My Walking Fart Joke

I often talk about my husband in this blog, usually, in an unflattering light, seeing as he is a self described “Walking Fart Joke” and currently looks an awful lot like “The Dude”. Last night I was lying next to him, and we were doing our nightly ritual of trying to steal the covers from each other, kicking, and saying mean things (in a playful way of course) and I was struck with an overwhelming feeling of love for him. It was very comforting.

Steve and I have been married nearly 4 years now, that isn’t very long to most people, but for us, it’s been an amazing feat. In our first year of togetherness, and the subsequent 3 years of marriage, we have seen each other through things that most marriages don’t see after 10 years. We had a baby, long before we were even married, so that started us off great, shortly there after, my dad was diagnosed with cancer, and then passed on within a year. His uncle fell down the stairs and became a quadriplegic. Steve was laid off when I was 7 months pregnant, and then, luckily, he found another job that kept him working 11 hour days from 2pm to 1am. We moved, a total of 5 times in 3 years, I have gone through my own cancer scare, (not cancer thank God) and most recently, saw his mom through her battle with breast cancer.

This is a lot, by any standard.

So here is the cool thing about this entire shit storm we have waded through together; it has made me realize just how much I really love this guy.

In a marriage, we wives and husbands often get too caught up in the day to day grind of raising kids, schlepping them to various activities, doing dishes, cleaning up after assorted pets and friends to remember that first and foremost, we love each other.

As wives, we sometimes get into this dichotomy of becoming our husband’s mothers, or roommates, and the husbands become our errand boys and scapegoats, never quite living up to the expectation we had when we were wearing our nightgowns on our heads and playing bride.

Husbands can start looking at their wives as liabilities, as literal balls and chains, and the inevitable conclusion to all of this?

Misery.

So what do we do? How do we keep from taking each other for granted? How do we keep our marriage from becoming a weigh station between dating and babies, or an inevitable collision of strangers come graduation day?

We make the effort.

When my dad died, my mom gave me the best advice I have ever gotten. “Appreciate your husband” unless your husband is truly a total rod, he has done at least one thing week worthy of appreciation. My husband is pretty amazing at doing those day to day things that maybe you shouldn’t need to thank him for, like doing the dishes, or reading his daughter a book, and maybe he doesn’t need it, but our marriage does. So I thank him. I give him a kiss, or a night off, and it makes him all the happier to do it again the next day.

This goes for husbands too, your wives may not require a thank you every time they make dinner, or fold the laundry, but sometimes, just looking at her, smiling in that loving way, and simply saying “Thank You”, man that’s the best foreplay there is.

Every time I start to hate my husband, or worse, ignore him, I try to do something, anything, to remind me what it is about him that I fell in love with. It certainly wasn’t his sense of style or comedic timing, but when I can take that time and find the many things that endeared him to me once upon a time, I find that coming home to him puts a smile on my face, despite the swirling vortex of crap that surrounds us 98% of the time. Below, is my top 5 list of ways to show your appreciation for your significant other, flowers and wine are nice, but these I find are a wee bit more practical, and long lasting, not to mention appreciated more often by the opposite sex.

5) Do their least favorite chore
Nothing turns my husband on more than watching me take out the garbage, a standard “Daddy Job” in our house, admittedly, he only gets this a couple of times a year, but when he does, its better than Christmas.

4) Treat them to a night off
This only works if they are not taking it upon themselves to have nights off regularly. In our house, my ultra modern husband is often the primary cooker of dinner and do-er of dishes, so when I get home, hand him a beer, and tell him to go play his video games for a while, I can see the love in his eyes as soon as he picks up the controller.

3) Where necessary, give them an entire overnight off
This again, only works if they do not take it upon themselves to do it regularly. My husbands best day ever involves drinking copious amounts of beer and playing video games in a secure, child/wife free environment with his buddies, and my worst day ever involves him with a hangover moseying in around 3pm only to fall back asleep on the couch. When I feel like I really owe him something special, I tell him to go spend the night at Dan’s. Typically, this is only where I have been a particularly “bad wife” and have been disappearing for multiple events/weekends in a row myself, but it certainly makes him appreciate his warm bed and squishy wife after he has spent a night spooning Joe on Dan’s floor. If this is not your husbands idea of fun, fishing trips, hunting excursions, spa days etc. work just as well, the point is that they are able to relive their carefree, usually stinky youth for a night with no obligations the next day.

2) Take him on a date
And I mean a man date, not a girl date. Every year on husband’s birthday he is allowed to pick where/what we eat and a movie that only he wants to see and I’m not allowed to make fun of it. (ex: 2006’s Star Wars Episode III *gag) On these nights you may be subjected to endless games of Magic Cards, a concert with a terrible band, or possibly a freezing cold football game, but it really does bring them joy to share their activities with us. The key is to really try and enjoy yourself, feel free to mock later with girlfriends, but it will make them not want to include you next time and that can result in separate vacations very soon. Don’t worry, he will be that much more inclined to see the next Nicholas Sparks adaptation with you.

1) Oral Sex.
Enough said.

If none of these work for your family, then by all means, come up with your top 5 list, but the most important thing you can do, husband, wife, living in sinful bliss, whatever, find a way to show your primary parenting partner that you love them and are grateful for their contribution to not only your family, but to your life.