BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Part 10 of 12

Continued from: Mahwage: Fool For Your Stockings…

Grabby little minx, isn’t she? I mean would you look at that? She’s only had the collar around my neck and the ring around my… Uhm…  Uh… Finger, yeah, finger… That’s what I was going to say… So, anyway, yeah…  Ahem… Well… Back to what I was supposed to be saying, I guess…

The marriage had only been official for about two hours when the above picture was taken, and my bride was already just grabbing things right out of my hands like Kwai Chang Caine snatching pebbles from a blind Shaolin monk. (If you can believe the old TV show that task is much harder than it sounds…)

Okay, I have to be honest… I have absolutely no clue what E K is so intent on taking away from me in this photo. Well, that statement isn’t entirely accurate, because I do have at least a faint clue, but I cannot in any way be absolutely positive what it is in this particular picture. The only thing I can assure you is that it’s not candy. She only takes that away from babies. Just kidding… Man, y’all are way too serious… loosen up… please…

Let’s put it this way, since people were well aware of our  financial situation – not much cash in the bank, just bought a house,  financed our own wedding, very little furniture, yadda yadda – rather than give us relatively useless crap like Terra Cotta Taco Racks or some such as wedding presents, many of them simply gave us cash. So, I suspect money is most likely what my bride is reaching for… I probably had a couple of twenties in my hand that I had just pulled out of a card or something of that ilk. But,  you know, I can’t really blame her… I mean, after all, she knew  all too well my history with getting myself into debt, so letting me have any manner of control over the cash was cause for immediate alarm. And besides, she’s a Taurus. She absolutely loves money…

Wait… You know what? Something just dawned on me… I think maybe we did get a Terra Cotta Taco Rack… Oh hell, there it is! Right there in the middle of the picture… that yellowish box with the bow on the corner… And, it even looked exactly like the one in this other picture here on the left… (Yeah, I actually had to go out and steal the picture off the web since we no longer have our Taco Rack, therefore the closeup is not of the actual gift, although it is exactly the same kind we received.)

Yep… It’s true, we did in fact receive a Terra Cotta Taco Rack, and it came from some dear friends, Dave and Deb. The verbal caveat they added when we unwrapped the box was that it was more or less a moral imperative that a newly married couple receive at least 1 somewhat useless gift as a wedding present. Well, D and D, we actually did get some use out of it – as well as plenty of amusement given your “explanation”, so here’s another “thank you” all these years later…

But, I suppose I should be staying on topic, correct? Well, you know me better than that by now… I’m afflicted with Blog A D D, and I just can’t help it…

Unless I missed my guess, it most likely hasn’t escaped your notice that our wedding was held on Halloween. I mean after all, not only have I repeatedly tossed the date out there, I even pointed out that it was on Halloween… And, I’ve been going on and on about how it was held in our living room… In our new house…on a residential street… Need I continue scattering breadcrumbs?

I seriously doubt I do, because y’all were already on top of this one. E K and I, however… well… not so much.

Now, in our defense we were twenty-somethings without kids. The duplex where we lived prior to buying this house was on an extremely busy thoroughfare and there weren’t really a lot of kids around… On top of that, let’s go back to the twenty-somethings thing… What do folks in their early twenties do on Halloween? Stay home and give out candy? Well, unless they have kids of their own, probably not. More than likely they are misspending their young adult youth at a party in not-fit-for-all- ages costumes, with dip, party food, and ungodly amounts of alcohol. Know what I mean?

Yeah… We completely and totally forgot about the fact that kids could possibly come to the door and scream at us until we produced candy… candy that we had neglected to purchase for the occasion.

I’m sure you see where I am going with this…

About 5 minutes into the ceremony a handful of tiny voices bellowed outside the front door, “Twik o Tweep!”.

Everything came to a screeching halt as we all looked around in sudden realization. My father looked at me and said, “Where’s the candy?”

To which I replied, “We forgot.”

“You forgot?”

“Yeah, dad… We’ve been a bit preoccupied.”

