Category Archives: marriage

the lodger

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here and there

Since the start of the school year I have been working long hours and at weekends staying in the city to help out with baby Petit Fille and her reflux problems. Today I said to a colleague that I was a bit of tenant in my own home. I didn’t realise how true my words were untill tonight when I was in our bedroom and closed the door.

Mr FD, roused from his television viewing by the sound of the door closing, called out to Son that he thought someone was trying to break into the house and set about searching for the source of the noise!

Surprise – it is called a wife!

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Happy 36th

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Wedding anniversary number 36 – and no one has murdered anyone, yet!

I will not take my love away,

when praises cease and seasons change.

While the whole world turns the other way,

I will not take my love away.

I will not leave you all alone,

when striving leads you far from home.

And there’s no yield for what you’ve sown,

I will not leave you all alone.

I will give you what you need,

In plenty or in poverty.

Forever, always, look to me,

And I will give you what you need.

~Matt Wertz

anniversary 1

 

thread

love, it’s entirely debatable

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Wenda Parkinson at the RacesThis is how Valentine’s Day  darkens relationships.

It starts in high school, where every year some bright spark thinks selling roses, chocolates and balloons will raise some money for a cause. Great motivation certainly, but the few girls who receive the gifts walk around with their loot all day; which leads us to the girls who don’t receive anything. There are those that buy something for themselves, or BFFs who gift each other, but more go home at the end of the day with nothing and so feeling less. Less and rejected. Who needs that at 14 or 16 or 60 even?

Then there is that one male who goes all out to impress his loved one in your workplace. Roses that cost more than the current national debt get delivered and every other woman then thinks about the non effort of her husband. Not that most of them made any effort for their husbands either, but apparently that is swept aside in the Valentine’s Day stakes.  No, the male is the endangered species.

Minerva, the erstwhile Library assistant, was the actual recipient this year (and last). Her partner of 25 years personally delivered several dozen long stemmed roses today. Every available female followed him to gush and sigh over the flowers. They are beautiful, and have the most delightful perfume.

Female staff were posing with the flowers to send photographs to their husbands with the text message “Thank you, darling. The flowers are gorgeous!” I think that is called stirring the pot…

 I am just now sure of his ulterior motive though, as Minerva has a severe allergy to flowers. Her lips tingle and swell, and she was already sniffling and blowing her nose over some blooms outside earlier. Oh yes, that might have been the rose petals he left in a heart shape on the kitchen bench before he went to work this morning. So knowing this, he also brings the flowers to work, ensuring that she has to drive home with them in her small car after work.

He loves her, he loves her not?

flowers Suzy, Paris 1953 2

[Valentine’s Day in the Flamingo Nest? As I opened the connecting door to the garage this morning I yelled down the hall “Happy Valentine’s Day!” I heard a muffled reply from Mr FD in our bedroom, “Yes, Happy Valentine’s Day!”  I won’t tell him I was calling back to Augie Dog…]

Is it a deal breaker?

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attitude

On my drive home from work I listened to Amanda Vanstone interview Philip Hensher, the author of the book, The Missing Link: The Lost Art of Handwriting. Hensher commented that in today’s world of text messages, tweets and emails that it could be entirely possible for someone to marry a person without ever seeing their handwriting until the moment they signed the marriage certificate.

He pondered, and this is probably more a query for the female readers but guys you can answer too, how would you feel if, having never seen your beloved sign his/her name previously, if once you were married you became aware that he signed his name with a little heart over his letter i, or finished his sentences with a smiley face?

The dilemma, if I can call it a dilemma, occupied me all the way home, and I still not sure of how I would react. Does gender equality extend to handwriting too?

One of life’s bigger questions, isn’t it?

a singer out alone

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laundry Clara Bow 1927

Our washing machine plays a little tune at the end of its spin cycle, heralding that the laundry is ready to be hung out on the clothes line . It plays a few bars of Riders on the Storm, by the Doors, except in jingly mechanical music.

The problem is that Mr FD starts singing “My brain is squirming like a toad”, every time he hears the tune, and continues singing it every time it pops back into his tiny little brain.

Laundry day seem very long these days…

ah the smell of rotting fish in the morning

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Sea Lion Male-With-Female-Sea-Lion

In sickness and in health, love my filth

Sunday morning I said to MR FD that I was going to shower and than make the decision as to whether I needed to go to the emergency department of the hospital. The pain was intense all Saturday night and I felt that I probably needed help.

