Archive for the ‘Neurotic Griping’ Category

My most anticipated…and dreaded book reading is coming up. It’s in the town I was born and raised in. It’s one of those small towns where everyone knows everyone and can trace them back to kindergarten. If your childhood was a cumulative litany of athletic or scholarly accomplishments, I suppose that would be a good thing. Mine was not.

To be blunt, I grew up in the wrong part of town with the wrong name. I loved my friends, a few of whom I’m still very close to, but even they will admit that none of us were “popular” or “cool.” As a child and young adult, I was awkward and weird; neither trait being appreciated by my peers. As a grown woman who’s gained at least a little perspective, I can see how I was able to foster an active imagination in that environment, but at the time I was often lonely and depressed. And, even though I much prefer small town living to the burbs, I have no desire to move back to my home town.

I went to one class reunion, the first one. I crashed it after the dinner. I only went because I was told one of the mean girls who used to torment me in school was fat. Soon after arrival, I got very drunk on Alabama slammers (if you’ve ever had them, you know it doesn’t take more than a couple), announced I was no longer a virgin, danced with a guy that I had a crush on in high school but never told, and tracked mud through my parent’s house at 3 in the morning. The reunion committee still calls my mother every five years, looking for me. This last time, I told her I’d rather get a colonoscopy because it would be less painful and a better use of my time.

So now, I have this reading coming up. Part of my brain will always be that forlorn teenage girl who’s terrified of being noticed. The reality, of course, is this will probably not differ much from my other readings. I really don’t expect more than maybe a dozen people. They will most likely be my family and friends who already accept my lunacy, even embrace it on occasion.

I used to practically live in the library as a kid. The old librarian is still there. My mom told her I would be doing the book reading. She doesn’t remember me. They also spelled my name wrong in the local paper, twice. So much for my infamy.

A warning to all men: never leave a stubborn woman alone when she’s got a bug up her ass.

So, if any of you actually read through my tirade, Straight American Men and Relationships, you know that our first attempt to shove our queen-size box spring up the stairwell of our old-new house was shot to hell, as were all of my expectations for the bedroom it was suppose to go into. So we slept in the downstairs bedroom with the weird layout, and no privacy from the rest of the first floor instead. And I was trying to make peace with that. Really, I was.

Well, a couple of days ago, I dug out some gardening and decorating books to do some soul soothing (those are my fun, selfish hobbies), and I saw a bedroom I liked. It had mocha brown walls. It wasn’t the perfect shade of calming grey-blue that I had upstairs, but it was pretty. So I walked the book into the dreaded bedroom, and I tried to picture mocha brown walls.

It didn’t work. The room used to have 70’s brown paneling (the only room in the original house without plastered walls except for the remodeled bathrooms) that had been painted with a thin layer of beige, so you could still see the stripes from the paneling through it. I would be painting brown paneling that was now beige, back to brown again. Ew. I tried to work with the stripes, saying, “Well, I could clear glaze every fourth fake board so it would look kinda cool…” but in my gut, I knew it would be a lot of work that would never make me happy.

“Your bedroom’s upstairs,” the mule in me complained. I turned and looked at the stairs. The opening seemed deceptively large. I reran the first attempt through my head. Hubby had been at the top pulling, and I had been pushing from the bottom. The box spring had wedged under the trim on the second floor railing and the ceiling on the first floor. I wondered, if I angled it the other way….

And that was it. The bug was officially up my ass and I was pissed all over again. I yanked the mattress out of the way, up-righted the box spring in front of the stairs, and began the slow, arduous process of pushing and pulling back up again.

It wasn’t a smooth transition. I had to rip a shelf down when the top got stuck in an alcove in front of the stairs. Then I had to rip a plastic cover off of the bottom of the box spring when it got stuck on a tread, but I was slowly climbing, and I was way further than the first attempt had been.

There was just enough give to get past the first piece of trim under the upstairs railing, but on the second I got stuck. I could pull the box spring out of the way, but I wasn’t strong enough to pull the box spring up at the same time. And it had to come up now; it was beyond a point of no return.

I had no choice. I had to call the husband. “Say,” I chirped pleasantly, “you got ten minutes to come home from the office?” (We live in the same town our business is in, so I knew it wouldn’t be a big deal).

The cheeriness made him immediately suspicious. “Uh, oh, what did you do?”

“It’ll only take ten minutes,” I promised vaguely.

So he came home, surveyed my craziness with his usual stoicism, and then said, “Well, you got it up a lot further than last time. What do you need me to do?”

He pushed from the bottom on my command while I did the pulling, and all those TV dramatizations of birthing babies inevitably filled my head as I was yelling, “Push!…Push!…That’s right!…Almost there!…Just one more!” When my husband did his final grunt and the box spring emerged from the opening, I simply couldn’t help myself. “Congratulations! You just gave birth to a box spring. It’s a queen, so, it’s a Girl!”

