PESSIMASTERY

Though not as frightened as he used to be, Mark is scared of the concept of me as a mother. (Oh calm down, I’m not pregnant and not planning to be any time soon. Mark and I are talkers. You name it, we’ve talked about it.)

My innate pessimism—and yes, it is innate, there’s more than one study that says it's possible—and cultivated cynicism are things he doesn’t want heaped on the next generation.

(As for me, I don’t see the productive value in a ridiculous sunny outlook all the time. Uh, hello disappointment! To live pessimistically is to understand the limitations of faith and to constantly be delighted with the surprise of expectations exceeded. I’m not an unhappy person. Contrarily, I’m a person who finds herself perpetually pleased with a result because I anticipated things going so much worse than they did.)

A few days ago we were chatting with our friend, Mick, about the trials in enrolling his youngest in public preschool. (Oh yes, Dear Reader, that exists—tax dollars dedicated to early school for kids with special needs.) In our discussion Mark asked Mick if you get to choose your kids’ teachers in public school. (Why didn’t he ask me? I know the answer to that! I know the answer to everything!) Mick explained that it’s fraught—you don’t want your kid labeled as the one with the pushy parent, but you also don’t want to land a teaher that’s not going to work for your family. Mick then said, We’ve been really fortunate to have great teachers for our kids. I’m blessed with a sweet wife who can get anything from anyone.

Mark looked over at me, We’re screwed.

I leapt to my own defense. Are you kidding me? Dude, I pay this mortgage with sweetness designed to get me stuff. I can weasel my way into any office based on my sparkling adorability and charm.

Yeah, there’s a dusky layer of sarcasm quivering beneath, but I don’t let that out until the time’s right. So far as anyone new knows, I’m an accommodating, optimistic, peach of a girl with a pixie haircut and elfin face. About six months into my current job I made some offhand very Megan-like comment and my manager said, Whoa! Something from Megan that’s not 100% upbeat! (He’s since met the casual version of me and I’m quite sure he likes it. (Read: I’m still employed.))

So, while managing expectations and enjoying life through the lens of cynicism I’m quite able to utilize expert charm to get things done.

We’re screwed?

As if.

IF LEFT TO HIS OWN DEVICES . . .

I was in my head all day yesterday.

I woke up at 10AM, ate some cereal, grabbed a can of Diet Dr. Pepper, and came back upstairs to the bed where I opened up my computer to write, and I didn't move—aside from the requisite bio breaks—for the next eleven hours. 

And then I was sick of myself. Sick of writing. Sick of being the gross little troll that didn't move all day. Sick of being in my head.

So I heaved my still-pajama-clad self from the bed and went looking for my husband.

Not watching TV. Not in his office. So I went downstairs. And when I reached the landing I knew something was wrong. It was too quiet. And the smell wasn't right. Chemicals. I walked slowly—a little scared—toward the garage. And as I walked closer, the chemical scent grew stronger.

Oh good grief, I thought, Is he sniffing paint 'cause I ignored him all day?

When I opened the door to the garage what I discovered was much worse than husband getting high.

He was painting his car. 

ABOUT A WICKED WEEK AGO

How was Wicked?

Wicked awesome, I say. And possibly made more awesome because The Husband insisted on front-row tickets.

When we sat down, I complained: The front row? This is dumb. I'm not going to be able to see anything. We're too close. I told you this would be too close. It's like at the movies; no one sits in the front row if they can help it.

Er, I was wrong.

At intermission, smirking--for he knew the answer, The Husband asked, Can you see okay?

Not the stuff in the far back.

Well it's in the far back because it's not important. The stuff in the back is for the people in the cheap seats.

It's dumb that people in cheap seats can see better than I can.

Can see the stuff that doesn't matter.

I guess you may have a point there.

The Husband wanted front row seats so that he could see the players sweat. We were close enough to watch flecks of spit spin from Elphaba's tongue when she spewed an especially big belt, but I didn't see anyone sweating. I guess they were just that good.

PERIOD.

I suck at being a girl.

