Reason Eleven: Constant Power

I doubt that there are many homes in America that have the "right" amount of extension cords. Most that I have seen either have too many or not enough or they don't have the right ones that they need. There are not many times that you really need an extension cord. Christmas lights, indoor and out. The occasional need to use a power tool. The odd thing that you need power to in the middle of the room.



Our house is the home to way too many cords. This is just a small assortment of the cords that we have. I have had to dig into it exactly once. Yes, this mess of cords irritates me. Yet, there is something even more irritating about the electrical nightmare.



If someone had to guess where this pile was, they might say a closet, an extra bedroom, the shed. If only I could say that any of these was the location. Instead, our extension cords live in the dining room. Now, even the dining room might make sense if we had a formal one which we never used. Instead, our living room and dining room are one great room. So, I am lucky enough to see extension cord island from just about 50% of vantage points in my house. I am one lucky woman.

A fairly constant theme in this blog is that of complete disconcern for the appearance of anything. And, you guessed it, this is another. I find it hard to comprehend whether this lack of concern is simply an HH thing or if it is secretly an attempt to gain and/or maintain power within the household. Is the constant complaining about needing more space a residual genetic effect of some ancestral homesteader or is it just something to do to avoid going through the 20 boxes he hasn't unpacked since we moved in? Is HH a hoarder or is keeping all of this stuff his way of asserting his identity in the relationship?

I doubt that I will ever know the answer to these questions. But what I do know is that if you need an extension cord, I have plenty.

Reason Ten: Dining Out

A big pile of weiners. I won't go into the many tasteless jokes that I could about that, but I will go into an incredible difference between HH and I.

A while ago, we got to sit in his company's luxury box for a pre-season football game. As a non- red meat eater, I was worried that I should eat something first for fear that burgers and hot dogs would be the only dinner available. Well, I was wrong, there were chicken strips but there was also a ridiculous amount of hotdogs. For about 15 people, out THIRD container of hotdogs included about 50. Another wife and I were shocked that a) they would bring so many hotdogs and b) that the stupid men had ordered more at anout $6.00 per person.

HH chowed down on, oh I don't know 5 hotdogs. Yuck. But HH is perfectly content to eat hotdogs - HH eats carrot sticks with barbeque sauce. HH thinks Chevy's is a REALLY nice dinner out.

I wouldn't say that I am hard to impress. I like good food, it doesn't have to be gourmet or even fancy, but sometimes, it would be nice to go somewhere that doesn't include sweatpants in its dress code.

Thankfully, HH is fairly easily swayed so I could pick any restaurant. Getting him to not wear a t-shirt is another story. Getting him to not make a shocked face when the bill comes would be comparable to ending the war (or peacetime mission or whatever it is supposed to be) in Iraq. I yearn for a day when he suggests going to a hip, local mexican restaurant with a good patio and better guacamole. I dream of white tablecloths and more than one fork. I pray that one day, HH will see eating out as more as an opportunity to locate an even better buffet.

Reason Nine: Motor Vehicles

While I have come to understand a great deal about HH during our time together, one thing that I will never understand is his extreme infatuation with motor vehicles.

I am certain that HH has spent more time talking about his truck during our relationship than has doing anything else. Checking his oil is a weekly priority, he is constantly changing the flashlight that is kept in my car, and sometimes we just have to talk about how everyone is jealous of his truck.

Gay men want a certain body; a friend once told me about his quest for large shoulders and a small waist. HH's priorities lie in his horsepower, not in his measurements. I am often asked what my car's horsepower is as if I can remember (I don't even know my dad's house phone number thanks to my cell phone.) I am expected to know what my tire pressure is at any given time. I am also quizzed on such things as hemis and cold air intake. Although HH seems to know a lot about cars, when my engine was recently clicking and my AC not cooling properly, he wanted me to just wait until next summer even though a simple can of freon was the answer (which I had taken care of on my own.). Once, however, after he installed something that was supposed to give him more power and it was making a funny noise, we had to pull over every ten minutes to listen better.

So while he quizzes me on my car, his truck is his oxygen. We can be in the middle of a conversation and he will walk out into the garage to look at it without warning. My car must be driven to any place or event that is deemed to have any possibility of car theft or damage. Before we got married, HH promised me a few things: he would cut the grass (which he usually does), he would clean up dog waste (we no longer have a dog), and he would make sure that my car always had an oil change and gas. I have gotten zero oil changes out of him, despite my complaints that the guy at the oil change place is creepy and he took my car to fill it up...once. Whether this was all a lie or he is simply too busy looking at his truck, I have yet to figure it out.

