My Tits Aren’t Your Husband’s Problem

A few days ago, this article showed up in a Facebook friend’s newsfeed.

My Husband Doesn’t Need To See Your Boobs

Go ahead and give it a read, we’ll wait.

...

Back?  Okay then.  We’ll begin at the beginning, and go on ‘til we come to the end, then stop.

First off, “I can’t believe I used the word boobs in the title of this post”?  Yes, you can.  You can believe it quite easily and completely because it was a deliberate attempt to drive traffic to your blog.  I know this because it’s the same reason I used the word “tits” in the title of my blog post.  The Internet has scienced this thoroughly and concluded that posts with titles that contain any alternate word for “breasts” receive approximately 317% more views than all other posts.  You know that as well as I do, so please stop dissimulating like a nine-year-old who just dropped her first f-bomb on the playground.  We don’t write blog posts so no one will read them.  Own your words.  Oh, and FYI, “boobs” in that context belongs in quotes, not italics.

Second, stretch khakis should not be a sin.  I don’t know about your ass, but mine is pretty big.  I need stretch pants.  They are the only pants that fit me properly and still allow me to move.  And “hot” never needs to be spelled with a double T.  In any context.  Ever.

But enough with the nitpickery, and on to the real topic at hand.

Your first concern is whether or not your husband is looking at the bodies of other women.  Well, allow me to put that concern to rest for good and all by assuring you that yes, he absolutely is.

Your next concern is whether or not he is sometimes comparing you to these other women, and I can give you the same assurance.  Yes, he absolutely is.

Now, before anyone goes too far down the “holy shitstacks what a heartless twat throwing this woman’s insecurities back in her face like that I’m not reading any more of this cruel fuckery” path, please read just a bit more to see if I can’t redeem myself by letting you in on a little secret.

You know who else is looking at other women, and even occasionally comparing his life partner to them?  Brad Pitt.

Yes.  Not even Angelina Jolie, arguably one of the most beautiful creatures the universe has ever seen fit to create, is an exception to this very simple rule.  The rule is, everybody looks.  Which, by the way, also means that Brad Pitt isn’t an exception either, because Angelina Jolie is looking too.

Everybody looks.  So when you make statements like “my husband was in solitary confinement from social media for two days to protect his eyes and heart” what you’re really saying is “my husband took drastic action in the hope of making me believe something completely unrealistic, which is that he would never ever as long as we both shall live ever look at another woman with anything even vaguely resembling a lustful thought in his head”.  Which is, in a word, bullshit.

You say you’re “fighting for your marriage”.  May I suggest, as one human being to another, that you fight for a marriage built on realism and truth rather than escapist techniques and impossibilities?

My guy and I have been together for going on seven years now.  He looks at photographs of beautiful women all the time.  Of course, part of that is because he’s a photographer, but while he could just as easily pick up lighting ideas and various other stylistic whatnotteries from photos of things other than beautiful women, most of the time he doesn’t.  Because in addition to being a photographer, he’s a guy who likes looking at beautiful women.

Women who are a lot younger than my 44 years.  Women who are a lot more boobacious than my B cup.  Women who are a lot taller than my 5’ 3”, and a lot blonder and a lot less asstastic and and and and and.  I could go on for a day and a half about all the things I’m not and still not finish the list.  But what I am is the woman he comes home to every day, and falls asleep next to every night.

And would I be surprised if someone told me he was cheating?  No.

I would be shocked.  And demand proof of his supposed crimes against our relationship.  And if you showed me a picture of him shirtless on a bed with a naked woman, and he said “oh yeah, that was a light check, the stand-in flaked” I would accept that without question.  You show me photographic evidence of actual intromission, and I will have questions.  Until then, I trust two things; he’s going to look, and he’s not going to act.

And so am I.

And that is how things work in the real world.

Your husband is going to look at other women, he is sometimes going to compare you to other women, and he is sometimes even going to think about other women while he’s having sex with you.  That’s just how it is.  The difference between a healthy relationship and one that you should probably get the hell out of immediately is that he is occasionally thinking about other women while he’s with you, rather than occasionally thinking about you while he’s with other women.

And you’re going to do the same.  I already know that you, as someone who feigned shock at her own use of the word “boobs” in a post title, will deny this up to and with your dying breath, but you’re not fooling anyone.  But you know what?  Fooling other people isn’t anything you should be worried about.  Fooling yourself, on the other hand, that’s where you start to have a problem.

