The Secret to Marital Bliss

The other night Mr. McKay was making dinner and it needed some time to cook. I was starving so I made us salads and then sat down to watch Jeopardy. I love Jeopardy. Mostly I like yelling random locations at the television during geography categories (that are seldom correct) and sweeping pop culture categories like it's my damn job. 

The show just started and I'm shoving fork fulls of lettuce into my mouth like a starved animal when the news breaks in with a special weather report. Apparently, there was a tornado warning in the next county over. Ok, good to know. It didn't affect us, but I understand the necessity.

Then they start going on and on. And there's a radar map. And there are 2 weather people now discussing it. And they zoom in on the map. Also, do you know what kind of weather conditions create a tornado? I do now.

Slightly annoyed and keeping an eye on the clock, I'm completely cognizant of how much of Jeopardy this is taking up and I say to Mr. McKay, "Really? By the time they finish their very detailed report the tornado will have hit and be done with."

We're normally on the same page so I anticipate his agreement. Instead, he kind of makes a face and says, "They're warning people. It's important."

Now I'm annoyed at him for not validating my annoyance and I'm like, "But this seems like an extra long report. They're not usually this long. Why do we need radar of the storm and an education about how tornados form?"

He very calmly says, "Because it's news." And rolls his eyes. Then adds, "You're very serious about Jeopardy tonight."

He switched the station to another feed which didn't have a tornado warning and I watched the rest of Jeopardy and finished my salad. I felt less annoyed the closer I got to the bottom of the bowl.

We're married 9 years this week and I'm wondering if half the secret to marital bliss is navigating your wife's emotions when she's hangry. Maybe it's just the secret to being married to me... keep me fed and I'm much less feral!

(Also, there were no reports of tornadoes. So at least I don't look like a callous asshole. On the bright side, if Jeopardy ever has a category on tornados I'm going to outscore those smarty pants on the show.)

http://teampizzalovers.tumblr.com/post/130647544835

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Crying~It's Not for the Faint of Heart

I'm an emotional person. I don't know if I cry more than the average person, but I think I tend to cry at inopportune moments. 

This past week one of these inopportune moments occurred at my job. My day job has been stressful and frustrating lately. There have been staff changes, schedule changes—pretty much every day I go in I am faced with a long day of chaos. At the end of one of these particularly long days I ended up getting into a spirited discussion with my new boss. 

Feelings of frustration, exasperation that I wasn't being heard, and anger at the patronizing tone and bullshit excuses that were being thrown my way all accumulated. I had a brief vision of telling my boss exactly where he could stick his job and giving my fellow co-workers a one-fingered salute as I dashed for the exit. The daydream was satisfying.

The reality is I like having health insurance coverage.

So I pushed the anger down and plunged back into reality to have a very uncomfortable confrontation in a workplace environment. Except, the feelings were all still there. I had crunched them all down, but they were dying to get out. So my eyes started to water. I felt it and ignored it.

Blink. Blink.

And then my bottom lip did this quivering thing. 

I bit on it and trapped it between my teeth. 

But not before my boss saw it. 

He gave me a horrified look—oh no, crying female. "Don't get upset."

This comment heaped on top of the patronizing tone only made things worse. "I'm not upset," I forced out in a measured and even voice. I took a deep breath and a second to center myself. I wished I could have explained to him that I literally had rage leaking out of my eyeballs. That, no, he didn't make me cry. I made myself cry by deciding not to fly off the handle. I wouldn't let the anger out, so it converted itself into something else and tried to slip out some other way.

Of course, I didn't explain this, but I did take the opportunity of him being thrown off balance by the "almost tears" for a few moments to speak my piece. 

Upon reflection, I thought of all of the other inappropriate moments where I shed a few tears during the course of my life. Because that's what I do, when something in my life happens I get a recurring slide show of every other little thing in my life that went wrong or embarrassed me. 

My reflection on these situations made me realize that crying gets a bad rap. It's looked on as a weakness and mostly a very feminine thing. If you're crying about something you obviously can't handle it. You're a basket case and no one wants to listen to you.

Thankfully, I married a man who doesn't discount me when I'm being emotional about something. If I'm worked up and crying, I think he listens more carefully. He won't write me off, he'll ask me what's going on. It wasn't always like that. I think I did have to prove to him that I can have a rational conversation about something while I'm crying, sometimes I just can't control it. And if I can't be myself with my one true love then what is the point of anything?

Some moments that I have shed a few tears that maybe were not ideal:

The night I lost my virginity.

Technically it wasn't even at night. It was midafternoon. And it happened to be with my now husband. I'm not sure why I cried. It didn't hurt, although I think I scared the shit out of him and he thought he mortally wounded me. There was so much build up to this one moment in time. And then it happened. I loved this man so much. I still do and I did even before we had sex. But something about it just wrenched my emotions out of me and I wound up crying as I laid in his bed.

I couldn't explain all of that at the moment. And I am sure I'm romanticizing a lot of it. But there was so much love and emotion welled up inside of me that I wept openly. Probably not what any guy wants to experience, but it was an honest reaction.

Our wedding night.

Again, not really the usual reaction that a girl has to marriage. It wasn't like a replay of the night I lost my virginity because we didn't even have sex that night. It had been a whirlwind of a week. Emotions ran high. Lots of money was shelled out. We made it to the finish line. I was a little drunk, my ribs were bruised (perhaps broken) from the torture device I wore under my gown. I was exhausted. I was happy. I was overwhelmed. 

I was crying next to my husband of ten hours in a hotel room bed at 3am. 

This was a huge milestone in my life. One I planned for and dreamed of for a long time. And it was over. Now what?

"Now we're married," the ever practical Mr. McKay replied in the dark to his weeping wife beside him.

"But, it's over, what do we do now?"

