I think that will probably depend on how well I follow instructions from here on out. The dance thing, I mean.

You see, messages come in all forms and from many sources. In fact, depending on your belief system, you may even be convinced that you receive messages from beyond the veil between the worlds. And, sometimes those messages come along with a set of instructions that need following.

I suppose at this point you are wondering what messages from the great beyond have to do with the picture of Evil Kat’s shapely gams over here on the right. Well, to be honest, both everything and nothing. You see I’m not actually going to go on about being contacted by the dead. I am, however, going to go on about messages. In particular a message I received just the other day, and it just so happens that it has quite a bit to do with E Kay’s shoes.

In particular, her Mary Janes.

(BTW, I’d have put the whole picture up there, however if you have seen the revamped cover of Perfect Trust, for which this was one of many shots taken to create the final collage, you know things were far less pretty above the waist… Not gory or anything… You’ll just have to read the book if you don’t understand what I’m getting at… But, yeah, E K was one of the models… How cool is that?)

And, back to our regularly scheduled blog…

So, E K has several pairs of Mary Jane styled pumps. Dress up, work, leather, patent leather,  canvas, heels, flats, wedges, brown, black, and so on…

You get the idea.

I couldn’t begin to tell you about the fashion statement surrounding these, primarily because I have absolutely no fashion sense at all. I will pair stripes and plaids in a heartbeat, so I am definitely NOT the go-to guy where this sort of stuff is concerned. However, as shoes go these seem to work for the Evil One, and I am perfectly willing to admit that I think she looks pretty damn good in them. This latter fact may have something to do with one of those childhood memories, that being the little blonde-haired girl next door when I was growing up. We were all of about 7 and I was crushing on her pretty hard. Being the style of the 60’s she always wore frilly dresses and patent leather Mary Janes. They say you never forget your first love. Well, I wouldn’t call this playmate from my childhood a “love,” so I guess that old saying applies to crushes too.

So, there you go. Nothing sick or twisted, just Id, ego, and superego colliding to stir fond puppy love memories in my heart whenever I see the evil redhead in her Mary Janes.

Okay, enough with psychoanalyzing the Murv…

Now, the thing about E Kay’s shoes is that while most of them reside in her evil shoe closet, there are a few pairs that occupy strategic locations around the house – i.e. wherever she happened to take them off. Of course, her evilness is still more conscientious about her shoe placement than the O-spring. If you go stumbling through the dark in the middle of the night around our house, while traversing the living room you will trip over every pair of shoes the child owns. E K, however, does place hers pretty much out of the way. One such “out of the way” location where her feet become un-shod – and the aforementioned shods remain – is the general vicinity of her desk in our shared office.

And yes, Virginia (No, not you Doc… No, not the state either… I mean the metaphorical and collective Virginia) this is from whence I received a message. I just didn’t know it at the time. See below…

If you look closely at the left shoe you will notice a piece of paper lounged out on the insole as if it belongs there…

You see, the other day I rolled back from my desk on a mission to put something in the cabinets on the other side of the room. Since our office is relatively small our desks are against opposite walls. When I stood up to make the 4 steps to the cabinets I had to step around the shoes. When I looked down I noticed this bit of paper occupying the insole.

I didn’t really think much of it at first. Her shoes were sitting next to the paper recycling bin and since she is a shredding maniac I figured that in a frenzy of potential paper-mâché production the previous evening a scrap had escaped her evil clutches in a daring attempt at freedom. Unfortunately for the scrap, however, it plummeted into her shoe where it was overcome by odoriferous fumes and expired before it could get away.

Do NOT tell her I said that…

I continued about my task, tucking some papers into a cabinet, then returned to my desk. once again stepping around the pair of Mary Janes. This time, however, I noticed that there appeared to be writing upon the bit of paper. Again, I didn’t really think much of it until several seconds had passed and I was seated back at my desk. Some manner of subliminal trigger clicked, clanked, or whatever it is they do and I stopped everything I was doing. The image of the paper with the writing on it flashed through my gourd and I screwed up my face in thought as I wondered, “Did that really say what I think it said?”

Now I was curious. So, what else could I do? I rolled back, turned around in my chair, then leaned over to look at the scrap in the shoe (all while holding my nose, of course…) And, much to my surprise, it did in fact say what I thought it said.

“Leave Treat”

I’d heard “trick or treat” before, but never “leave treat,” although it definitely sounded like a pretty clear instruction to me. For a minute I started wondering if she was trying to get in touch with her Dutch roots and thought it was Christmas or something. But I came to my senses and remembered she is primarily Welsh and Irish, not Dutch.

Then for another brief moment I considered stuffing a banana into the shoe just to see what would happen when her evilness came home. However, since I wasn’t sure if that would spark some sort of Freudian dilemma or not, and I didn’t have any Vodka or Scotch miniatures on hand, I elected to simply laugh and snap a picture or two, because it was obvious to me at that juncture that this would be blog material.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that maybe I should have put some individually wrapped Dove chocolates in there or something.

Why?

Well, what you can’t see here is the knobby tread this pair of shoes has on the sole. The reason that is important is that I am now sporting a mirror image of it all over my face. All I know is that E K was doing a lot of unintelligible screaming while she was dancing on my head, but I did manage to catch a little snippet about her shoes being empty when she arrived home and when was I going to learn to follow instructions?

