Cars and Donkey Kong

The other night I watched this great documentary called "The King of Kong," which was basically all about these total nerdy burgers whose greatest feat in life is reaching world record breaking scores in classic 80's arcade games. Donkey Kong, Q*Bert and so on.

They're total losers, but they make good documentary fodder. If you can get your hands on it, I'd recommend seeing it. I was seriously glued to the screen - there's intrigue, drama, good guys, bad guys, whiffs of conspiracy theories and a whole lot of soda being drunk. There's even some romance if you consider the wife of the creepy guy, who is on screen for about 10 seconds and yet shows more boobs that you would see in your average porn flick.

But I digress. The thing I find compelling about these sorts of documentaries (and I've seen many) is the sheer dedication these people have to a single thing (or a single hobby.) I saw a similar doco a few months back, all about the NY Times crossword puzzle. I also saw one about these kids competing in the US National Spelling Bee, and what all these people have in common is dedication. The girl who currently works for me drives a VW Combi van (or 'bus' as she calls it.) She drives one, spends time with other enthusiasts, goes to dedicated car clubs events and expos, is part of an online forum with other 'bus' drivers, travels around Australia with other Combi owners, and even has a Combi tattoo. Heck, I could probably film a documentary of my own just about her and her friends.

It occurs to me that I have nothing to which I am so totally dedicated (unless you count Slurpees, and even then I don't even own a t-shirt so that does not qualify.) While I enjoy a whole lot of stuff, there is not one single solitary thing to which I can claim nearly as much a dedication as these people have. One one level, I admire them and on the other level, I think they are totally nuts, but then maybe that's just because I have not yet found my thing to obsess about so I'm secretly jealous.

Do you have a 'thing' and if so, what is it? (Although for some of you I can make a pretty good guess...)

Big Bullies

I've recently come to realise that the world is full of bullies, and that I am one of the nice guys of the world. My friends often joke about what a soft touch I am, how much of a rule follower I am, and how much I just always like to believe that people's intentions are pure and that being nice is most people's first reaction to things. I think The Neighbour's Wife said it best recently... I told her that I have the same philosophy as Anne Frank, who said, "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart." To which TNW said, "Yeah, and look where that philosophy got HER."

All together now: ZING! She totally got me between the eyes on that one.

In any case there have been THREE massive bullies in my life lately, and I'm none too happy about any of them. At the moment all 3 are triumphing over me, who is over here trying to do the right thing, the nice thing, the moral thing and trying to believe that nice guys DON'T always finish last.

Bully #1 is the owner of the new property I want for the biz. He seems to think negotiation is where one party begs and one ignores.

Bully #2 is my current landlord, who seems to think a normal rent renewal process is a synonym for "give you no notice on a massive rent hike and then hope you never check the legality of what I'm doing, and threaten to evict you as well just for good measure."

Bully #3 is the principal of the kids school (and did I mention, as of 6 weeks from now, it's their former school?) who tried to tell me that moving my DS to another school is "no guarantee he'll make any friends" and that "he's totally fine now" and then tried to threaten me with the fact that as I did not tell her they were going when I was supposed to (last term), I'm liable for all of Term 1 fees. Kinda hard to tell someone something when you have no idea that something is happening or is even on the cards, but there you go.

The sad thing is, I'm still persisting in believing that ALL of these bullies will do the right thing, that all of them will see the error of their ways and all of them will realise that I am not going to be pushed around all that easily. It might be true that the outside of me is made of sugar, and the first few layers (okay, many layers) are decidedly marshmallow-esque, but at the very heart of it is one hell of a bitch who does NOT like being told what to do.

You have been warned.

Frighteningly Like Real Life

....only I don't sound robotic (although often the other person in the conversation does!)

