I am fairly certain that at this very moment charming husband is plotting to kill me.
Likely this murder is being carefully premeditated and would be accomplished by some slow and painful means such as poisoning, or smothering with a too soft pillow. That in itself, the slow and painful part, being enough to make my blood boil as I, naturally, would go all Lizzie Borden on him depriving myself of any extended satisfaction and hastening the state of remorse/regret assured to follow—remorse and regret being quite familiar territory—whilst charming husband would be hoisting a beer regaling someone about his cleverness.
Just yesterday charming husband and I were little-kid-gleefully remarking on the fact that we have been married for more than half our lives! We are kinda prone to these gleeful observations. Lots of days we sit on our couch watching our (what we think is a large screen) 32" TV with 11 whole channels from the basic cable package, looking around at our actual furniture (well, there are still a few post-student decor crates acting as end tables that I really should have hauled out of here a decade ago), marveling that we have 4 teenaged kids (where are they again?), and that we own a house and car(s) and, quite frankly, we cannot fathom how the heck we got here. It all seems quite impossible when aren't we like 25 years old?!
[Dear young dismissive disdainful people: barring poor health, this is pretty much a constant for the rest of your life—you will think you are 25 a good deal of the time (or at least until you walk by a store window and see a reflection and wonder who the heck is that short squat old person and why is she/he staring at you.)]
Anyway, a mere 24 hours ago this happy state of affairs called marriage (that phrase not actually that suitable here) seemed cause for self-congratulations or, at least, warm fuzzy feelings (and maybe even sex), but today, go figure, marriage appears to be a very long life sentence. This simultaneous feeling of marriage being both a treasured gift and a cruel sentence is, of course, the very definition of marriage—a tiny fact that someone failed to mention to me as we rushed into this blissful state after only four short years of courtship.
Anyway, back to murder. Naturally, murderous thoughts always stem from serious important life-changing issues, in this case, the very pressing question: Is reading a book doing something?
The scenario is this: I am blissfully reclining in a very comfortable chair with a very good book at the in-laws' cottage enjoying (in almost equal parts) the book, the spectacular view, and the fact that just the six of us (well eight, two boyfriends having tagged along) somehow are here at the Hyannis Port compound at the same time without a single in-law in sight. (Okay, I am enjoying this last more than all other parts.)
The kids are happily reading, sunning, swimming, or getting poison ivy (i.e., surreptitiously having sex in the woods). Everyone is doing exactly what they please—which is yet another gift as, due to the fact that teenagers have jobs, city commitments, etc. etc., it is very unlikely that this scenario will be repeated again this summer. Everyone is happy, everyone that is except charming husband.
Charming husband is pacing and hovering. Earlier he decided that this very glorious sunny day (the first such sunny day at the lake this year) was an excellent time to bark orders at kids about unnecessary tasks that need to be done RIGHT NOW (despite the fact that due to the infirm nature of the in-laws, the distance of his siblings, and slothfulness of the one sibling who does live close by, charming husband's wife does 90% of the upkeep of this effing place). This was particularly irksome as first-child has exactly 36 hours to spend with us until she leaves for the entire summer.
Meeting with little success, and with the kids having scattered very quickly after completing meaningless tasks, charming husband's hovering and pacing escalates. I am finding it increasingly difficult to a) be lost in my very good book while I am being continually interrupted and to b) endure charming husband's ceaseless pacing less than 5 feet from my deck chair. I am beginning to realize that charming husband best never retire as I am pretty sure that if I am impatient enough to find this behaviour annoying for this seemingly endless half-hour, that 20+ years of retirement is going to kill me.
Finally, I turn to charming husband and say "for Christ's-sake, you need to find something you want to do."
To which he replies, "but you're not doing anything."
This leads to a long debate about what is a good way to spend one's time at the cottage while one has the place to oneself. Some point during this disagreement I stomp off (finding this a mature way to deal with conflict); Note: I am careful to ensure that my book is tucked under my arm. My short-term plan is either a) to find some privacy or b) to bond with the kids and bite my tongue hard—biting my tongue very necessary due to my personally imposed, onerous, neurotic and random code of conduct (in which code #5 is never pit the kids against charming husband), a code that I am now smugly admiring having only moments before this read the excellent musings of the equally neurotic first-child in the book I am reading: "certainly he got an erotic kick out of adhering to principle."
Someone should hide the axe.
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