Oh, and please don’t call me “love” unless you actually know me, or you’re from somewhere in the UK and have the accent to back it up.

Hockey, My Little Pony & Filthy Instantly Regrettable Lies

The other day, I found myself in a conversation about sports with a cashier at Costco. A moment before, he had been engaged in a conversation with some guy in a San Jose Sharks sweatshirt, and I overheard mention of an injured player. Now, my dear boys had had a difficult game the night before but to my knowledge no one had gotten hurt, so needless to say I was concerned that I might have missed something. When it was my turn to check out, I asked about what I had overheard, and it turns out Cashier & Friend had been talking about one of the Oakland Raiders. I replied “Oh, I thought you were talking about-“ and caught myself before I finished the sentence with “something important”, choosing instead “I saw the Sharks sweatshirt, I just thought...”

After telling me which specific player had been injured and receiving a negative reply to his query as to whether or not I was a Raider fan, Cashier asked me “So who’s your favorite Shark?”

To which I replied... with a blank stare. Favorite? I said I didn’t have one. He insisted that I must. When pressed, I told him the closest I could get to picking a favorite was a three-way tie between... and even then I had to pause before I said Thornton, Niemi and Murray. (Douglas, that is. No offense, Andrew.)

Thornton for being such an enthusiastic leader by example,

Niemi for reasons I have detailed before,

and Murray because, really, how can you not have a soft spot for this?



Or, frankly, this.

As soon as I walked out of the store, my mind started throwing out snippy little guilt-laden tidbits like you forgot Marleau, how could you forget Marleau? What, Clowe isn’t good enough for you now? Pavelski hasn’t done anything for you lately? Nice “favorites” list, if you don’t mind that you neglected to mention... and on and on until I had no choice but to head straight to the nearest mall and spend an hour looking at nothing but My Little Pony displays and layered pastel clothing with ruffles, to drive the very idea of the existence of hockey as far from my mind as possible. I was a terrible fan, and I had no right to pretend otherwise.

It wasn’t until later, when I’d had enough wine to chase the My Little Ponies from my thoughts, that I recognized the source of my original dilemma. The reason I had been so hard-pressed to name a favorite player is the very same reason I like hockey so much in the first place. It’s never about the individuals. It is, more than any other "team" sport, all about the team, both in the way the game is played and in the attitudes of the players themselves. There will always be highlights, there will always be standouts and great nights for certain players and things you will always associate with one particular guy, but at the end of the day, hockey isn’t just a bunch of people in the same game at the same time. It’s about a group acting as a single unit toward a specific goal (no pun intended, unless you cracked up in which case I totally planned that).

So, Costco Cashier, if you’re reading this, I apologize for the lie, and would now like to come clean and introduce you to my favorite Shark.

Ooooh, Pretty Flowers...

The pretty flowers you now see as the background on this blog are a pattern I downloaded from PatternCooler. The name of this particular pattern is "Harlean's Sunflowers", but I actually loved PatternCooler long before they did something as sweet as name a background after me.

PatternCooler is amazingly awesome. You go there, pick out a pattern, customize the colors, resize it to suit your needs, and presto, a seamless tile is generated and made available for you to download.

FOR FREE.

The gentleman who runs the site is a great guy named Harvey. See how great he is?

As you can see from the photo, Harvey spends so much time making PatternCooler awesome that he doesn't even have a spare moment to shave. And sadly, most of his wig budget has to go toward covering all of those pesky website-hosting-related whatnotities that can really add up at the end of the month. So while PatternCooler is indeed a free service, if you do use it and are able, please consider making at least a token donation to thank Harvey for all of his hard work and awesomeness.

And maybe someday they'll name a pattern after you, too.

Guys I Would Not Instantly Not Leave My Guy For

There are moments in our household when I have occasion to say “You should be aware that if Suchandsuch McSoandso were to ever show up on our doorstep and ask me to run away with him, I would pause a moment before I said no”. Because I’m honest like that. And, contrariwise, I know if Cameron Diaz were to ever show up on our doorstep with a similar question, I would see The Guy do some pausing of his own. Fair’s fair.

So now that you know who my real competition is, I present to you...