Freedom and Independence

To give my kids a taste of freedom and independence, I'm going to want to:

• Discuss their choices in tattoos and piercings but not actually go with them to the place to have it done (too embarrass for both of us),
• Allow them to go to Queensland on Schoolies Week with nothing but a suitcase full of towels, bathing suits and money,
• Say "yes" to every request for money,
• Say "yes" to every request to borrow the car,
• Say "yes" to every request for concert tickets, or every request to attend a party even when I know that party might have kids/stuff I don't like there,
• Give them a car as soon as they earn their licence,
• Not tell them that the guy/girl they are dating are no-good pieces of shit who will just break their hearts,
• Bite my tongue when I see them eating too many carbs/sugars/high fat food/whatever is clearly not at all good for them,
• Allow them to make their own choices about going to university (or not), what to study (or not),
• Allow them to wear whatever they like even when a street walker's clothes would be nun-like in comparison,
  
• Let them control all their own money, starting from now,
• Never teach them how to read maps of the non-GPS kind,
• Leave them on their own to figure out most things even when I've already been there and done that and know the right answer,
• Tell them to give up when it all gets too difficult, and all them t0 make their own choice to try again (and this applies to everything from bike riding to time management to making babies to making souffles),
• Come home from school and neither DH nor I will be waiting for them, but get home and expect that they've already done their homework/showers/dinner cooking,
• Look out for one another but stand on their own two feet,

...but I can't say that I'll ever do ANY of those things, even if I will want to. The best I can hope for is to fulfil that old cliché of giving them both roots and wings. The rest will just have to work itself out.

Did I do that?

I promise this is not me trying to be all shy and "oh you shouldn't have"...but when it comes right down to it, I'm not entirely convinced I am any good at this whole cake thing. Or this whole blogging thing, but that's not today's topic.

Today's topic is all about how I secretly think (or not so secretly, hello there Internet) that I suck at cake decorating. Not suck as in "feature on cake wrecks" suck, but suck in a"never going to be as totally freakishly awesome as Pink Cake Box, Confetti Cakes or Cake Lava," sort of way (go Google any one of those and prepare to have your eyes fall out of your head from sheer awesomeness). I attribute this suckage to two things. One, I am mostly self-taught when it comes to decorating, and so there are a lot of things I feel I don't know (although I do endeavour to engage in continuing education). Two, I am lazy as all get out, plus a dash of impatient thrown in for good measure. So while I *could* spend an entire day making sure each corner is *just so*, I tend to make it 'pretty darn good' and then get on with the next task. In part that's just who I am, and in part it's where I've deliberately placed myself in the market - many steps above home decorator and yet some steps below the "sell a kidney to afford it" decorator.

Many, many times a week I will finish a cake and see only the flaws. I might see it as "the client will be really happy with this" but I rarely see it and think I am totally happy with it. I am mostly left thinking I could have done more, done better, worked harder, been more particular, fixed that mistake, started over, done it a different way. I am my most demanding client, and this client is pretty much never satisfied (damn. Should've told her we're fully booked for all weekends into eternity.) Some of this relates back to my emotional self, because being far too attached emotionally to just about everything means it's very hard to be objective about things (even cake.) I look at the blogs of those companies I admire and think, "In my wildest dreams I could never produce something as perfect as that," or I think, "I'll never find a client willing to order something like that," or one of a thousand other negative thoughts which are doing nobody any good.

I just feel as though I lack the skills and the artistic vision to produce anything nearly as wonderful as the creations I see in magazines and books and online. Sometimes I even feel like I am just a big ol' faker - I do it well enough to keep the punters happy but not well enough to actually stand up amongst my peers.

This week, though... I had a moment of happiness and feeling like I am worth something as a decorator. Actually a couple of them, which are rare as hen's teeth and therefore very valuable to me. My employee's decorating skills are coming along pretty well - especially considering it's this lazy, impatient decorator doing the teaching - and this week she has had to replicate a number of my cakes. By replicate I just mean a client ordered something which the business has done before, so she had a photo to work from. She did the first one, and I thought it was pretty cute, and I said to her, "Hey, that's a really cute cake - fun colours and design!" ...and then a couple of minutes later I thought,"Wait a sec! That's a cake *I* designed!". Later in the week the same thing happened a few more times - with a couple more cakes and then some fondant sea creature cupcakes. Creations which came out of my head and made it into real life without the help, influence, or inspiration from anyone else. Creations which I looked at and thought they were fun, interesting, different, colourful and entirely happy-making for both me and the client.

Hmmm. Could it be I am finally beginning to appreciate myself, finally valuing my skills?

Sadly, I don't think so...because after each of those, my next immediate thought was, "Yeah, total fluke, that."

*sigh* I think I've got a ways to go on more than just the decorating front.