Unfortunately, his obsession goes beyond his own vehicle. On vacation, we often end up places looking at cars; I can say that I have seen the General Lee at a "museum" in Gatlinburg, TN. While in Vegas, I spent two days arguing against renting some sports car and just last weekend, we ended up at some boat race at the lake where I was forced to identify engine parts. Earlier in the summer, we went to a baseball game for "camera day". We got there much too late to even dream about getting on the field to get pictures of/with players so we headed to the club which overlooks the highway. The next hour or so was spent taking pictures of various cars and, as though it was a modern marvel, tractor trailers passing by. He would time it to get the right angle, make sure you could read the truck, etc. Yet, if I take a picture of, say a gorgeous flower in another country, I am insane and wasting a picture.

I don't know what I would prefer for HH to be obsessed with. Of course, I appreciate that he can at least keep cars running (arguably.) But would I prefer being quizzed on how to get a smaller waist?

Reason Eight: Cleanliness

A friend recently asked me if I truly believed that all gay men were the clean, rational, fashionable people that I purport that they are on this blog. Of course not. My fictional gay husband, however, is.

I once lived with a gay man that left opened cans of peaches on the living room table for weeks, had questionable fluids on his walls, and wasn't all too angered when I made him a dirty ashtray candle as a joke. He also wrapped himself with an ace bandage to appear thinner under his wife beater and ruined a kettle made for sitting on top of a wood burning stove for humidity after making tea for a friend one night. That friend is no longer with us, but when I think how much he would have not made the ideal gay husband, I have to giggle. In addition to these "flaws" though, he told a mean story, was always ready for an impromptu barbecue and, most importantly, understood that even if you are a slob, you should clean up if people are coming over.

Now, this is one trait that I wished that HH had. Despite my constant nagging about keeping the house, at the least, presentable if someone would happen to come over, HH seems to think that leaving five pairs of shoes in the living room is necessary. Above, you see HH's pair of brown dress shoes that he obtained by trading a football jersey with some man at work (I am not making this up.) HH wears these shoes about 4 times a year, but when he does, they take permanent residence on the living room floor for at least three weeks. This is added to a pair of indoor slippers, outdoor slippers, work boots, tennis shoes, summer sandals, and an old, old pair of shoes that are worn while playing drums once or twice a month. Now, when we get a call that someone is on their way, HH does not simply carry them upstairs to the closet. Instead, they are pushed against the wall or hidden in a nook. Because people obviously want to sit in a room full of your stinky shoes.

I do not try to argue that I am the cleanest person alive, but I do see the need for dusting. Not too long ago, HH told me that dusting once or twice a year wasn't a bad idea. When we first started dating, he confessed that he hadn't cleaned his kitchen floor in 4 years - the floor that I walked barefoot on. While I mopped it, though, I realized why we needed indoor slippers. I have now come to believe that HH believes that our house has a magical fairy that cleans the toilets and washes the dishes since he never offers to do either.

So, while I know that not every gay man would have an immaculate sense of cleanliness, my ideal gay husband would at least rush around to put dirty dishes in the oven when guests were coming over.

Reason seven: Tape

It's not just tape, but the useless accumulation of things that might be used for a "home improvement project" one day that is my latest reason. Here, you see a drawer full of tape. Unfortunately, this is not the only stash of tape that we have. I have used tape from this drawer about three times - electrical tape on a cord and masking twice. HH, however, uses tape for everything...way too much on boxes, gift wrapping, and decorating.

Notice that tape is not the only occupant of this drawer. Baseball cards. Hooks. Twine. Fishing Lure. Only a hetero man would have this odd combination of things in a drawer...a drawer that could be much better used for other things - extra linens or, call me crazy, clothes.

Other items that he stockpiles ridiculous amounts of are hiding in other places, as well. Boxes and boxes of light bulbs fill a closet, but my insistence for new non-early 80s light fixtures are ignored. We have enough screws to last a lifetime, but every trip to a hardware store requires the purchase of more. An entire toolbox of screwdrivers doesn't cause so much as a blink.