We’re in my car and The Husband asks if I have any lotion. Northern Nevada is whatcha call the high desert, and in respect to dryness, it lives up to its name.

No, of course not, I tell him, I'm not actually a girl.

We’re in my car and The Husband asks if I have any lipstuff. Northern Nevada is whatcha call the high desert, and in respect to dryness, it lives up to its name.

No, of course not, I’m not actually a girl.

We’re in the car and The Husband asks if I have any nail clippers. His need to constantly clip his nails has nothing to do with living in the high desert.

No, of course, not. I’m not actually a girl.

Like I said, I suck at being a girl.

I chew my nails, thus I always have hang nails or bleeding cuticles. My pedicures are few and far between and induced by the guilt of having awful looking toesies. I don’t carry a purse. I’m almost always out of shampoo. I hate going to Ulta. I think shopping is drudgery. And I never buy tampons.

The Husband does it for me.

From the beginning of our days of wedded bliss—and of course every moment has been a one of bells, roses, and stop-yer-heart romance; I can’t help myself if I just love him more and more every single day; when we’re not together my heart drops to my gut and my fingers twitch with ache to touch him—my spouse has been the one to dash off the to store, morning or night, when I discover I’m on my period. For at the beginning of my routine red plague I am always digging through bags, rifling through the car, and tearing apart bathroom cupboards searching for a solitary paper-wrapped plug.

He saves me from starting in on the junk drawer in the kitchen and the racks in the garage when he grabs his keys and makes for the store. He’s never once purchased the wrong kind.

You didn’t see this coming? He’ll ask.

Uh, no. I swear this happened like last week. How was I supposed to know it was coming again so soon?

It wasn’t last week, he says, checking his phone, It was last month.

You calendar me?

There’s an app for it.

Disgusting.

What’s disgusting is that you always find it’s your time of the month and are shocked, like it’s never happened before.

How am I supposed to know? (Remember, I have an IUD; I don’t take the pill.) It’s no kind of regular. Stupid nastiness just sneaks up on me.

I’d just think you could read your body better. You can look in the mirror and know what your weight is to the pound.

Yeah, but that’s the important stuff.

Maybe I'm better at being a girl than I thought.

CEREBRAL DECOMP

It was quite a while ago, and I don’t remember which pal I was visiting, but as I sat at what I recall to be the kitchen counter gabbing, out of the corner of my eye I saw her six-year-old son come in from the yard, turn on the television, palm the remote, and plop down on the couch.

That happened and I think I momentary blacked out, for I don’t remember the rest of the conversation I had been engaged in.

The lil' fella came in, turned on the TV, and his mother didn’t have a word to say about it. Apparently, what he’d done was the norm.

My shock was founded in my childhood, wherein my sisters and I, when we became old enough to understand what a television was, weren’t allowed to flip the TV's switch without mom’s go-ahead. When we did have her permission, it wasn't to watch network television; we watched PBS or, on Friday nights when ma n’ pa went on their weekly date night, we enjoyed the treat of Nick at Night. Cable? What's that? There were stacks of movies in the house and we borrowed even more from the neighbors, but we had to have the parental okay to turn on the TV for those as well. In the Peterson home, sitting on your rump entranced by moving pictures wasn't an acceptable use of time.

And it had never occurred to me that other homes didn’t operate in the same way.

TV makes a frequent appearance as a topic in conversations between me and Mr. Megan (I should really doom him to being called that permanently if he's going to be difficult about not wanting his name used here). Most often it is in the context of how glad we are that we two aren't TV-watching people. We get news from our phones' apps and our liberal fury fix from NPR. We don't feel we're missing out on anything by placing our television and its little buddy, Apple TV, in the garage in front of the treadmill.

Years ago, in one of our exchanges on TV I was stunned to learn that when he was a kid, long before he was Mine, when my husband came home from school it was perfectly fine for him to turn on the TV and park himself for the afternoon.

You didn’t have to ask permission? I sputtered.

Uh, no. You did?

Of course! Did you have to have your homework done.

No.

And you could just watch TV? Like network TV with commercials and stuff?

Sure.