The 25 Year Old Me

If I could go back ten years to my 25 year old self, I would have so much to tell her! Firstly I should point out that until 5 weeks from now, it's really my 24 year old self - but my 24 year old self was going through IVF, still fairly newly-ish married, and pretty much all over the place. My 25 year old self was pregnant with triplets, still newly-ish married, and basically felt as though just about everything was falling into place. I'm going to talk to her because I think she is just that little bit more sure of her self than she was the year previous.

Dearest 25 year old self,

As I write this, you are now (almost) 35, and these things I know for certain:

1) Nothing is a certainty. You will spend a lot of time waiting for things to become easier, simpler, more stable so that you can make more considered, slower, more definite decisions. That day will not come, and you need to stop waiting for it. Take action even when the future is uncertain because the future will always be uncertain.

2) You will survive your children's babyhood, toddler-hood, and pre-teen years even when you have a day when it feels like you can't possibly survive it all. The teen years, well, that remains to be seen. However, you've made it thus far with a minimum of fuck ups, so chances are looking good.

3) Take your own advice. When people ask for your parenting advice, you always say: Listen to EVERYTHING and then pick and choose the things which you think are relevant, worthy, and might actually work. Totally ignore the rest of it but be polite about it. It's high time you lived by the words you dole out.

4) You will re-gain all the weight you will lose when the kids are toddlers, and then some. It will be HELL ON EARTH to think of how far you came, only to bugger it up again. Might I suggest you try and stop that freight train before it goes right past the station? Start as you mean to go on and then keep on going.

5) You won't be stuck in a dead end admin job forever. I promise. What you will move to, though, will be much, much more demanding (physically, emotionally, financially) and yet much, much more rewarding. I won't tell you what it is, though, because the surprise of achieving it was one of the best moments of your life.

6) You will lose friends, some of whom you will be very sorry to lose and others which you will be glad to see the back of.

7) You will gain many, many new friends - a vast majority of which you will never meet in real life, but that won't seem as strange as it does now.

8) You will live to 35 and well beyond, even though when you were 5,10,15,20, 25 you could not even imagine yourself being 30. 30 isn't nearly as old as you think it is - but nor is it the time at which your adult life begins. You're almost 35 and yet you still adore Slurpees and tickles and peanut butter sandwiches. I don't think you'll ever fully grow up, and that's what I love about us.

9) There will be times in your life when you think, "I can't take this anymore!" and "I've had enough!" and "Why ME?" and you will cry, and cry, and cry rivers and rivers of tears. All I can say is - remember that you are blessed, and remember that losing your shit altogether occasionally is a very human thing to do. You really DON'T have to cope well all the time.

And lastly,

10) Call your Dad more often. More than that - in that first week of August of 2009, when he tells you he will call you on Wednesday afternoon and then forgets to call, YOU SHOULD CALL HIM. Because while I don't know what he or you might have said, I know you will regret missing that call for the rest of your life.

We Have All Met Her

I realise this is not going to be the witty post you are all waiting for...seriously? Mother in laws and gay men? You amaze me. In any case I recently saw this and adored every robotic-sounding moment of it, because we've ALL met one of these women, haven't we??

Only 10 Days Left

Dear most patient readers of mine,

There are 10 days left of NaBloPoMo, and frankly, I'm running out of ideas here! Mostly stuff just kind of rolls off the top of my head - but being as grumpy as I am at the moment, good blogging ideas are a bit thin on the ground at the moment. It will make me even more grumpy if I have to give up NaBloPoMo for reasons of lack of interesting content (I mean, I could just write, "This space intentionally left blank." for 10 days, but that's not doing anybody any favours, is it?)

So. There are 10 days left, excluding this non-post I only need to come up with 9 ideas for topics. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write me a blogging prompt. Not a topic per se, but a one line (or one phase) string which I can use as the start of a blog topic.

The ones which will not be used:

If I was on a desert island...
If I could invite anyone to dinner...
My 3 favourite books are...

Or anything else boring and hackneyed. To make this more challenging (for me), I'll even accept a list of words which you want to see appear in a blog post. So, go ahead and write a list (5-10 words or less) of words which you think I won't be able to make fit together in the context of a blog post. The challenge for me is to make them not only fit, but make sense.

