running through my husband-to-be’s mind as he was planning my proposal. He intricately crafted an incredible scrapbook created from mementos that we had both collected during our years together. Fancy paper and little doodads were used to embellish his creation and it was quite impressive in the end. When I returned home from a night out with friends, the lights were low, candles were lit, and music was playing softly in the background. And there, standing proudly in the middle of it all was my husband to be, carefully attired in the Chicago Bull’s t-shirt that was so stained that it’s original red was now slightly orange and looked as if he had worn it during his years as a mechanic. Holes had formed in the armpits and other strategic locations around this soon to be rag. Completing the ensemble was a carefully selected pair of mesh gym shorts. Maybe he just ran out of proposal preparation pep, as he had clearly worked arduously on the first three quarters of the event.  

Nevertheless, when he got down on one knee and pulled the diamond engagement ring out from under the couch, I still said yes and eventually married him. Not that I am encouraging men who are planning on proposing to their beloveds to skip the final step of the process by dressing with wild abandon and a lack of consideration for the formality of the event, but it does go to show you that when it comes down to it, as long as you have love, and a diamond, he could be proposing in a Big Bird costume and it wouldn’t really matter, for most women anyway.

4. If at first you don’t succeed, try it again differently
After quitting my teaching job, due to a commute that explains the development of road rage, I have found it much harder than expected to find a new place of employment. This is not for lack of trying as I submit at least two applications a week to various employers for whom I believe that I am qualified to work. In spite of my persistence, not one company has had the decency to send me an e-mail claiming that they have even received my applications. As you would imagine, this is very frustrating for me and it upsets my husband a great deal as he’s probably becoming sick of seeing me in my sweat pants and tank top when he leaves for work and again when he returns home later in the evening. Frankly, I’m not enjoying it so much myself, except for the bonus of being able to enjoy the simple pleasures of The Bonnie Hunt Show and Ellen.  

As my husband and I were discussing my predicament recently, he devised an idea that he thought to be at the root of my occupational woes. His theory was that because my name is spelled so uniquely, employers might be under the impression that I had spelled it incorrectly. Therefore, if I couldn’t spell my own name right, then I would probably not be a suitable member of their workforce.  

While pondering this, I found there to be a few discrepancies with his proposal, such as the fact that my name was spelled the same way on both my cover letter and resume. My husband rationalized that I must be simply incompetent enough, in the minds of human resources, to misspell my own name twice.  

The other issue with his brainstorm was that I had no way of solving this problem as my name was, in fact, correctly spelled each and every time I wrote it and therefore, there was no actual way around this. Again, my husband had a prepared resolution for this as well. “Why don’t you just start spelling your name the normal way and see what happens? It can’t hurt, ” he proposed. While I couldn’t do any worse than my current unemployed and unresponded-to status, a new conundrum arose out of this idea. Suppose I did actually receive an interview based on one of the misspelled applications, how did I now explain my little sociological test to the employer?  

While, I appreciate my husband’s persistence and ability to think outside of the box in an attempt to help me get off the couch, into some respectable attire, and possibly the shower more regularly, I don’t believe that I will be carrying out his advice in the near future. However, I have realized that if something is not working, there’s no harm in doing it a little bit, but logically, differently the next time.

You Are Not Alone- It Has A Name

My husband is a machosexual. There I’ve said it and I’m not ashamed to admit it. No, I didn’t mean metrosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. As “bootylicious” is attributed to Beyonce, I think that the term machosexual will be forever synonymous with my husband. I know that there are myriad expressions to describe how people look and act and that it is easy to get confused. Nevertheless, I am still going to throw machosexual into the mix. I can’t take all or even most of the credit for the creation of this new moniker. That honor goes to the wedding planner for our big day.

A machosexual, we determined, is a man who, although seemingly very manly and rugged on the outside, clearly knows a bit more than one would assume about traditional “girly” endeavors, such as wedding planning. Let me explain how we arrived at this title for my husband and for those other men out there whose wives have yet to find an appropriate description for them.

My husband is about as much of a man’s man as you can get, on the outside. He played football in college and rugby afterwards. Let’s just say that he likes to put his body to the test. He has had so many concussions that he’s not allowed to do contact sports any more, but like any macho man, he continues to defy doctors orders. I keep telling him that I don’t want to be mashing up food to feed a baby and my husband at the same time in life, so he’d better be careful, but he just doesn’t really know any better. He enjoys the camaraderie of a team sport and the physical action of smashing his body into someone else’s and hearing the resounding crunch afterwards.