Geez. No wonder I got better grades than you.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have set my eyes on and snagged this fellow if he weren't plenty sharp and awfully intellectual--I think far too highly of myself to buddy up with a dullard--but in the context of performing during public education, mama's oft-repeated adage in response to whining from a denied request to watch television was dead right: TV rots your brain.

SWIMMING AND FISHING

Along with a lemon-yellow belt, two of them came in the mail.

One bathing suit came in my favorite color: barfy green, while the other was an orange just about as bubbly as orange can get.

Though he wasn't invited to be a part of investigating my new merchandise, The Husband plopped down on the closet floor to make himself seem a supportive contributor in my quest for a decent suit. His eagerness to be a help could have been largely influenced by the fact that a girl has to take her clothes off to change from one suit to another. ("Could have been?" Who am I kidding?)

I tried on the first one and made my way to the mirror. Sick, I thought, but the kind of sick I've become accustomed to.

This green. Do you like this green? I inquired.

It's--

I mean, is this the kind of color someone colored like me shouldn't wear, right?

I--

I mean, I'm probably too pale for it right? I mean besides what a disaster this swimsuit is on anyhow.

I like it.

You do? Why?

I like the green.

As I changed from the green to the orange I had the kind of rapt attention wives seek when trying to hold a meaningful conversation.

With the orange one on, I walked tip-toe to the mirror. (Why does putting on a swimsuit make me want to walk tip-toe? I think it's something about that extra few inches from the ground lengthening my leg so as to diminish the apparent size of my thighs on naked display, fooling myself into thinking they're not what I know they are.) Once there, I tightened the tie in the front, mumbling something about little boobs needing extra help staying in swimwear.

Back in the closet, I said, Do you like this one?

Yeah. It looks good.

But it really doesn't. I look fat.

There's no muffin top or anything.

Well of course there is, I said, walking back to the mirror. See, right there!

If you say so, he said with a detectible eye-roll in his voice (neat how after seven years of being his wife I can hear that and even often anticipate it).

I do.

I stood facing him, with my hands on my hips. Well, which one do you like better?

I like that one. He indicated the orange one I was still wearing.

Why? ('Cause that suit was already dead in the water, as I liked the other one better.)

'Cause it's more revealing.

What? No it's not. It's a halter top while the other is strapless. Duh. How's this more revealing?

I can see your nipples.

I groaned. Okay not as my husband who constantly wants to bang me, which one do you like better?

That's the right question, he said, Go with the green one.

BIZARRE WARS

The scene: one a.m. Sparks. Romo home. Master bedroom. Big, tall, puffy bed.

The she: I wish I had Star Wars.

Giant guffaw erupts from the he on the right side of the bed.

The he: Which ones?

The first three.

The new ones.

No the first three. The originals.

With Mark . . .

Hamill.

And Harrison . . .

Ford.

Silence.

And Carrie Fisher. And Sir Alec Guinness. And—

He's a sir?

Think so.

What did he do, invent beer?

Of course he did . . . And Billy Dee Williams.

Who is that?

Lando. Lando Calrissian.

Who is that?

The second movie. The token black guy.

That's a great name for the token black guy.

Oh, and James Earl Jones. He's in it too.

But just his voice.

Yes. Carter calls him Dark Vader.

So there was some guy in the Vader suit making motions and saying lines just so the other actors knew their cues.

And then they V/Oed it.

V/O?

Voice over.

You know industry jargon.

No. I just make things up. It's a talent I have.

Pretending?

No. Lying.

THING IS A THING

One thing (for of course there are many) about having been married a little longer than “newly” is how a couple gets better at communicating—or at least you’d really hope that they do.

Now to be clear, I don’t mean I that my assumptions about what El Husband is thinking at any given time have gotten any more accurate or that I have stopped getting perturbed when I think he might be thinking something that bugs me. We are (I am) working really hard on getting the telepathic communication down, but so far we’re (I’m) pretty crummy at it.

What I’m referring to in getting better at communicating is how El Husband and I use certain words for our unique purposes. Vague, I know. Allow an example for the sake of clarification:

The word “thing.”

