My husband has a girlfriend..................

My husband has a girlfriend..........Well, not really.....OR to my knowledge not really. If I actually thought my husband were cheating on me (I don't know why I feel the need to clarify by saying "on me") of course it would be on me.............anyway........

 I wouldn't be sitting here blogging with a cappuccino on my left side and an 8x10 glossy of him holding the Vermont teddy bear I gave him for Valentine's day this year surrounded by candles on my right side. I would be in my full coat of armour, shot gun polished, his "suicide note" meticulously written and signed with the most technologically advanced forgery options available and an updated life insurance policy by my side. But, I do not honestly feel he is cheating on me. However, I find that this is a topic I am always confronting him about.

 I use the word "confronting" extremely loose in this story because it's more like rhetorical banter that I just throw out at him when he is "ignoring" me by claiming to be  busy "working", or "using the bathroom".....
Yeah...., WHATEVER!! I know the ole 'I'm using the bathroom trick!" Your slutty girlfriend is in there with you isn't she?

 Ryan (my husband) is nothing less than an amazing creature!  You can ask anyone that has known him for fifteen minutes or fifiteen years and their answers will all be the same. He is the most calm, collected, easy going, positive, gentle, laid back, hard working beer drinking guy you will ever meet.

Our landscaper, Omar, looks  forward to "Thursdays with Ryan." Have you  have ever heard of the book, Tuesdays with Morrie? It is a heartfelt story about a sociologist/professor who is dying from cancer. He meets with a former student on Tuesdays..(hence the name of the book). They talk about life and the professor shares his heartbreaking experiences and stories about his memories as a child during the nazi era.

 Well, it's like that on Thursday's at our house. Minus a few details like the sociologist, former student, nazi camp scenario. It's just my husband and Omar venting about Omar's tails of woe.

Omar, a formidable man, in his mid thirties and as his name would reflect, dark, masculine features, shows up in his big ass landscaping truck. Armed with his big ass chainsaws, hacking tools and big ass cans of gasoline.

He jumps down from his big ass truck and immediately scours the area for any sign of Ryan. Sorta like the robot in Terminator. Remember how that robot looked around with his beady little robot eyes hunting down John Connor?  If Ryan isn't outside,  Omar will tap on the kitchen window and motion towards Ryan's office window with his pointer finger and mouth in slow motion "Issss Ryyaannn hoommeee?"  I feel it is my obligation to coach Ryan into going outside and seeing what he has to say.

Ryan listens on intently, knodding and agreeing as if they were best girlfriends. Sometimes I look out of the kitchen window to find them chatting quite intensely.
Omar will have a forlorn look upon his face, the bill of his ball cap tucked between his fingers while wiping his sweaty brow with the forarm of the same hand. I can only see his mouth moving, but I will get to hear the whole story over dinner so I don't bother worrying that I am missing something juicy. (Sometimes, believe it or not, his stories are juicy).  Ryan listens until Omar is done, he's just that kinda guy. He's just someone that everyone feels comfortable talking to about anything.

I met Ryan when he was eighteen. I was a much more mature, beguiling twenty year old. He worked at a cd store while going to college and I was doing an internship at a furniture store two doors down.

The first time Ryan saw me he said he wanted to marry me..... I was like... Ryan who? But it didn't take me long to see that he possessed a natural ability to nurture and care for people. Twenty years later, I still see the same consistant loving person in front of me....... But that doesn't excuse his cheating!
Now that I have described Ryan and immersed you with his good qualities....back to his dirty rotten cheating ways..............

I don't know why I find it so humerous to constantly badger him about his cheating ways. He will say something like,  "I'm going to Home Depot to pick up, I don't know, let's say bran muffins." and I'll respond with... "Yeah, WHATEVER!  Is your fat ass girlfriend meeting you at McDonalds for lunch afterwards?"
Or I will accuse him of hiding his pack of sluts in the basement if I hear unusual noises coming from that direction.
 Sometimes, I think he keeps his tramps hidden on that Captain Morgan bus he "rented" for my birthday. Yeah..WHATEVER!   Rents that bus my ass, he probably owns a couple of those buses to house all those tramps. (Does anybody know if that is a tax write off?) I am confident that since I keep track of his visa bill, he  has "them" doing  "street walking gigs" on the side to support all of his hookers scattered around the world. Gotta be able to support all that "BLING" without a paper trail!!" 

The first ten years he used to just look at me and shake his head. Now, he's gotten so well aquainted with my crazy antics, that he smoothly plays the silly and basically useless game along with me if for no other reason than it simply kills the time, and usually satisfies one of my MANY demented cravings.

Last night we are laying in bed. He is leaving at 4:30AM to get on a plane headed for Park City Utah for two days of .... huh umm.... "work"..... "Yeah...WHATEVER!"  I snuggle up next to him. With an average body temperature of 104 degrees, (fahrenheit) the man is a virtual human inferno! He is so cozy!  I dig my cold hands under his hairy armpit and nestle my head under his scruffy neck comforted by the security his warmth brings. Even though I know it aggravates the living tar outta him, he giggles and let's me have my fun.

 I get all comfy and I whisper in his ear "Are you excited to see your girlfriend tomorrow?" I don't even plan to say this, at this point it just comes out. A thoughtless process brought on by years of random accusations of imaginary infidelity.  Almost on cue and without hesitation he retorts, "I can't wait! I have her staying at the Red Lion Inn with me." (Which, by the way, is the equivalent to a really bad Motel Six on the side of the highway attached to an old truck stop with showers and everything.) He then goes on to mention that I should realize by now what a sex machine he is and how it is his "job" to travel around the globe and satisfy his heirem of woman, and if I can't accept his curse of sexual greatness then I need to just move on. Then he kisses me on the..................forehead.