In addition, he’s a large, hulk of a man. Six feet tall with broad shoulders and additional protection around the middle. No one would mistake him for the intellectual that he actually is. While his style of dress is improving, he is far from the world of a metrosexual. He’s a used t-shirt and sweat pants kind of man. The only time that he can be coerced out of his usual ensemble is when he goes to work or we venture out to dinner. Even then he continues to pick out some really hideous sport coats in bizarre fabrics and plaids that only one with a very limited fashion sense or limited eyesight would enjoy. Clearly, my husband is your typical male.

However, as we started planning our wedding a few years ago, it became evident that he was more than meets the eye. While his creation of a scrapbook for the big proposal should have tipped me off, I did not truly realize what hidden talents lay beneath his toilet seat leaving up exterior. As much as he tried to hide it, he knew more about weddings than I did and voiced an opinion on everything. While some husbands might shun this whole rigmarole of mother -daughter fighting and color palette selection, he was getting his hands dirty with the rest of us.

One day, as we sat smothered by leather-bound volume upon leather-bound volume of wedding invitations in the stationary store with floral printed chairs, ribbons, and cute knick knacks abounding, you would have thought that my husband would want to bolt or at least walk in like an embarrassed celebrity with his sweatshirt blocking a clear shot of his face. Instead, he strode in like a white knight entering the queen’s kingdom with my mother, my wedding planner, and me. He poured over the books with us, pointing out a color preference here, an embellishment there, and this went on for a while. As someone who doesn’t like to shop, I was done within a half an hour of this antiquated ritual, but my husband to be hung in there with me, like Jack in the Titanic, except I think that he prevented me from drifting off to sea.

After my husband had made yet another intuitive comment about the texture of an invitation, my wedding planner looked up at him in awe and surprise that not only was he still there, but he was still engaged in what I had come to think of as a horrific process. By this point, even I was toying with the fact that eloping might be easier than picking an invitation. As she stared at him, brow furrowed, lips tightly pressed together, in intense concentration you could practically see the light bulb turn on in her mind as she exclaimed, “You are unbelievable. I know what you are, you are a machosexual.” So, it was decided.

Later on in the wedding planning bonanza came the selection of music. I didn’t even know what the wedding song was called but up piped my husband with a request for Pachelbel’s Canon in D. He even knew other wedding songs that he wanted to hear, by name! Who was this man? One minute he’s spouting wedding songs and the next minute he’s knocking back a pitcher of beer or hocking a loogie on the street. As the music lady looked at him with eyes wide and mouth agape, I sat there completely disengaged in the entire proceeding since I didn’t know any of the music to which they were referring, I just wanted the ones that sounded nice. My wedding planner, attempting to resuscitate the musician, just turned to her and explained, “He’s a machosexual.” I do not know if the woman knew what she meant, but she seemed to be more at ease after the proclamation.

I’m not going to lie; there were definitely times when more of the macho side showed through. For instance, during the cake tasting, as my mother and I took a small bite out of each little slice of cake, my husband’s entire plate was inhaled in a matter of seconds, like there had never been cake on it to begin with. He was a human vacuum cleaner and thus it was no surprise that he liked all of the cakes, probably because he couldn’t distinguish between any of them as they were shoved in a mashed jumble down his esophagus.

Nevertheless, I think the term machosexual is perfect for my husband and I don’t know what I would have done without his tendencies during the wedding planning process. I had always known that he had secret talents most often associated with estrogen, but this experience confirmed it. I love his manly side, as it makes me feel safe and comforted, and this strength is what attracted me to him in the first place. However, thankfully he has this alter ego that only comes out for good, such as wedding planning and wedding proposal scrapbooking. So, if you are one of those women that is trying to rationalize a normal beer drinking, ESPN stalking, can’t cook anything other than bacon husband with the man who recently made you a picture frame or created a mixed cd of famous love songs for your anniversary, you are not alone. There is a name for people like that- machosexual.