Yeah, he thought the joke was lame too. I don’t really care. I have my bedroom back, and the downstairs office is coming together nicely. I crushed the ass bug, for now.

This particular fight started with a room, the bedroom to be exact. It’s not about sex or sleeping positions or anything like that. It’s about the actual room. Let me bore you with over-explanation.

So we just bought a house a couple of months ago (yes it has the original kitchen cabinets, but half of the trim is painted, and there is one room with knotty pine paneling, so there.), and it was decided at that point to have a particular room upstairs be the bedroom. So me being me, I set my heart on it, and in my attempt to be the perfect attentive wife, I included my husband and his opinion on the matter.

This is the beginning of the problem, because, in general, men typically don’t care about their bedroom in terms of aesthetics. Don’t get me wrong, they might bitch a little if you do the whole thing up in some sort of tribute to Gone with the Wind or your obsession with American Girl dolls. I’m guessing, however, that after the initial shock, they are all thinking the same thing. “What do I care? It’s usually dark when I’m in here anyway.” (You’d get a lot more of a rise out of them if you surprised them with a TV or a sex swing in the corner, but spoiling them for no reason is only going to make them suspicious)

The common sense part of me knows this, but as a writer, I’m always running scenes in my head that have expectations that have almost nothing to do with reality. I’m picturing this room with the furniture and the wall color and the rugs and drapes.  As I’m painstakingly painting the walls, I’m imagining waking up in this room, what a peaceful oasis it will be, etc. I think you get it.

So, we go to move the bed into this newly painted and prepared room…and wouldn’t you know it, but our queen size box spring won’t fit up the stairwell, at all. It’s a 70+ year old house. Most people didn’t have Queen size beds back then. We would have to cut holes in the trim or get a different bed, not gonna happen.

Obviously I’m disappointed. The bed is resigned to the only bedroom downstairs, which was suppose to be my home office. I had already formed preconceived notions about that room, and they didn’t include a bed. That room has not been painted the perfect color that I saw in my head. My expectations are dashed.

And so, I expect my husband to be equally put out by this unforeseen chain of events, but, of course he’s not, and of course, I’m upset by the fact that he’s not as upset as I am. This causes a fight, because I interpret his lack of empathy for my disappointment as him not caring about things that are important to me, and in turn him not caring about me in general… Does this sound familiar?

So, my husband saw the writing on the wall and left me to my own stewing. This only made me feel abandoned on top of being misunderstood and generally neglected, so I decided to pop on my MP3 player and take a  long, angry walk.

Very long story short, while on my walk I came up with two proposals to keeping a satisfying relationship with the straight American man. Obviously, this portion of my gripe is geared toward the female members of my viewership, but let’s face it. I probably lost the guys after “sex swing” anyway.

The first is simply a change in attitude. I propose that you have no expectations when it comes to your man. I mean it. Other than what you can really leave him for (infidelity, abuse, and addiction problems), expect nothing. Don’t expect him to hold you when you cry. Don’t expect him to help with household chores, pets, or kids. Don’t expect him to listen to you when you talk about your day. Don’t expect him to initiate sex. Don’t expect him to clean up after himself. Have no expectations, period.

I know it sounds crazy, but here’s why I think it just might work. If you expect nothing from your man, when he does actually do something that is not exclusively for his benefit, he will automatically surpass your expectations. Suddenly, he’s great. He’s awesome. You will be so delighted that he actually thought about someone besides himself, that you will gush with praise and happiness… And just maybe your reaction will be so validating to him, that he will attempt other selfless acts just to repeat the reaction. It may have a cumulative effect.

My other proposal requires a change in attitude and a bit of physical maintenance. Get Hot. Work out like crazy, make yourself up like you’re going out dancing with your girlfriends, always look like you’re trying to make other men, not your man, check you  out.

Again, I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but bear with me. Not only will you feel better and look better, but you will be playing to your man’s baser instincts. In my opinion, straight guys tend to come off as not caring because they are biologically compelled to only care about conquest. The testosterone that makes them so attractive to us is also what makes them not give a rat’s ass if we ask them how we look in those pants. If they can’t kill it, eat it, protect it, fix it, or screw it, they really don’t care to be involved.

So where does looking hot come in? It’s about territory. If they think you have the potential to be taken by a rival, you become the conquest. They have to work to keep you. Suddenly, they’re more attentive, because they feel they have to be. They are protecting territory. You get to feel cherished and appreciated, and they get to feel…well, manly.

Both these proposals seem all well and good in theory. As far as practice though, don’t ask me. I’m still pissed about the bedroom.