Go on, help a girl out here! Only 10 days to go and no way will I give up now.

Privacy

When I started this blog, I thought I had a need for an audience - because let's face it, I'm not sure I could keep writing if nobody ever knew I was doing it. Obviously, I'm an attention whore. So when I started, I emailed the address to a bunch of people and said, "hey! check out what I'm doing with my spare time!" Not surprisingly, this method of advertising worked and so I kept on writing, and writing, and writing.

These days, I've got an audience which is not limited to close friends or family members - the blogosphere has filled my readership with all sorts of fabulous and interesting people. Some of them I've had the good pleasure of actually meeting in real life, and some I hope to meet someday soon (Danielle, I'm looking at you.) Of late, though, I have begun to question if the open door policy was such a good one.

Admittedly, my blog being public serves many good purposes. It keeps my far-away family in touch with my daily goings on, it allows me to express in print things I have difficulty saying out loud, and in general it provides me with a good vehicle for voicing all sorts of things which are on my mind. On the other hand, it has upset and offended people (even though there is a very clear disclaimer.) Sometimes I get friends calling and saying, "I can't believe you blogged about that before you even told me!" Or even my Mum will call and say, "Your blog sounds upset. What's wrong? Why didn't you call me?" Blogging in that respect has definitely opened me up to a hot mess of drama and emotions - and sometimes I've then totally caved in when the person has called me on it, and other times I've stood my ground.

I've found myself pondering on this notion of privacy - of when being a public writer outweighs (or does not outweigh) the potential downsides of being a public writer. I do actually have a second blog, which is an entirely private one - not visible to anyone at all. I managed 6 posts before I stopped altogether (and the last one was well over a year ago.) So for me, the audience is motivation to keep on going, and the reason why I am so honest here. Somehow telling it like it is to people who willingly listen is the whole crux of why I do what I do.

These days, though, I'm wondering how wise that is. My thoughts on this actually stem from another blog I read, in which the author's work mates have used the information in her blog in a less-than-savoury way. She, too, is contemplating a private blog, but wonders if that means that the help she provides to all her lurkers and non-workmate readers will somehow be lost altogether. I've been lucky in that nothing like this has ever happened to me... (maybe that's because I have no actual workmates? Ahh, the benefit of working in a micro business!)

In any case, it has me thinking. Do you have a private blog, or a public ones? What are your reasons for keeping one or the other?

Hope, And The Loss Thereof

I make no secret about the fact that DH and I are in the mega financial hole, and that he's been out of work since July.

Because clearly, I'm all about over-sharing on my blog.

In the past few months this situation has been really wearing me down. I'm doing my best to hang in there, but the reality of it is I can feel hope slowly slipping away. Funnily enough I recently re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (in anticipation of the movie) and the description of the Dementor's Kiss is kind of what I feel like these days. It's as though I can just feel all the happy, good, hopeful, 'we'll get through this' positive stuff ebbing away and leaving me with a very dark heart.

This isn't to say that I'm not still cheerful (and yesterday's post summed that up nicely, I think. ) It doesn't mean I am spending every minute sitting in a corner feeling sorry for myself. It's more that I am at the point where I can't really see a positive outcome for us right now, and frankly I'm damn sick of pretending that I CAN see one. In short, it would seem that hope has left the building.

A friend of mine living in a similar situation told me that this feeling is normal...that eventually I'll just get past this bleak moment and hope will float right back in again. She's someone who has been living with this for 3 YEARS so I'm sure she knows what she's talking about, but... I'm not sure I can really make it that long. At what point along this crappy road do you make the big decisions? To sell the house, to ask for help, to get a third job, to put the kids at the local school and stop all their activities? At what point do you give in to the reality of the situation? Or do you just hope it will all be okay and fix up the mess (eg debt) later? We have taken a lot of action to allow us to keep surviving, but as I stare at that woeful bank balance, I know it's not nearly enough. So what now? Is it time to take the next step, even if that next step would mean choosing to give up my home?

Without hope, how does one even make decisions in the first place? It seems the energy to do so has also left me.

emzee is not in a good - or even cheerful - place right now.

Bugger. I hate it when that happens.