More to come…

Murv

I don’t know if any of you caught the recent news report about this. It was one of the feature stories on The Early Show, and since I like to sit and ogle Julie Chen and Maggie Rodriguez every now and then it’s a program I catch on a regular basis. (Just kidding, I don’t really ogle them. They are both very easy on the eyes, though, I can’t deny that.)

Anyway, as it happens, just the other day they had a feature about Marriage, Relationships, and Intimacy in the wake of starting a family. Basically, some University did a study – probably with our tax dollars if I had to guess – and came up with the conclusion that better than 90% of the time,  once a couple has a kid, intimacy and moreover sex within the adult relationship declines dramatically. They even pointed out that this happens most especially within the first couple of years.

No shit… You know, I never would have figured that out without their help. I mean, it’s not like you suddenly aren’t getting any sleep, or that your whole life doesn’t hinge solely on the well being of this screaming poop machine.  Or that your wife is now in the land of unbalanced hormones and will be for a while. Had they never done this study I’m afraid I might have wandered aimlessly through the rest of my life, always wondering why such things happen.

Okay… That’s enough sarcasm from me for the time being.

So anyway, they talked to some guy with a pile of letters behind his name who is billed as a relationship expert. He was the co-author of the book to the left there… Hmmm… I think the cover artist must have been looking in E Kay’s closet for inspiration or something… But, I digress… I’ll admit, I haven’t actually read this particular book, but I did read one of his other self-help missives – She Comes First. It’s a tome geared toward helping men please their mates in the… you know… bedroom. I read it because I’m all about doing whatever I can to please the E K. It tends to reduce the number of beatings I have to endure, and stuff like that.

However, with regard to She Comes First, let’s just say some of the things in it frightened me. Quite a bit. Not all of them by any means, but there were a few… And, I’m married to Satan in High Heels, so I’m not easily frightened. Okay, I’ll be honest; they didn’t really “frighten” me per se. They did, however, make me go “ewwwww!” At any rate, I won’t go into details, but… ummm… well… ’nuff said… shudder… ewwwwww!… Okay, now ’nuff said.

Anywho, they were talking to him about the Love In The Time Of Colic book – (that I am inadvertently advertising for him… aww hell, maybe he and/or HarperCollins will return the favor) – but, back to the story, one of the things he went on to outline is that couples have to make time for one another, do the date night thing, give each other 20 second long hugs – (Where 20 seconds came from I dunno… Probably all that research is my guess. E K and I usually go for a 2 or 3-minute hug, but then we love each other and all that silliness so we can actually endure physical contact that lasts longer than 20 seconds.)

And, of course, there was also the whole thing about the S word… Yeah, S E X.

Okay… I’ll fess up… We had ourselves another “no shit, Sherlock” moment right then and there. But, to be fair, maybe we are just a bit more well adjusted and free thinking than some other folks and some of this stuff simply hasn’t dawned on them. Therefore, I’m not going to put the guy or his work down. If it helps someone out there, rock on. It’s just that the concepts seemed like no brainers to the Evil One and me.

Still, E K was in a semi-jocular mood… So, as this interview and feature aired, and she was preparing to leave for work, she came over to hug me and started counting aloud – One… Two… Three… Four…

Okay… I guess you had to be there. Trust me, it was funny at the time. Really… It was…

But, moving right along… We had both been chit chatting about this report, pretty much making comments at the TV much like the comments I made above. I did, however, mention to The Evil Redhead that I thought we had handled things fairly well, both throughout the munchkin’s infancy and now with her being an almost tween who demands a lot of attention. I also pointed out that a few good hugs shared between the two of us definitely did make my day complete.

She agreed… Well, I suppose I should say I think she agreed. Her reply was kind of one of those E K grumbling, “Yeah, okay, whatever, now fetch my things out to the car then kiss my feet, lackey,” sort of comments.

Still, even with the grumbling, since she seemed to be in a good mood I then mentioned the more intimately physical aspect of things. Of course, since our offspring happened to be sitting right there staring at the TV, I tried to do it on the sly – How would I do that, you ask? Simple – I said, “And besides the hugs, there’s the whole S-E-X thing.”

Yeah… I spelled out the word… Yeah… Yeah… I know. Our kid is nine, gifted, reads at a level way beyond her years, and has a vocabulary that outshines some high school students I’ve met.  Just bear with me for a second… There really was a method to my madness.

Of course, E K looked at me like I was a blithering idiot, looked at the kid, then back at me – once again like I was an idiot – and then shook her head and said, “Why did you spell it?”

“The kid,” I replied.

“She can spell, you know that.”

“Yeah, but I’m counting on the fact that she’s half asleep and drooling at the TV,” I replied. (For the record, it was Good Friday so the kid was off school.)

E K snickered and said, “Yeah, right.”

“What did you just spell, daddy?” the kid asked out of the clear blue, not breaking her zombie-like stare from the television screen.

“Excess,” I replied without missing a beat.

She mumbled, “Oh… Okay…”

I knew my ploy had been a bit of a gamble, but luck was on my side and it had worked. I looked back at E K in triumph, but she just scowled and cocked her eyebrow. My momentary elation instantly came crashing back to the ground in a crumpled heap.

You see, Her Majesty, The Queen Bitch Of The Whole Fucking Universe, Missouri Chapter, doesn’t like losing, especially if it involves her being wrong and me being…well…not wrong. Even if my “not wrongness” is purely out of luck or even a fortuitous accident. Moreover, not only had I seen that evil look before, unfortunately I knew exactly what it meant.

Seems I’ll be doing without any excess for a while…

More to come…

Murv