Saving the day, my father stepped over to the door, swung it open, then dug into his pocket and started handing out change to the kids. I believe we only had one other interruption during the ceremony itself, but by the time the reception was rolling, kids were knocking on the door left and right…

Eventually, my dad ran out of change and so did I. We ended up offering wedding cake, ham, and veal parmigiana to the costumed beggars after that – only with their parent’s permission, of course… As I recall, we had 1 taker for a piece of cake. However, I think what I ended up finding to be the most amusing out of all of this were the numerous compliments we received. Not because we looked damn sharp, which we did… Especially E K… (Hey, I’ve been good for almost an entire blog entry now)… No, it wasn’t just our costumes… it seems we were garnering compliments on our Halloween decorations and spirit for the occasion. Apparently, several of the folks who were escorting their kids around the neighborhood thought that we were simply in costume as Bride and Groom, and that the whole reception itself was an elaborate, wedding-themed Halloween Party, complete with food and cake. Some who had been by the house earlier actually thought the wedding ceremony itself was a mocked up act to lend credibility to the facade.

Since we are on the subject of “wedding cake”, I would be remiss if I didn’t include the picture on the right. Especially since E K went to the trouble of digging out what passes for our wedding album  for me  in order that I be able to scan a few of the photos for this series of blog entries. (Remember, I said we couldn’t afford to hire a pro)…  So, what you have here is obviously a picture of us next to the wedding cake my father insisted we have… (And we definitely appreciated that more than we could ever convey).

But, unfortunately, there is an evil and insidious story behind this particular snapshot… Notice how we are both reaching? Well, you see, E Kay had been hitting the champagne pretty hard. She was starting to get a little rambunctious, and no one could seem to calm her down. A suggestion was made that we cut the cake in hopes this would bring her under control, but alas, it just fueled the fire. In this piece of historical still life, what you are witnessing is E K as she is just about to pluck the tiny little groom off the top  of the cake so that she can throw it on the floor and stomp on it. I, as you can see, am rushing to save him.

Really. She did. Danced all over his little body in her high heels. Crushed the poor bastard into a gazillion pieces… Laughing maniacally with a bizarre gleam in her eyes, and mumbling with each step, “Take that… How does that feel?  … How about this? … And this?”

Yeah, really… She did…

Seriously…

You don’t believe me?

Okay, so she didn’t. Y’all are just no fun today at all are you? Oh, and since we are apparently operating under a full disclosure policy here,  I suppose I should point out that she hadn’t really been hitting the champagne either. Yes, we had some, but not even enough to tickle our noses in the grand scheme of things… Besides which, E K isn’t a very big fan of the bubbly.

So, in reality, if memory serves, our grabby, reaching gestures in this particular photo have something to do with us trying to figure out how to go about disassembling the cake and store the top layer away in the freezer for our first anniversary, as is called for by time honored tradition.

I have a comment about said tradition: … For the record, year old freezer burned wedding cake tastes like crap…

More to come…

Murv

… NEXT: Mahwage: Where’s Everybody Going?

Well, to some extent they go hand in hand. Love, lust, and all points in between. You start out in lust and as you get to know one another the lust becomes love, and if you are lucky, they blend together to become this Love/Lust amalgam that carries on throughout your relationship and/or marriage.

But, before you get all excited or start calling me Doctor Phil, I should point out that I’m actually here to talk to you about dominos again. And, no, still not the pizza.

You see, I’ve been married to EK now for Twen-koff-koff yea-koff…Okay…for real, 21+ years, and we “co-habitated” for a year prior to that. So, we’ve been ’round the block in the ol’ Radio Flyer a couple of times – always with me pulling as she beats me with a buggy whip and screams “faster, faster…watch out for that crack in the sidewalk…slow down…careful around that turn…faster, faster!” But, as usual, that’s one of those “other” blogs (actually, they probably wouldn’t even let me post it here…but I digress…)

My point being, I’m no stranger to the relationship game, marriage game, whatever… Now, let’s be clear. I am in no way claiming to have all the answers. Hell, I don’t have ANY of the answers. I just pull the wagon and do what I’m told. I’m merely pointing out that I do have at least a passing familiarity with interpersonal relationships between two folks who make up a couple.