Cheerful

Last night I was feeling exceptionally grumpy. The sort of grumpy which settles in at the pit of your stomach and nags at your psyche, the sort of grumpy which makes you want to bury your head right into a bag of peanut M n' M's. I ended up sorting this grumpy out by spending some time with girlfriends of mine - just eating chocolate (Israeli chocolate embedded with pop rocks. WTF?) - and sitting around having a chat.

In the course of the chat (which was really me just having a pity party), the Neighbour's Wife mentioned something about a cheerful person. I happen to think *I* am a cheerful person..but apparently she didn't agree. To be fair she said NONE of us in the room were cheerful people...which made me wonder what exactly a cheerful person is.

Is it someone who is always sunny and happy, even in a crisis? Is it someone who pretends to be sunny and happy? It is someone who is always smiling? Someone who pretends like nothing is wrong even when the world is falling down around their ears? Someone who always has a good thing to say? Someone who never complains? Someone who never lets life just get them down?
Have you ever heard that expression - if you are smiling while all around you is chaos, perhaps you have not fully understood the seriousness of the situation? (Or you are choosing to ignore it) Is THAT a cheerful person?

I think I've decided that on the whole, I'm a cheerful person. Most of the time, anyway, my outlook is pretty sunny and I like to believe that better things will come, that bad situations are not forever, and that people are basically honest and good. I think TNW believes that cheerful people are of the 'never complain' variety...of the Dory school of "just keep smiling, just keep smiling," lifestyle. Urgh. How bloody boring to be so cheerful all the time! I think I prefer my definition, AND I prefer that my friends know they can count on me for a laugh and a smile, but occasionally I acknowledge that life goes pear shaped sometimes. Seems all the more normal somehow.

Humans Are Dumb

Have you ever noticed that sometimes you can anticipate a negative outcome to something, and yet you do it anyway? It's like you just can't help yourself - even when you're pretty sure nothing good will come of your actions, you still go ahead on that course of action.

This recently happened to me with a 3 tiered cake... but the end result was a really positive one.

I designed a 3 tier cake which was stupidly ambitious. I knew just from my drawing that keeping it supported and upright would be a challenge, but I kept going with it anyway. I enlisted the help of DH, who looked at it and thought it would be difficult, but not impossible. Hmmm. DH is an engineer and can generally be relied upon for these sorts of things, so if he doubted it, well, I should have stopped right then and there. I kept going with it anyway. I don't have a picture o f it to show you(which sucks, what was I thinking?? Or not thinking, as it happens.) Have you ever seen one of those barbie doll cakes where the dress is cake? It's kinda like a fat cone shape? So I baked three of those, and the idea was to tier them UPSIDE DOWN. So the skinney part of the cone is at the bottom, and the fat part of the cone is at the top. Similar in shape to a flower pot. So like three cones on top of one another in a straight line, held together by a central pillar

Are you still with me? I know, even you can tell this is a bad idea, can't you?

The cakes got baked, and iced, and stacked with SHED LOADS of internal structural support. Like about 50 million skewers and boards and stuff. I knew this was a bad idea but I just was compelled to keep going. I knew it at the drawing stage, at the 'buy some dowelling and screw it to the cake board" stage, at the baking stage, the icing stage, and the final decorating stage. At EVERY STEP OF THE WAY I knew this was a bad idea and yet I kept going, and going, and going.

I finished the cake and I hated it. It just looked like crap. The idea was sound but the execution was miserable. I was under pressure, though, and had already spent many hours on it so I didn't want to start again. When I left work on Friday night, it had developed a slight lean to it, a la Pisa. I shored it up with some strategically placed icing and left for the night. That damn cake stayed in my brain all Friday night - I even told my in laws that I was 90% sure Pisa was going to fall right over. DH happened to return to my kitchen late Friday night and came back to report that it was standing upright, but "at a rakish angle."

Hmmm. Not generally the sort of thing you want a cake to be doing.

Saturday morning I went to check on it and the entire thing had EXPLODED. The top tier fell off totally, smashing into the second tier, and while the bottom tier was intact, it was at somewhat more than a rakish angle. The middle tier was sort of intact on one side, and smashed to bits on the other (it got in the way when the top tier tried to make an escape). Literally this cake looked like someone had punched right through the middle of it. The bench was littered with cake and icing. I am SO sorry I didn't take a photo of it...but I think the desire to just scoop the whole lot into the bin was far too strong.