Nutritionally Deficient

Clearly, healthy eating in our culture is a complicated subject these days. Everyone is either on a diet or believes that they have developed the next great cure in the battle of the bulge. We are bombarded daily with all sorts of new information telling us what to eat, such as only meat products or lemonade with maple syrup and cayenne pepper. Both sound like fabulous ways to live one’s life if you never plan on enjoying it. Everyday there’s something new we shouldn’t be eating and something else the powers that be have decided should not be in our foods and we are supposed to check every nutrition label and root out this evil from our homes. It’s no wonder that people are continually confused about what is good for us and what is not. However, if you search hard enough you can find a study that tells you what you want to hear, just look at chocolate; don’t tell me that Hershey’s did not have a hand in dark chocolate making its resurgence on the diet scene. With all these nutritional reports changing at a frenetic pace, some people have just decided to develop their own theories about what is and what is not healthy for them. Some are based on fact and some are based on misguided beliefs that formed at the dinner table during their youth, before trans fats and white carbohydrates became the enemy.

My husband falls into the latter of these two categories. He was raised on, how do I put this nicely, not the healthiest of diets. Lots of meats, cream of anything on everything, desserts like each day was a wedding tasting, etc. Consequently, in spite of my husband’s continuous athletic pursuits that resulted in him being a football player during his undergraduate career, he developed into a husky man with a hearty appetite. He also possessed an extremely skewed view when it came to nutrition. I like to think of him as nutritionally disabled, a condition that when treated with medical attention and therapy, could possibly be overcome.

His condition first came to light when my husband went to college and he encountered his first taste of dining hall food. Like most young students, new to the delicacies that make up dorm dining, as a lump of white food was placed on his plate, he immediately asked what it was. Mashed potatoes was the response. This confounded him as he told his fellow dining mates, “No they’re not. Mashed potatoes are yellow.” One might think that he was trying to crack a joke to his new friends, but, sadly, he was being completely serious. Until that day, he had only come across mashed potatoes in a form so butter-laden that none of the original white potato color shined through. He was reared with the belief that this was how mashed potatoes looked. It was a wonder that he did not have cardiac arrest before he got to college with that kind of upbringing. It would also probably not surprise people to learn that he had a similar reaction to rice. It too, he was under the false impression, was best served with a yellow hue. Apparently butter was used more liberally in his house, during his youth than in Paula Deen’s kitchen.

To further elaborate on the fact that trying to convince my husband that butter was not the wonder-food he thought it was, he once genuinely explained to me that butter is healthier in liquid form. Therefore, eating butter on top of a massive cauldron of popcorn at the movie theater was acceptable and apparently even nutritious. He seemed to somewhat grasp by this point, that hardened butter had its issues, but held fast to the theory that when liquefied, it mutated into a health food. You can see what I was dealing with here.

Through our years together, he has continued to defy common sense and logic when passing along his dietary wisdom. For example, vegetables perplexed him. On more than one occasion, he told me he didn’t want to eat vegetables because they had too many calories. Seriously. Maybe this was true in his house where I saw first hand how all of the nutritional value could be sucked out of a normally healthy food like broccoli by upturning a carton of Parkay and Velveeta on top. I tried to explain to him that in the real world outside of “Butterland”, as I started referring to his mother’s kitchen, vegetables were actually low in fat and calories and could even be dietarily sound. Nevertheless, this was the man who believed that French fries were a vegetable and therefore a heart smart choice. Sure, they were a vegetable, a tuber if you will, but that was where the good-for-you similarities ended.

One night after he arrived home post-happy hour with some friends, we engaged in a discussion about his desire to lose some weight. In jest, I suggested a pudding diet, as he seemed to enjoy eating the sugar free cups of vanilla creaminess that I had been buying as healthy treats. Excited does not even begin to describe how he felt about this idea. He started calling out flavors that he wanted to have and even posted his plans on his Facebook page. I attempted to explain the dearth of nutrients that would result from partaking in this diet, but he wasn’t listening. It was only after he learned that he might have issues with, let’s say, fully processing this diet that he decided perhaps it was not in his best interest after all. It was intriguing that not receiving protein, minerals, vitamins, etc. did not pose a problem for him, but the thought of not being able to take his morning constitutional was a deal-breaker.

I think I am making progress with my husband in terms of healthy foods, but I am continually surprised by his nutritional knowledge deficits. It is almost like he gets his advice out of the fake newspaper The Onion. He loves to seize the news tidbits that say, “beer is good for you”, omitting the -in moderation part, or “potatoes are healthy”, conveniently forgetting the detail about not covering them in so much butter that it would clog the artery of a moose. In reality, I don’t expect perfection or even something close; I just do not want him to seriously scar future generations with his “wisdom”.