While all of these items drive me crazy, this one use of tape desperately wants me to have a different type of husband. Quite a while ago, HH "fixed" the back storm door when the screen was ripping. HH doesn't see the problem with it. HH will leave this like this until I fix it myself, like many of the "improvements" that he makes. HH didn't even have the sense to use one of the 17 rolls of clear tapes that he has in the drawer. So I leave you with

this, my ghetto back door fixed with tape, a memorial of sorts to my

dream of having a gay husband.

Reason six: Certainty

Those who know me know that I am a student of people. I watch them, analyze them, and silently diagnose them (fyi, almost everyone has some characteristics that give them a mental health diagnosis in my mind.)

My most recent observation of people is one of numbers. If ten percent of the population is gay, it stands to reason that ten percent of most families are. HH has an incredibly large, Catholic family so recent comversations have led themselves to guessing who the ten percent might be, if this is so.

Although we agreed on possibilities, the chance always remains that HH is one of them. I don't actually think that my husband is gay, but he certainly has some tendencies that make me wonder from time to time. Not wonder in a serious way, but wonder if sexuality is, itself, a myth.

A few nights ago, I caught HH in the refrigerator holding this little bottle of lemon juice and saying, "This is so cute" in a baby, singsong type of voice. A lemon juice bottle is cute? This is not the first time I have caught HH saying this about something, but certainly the most odd of all of the things.

Then there are the man crushes that all hetero men have. Once, HH wanted me to buy him a t-shirt because one of his friends would love it when he wore it. It was a Mustang shirt (the car, not the horse), removing some of the gayness from the proposal. I, however, agreed with the arangement that he admitted he had a non-sexual crush on the friend - a la Seinfeld and Keith Hernandez. He can also call another friend and chat for an hour about what they ate that day, what songs are really "killer", and gossip about other friends. This definitevely "girly" behavior make me wonder...are we all really just the same and just happen to land in a body with certain parts? (Note: I am not saying that gay men are girly, just that these are not typical hetero man behavior.)

Just as soon as HH leaves me in awe, his hetero flag flies when he dresses himself in 15 year old acid washed jeans and a free cigarette t-shirt or bores me with a 20 minute discussion of cold air intake on a vehicle or dances his self-named "clothes dance" (don't ask.)

HH sometimes purports that there is no such thing as bi-sexuality; yet, he gets a certain amount of emotional happiness from impressing his male friends with a t-shirt. A typical hetero man would make more money, get a bigger house or a faster car to do this. HH, however, dresses pretty for his man.

While I know HH's sexuality, if I were married to a gay man, I would always be certain. I would not have a headache from pondering the whole concept of sexuality as a whole (let's face it, none of us understand it, it just is.) Or is it better to remain uncertain?

Reason five: Random Acts of Decorating

I almost always fall asleep before HH. Usually, this is not a problem, but there are some mornings that I awake internally screaming, why oh why?



This first happened when the side mirror on my car was damaged and hanging partially off (no, this did not have anything to do with me hitting the garage...). HH proudly announced that he would fix it. Well, he did. By screwing it onto the car. Genius...



More disturbing than fixing a car in the most ghetto way possible, are the "decorating ideas" that HH gets in those evenings while I sleep unknowingly on the couch.



I decided to get this wall mirror after I realized that I am very, very bad at plucking my eyebrows in the medicine cabinet mirror. HH gladly hung it on the wall for me, BUT put it at his eye level (a good five inches higher than mine.) It does swivel, but HH needs to check his bald spot every two hours so evidently, that was more important. A few weeks later during my slumber, I awoke to the sounds of banging. I immediately ran to the source; HH was hanging up his brush and dollar store hand mirror (also used to check the bald spot.) There are two reasons that made me most angry about this...well, maybe three. First, I have never seen HH use this brush, he is mostly a comb user. Second, with the new swivel, movable mirror, hand mirror is really no longer necessary. And, last, this is the guest bathroom, they don't want to see your crap hanging on the wall AND the room is painted pretty bright ORANGE; we really don't need more craziness going on. Oh, and a fourth reason, notice the patched holes that needed to be made to hang just two items - very classy.



Besides the bathroom "decorating", HH has tried to slip several other items onto walls while I slept. There was the STL Cardinals miniature base that was taped to a hallway wall with electrical tape. Recently, a sheet of USPS Commemorative Star Wars stamps was added to an extra bedroom wall with scotch tape' only one usable stamp remains so I hope that this will soon be removed. An ongoing fight was a metal sign of an old advertisement for guns and ammo that I recently won and it holds a rightful place on the garage wall.