The Guys I Would Not Instantly Not Leave My Guy For

The Blecha Brothers, Jake & Justin

(aka “the totally hot plaid-wearing bearded carpenters from Cupcake Wars”)

 

If you watch Cupcake Wars, you already know what I’m talking about. If not, allow me to elucidate. The final battle of the cupcake war requires each contestant to design a display that is thematically relevant, stylish, and able to hold a thousand cupcakes. In two hours. That’s where Jake and Justin come in. Using hastily scribbled outlines of grandiose concepts from the minds of bakers whose understanding of carpentry seems at times barely equal to the task of building a rectangle out of squares, Jake and Justin build miracles. Ever encouraging and optimistic in the face of even the most unreasonable of requests, they listen patiently to what people say they want, glean from it the truth of what people really want, take that truth to the place where what you want meets what you can have, and not only make if happen but make it happen in time for the paint to dry. In two hours.

This is like the workshop equivalent of a guy asking you what’s wrong, you saying “nothing”, and him figuring out on his own what is actually wrong, saying all the right things without being prompted, repeatedly refilling your wineglass without being asked, stenciling Hello Kitty graphics on your bathroom walls to cheer you up, doing the dishes, picking up the dry cleaning, feeding the cat, screening calls from your mother and bringing you Chinese food, all the while reassuring you that absolutely nothing about anything in your life is making your ass look fat. And all the while continuing to wear plaid, have a beard, and be totally hot.

In two hours.

David Caruso

It speaks to not only the uniqueness but magnitude of his charisma that I am willing to continually overlook the forensic absurdities, forced dialogue, inexplicable insistence on the use of 5 SUVs to transport 6 people from a single office to a single crime scene, blatant emotional manipulation, complete disregard for the basics of investigative procedure, and fantastically over-engineered technical displays that are CSI: Miami, for the simple pleasure of seeing David Caruso for an hour.

Even if most of that hour is spent watching him peer cryptically through his sunglasses in darkened rooms only to remove said sunglasses when going outdoors to better convey, as only squinting cryptically in full sunlight can, what it is to be Horatio Caine, just a man, one man doing what little one man can against all the evil that Miami can spew, it is an hour well spent.

Actually, because of that it’s an hour well spent. Because he is David Caruso, and no matter what he does, he will be David Caruso doing it, and that will make whatever it is instantly and vastly superior to anyone else’s feeble attempt at performing the same action.

And like Miss Turkey’s bikini and The Rembrandts’ oft pined-for lost love, that’s just the way it is.

San Jose Sharks Goaltender Antti Niemi

Do I even need to explain the appeal of a large man who spends his work hours carrying a stick and determinedly deflecting dense objects hurled across slick surfaces at dangerously high speeds by other equally large stick-carrying men while thousands of people scream in the background?

Okay, I will. The appeal is, your worst day has nothing on that. Some guys get pissy if you so much as snap at them to get their feet off the coffee table and stop leaving their boxers on the bathroom floor. A guy like Niemi? Your most banshee-like rants are cool waters burbling softly over age-smoothed rocks on tree-lined banks in a land that time forgot compared to what he just came from. He doesn’t need 40 pounds of gear to protect himself from stories of how much you hate Sheila in HR. You could throw a blender at his face and he’d just bat it away without even looking up from his video game.

“But”, the quibblers among you may protest, “surely you could say the same about many NHL goaltenders?”

Perhaps I could. But I do not, for two reasons. First, I am a San Jose girl loyal to my local boys. And second, Antti Niemi has a really really cute nose.



And the guy I would have to pause the longest before refusing to run away with should he ever ask...

Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto

“Because he’s frikkin’ Morimoto.” –Alton Brown, in response to having witnessed yet another feat of unmitigated awesomeness on 'Iron Chef America'

There’s really not much I can say that Alton Brown hasn’t already summed up in that single quote. Masaharu Morimoto is, quite simply, cooler than most human beings realize it is even possible to be, much less stand a chance of ever being.

Give him a jar of Skippy, some Smuckers and a loaf of Bimbo Pan Blanco, he can make a five-course meal out of them before you can even finish making a sandwich, even if you don’t bother taking the time to cut the crust off.

He looks better breaking kitchen equipment than the rest of us do when using it properly.

Oh, and he can sing, too.

Yeah, Alton. What you said.