Like any true deficiency, nutritional or informational, the best course of action is to give my husband what he is missing. While I will continue to try and erase the erroneous beliefs about food that my husband internalized throughout his youth with modern data and facts, I have a feeling that while I might make some headway it will ultimately be like telling an Italian not to eat pasta or the Japanese to avoid the sushi. There is only so much I can do to counteract tradition and time; maybe butter is in his blood, but at least now that butter is the light kind.

Laundry Hamper Headache

My husband is elusive. Just when I think I’ve laid the perfect trap, he manages to escape my grasp. No, this is not some sort of game that we like to play at home. If only it were that simple. In fact, my husband is like the Chris Angel or Harry Houdini of dirty laundry. No matter what I do or where I place the hamper, clothes magically end up in unimaginable places. I’ve tried to thwart him, but to no avail. This is not an attempt to complain about him not doing his laundry, because he does his own and quite frequently. Instead, this is about how one man vehemently refuses to be tied down by the simple domestic pleasure of a laundry basket.

It all started with the purchase of his first hamper. I thought it was a nice manly hamper, navy blue, with mesh sides, and a slight college feel. It was collapsible because I didn’t want him to feel as if he had made a big commitment to domesticity. I was having him dip his toe in the water of home economics, which in my experience with my husband was definitely the way to go. The nice wicker hamper could wait. Still, it was a big day for us. No more, I thought, would laundry pile in a corner inside his closet, slowly inching toward the door until entering became like trying to push open a car door in 15 feet of rushing water. Now, he would be free to peruse his closet unhindered by t-shirts and pants tangling with his feet like slimy seaweed. He could stroll through his closet with wild abandon and without the threat of being attacked by a hidden hanger lurking beneath the piles of dirty clothes. It seemed like a brilliant plan. And it was for about 36 hours. Then, reality set it.

I soon discovered that the lack of a clothing containment device wasn’t the actual problem; it was my husband himself. He was like a whirling dervish of clothing removal. As soon as he strode in the door after work, outfits were pealed off, rapidly fluttering to the floor mid-stride. Most of the time, they didn’t make it upstairs anywhere close to his closet. Sometimes socks were found casually relaxing on the stairs and a sweater might be carelessly strewn across a couch. Other times items were dumped somewhere near our in-kitchen laundry closet. “Somewhere near” being the operative term since there might be used gym shorts or shirts inches from our kitchen table. Yum, nothing whetted one’s appetite like the aroma of sweaty man. I did understand his argument that putting the clothes closer to the washer and dryer made more sense than placing them in the bedroom hamper and then bringing it back downstairs. However, this current textile tornado was not going to work for me. There needed to be a middle ground.

So, I devised a new plan. In my organizational, OCD mind, the clothes had to be confined. They could not roam free in our house like hyenas in the wild. Similar to the hyenas, the items seemed to laugh and mock me from the floor. I did not want to be my husband’s mom and pick up after him and I didn’t desire to become the proverbial nagging wife. I simply aimed to develop a solution that would make him independent and prevent me from losing my mind. Each time I came home, I was beginning to feel like Gretel following Hansel through the woods, except my Hansel dropped a path of clothes to mark his route. Granted, those two frantic children ended up with a witch at the end of their trail and my path terminated at a half naked man watching sports center. Neither were good options.

Therefore, after more deliberation it occurred to me to put a hamper inside the washer dryer closet. Brilliant! Now, my husband had somewhere to place his garnished garments which was orderly and logically located. A little pat on the back for me.

However, shortly thereafter, that pat on my back turned into a desire to kick my husband in the shins. This man was incorrigible. In spite of the fact that he now possessed two hampers, more than the average domesticated human being, it wasn’t enough. He refused to be pinned down. Suddenly, clothes were appearing everywhere but in the hampers. They might be abandoned directly in front of the hamper, but not inside. It was similar to how he put the dishes in the sink but not the dishwasher. One was not harder than the other, but it seemed to be a matter of man-principal. As if the laundry hamper goddess would wave her magic wand and save him the extra back breaking step of bending over and placing his own clothes into its mesh depths. Items of dress would lie on the floor in the bathroom, the man-room, yes we had one of those with the big TV and everything, or back on the closet floor outside of the hamper. I was angry and stumped. It seemed like such a little thing for him to do and he knew how much it aggravated me, but he simply rejected the idea of confining his clothes.