Since the EK and I have been together for better than two decades, just like any other couple we have settled into some behavioral patterns. This is not to say that love and lust are gone. The love is there stronger than it was in the beginning, and growing daily. Lust…well…can’t really get into that here (LOL)… But, like I said, as with any couple, patterns will emerge. Ways of interacting. It’s just all part of life. Therefore, a half hour or so ago when I nonchalantly and jokingly said to my wife, “what are you making for dinner tonight?” her response came as no surprise, and the dominos began to teeter…

I suppose you might need a bit of background first…You see, my wife almost never makes dinner. In fact, whenever I go on tour for a week or two at a time, I spend the week prior to my departure working in the kitchen – cooking, packaging, and freezing meals in reusable “freezer to microwave” containers so that I know she and my daughter will eat something other than crackers and yogurt. It’s not that she’s lazy. She’s about as far from lazy as you can get… Hell, I wish I had her energy… It is just that she really dislikes cooking. With a passion it seems. Me, on the other hand, having grown up in a family with diners and restaurants, I absolutely love to cook. So, this makes at least part of the division of labor in our home a no brainer. Put simply, the kitchen is my domain.

But, like I said at the outset, there are dominos involved here, and again, I’m not talking about pizza…even though we are on the subject of food.

To inspect this particular dot-covered game piece we have to turn back the clock to a time EARLY in our marriage. Back when, even though we had dated for some time, then cohabitated for an entire year, and then even been legally married in the eyes of the law for a couple more years, we were still in that state of semi-honeymoon. Not the face-sucking-sex-in-every-room-with-reckless-abandon phase, mind you. Just the hyperactive love-lust combination where you want to impress your partner because you love them so much – and again, I want to be clear on this impressing thing – I’m not talking about dressing up in a negligee and posing next to the bedroom door while batting eyelashes (come to think of it, that’s a pretty good domino too, but I probably wouldn’t fit in that negligee anymore…just kidding… I mean just kidding about the negilgee, not the fitting into it part… you know what I mean…dammit, I’ve never owned a negligee, so just stop it!)

Back to the story… sheesh…ya’ bunch of weirdos…

So, in this particular instance we are talking about dinner. You see, way back when, during the days of hyperlovelustwhatever, the evil redhead decided to make dinner. (They “make” dinner here in the north, as opposed to fixing dinner, like it’s supposed to be done) Now, not being a big fan of the kitchen she wasn’t about to get herself into a major project (I’d like to take a moment to point out that it isn’t that she can’t cook, because she can. It’s simply that she hates cooking.) But still, she intended to “make” dinner. And, so she did. Cheesy tuna and noodles Tuna Helper^TM. Now, before you think I am about to complain, guess again. I happen to like tuna casserole, and mac n’ cheese, and yes, cheesy tuna and noodles. It was all good.

So, my lovely bride served up a big, steaming dish of Tuna Helper^TM, happy with herself and confident in the fact that she had done something nice for me that I would appreciate. And, I did. Harboring the same hyperlovelustwhatever as she, I sat at the table and shoveled in the Tuna Helper^TM while smiling and telling her how wonderful it was, as well as how much I appreciated her fixing dinner. In fact, I was so overwhelmed with hyperlovelustwhatever that I didn’t even hint at the fact that there was something terribly, and fundamentally wrong with the meal. Not something that would make you ill, mind you, but something fundamentally wrong, nonetheless, given what it was supposed to be. The meal went on, the dishes were washed, and well, I can’t really remember what else happened that night, but I suspect that since we were working on remodeling the house at the time we were probably both exhaused and just went to bed then straight to sleep – none of the “not so blog safe” material to worry about this time.

So, everything was good. I had done my duty and nothing need ever be said about the problem with the meal. The EK was happy, I was happy, and even the cats were as happy as cats can be.

The next day, however, it became apparent that my plan to protect the evil redhead from personal embarrassment had gone terribly awry. At this point I cannot remember exactly what I was doing at the moment of realization. I do, however, have vivid recollection of EK walking into the room with an unopened can of tuna in her hand, which she had found sitting on the kitchen counter right where she had left it the night before. With a look of realization flooding her face, she stared at me and stated, as much as asked, complete with a matter-of-fact incredulity, “I forgot to put the tuna in the Tuna Helper last night, didn’t I?”

I could not tell a lie, but I also didn’t want to add insult to injury. I simply replied, “No worries. It was really good macaroni and cheese.”

The domino in this case? Well, it didn’t have to knock much over. You see, this afternoon when I jokingly asked my wife what she would be “making” for dinner, without missing a beat she replied, “Hamburger Helper without the hamburger.”

We’re older now, and while we still have that hyperlovelustwhatever thing going on, I’ve learned I don’t really have to suffer (unless I want to, that is, but again, different blog…)

I think I’ll just go ahead and “make” dinner tonight.

More to come…

Murv