As of late I have been encountering a lot of cheaters.

They are not my friends.  They are Millhouse’s friends.  And it seems like lately there are a lot of them that are going out and having affairs.  Some are staying with their wives, and some of them have confessed and are now getting divorced.

At first it was just one friend, and even though I didn’t approve of the affair I didn’t judge.  But over the four years that we have been married more and more of his friends have started or confessed to affairs.  I am starting to notice a trend and I am not sure if this trend is limited to the general population or just Millhouse’s friends.

I have been noticing that a lot more of the couples that we know have been breaking up due to infidelity.  I recognize that monogamy is hard.  To remain physically monogamous is hard but to remain emotionally monogamous is even harder.   I am wondering if these couples knew this and if they knew this what happened.  I think it is the anthropologist in me.  I like to know what people are thinking and why they do the things that they do especially if it looks like they following a trend.

I haven’t been able to get into the heads of Millhouse’s friends yet and I think it is because they don’t even know why they cheated.

Millhouse and I have been working together for a long time to lose weight.  He is doing better than I am when he stays on course.  There are some days when he falls off the wagon big time but then there are weeks when he is really, really good.  He works hard and you can see the weight just fall away.

As of late, it appears that he has hit a plateau, but he is working to get over it.  He is looking into enzyte which I am not too keen about but I will help him get over this plateau.

Husband:  if you are reading this.  STOP RIGHT NOW!  I am not going to divulge any secret information about our relationship to the internet.  Nor am I going to air my grievances about something that you know nothing about.  I am going to b*tch about something that you are sick of hearing about.  I am going to talk about something that you have asked me to stop talking about and since you are refusing to discuss this with me, I am going to discuss it with the interweb.  Why?  Because I need to talk about this, I need to get this off my chest.  So unless you want to read about a topic that you are sick of talking about then I would stop reading NOW.     

As the title says I am mad at my husband but I am not really mad, I am disappointed and feel very alone. 

Last May we started trying for baby #2.  We weren’t really trying it was more like not being careful.  We adopted a if it happens it happens kind of attitude.  But nothing happened.  So January of this year I decided to get serious about trying.  I told Millhouse this and he was OK with it.  I went to the doctor in February, told him about what was going on and got checked out to make sure that everything was working well.  I got a clean bill of health.  Millhouse declined to get checked out because he ‘knew’ that everything was OK.  I was OK with that because I figured that the previous failures to get pregnant were the result of timing.  So I got some ovulation strips from a friend and got serious about trying.  I started charting, testing and tracking monthly.  Millhouse really wasn’t involved in this part.  His involvement in the trying was limited to the BD.  And that was OK.  I am the planner and this is what I did.  

After 10 months after trying and failing, there was another trip to the doctor for me and out came the medication.  It was official on Monday, the first cycle of Clomid failed.  I feel lost and I need Millhouse to get involved.  I want him to go get tested but he doesn’t want to, he thinks that he is fine.  And that is fine.  But we need to make sure that he is because if he isn’t then all these months have been a waste.  I need him to get involved but the more I ask the more he asks to me to stop involving him.  

I am mad because I wanted him to do this months ago but his masculine pride refuses to believe that there is even the possibility that the problem may not be with me but with him.  He refuses to even acknowledge that he may be the reason that we cannot have another baby.  In my head I need him to have a clean bill of health for us to keep trying.  I cannot keep going knowing that this may never work and him not getting tested means that there is always that possibility.  

This is breaking me down emotionally and he wants me to stop thinking about it.  He says that I am putting too much pressure on him.  And I don’t understand how.  I started being really vocal about him going to the doctor two months ago AFTER more than a year of being quiet.  After almost a year of doing this on my own, I am asking him to please get involved because I cannot do this on my own anymore and he feels pressured. 

I am mad at him.

Millhouse has an unattainable list when it comes to Christmas.  I think he does it on purpose because he really doesn’t want me to buy him anything so he gives me a list of things that I would have a really hard time getting.  This year he wants:

A garage floor.  This is really hard because we don’t have a garage!  He really wants a garage.  He wants a two car garage.  And really how in the heck am I going to get him that!!

*Millhouse requested that I do this post.  He claims that you all would get a laugh as a result of his popularity.  I say that he is a tried and true nerd and only he would really find this post amusing.  So, Millhouse here you go.* 

My husband is super popular, according to him anyway.  According to him, he is so popular that whenever we go out people know him.  Then he gave these examples.  (The italics are me.) 

Example one:  The grocery store 

This week while I am busy checking out produce and climbing up racks of bread trying to grab the loaves with the longest shelf life.  Millhouse & Maks are were rolling around in the cart looking at the candy and ice cream.  When I finally tracked them down, Millhouse was having a conversation with someone.  I didn’t know the person so I checked out with Maks* and waited for Millhouse in the car.  Turns out that the person that he was talking to works at the restaurant where he buys lunch all the time.  Dude recognized him and then proceeded to have a 20 minute conversation with him.