El Husband and I use the word thing for everything (oh, that was a delightful little pun of sorts, wasn’t it?).

Me: We can’t have any company that last weekend in May. I have to get ready for my regional POA meeting.
The Husband: No problem. I’ll reschedule. It’ll be a thing.
Me: Absolutely.

In his “it’ll be a thing,” I understood that he knew that my stress level will be high that weekend, so I wouldn’t be any fun for company. And that he knew that if the company came anyhow, I’d probably end up hating them and wish they’d go away and never come back. I knew that he understood that interference during that weekend would have long-lasting ramifications.

The Husband: I’m going to go paint my office.
Me: You have paint?
The Husband: Yup.
Me: Where’d you get it?
The Husband: The store. (Duh.)
Me: So it’s not a thing?
The Husband: Nope.

In my “it’s not a thing” The Husband understood that I was verifying that it wasn’t going to be a hassle for him and that he had all the materials he needed. I woke up the next morning to see that his office is now a lovely limey green.

Thing can mean important event. It can mean a hassle. It can mean mountain. It can mean bike. Thing can mean anything we want it to. And miraculously, we two always understand, without clarification, what thing is being substituted for.

I like to reflect on how nice it is that we have become adept at this abbreviated conversation over the course of our togetherness. Especially nice since El Husband and I are a communication couple; we discuss everything ad nauseam—weekend plans, doctor’s appointments, future plans (those actually get charted on a spreadsheet), what should be in our 72-hour kit, and on and on and on. "Team Romo" isn’t some cutesy moniker; we team up on everything from money matters to color of drapes for the bedroom.

It doesn’t matter to me that if someone were to listen in to a snippet of Romo conversation they are likely to infer that we are unintelligent for the use of thing as opposed to drawn out, detailed dialogue, but I like to think that our way of using words like thing abbreviates conversation in a terribly efficacious manner.

Over the years we’ve become all about efficacy. It’s a thing.

BATTERED WIFE

“I fell down the stairs.”

It was two years ago last month that I arrived at my first two-week training for my new job . . . sporting a black eye.

“I fell down the stairs.”

No one believed me. Those new coworkers buzzed—Oh, that Megan girl, she’s a battered wife.

“I fell down the stairs.”

But they wouldn’t have believed the truth either: Yes. He hit me . . . while he was sleeping. Punched me right in the face. People do strange things in their sleep, and Freud would have had a field day analyzing why my husband punched me from the depths of a REM cycle.

“I fell down the stairs.”

Or

“He hit me, but he was sleeping.”

Oh sure . . . the coworkers would eventually mumble when I told them the truth.

“I hit back.”

But that wasn’t true. I just fretfully batted my hands out in front of me, trying to make him stop (one well-aimed strike didn’t seem to be enough), until it occurred to me that I ought to vacate the bed. So I rolled onto the floor and started to cry.

The Husband's done plenty of loony things in his sleep before, but this was the first time he’d done anything loony directed at me—repressed aggression? Hearing my crying, the Husband, awake this time, dashed over to where I was balled up on the floor.

He rubbed my back: What happened? Are you okay? Bad dream?

You freaking lunatic! You hit me!

Oh! I had a dream about hitting something—

It was my face!

He was tender and sweet and apologetic, and I forgave him, for truly, I know him and I know how he sleeps, and I know that it wasn’t on purpose.

The following morning said attacker saw the blackening area around my left eye and queried: What happened?

Oh, like you don’t know. (It then occurs to me that I could really milk this one.)

What?

You punched me last night—closed fist.

WHAT?

Ha. You were “sleeping.” I’ll bet that’d be a new one for the cops should I choose to notify them of last night’s antics . . . "No, sir, I was sleeping when I hit her." Brilliant.

“I fell down the stairs.”

And now—two years later, if I’d like some candy or another present, I say, Hey, remember when you gave me a black eye?

He feels so bad, but doesn’t remember doing it. So though he always capitulates to my requests cloaked in the battered-wife guise, for all he knows, I made it all up as a manipulative tactic.

But I didn’t.