On Saturdays I sub-let my work kitchen, so I spent about an hour or so collecting up EVERY SINGLE PIECE of cake decorating equipment I thought I might need (plus icing, and skewers, and measured out cake recipe ingredients) so I could take it all home with me since my work kitchen was unavailable. Suffice to say all that stuff filled up the entire boot of my car AND the back seat.

I cancelled all my Saturday plans, had a friend take my girls for the day (thank god for good friends) and set to work. AGAIN.

I spent all day Saturday and a large part of Saturday night re-baking it, re-filling it, re-icing it, and re-decorating it.

The crazy thing is that I'm actually not upset about this at all. I didn't even shed a tear (although I did shed a tier. Ba-doom-boom-boom. Okay, better joke, right?) I seriously was not even annoyed for one single solitary second about this cake disaster - and it should be said, it's THE FIRST TIME this has ever happened to me. Normally this would send me over the emotional edge. Hundreds of cakes and this is the first time one of them was an epic fail, and I could care less. Mostly because a) I expected this would happen and it was only my idiocy which made me continue working on a doomed cake design, b) the damn thing was seriously ugly and I knew in my heart of baker hearts it should have been re-done anyway.

But it still makes me wonder what it is about the human psyche which makes us continue doing things which we know can only end badly. It's like we are compelled to continue along the path once we've begun heading that way. Has this ever happened to you?

Away With The Fairies

In recent months, one of my worst personality traits seems to be getting worse. Yes, this over-achiever, Capricornian control freak spends most of her time away with the fairies. This is of course very odd, since generally I consider myself very well organised, ordered, on top of things, in control and very 'on the ball' about life in general. I have more than one diary, I always answer phone calls, I (try to) answer emails, I pay my bills on time and I have no problem making appointments and keeping them. I'm even usually on time to places and most of my
'to do' lists get completed. Therefore, I consider myself a very put together sort of person. Here's the thing, though... I'm often pretty clueless. What this means in my everyday life is - I never remember anyone's name, can meet someone ten times and forget each time that I've met them, I can totally not realise when something really obvious happens, and often when people talk I am hearing them but not listening at all. I literally wander around with my head in the clouds (not hard when you're as tall as I am. Ba-doom-boom-boom. Okay, not my best joke.)

It's not at all unusual for me to have a conversation with a friend and they'll say, "You know, remember, Debbie, you've met her before?" and I'll shake my head because I haven't the foggiest clue who Debbie is (never mind that I saw her this morning.) Or a friend will ring me about something and I will listen intently but then give up and say, "Can you please send me an email or a text about that? Because I'm hearing you, but I'm not really listening and I will forget what you said the minute I hang up." (Which I will.) It's like I just can't process all the information in my head. Poor DH will often talk to me (and talk, and talk... it's one of his more amusing habits), and halfway through I'll look at him and realise I have not heard a single word he said. So sheepishly I say, "Wait, can you start again? Because I totally wasn't listening." So he'll sigh and then launch into the story again and I will have to actively force myself to pay attention and be in the moment.

I have no idea why this is. Far as I know I don't smoke, drink, suck on bongs or do anything else which might have killed a whole swag of brain cells along the way. I'm pretty sure the issue is just that I am often thinking ahead to the next hour, day, week, month...and so it's quite hard for me to stay focussed on the here and now. Plus I tend to make fairly snap judgements about whether I think people, or stories, or experiences are of any value to me - and so I just sort of stop listening or paying attention when I decide something is not worth my time (I've been known to be wrong about that, but there you go.)

This whole airy-fairy habit of mine is something I sort of thought was my own private craziness. I really thought that on the outside I seemed like a totally put together kind of person. Until of course I spoke to The Neighbour's Wife (who can always be counted on for honesty, I adore that about her) and I jokingly said, "Yeah, you know me, totally clueless and away with the fairies," and she said, "Yes, totally! Sometimes I wonder how you deal with all those clients!"

Damn. Outed again as imperfect.

Wuv, Twoo Wuv

Today I told DH that I was running out of blog topics, and I asked him for a suggestion or two on what I should blog about. I wondered, did he have any thing he would like to hear my opinion on? (A ridiculous question, because I am nothing if not vocal about my opinions.) He stood there with a confused expression on his face - sort of along the lines of, "Is this the same type of question as 'do I look fat in this?' because then we know I won't win no matter what I say."