As if these guerrilla decorating efforts aren't bad enough, I often have to spend time arguing about ridiculous ideas. In an effort to not bore you, I will share only my favorite: We had a minor mishap when we bought a new television. It was too big for the cabinet, so we had to dismantle it and the poor tv simply sits on the bottom. HH believes that this is too low to the ground (it is about a foot or so). So, for Christmas he asked for bed risers. My mother indulged not knowing that his plan was to bring a nasty, greasy car jack into the house, jack the tv up (it is terribly heavy), put the bed risers under each of the legs and create a new "entertainment center." This argument got all the way to the attempt. Thankfully, the jack could not get the tv high enough - crisis averted.

I am not so naive to attempt that my gay husband and I might not have blow outs over decorating. But I am fairly confident that I would not wake up to sports memorabilia taped to a wall. I am pretty sure that the goal for the bathroom would be a spa like interior rather than a wall of grooming items. I doubt that I would have a two year argument over a sign for guns (unless, perhaps, we were talking about arms as guns).

No amount of watching HGTV will ever make HH a "good decorator". No amount of complaining seems to stop the late night tape sessions. I have learned that I must do a walk through in the morning to see if anything has been added to his gallery of oddities.

The frustrating part is that I think that people still see a hetero home's decor as a reflection of the woman living there no matter what. People assume it is the woman's taste, the woman's effort. Yet my efforts are overshadowed by HH's weird decorating power struggle. If I had a gay husband, at the least this burden would be shared. I wouldn't spend hours arguing over junk furniture and maybe, just maybe, I would be able to fall asleep and not worry.

Reason four: Wildlife Obsessions

I recently wondered why people (okay, usually men) are obsessed with sharks, tigers, snakes, etc. Sure, we can learn a lot from animals, but it seems like the hetero man is often enamored with animals that lurk and maim. I can't tell you how many times I have had to listen to the list of poisonous snakes around the world. Not that HH (hetero husband) would ever go to Egypt; but just in case, he knows which is the most poisonous snake there.

Our honeymoon package included admissions to "Ocean World"; an adjoining property that was like a mini-Sea World. After taking in the sea lion show, walking through the mini-rainforest, andsnorkeling through a coral reef in a tank, HH decided that we needed to watch the shark show...twice. We didn't need to see the dolphins or relax in one of the pools. We did, though, have to go to the tiger feedings...twice. Then, we needed to have our photo taken feeding the tigers...in a bathing suit. (Not pretty.)

Somehow, sea lions flipping, smiling, swimming was much less entertaining than a nurse shark swimming after a drop of blood to HH. Somehow a hunk of meat pushed through VERY thick plexiglass was more exciting than holding some exotic bird.

Now, if this obsession was limited to real life experiences, it might seem more understandable. I much prefer a pet talent show to watching sharks swim or someone poke at a snake with a stick. HH, however, wants to watch these shows (when not watching the military channel) all the time. But somehow the connection makes sense. Animals are like a little military outfit. Travelling in packs. Doing anything for food - Predators stalking lunch.

So, I think that I have come to understand that despite years of evolution, HH is still just a caveman; thrilled by a new animal, waiting for blood.

Reason Three: Gifts

No, this is not a block of cocaine. This was my birthday present this year (or part of it, at least).

My hetero husband is seriously gift challenged. He never knows what to get me, can't remember when I tell him things and, later, we will discuss presentation.

Our first Christmas together, I was convinced that I was getting some sort of kitchen appliance. I was sure of it. I walked out on Christmas and saw a HUGE cardboard box, with something about a chair on the side. Ugh. "He bought a chair, it is going to be hideous," I thought. To my surprise, a nice necklace was inside a very small box inside (wrapped in the plastic bag from the jeweler.) Now, this was not a necklace I would have picked out, but it was nice. I thanked him and told him, several weeks later, to let me pick out jewelry in the future. But I am still haunted my that cardboard box.