Mr FD’s response? “Oh good, I was wondering how I was going to clean you up.”

Obviously, the fact that I moved with the aroma of a herd of sea lions after a week long  fish feast had not passed him by either. I always think it is a good rule of thumb that when even you can’t stand your own body odour it is time to take a visit to Mister Shower.  My kingdom for a soap bar and all that.

I noticed however, that despite my pungency Mr FD had continued to sleep on my side of the bed when I told him I would break every bone in his body if he touched my tummy region, or any region of my body;. He had also not offered me a sponge bath, but that may have been a blessing in itself.

I once made the mistake of asking Mr FD to massage my back and he thumped twice square in the middle of my back and considered he had cured me. Apparently, I am ungrateful. Ungrateful for a new and unbridled form of torture? Then call me damn ungrateful.

I stood under the shower for some time, more due to the fact I didn’t have the energy to move, BUT eventually I sensed not only fresh air, but that there had been a slight change in my pain. So, still in bed, but now contemplating celebrating another Christmas.

Now, it is my kingdom for a cup of tea.

what goes around comes around

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Augie had been sleeping under our bed when in the early hours of daylight I heard him stir. I rolled over and told Mr FD he needed to let the dog out for a toilet visit (one of my conditions for agreeing to a dog was that the men of the hosue saw to the toilet patrol). Mr FD rolled out of bed, luckily putting on some clothes for the sake of the neighbours, and stumbled out of the room, Augie in tow.

I heard Mr FD mutter “This is the reason we stopped having kids, dog!” as he stumbled out.

If memory serves correctly, and it does, I believe that I got up to the children most of the time.

Revenge is sweet.

Today’s list of possibilities

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Implode, Murder, Slaughter, Mayhem, Revolt, Mariticide, 

One the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, they list the death of a spouse at 100 stress units and moving at 20 stress points. I think that may not quite be correct, if the death resulted because the spouse was a major source of the stress during the move. I am quite confident the stress levels wouldn’t be so great on either side. Perhaps, I should not discuss further in this public forum in case my words are later used against me.

On a happier note of accomplishment, remember those boxes that have been in our garage, unsorted since our last move, ten years ago? Well, today, I started to sort through them, as I refuse to move them to another house to moulder in the shed.

Guess, what? Six boxes down and I have yet to find anything that isn’t Mr FD’s… There were his college textbooks and hand written class notes. Mr FD graduated in 1976. I rest my case, your honour.

Mr FD is an agronomist (agricultural scientist) and if he doesn’t know that the early bird gets the worm by now, he is never going to know it. In fact, he is busy forgetting things these days. So, we all know where those boxes got binned don’t we?

Then there was his library of fantasy books. Mr FD was a constant reader until he bought his first computer (a Sinclair) in 1985. Since then I have rarely seen Mr FD read for pleasure except when trapped on a plane, where he also leaves the books. He keeps instructing me not to throw out his books, and I’m not… they are being collected by Lifeline tomorrow.

I have a number of boxes on the front porch for collection, my books as well as his. I am covering the fact that his books are included by placing a layer of mine on top. This is what 35 years of marriage reduces a woman to; subterfuge in its many and varied forms.

In future, should he ask for the said book by title, I shall tell him that the books are stored in our shed which is down the slope from our country home. The thought of walking down the slope, searching boxes and then walking back up the slope will dull his enthusiasm by which time we can download an ebook copy. As if he will ever reread them!

I also threw two boxes of floppy disks into the bin. Think he is going to miss them?

[I must remember to keep the shovel handy, I may need to dig a hole when we move to the country...]

There was one in the bed, and no one said roll over, roll over

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Interstate relatives have been visiting as MIL’s 90 th birthday was earlier in the week. Mr FD had volunteered to drive a couple of aged uncles back to their various homes and so they left for the return trip today.

You know what that means don’t you? A QUEEN SIZE BED TO MYSELF! NO SNORING, SLEEP TALKING HUSBAND!

I am so excited.

A bed of my own.

I am so exhausted from days of being nice, and keeping my evilosity in check that I am going to reap the joys and benefits of that empty bed, shortly. Maybe even three nights of bed to myself.

The simple things in life really are the best.

[Try being married for 35 years, then you will know exactly what I mean].