I did attempt to leave the offending items where they lay, but after a day or two it disgusted me and I had to deposit the disrobed duds in one of the hampers for my own sanity. I didn’t want my house looking like a pigsty, but I also did not want him to think that he could get away with this. As far as I could tell, nothing short of placing hampers in every possible spot where he might decide to undress would solve this problem and even I had to admit that this wasn’t a viable solution.

This laundry enigma continued to perplex me and then we moved to a new town. Maybe it would be better here, I fooled myself into thinking. Perhaps having a job with more responsibility will lead to an increase in organization on the home front. This was the same man who had a classroom sized white board installed in our office that he wrote on like Russel Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. He used multiple colors to symbolize different events and categories. Even Rainman would be impressed. Clearly, he could be meticulous when necessary.

Alas, I was wrong and now we lived in a townhouse with three levels. More places for him to discard random objects of clothing! I plotted and I schemed and I’ll admit that occasionally I exclaimed about the state of our house as a result of his clothing chaos. Finally, with my all of my options tried and my energy spent, I gave up. I’d had it. Dirty shorts attacked me in my dreams; hampers played a game of Sudoku with my mind. Enough was enough; I had other issues with which to deal.

I had to make a choice between my husband and the laundry. I felt myself tobogganing down that slippery slope of irritating wifedom and realized that in the grand scheme of things, smelly gym socks in the hallway weren’t the ends of the world. My husband is a good man, he works hard, he cares about others, and he treats me well. While his aversion to the laundry hamper continues to befuddle me, I have not entirely relinquished all hope that someday our house will, in fact, be free of boxer shorts in the bathroom.

Everything I Need to Know About Babies-I Didn't Learn From My Husband

In society, I realize that most men are portrayed as little better than children themselves when it comes to child rearing. We’ve all seen the sitcoms where the men don’t know how to hold the baby or are continuously getting peed on in a gag that never seems to get old. While we all laugh at these oafish husbands, let’s face it, it wouldn’t be funny unless some poor wives out there actually experienced these events and could understand exactly where the exasperated TV spouses were coming from. While I have no children of my own yet, it is for good reason. Not because I do not love children, although being an elementary school teacher does push back the old biological clock by a few years, that is for sure. Who wants to spend their entire day with children, most of whom are good, but a few who make you want to poke your eyeball out with a crayon, and then return home to your own restless brood. Nevertheless, this is not the real reason that my husband and I have delayed having kids. No, our reasons are more practical. I recently discovered that if the Department of Children’s Services found out about my husband’s misperceptions and ridiculous assumptions about child rearing they wouldn’t let me out of the hospital with a defenseless baby.

I first learned about my husband’s complete and total lack of child rearing knowledge after a friend of his had a baby. As my husband and this new father were discussing the infant, the conversation turned to bathing. The man explained that they had to cleanse the child almost daily if not more often due to the lack of bodily function control from both ends. My husband’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. This was news to him. “ I thought you only bathed them once a month, quarterly at the least,” he stated with complete and totally innocence. I did not occur to him that a child that small could get that dirty. If they weren’t jumping in mud puddles or sand boxes, what was to wash? You would think with a little brother who is ten years younger than he and a master’s degree in education under his belt, he would have at least a slight awareness of some basic baby protocol. This was clearly not the case, but thanks to my husband’s friend, my beloved, who wanted to father his own lacrosse team, was starting to realize just the beginning of what went into having one child, let alone six. As I would soon learn, bathing was only the beginning of my husband’s dearth of baby logic.

Let me explain that my husband is the one pushing for some offspring. Even with his obviously limited knowledge about children, he is constantly informing me that we are going to have a family of at least six. To which I continuously respond, “ Who will be having your other four babies?” Not a chance that I will be popping out six kids. In addition to the enormous pain, stretch marks, and morning sickness involved in the birthing of an excessive number of babies, I’ve given this family planning some thought. Here’s what I have concluded: in general, life is much simpler with two youngsters for a few, what I believe to be, very logical reasons. First of all, it is far easier to get a table at a restaurant with a small, even number of kids; no one has to pull up an extra chair and sit on the end or in the annoying corner spot. Secondly, going on rides at Disney World also becomes less of a struggle since nobody feels left out or has to ride with the creepy adult reliving his youth in the Mickey Mouse ears. I was hoping that the more my husband learned about kids and realized the brilliance in my logic, the fewer babies he would want to have.