I grew up in an admittedly insane family where if gifts were not wrapped with a homemade bow, grandpa refused to open them; where grandma had a closet full of wrapping supplies and gift bags were reserved for emergency wrapping situations only. So the lack of imagination in wrapping bothers me. It is an incredibly ridiculous thing to think about, but I am the type of person that wants the prettiest gifts under the tree, even if no one else notices. I buy ribbon all year long, have a huge bin of various bags, boxes and fillers. Okay, I might be insane.

Some of my hetero's other "unique" wrapping that I have received are: a Rachael Ray magazine wrapped in an orange pocket folder, the above DVD wrapped in toilet paper and masking tape and a scarf in a Target bag. Undoubtedly, each gift still has a price tag on and is, usually, some variation of something I said I liked once, but never really said that I wanted. Unless, of course, I have told him exactly what to get - like when he scored big with the black and white print umbrella as part of a gift.

The real kicker, though, was my gift for grad school graduation - the DVD of "Last Holiday" with Queen Latifah and "You: The Owner's Manual" that book by Dr. Oz. These two items, with price tags, were wrapped in a Pirates of the Caribbean gift bag. So finally, he gets a gift bag, but I am not into pirates. And let's talk about the gifts, themselves. I love Queen Latifah; but a movie about some woman who thinks she is dying? And a book that urges you to get healthy is great, but jeez, I just finished a Master's degree wasn't that enough self-improvement for one week?

As I created a very lovely basket for a wedding shower today, I thought about a day with a husband that would see the need for an entire room dedicated to gift wrapping. For a husband that would want to learn how to make my handmade bows, that would understand the necessity of wired ribbon and give me a gift with no price tag, wrapped in something actually from the gift wrap aisle at the store.

Reason Two: Yard Work

This is the pile of wood that has been sitting in my backyard for months. One day, my hetero husband came home with a truckload of wood from work. Did he pile it up nicely, NO. He just threw it in a pile as close to the gate as possible.

Then, a few weeks later, he decided that we needed to cut some branches off of our trees. These were added to the pile whole. The were partially on the pile, partially in the yard and partially hanging over the fence into the neighbor's yard.

Last week, tired of this huge, hoosier pile, I decided that something had to be done. I put on my gardening gloves, located the reciprocating saw (which is for some reason kept under the bed in the spare bedroom) and went to town on the 15 feet branches. I sawed, snapped branches, and got covered in bug bites until the sun was beating down on me and I couldn't take it for another minute.

Thankfully, this brief desire to hack at wood led my husband to want to make the remaining pile more manageable. We sawed and snapped even more branches until the neighbor no longer had our crap leaning over his fence and we had a huge pile of sawdust on the ground.

In his hetero male world of big trucks and fire building, having all of this firewood makes sense. In my world, I would much rather spend the time making the front of the house more presentable. Weeding, planting flowers, etc.

Somehow, I think that my fictional gay husband would share this same desire. My fictional gay husband would not plop a tree load of wood on the patio. He would need that space for entertaining. My fictional gay husband would think that curb appeal was more than making sure that the lawn is not overgrown. Going to by a flat of petunias wouldn't be met with groans and eye rolls. And that same trip to Home Depot would not then involve looking at ladders, even though we own three of various lengths. What a wonderful world that would be.

Reason one: Collectibles

I am the first to admit that I am no longer in love with my collection of Seraphim Angels that I just couldn't live without in my early twenties. I still, however, display them in a curio cabinet in my dining room. They are still pretty even if they don't go with my decor.

When I moved in with my husband, I had to give up one shelf in the curio. Actually, I don't know that I actually agreed to it; it was more of a retreat from arguing. After all, it's just a shelf.

First it was the Star Wars figurines. He wouldn't let go of the stormtrooper that he had fashioned a display case for. Then R2-D2. Then a football and an old 7-up figure that was his grandma's. Now we have casino chips, a golf ball, and replicas of the 2006 Cardinals World Series Ring. All by themselves, I don't have a problem any of the items (well, maybe the star wars memorabilia) if they are sitting in a drawer or box somewhere. In my curio, though, they look silly.

A gay man might or might not appreciate my angels; he might call them "his girls." A gay man would fight for a shelf, but not a shelf to place random junk from the past. Or if it was random junk from the past, he would at least somehow make it make sense amongst his girls.

I always imagined that I would marry a gay man. Whether it was for one of us to get insurance, or to realize some inheritance, I saw myself in a mutually beneficial marriage to a gay man. Not until I was married to a straight man, did I realize just how beneficial it could be.