Example two:  Costco 

I was clipping coupons at the cash when some dude waves at Millhouse.  Millhouse proceeds to wave back and then walk over and have a conversation.  It turns out that the dude is the pizza delivery guy.  He recognized Millhouse because he sees him so often.

 Example three:  leaving Costco 

The dude that checks your receipt before you leave eyes Millhouse as we walk towards him with our cart full of pizza pops and tampons.  When we get closer he yells out ‘decepticon’!  He and Millhouse then go on to talk about the t-shirt that he is wearing.  (It has the decepticon symbol on it).  It turns out that the guy that checks your receipt is a 80’s nerd too. 

Millhouse has taken these three incidents, which all occurred in the past 24 hours, as signs of his super duper popularity.  I say it is just proof that he eats out too much & he is a nerd. 

And here it is!

The highly anticipated post by Millhouse about his version of the events of our anniversary adventure.  For his first ever blog post, I think he did pretty well telling his side of the story.

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This year marked our 3^rd wedding anniversary and I was super excited. Not only did we actually achieve 3 years (total of 8 together), but the wife was planning the whole thing!

You have to understand something, usually I have to plan, pay and execute all aspects of anniversaries such as this one, but not this year…..

 It all started on Saturday evening, with a seemingly simple task of “just follow my directions”. However this could not be farther from the truth! The wife wanted to take my new (old) car, as she had never been for a ride in the BMW yet, and given it was our BIG night out I figured why not. On-route to the water front she informed me that we needed to find the ferry dock. She then explained (after much hesitation) that we where about to embark on a 20 minute guided HELICOPTER tour of the city departing the island airport at 7:30 sharp. Mind you she did tell me while on the high-way doing about 60mph, and I did have a hard time steering as the sweat started down my head combined with that  feeling you get in the pit of our stomach right before you get caught doing something your not supposed to be doing. Well after much searching for parking and numerous reassurances that we will not DIE we found the ferry dock and were off!  Or so we thought.

 No one told us that different ferry’s go to various islands and the ferry to the island airport departs another location 10 minutes (car drive) away. So we paid, boarded and set off towards the airport. About 5 minutes after leaving the main land we noticed the boat traveling away from the airport and heading in the opposite direction all together. Now much to my relief, I realized there was a chance we would miss our departure time and not get to fly. But I could not help but feel bad as I noticed my wife feeling very down as she did try very hard to book something off the wall exciting to mark this special occasion of ours. So when the ferry finally docked (world’s slowest moving floating barge), we frantically set out to find and hire a water taxi. After much searching we found a water taxi. Now to properly describe this character (calling him self a Captain) with a small yellow floating boat I would need to describe “Captain Ron” (Kurt Russell – movie from the 90’s) and a distinct odor smelling like cheap Rum to complete this wonderful equation which is unfolding before our eyes. Now fast forwarding about 10 minutes (skipping the part about almost being thrown from his moving taxi of death) into the future we arrived with 45 seconds to spare at the airport.

After a made dash clear across the airport we arrived at the chopper with 3 ½ seconds to spare and the Pilot shouting at my wife about being on time. The Pilot (who also had the job as flight attendant) gave us our run down about the safety bla-bla-bla most commonly used Bell Ranger Helicopter….basically if we crash….we die….. He was very nice though and helped strap (not buckle) me in to my seat.

My only departing request to him (other then I’m too young to die) was to fly as if I was 80 yrs old with a heart condition. Much to my surprise the flight was very smooth and enjoyable. I’m sure if you ask my wife, she’ll remember it very differently as her hand was aching upon lift off for the duration of the flight until we landed again. The only regret was not allowing the wife to take picture of a grown man crying and praying during flight, however the pictures where off-center and not very clear as she was taking them with 1 hand (advantage me!).

After we reached the main land again it was obvious that if we were going to make our dinner reservations we would have to move fast.  We arrived at the restaurant with 20 minutes to spare and got seated with a very good table (which did surprise me) with an excellent view of the city at night (all the lights did look nice).  As this adventure was a packaged deal the restaurant provided us with a limited pre-fixed menu. The menu would probably not have been a bog deal, if we had never eaten their before but as luck would have it we did. My wife is one of those women whom are very polite until you piss her off and then look out. She got our waiter and demanded the regular dinning menu, and not the 1 page disaster they gave us.

After the menu situation was done we managed to have a lovely meal and desert much to our mutual satisfaction. I would have to say that this past anniversary was the most memorable one yet, and I’m not sure if we’ll be able to top it next year, but we will certainly try!

I love you honey and thank-you for an amazingly planned (or unplanned) adventure around our city.

Guess what?!  I have a guest poster! 

Shocking I know.

Actually I am sleeping with my guest poster.  

Even more shocking I know.

 And no, he is not going to share the torrid details of our affair.  My guest poster is Millhouse!  He is going to share his version of our anniversary excursion. 

He’s been working on it all week and he is going to post it at some point this weekend.

And guys & gals, please be nice he’s a blog virgin and you wouldn’t believe how super excited he was when I asked him to do this.  I also have to shout out Nikki here this whole guest post thing was totally her idea.  I’m not that creative.