Anyway he was useless on the blog topics front...and this brings me to today's topic, marriage.

I've mentioned several times before that I had no intention of getting married. But then here I am and almost 14 years later, we seem to be making a pretty good effort at it. Among my friends I only know one divorced couple, so it would seem that for the moment we are all bucking the 45% divorce rate trend. Not that you asked, but here are the reasons why I think my marriage works so well:

1. We can talk about things like farts and the interesting-shaped shits we take, and pop one another's pimples. Sounds ridiculous, I know...but DH and I are so comfortable together, there is almost no topic which is off limits (other than money, but then that's a whole 'nother story.) I don't have any need to pretend I am something I am not and that in itself is a gift. With DH I can just be me - smelly farts and all.

2. He still makes me laugh. If all the fun had gone out of it, I'd have hit the road a long time ago.

3. We have the same core values and we worked that out BEFORE we got married. We talked about the big stuff - religion, kids, family, etc - before we got married. I just don't understand couples who get married without talking about things like if they want to have kids or not.

4. He loves me unconditionally, but isn't shy to say when he thinks I could be doing a better job of something. So by this I mean, he loves my ass if it's fat or thin, but if I point blank ask, "Do you think this looks good on me?" he will answer, "I think it could be more flattering than it currently is." He won't seek to hurt or offend (and will often go to great lengths not to), but he WILL tell the truth even when he knows it's not what I want to hear. (And it's not unheard of for me to say, "Geez! Can't you just say, 'looks great, honey!" and he says, "No, because you know I would be lying.")

5. I try to not let there be hidden messages. He does not have ESP. So - if I'm upset about something, and I'm not getting the feedback or care or whatever it is I want, I literally say, "I need you to just hug me and buy me a Slurpee, I don't want to actually discuss this," or I might say, "I need you to talk more about this and help me find a solution." Let's face it, boys can be bloody thick sometimes, and you've got to give them a roadmap. They can't give you what you want if you don't make it clear that you want it in the first place.

6. We talk and touch A LOT. I've already discussed being married to velcro man, but it has done a lot for our marriage and our general happiness levels. I know without fail that every time I come home, he will be there with a huge hug for me. I also know that if I come home and say, "I am Madame Grumpy Pants right now and if you dare hug me, I will shoot your balls off," he respects it. (Although he's not happy about it, Velcro Man needs his fix and I usually relent.) We also talk on the phone several times a day - and when either of us are at jobs or meetings where talking is not possible, we still try to text just to say hi. Yes, we're mushy like that (or like my employee says, "shmoopy like that.")

7. We try to remember that we were a couple before we had kids. So we sometimes go out for a meal together, or play hooky from work and enjoy an afternoon delight, or have conversations which do not revolve around the small people in our lives. I love and adore my children, but they are not the centre of the universe. DH and I had a lot in common well before the kids came on the scene, and it helps if we remember that more often than not. It's far too easy to get caught up in the kids and forget about the grown-ups.

8. We have interests outside one another and outside of our household and we make time for those things. Seems a bit odd to say that one of my best marriage experiences is spending time outside of it, but there you go. Just like we were a couple before we had kids, we were individuals before we had each other. Losing yourself totally in your partnership isn't doing either of you an favours.

9. We try to resolve the little things before they transform into big things. Note I said we TRY. We don't always succeed and there are times when one or another of us is mightily pissed off (usually me.) We both just acknowledge that sometimes, shit happens. Neither of us have any expectation that all of our married life will be wine and roses - and how terribly boring if it was!

and lastly,

10. Plain and simple, we like one another. If DH and I were not married (for whatever cosmic reason), I'd still adore him for who he is. I truly just like the person he is, and I consider him my best friend. The rest of it is just a bonus.

I should say (before you all think I've gone Little Miss Marriage Sunshine on you) that there are times when I want to kick him from here to kingdom come because he is seriously pissing me off. And there are times when he finds me very frustrating (god knows why, I'm totally perfect. Duh.) But because of all of the above points (and some other ones, too), we make it work....and even when he doesn't know what blog topic to give me, he gives me one anyway.

Thanks babe. Love ya.