A few years later, one of my good friends had a baby and I went to visit. While there, I was passing along the wisdom that my husband had acquired about washing your baby daily, and she informed me of a piece of sage advice that her father had given to her. In all seriousness this wise man told her, “Whatever you do, don’t leave your kid alone in the car,” as if this was not common sense for most people. We both laughed at his sincerely thinking that he was conveying a well-kept piece of secret fatherly advice.

After I returned home, I told this story to my husband and laughed about how ridiculous it was that her father would even think that he had to tell her this. Haven’t we all watched far too many news programs about the dad who forgot it was his turn to take the kid to daycare and left the sleeping child in the back seat on a hot day? Horrible lessons from which we all can learn. Apparently, my husband had never seen such reports. As I conveyed this tale, which I believed to be a humorous anecdote, my husband, between bites of omelet, replied, “You can leave them in the car for a few minutes if you’re just running in to Best Buy.” Why Best Buy, I don’t know, but I practically choked on my pancake at this. I truly believe that my ovaries went on strike at that exact moment. It was as if they knew that creating a baby with this man would be a very unwise decision.

Now a bit wary of this man being the potential father of my children, I exclaimed, “No, you can’t. You can’t ever leave them unattended. Are you crazy? Don’t you watch the news?” He thought about this for a second and then came up with an alternate plan that seemed to satisfy him, “Well, what if you leave Reggie (our dog) with the baby? I trust Reggie.” This is the same dog that eats garbage and once got stuck trying to jump over a fence.

I tried to explain that Reggie was a dog not a babysitter. I, at the least, required opposable thumbs in a childcare provider.
“What if I’m just running in to get a six pack?” He offered as another possibility. I did some quick math in my head before responding to this as I was seriously considering how many baby producing years I would have left if I got a divorce and found a new husband with an ounce of common sense. Unfortunately, the numbers weren’t in my favor, so I was forced to deal with the human conundrum in front of me.

“I can’t even tell you how many things are wrong with that situation. 1. You’ve left my child alone in a car, which can lead to kidnapping and/or death. 2. You are buying alcohol while in the care of my child. 3. If you get pulled over, how are you doing to explain that to the cops?” This was a bit overwhelming for him. He continued to eat and contemplate all of this new knowledge.

A few minutes later, moving away from the child in the car issue, he inquired as to what age people start dressing their babies. This is ridiculous, I thought. This wasn’t the jungle of Africa or even the Ozarks; this was suburban America. With incredulity in my eyes, I told him that people start dressing their babies at birth. They take them out of the hospital with clothes on. They even make socks and shoes for babies these days. The wonder of modern society is that we can dress our babies from the day they are born. It didn’t look like he believed me at first until I reminded him that whenever we saw our friend’s children, they were all fully dressed.

This was all too much for me. This man was talking about wanting babies yesterday and these were his child rearing ideas; we had a lot of work to do. Immediately following our breakfast, we headed straight to Barnes and Nobles for a book on fatherhood. Forget the first nine months, I could handle that because at least my husband couldn’t leave my fetus unattended or unclothed on a chilly day. We went straight to the books on the first year and what to do after the child is born. We found a pretty good, made for men, manual on babies. I informed my husband that if he wanted kids, he needed to read the text from cover to cover and answer some questions. There would be a quiz.

I have to give him credit because a few months later, as we were flying to a family holiday, there he was, highlighter in hand, reading the daddy book with all the intensity of a college text. Although he would occasionally report on information about baby bodily functions and clean up at a volume too loud for an enclosed airplane, he was clearly excited about this new wisdom. As an added bonus for me, there was an entire section devoted to not leaving your baby to fend for himself or herself. Thankfully, another man could convey to him the importance of this lesson in a way that made sense.

While we still remain childless, every time I notice my husband take the baby book and highlighter into the bathroom for a good half hour of contemplation, I begin to feel a little better about his potential fatherly abilities. Don’t get me wrong, he won’t be left unattended with any babies for at least the first six months and he has passed a series of rigorous tests, in which he will have to prove his baby knowledge. I will also probably keep him away from the baby swing for a while, as we had an unfortunate incident with a friend’s newborn and cranking up the swing to the highest level. Nevertheless I have a feeling that in spite of my husband’s deficit of infant intelligence he will eventually catch up. Right now, I’m just waiting for him to finish the book.