"Go to sleep."

He was right. I slept and life went on. Sometimes I think I get so overwhelmed by the next step and just life in general that I don't know how to process it.

Playing roller derby.

I know what you're thinking, "Of course you cried during roller derby, you broke your ankle in three places last year." I didn't cry when I broke my ankle. It didn't even hurt until the next day. I did cry when they told me it was broken and I realized I was going to miss most of the season, but I don't think that's a very unusual thing, plenty of people would cry about that.

This season I am back and I've hit a good stride. I went from inexperienced newbie, never getting rostered for any games, to someone who is playing in all of the games. A team, B team, I've played in a lot of games this season and enjoyed the hell out of every single one of them. 

My first A team game was in August. We drove five hours to get there. We left our husbands and wives behind, our kids and our jobs, and we took a crazy road trip. We were playing a team that outranked us. We were tired, but we were using everything we've been working on this season. When the whistle blew at the end of the first half I followed my teammates into the locker room and I was swamped with emotion. 

At this time last year, I was broken. At this time last year, my team was not playing like this. We'd all worked really hard in one year to get where we were and I was so proud. My eyes misted over as we filed into the locker room.

"Are you crying?" a concerned teammate asked me.

"No," I lied, as a tear escaped and ran down my cheek. "I just love you guys so much. I love playing with you."

"Oh, man, she's crying!"

"I'm not!" I was.

"Now I'm crying," more than one person echoed.

There were lots of sweaty group hugs. And we played even harder the second half, we barely lost and we over-played everyone's expectations—even our own.

Other things that make me cry: kittens, really good endings to books, sports documentaries I watch with my husband...

The list could go on. But the thing is I laugh a lot too. I smile a lot. It's really easy to be my friend, just be nice to me and we're good. I don't want to paint the picture that I am some kind of sobbing lunatic all the time. 

My emotions are always bubbling at the surface and I have a hard time hiding them. But my point is, crying gets a bad wrap. Not every person who cries is weak. Sometimes people are just trying to control themselves from hip checking you into the wall. 

The next time you cry, don't apologize for it. And the next time someone cries in front of you, ask them why they're crying. Their answer might surprise you. 

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I'm Not Sorry

Recently, I was out with my cousin. She's the same age as me, she's married to a great guy and has two adorable and sweet little kids. She's involved in the PTA and was regaling me with a story about a crazy mom who brought vegan cupcakes to school and refused to offer any of the kids regular cupcakes.

Then she brought up how all the mom's at the bus stop bitch about their husbands. I don't have kids, so I don't frequent school bus stops, but I have been involved in conversations with other women where all they do is bitch about their significant others.

"I don't have anything to complain about," my cousin admitted, almost apologetically. "Sometimes I try to think of something just so I can contribute to the conversation."

I've been in similar situations with the women at work. One of my co-workers said one time, "Oh, don't bitch to Casey, she actually likes her husband. She's weird."

It makes me sad that that makes me weird. Why is it weird to like your spouse? And why do women who have happy marriages feel like they have to apologize for it?

This particular conversation my cousin was telling me about stemmed from bath time. Apparently this is a hot topic with the bus stop moms. They have husbands who refuse to help with bath time. There was a PTA meeting that week and one mom was lamenting that if it ran late again she'd have to rush home to get her kid into the bath and into bed on time.

"I don't have to ask for Mike's help, he just gets the kids into the bath if I'm not home," my cousin went on. "Actually, as long as we're both home, we do bath time together. It's kind of our thing. We've never talked about it, we just always have. It's our routine."

This brought on some heart-tugging imagery I conjured up of my cousin and her little family all piled into their bathroom together. And really, her son is six and growing up fast. How much longer is he going to want to bathe with his little sister? I told her to hang on to these moments and I decided right there on the spot that I wanted that too. 

"I'm afraid to admit how good I have it," she said.

"Why? I think you should just tell them."  

"And be the source of marital discord in the neighborhood?"

But why should we be hiding our good relationships like skeletons in the closet? I stopped apologizing for the fact that my husband makes me dinner every night. Or that I'd rather hang out with him than have a "girl's night". 

There is some debate about what the divorce rate actually is nowadays. You hear 50% tossed around a lot. That half of all marriages are doomed to end in divorce (or maybe not doomed, maybe it's for the best for those people). This article I found argues that it might actually be declining. 

Whatever the case may be—if someone unhappy in their marriage feels completely at ease to air their grievances in a semi public social setting, why should someone on the opposite end of the spectrum feel like they can't speak up?

A lot of times you'll get criticized for not saying anything at all. My husband told me that he's been involved in more than one conversation with other men bitching about their wives and the lack of sex in their marriages. Mr. McKay just doesn't say anything one way or the other and it always gets noticed, comments like, "Oh, nothing to add? Guess you're a lucky man," get tossed his way. And much like my cousin with the bus stop moms, he felt the need to apologize.

I know that not long ago in our society, people weren't encouraged to talk about their problems and their bad relationships. I am happy that this stigma has fallen away, I think people should be able to talk about whatever they need to talk about. I don't think a failed marriage is something that should be hidden in shame or kept a secret. But I also don't think that those of us in happy marriages should feel apologetic about it.

I'm not saying my marriage is perfect, or that my husband is perfect. We fight. We argue about dumb things and we don't see eye to eye on every single thing in life. Just this week I flew into a hangry hissy fit that he ate all of the leftover corned beef hash on me while I was at work. Sure, he made it to begin with. Sure, there was nothing else to eat in the house. But a text is all I ask for, otherwise I come home wanting to eat something that isn't there! 

See? We have problems too.

All joking aside, we love each other and we genuinely like each other. He's my favorite person and he makes me happy. 

If you ask me, I'm going to tell you. And I'm not sorry about that.

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