Snuggling even tighter now and more secure than ever, I laugh wickedly and turn out the lights!

One3photography

Metaphorically speaking......................

I want to begin by saying my actual blog will have nothing to do with head lice in the sense that you all are probably thinking.   I am using head lice as a metaphor about life. I love metaphors!  I  love the way using a metaphor or perhaps an analogy to describe our great misfortunes in life can really take the edge off of otherwise serious or tramatic situations........ and God knows we've all got our sobb stories!

When I first mentioned the title of my blog to a friend of mine, her immediate reaction was "EEWW!" Her response stemmed from the tramatic rejection she and her daughter received when years earlier her daughter had gotten "it" at school and the very mention of the word "head lice" brought back horrible memories of the event even though several years had since past.

When we say the words HEAD LICE, everyone winces and makes the "eeww" noises and crude faces as if it were somehow the evil step-sister to leprosy. (A chronic communicable disease characterized by nodular skin lesions and the progressive destruction of tissue). Being honest, spotting a white spec in your child's hair is enough to make most parents panic, not to mention it scores HIGH on the yuck factor scale!

Let's face it, if you have a child (or children, this just means your extra fertile AND have dealt with "it" more than once) you have gotten the tragic news that your little prodigy has been stricken with HEAD LICE!  The scarlett letter is sent home from the school nurse and the dreaded phone call inevidably follows!  Your perfect life as you knew it, is over!

The next wave of emotions happen in exactly this order:

DENIAL: Are you sure? How can you be sure? "Perhaps you have mistaken her head with another child's head, they all look alike at this age. "Scrotum Jones" is a very common name, I am sure we received the letter by mistake. I better get a second opinion..Give me that magnifier! Those are not nits, that's left over oatmeal! I know oatmeal when I taste it!

ANGER:  This is some kind of conspiracy!  Things like this don't happen to people like me! I'm calling my lawyer, you haven't heard the last of us!

BLAME: Who gave "this" to my child?   I want the names and hygiene habits of everyone at that school!
We shower everyday with expensive soap that has little gold embossed bumble bees on the glass bottle, which, by the way, is made of rare crystal!  Obviously this is the school's fault! I am a tax paying citizen!


ACCEPTANCE: Finally when the shock settles and the smoke clears, we wipe away the tears, burn the scarlett letter (evidence is NOT good) and drive 40 miles to the "nearest" walgreens for a vat of medicated lice shampoo. Of course, we tell the salesperson, we are here for "a friend".


Now, how does this in any way relate metaphorically to our lives you ask?  Well, I don't know how any of this relates metaphorically to YOUR life, but I will tell you how it relates metaphorically to mine.


Here I go:   Even though there is very little we can do to ward off head lice, and contrary to the scary name, head lice is not a scourge of the lower classes of society nor is it a sign of poor hygiene. It effects children across all levels of income, social class and cleaniness. Head lice can even survive up to six hours underwater, so even those of us who bathe with the finest, most luxurious soaps with bumble bees on the bottle are still vulnerable to catching it.    

My entire childhood,  I had always felt different. I always felt like I carried the scarlett letter. (whooa is me!)  I was from a broken AND poor family and was a child who would only dream of belonging.  I had very low self esteem growing up and as I grew older never thought I was good enough to get the cute guy or smart enough to win the awards nor did I think I deserved the best of....well.... anything.

Emotions are a lot like head lice.  Those very tiny six- legged insects can be very powerful! They cling to the scalp and neck and feed on human blood. How can something so tiny (the size of a sesame seed) almost invisible to the naked eye stir up such feelings of denial, anger, and blame before we finally accept the news and focus on how to fix it?

In my life, I always denied my upbringing and would lie to people about being from a broken home and not having that idealic childhood. I used to have such bad self esteem that I would even lie about my name. I have been angery for so long because of the pain that came along with my childhood. I have blamed my mom for her bitterness, my dad for his absence, my sister for her ability to possess my dad's love, my brother for, well, I don't know what I blame him for, but I don't want to leave anyone out.   But it shouldn't be about denial, anger or blame. Just like we are not privy to choosing if we get head lice or not, none of us choose the life we are given, but we choose how we develop that life.

Being dealt a life less than perfect shouldn't be a gross embarrassment or a stigma that we are doomed to carry around. "HEADLICE" happens to all of us! Sometimes in the beginning stages of our lives, sometimes in the  middle stages of our lives. It's not about if we get headlice, but when. And once we get it, how fast we are able to grab that lice shampoo, massage it into our scalps, get one of those fine tooth combs and methodically wash out the blood sucking creatures that can either destroy us or be fun conversation at the next holiday party....."Remember the time Scrotum had head lice"....(crowd bursts into laughter..)

This blog is going to be about FINALLY accepting my "brush with lice." The lice that has virtually been sucking my blood for years, years before I even realized I had it!

Without blame or finger pointing, this blog will be a journey about recreating my life story and dealing with my obssession with perfection, loneliness, overcommittment, self deprivation, bad parenting (on every level)  my addiction to shopping and many other fun and rewarding topics that invade my head space on a daily basis!!

Won't you please join me on the journey?

Y- HEADLICE

One3photography

Y- HEADLICE

Y- yy-headlicehfOR ALL THE fOR ALL fOfOR ALL THE THINGS THAT BUG THAT BUG MEYHEADLICE