So here’s the dealie for our wedding anniversary Millhouse usually plans the adventure.  He’s pretty boring and we usually just end up going for dinner in some super fancy restaurant with really overpriced and delicious food.  I get wine, lots of good wine.

But Millhouse gets my complaints.  Fancy dinners all dressed up are boring.  I’ve eaten too much, blah, blah, blah.  Yes, I know I sound like an ungrateful wench and really I’m not.  I just want to do something different.  So this year Millhouse left the adventure up to me.  That was pretty brave of him, in my opinion but I ran with it.  I researched for weeks until I found the perfect adventure.

A twenty minute helicopter ride around the lake & city at sunset!!

Amazing, I know.

I was mighty proud of myself.  But I failed to take something really important into consideration when I made these plans – Millhouse is afraid of flying.  Now in my defense I know about his fear of flying but I only thought that it extended to airplanes.  I didn’t think that it would extend to all forms of air travel including helicopters.  I don’t know why it never clicked that if he is afraid of flying in an airplane that he would be afraid of flying in a helicopter.  But it just never did.  So anyway keep this little tid bit in mind as I continue with the story.

So I booked the helicopter ride but I didn’t tell Millhouse what we were doing.  I kept telling him that we were going to do something super fun and he would love it.  (The fear of flying part didn’t click in at this point yet.)  I didn’t tell him where we were going until we were about 20 minutes away from the helicopter launch pad.  However, as soon as he found out, he immediately went green and started sweating.  I kept reassuring him that he would be fine, take deep breaths, it would be quick and painless and he would be fine.  I kept rambling on soothing words as we boarded the ferry to get to the helicopter launch site.  I was so busy talking to Millhouse I didn’t realize that we boarded the wrong ferry.

We ended up taking the ferry to the wrong island!  And to make matters even more interesting, we had 20 minutes before our flight was scheduled to depart.  If we missed it, my credit card was getting charged and I was out of luck.  I think Millhouse was secretly relieved at this point.  But my panicking and almost tears brought out his chivalrous side and he helped me hunt down a water taxi.  If you’ve never been on a water taxi, they are basically these speed boats that travel between the islands.  They are expensive and pretty much, board at your own risk.  But we had no choice.  We boarded a water taxi and we were off.

Not quite.  We had to wait for the other passengers to board & be dropped off.  Once they were dropped off, the captain moved us to the back of the boat and drove so fast that it looked like the boat was popping a wheelie.  He pulled right up to the ferry entrance at the airport and told me to hop out.  Here’s the thing though; there was no dock.  I was a unauthorized personnel in an authorized personnel zone and Millhouse & I needed to get off the boat now.  This meant climbing on a tractor tire from a moving boat in a dress. 

Yeah.

So I hauled my tail out of the moving boat, over the tractor tire and landed at the feet of the security guard.

Yeah.

He was very polite and directed us to where we needed to be and we got to go on the helicopter.

But our adventure doesn’t end there.

The realization that we were actually going on a helicopter hit Millhouse hard.  He went red, started sweating bullets and I swear there were tears but he still boarded the aircraft and put on his seat belt.  It was when the propeller starting spinning is when he lost it.  He put his head down, grabbed my hand, started tearing up and praying to every deity that he could recollect.  He did that for the entire 20 minutes.

But he didn’t ask once to land early.  He didn’t look out the window once or let me open the window but he didn’t chicken out.  He toughed it out for the entire flight.

 And was really happy when we landed.

 That’s why I love him and that is why he is planning next year’s adventure. 

I tell you there are some days when I swear that Sprite’s Keeper is a mind reader.  The spin cycle this week is about birthdays and anniversaries.  And wouldn’t you know it yesterday was my 3^rd wedding anniversary. 

Now I could go on and on about how much I love my husband and how he is the light of my life and yada, yada, yada. But I’m not.  Instead here’s the reason why you didn’t see an anniversary post on my blog yesterday. 

And no, I didn’t forget our anniversary; I chose not to remember it.  There’s a difference. 

I think Hallmark has taken over the world.  I really do.  With the advent of the greeting card they have taken over the world.  There is a greeting card for everything and people are losing their marbles because of that.  I know people who celebrate their anniversary weekly!!  Now that is a bit much.  The word anniversary has annual in it.  You don’t have to celebrate not breaking up every week.  It gets tiresome and I really don’t want to hear about it. 

Now I am not anti – big celebration and milestones, just be selective. 

Millhouse & I celebrated our dating anniversary annually.  Since neither of us was too sure about the actual date that we started dating, we just picked a random day in the month that we started dating and that became our anniversary.  We celebrated 5 of them.  For the wedding anniversary it was a bit easier to keep track of the day that I donned a red sari / white wedding dress and he a suit.  It was a long weekend.  But we still don’t make a really big deal about it.  We go out to dinner and Beanz and Stinky come over.  

That’s about it. 

You know when I will make a big deal about it – when we actually make it.  My parents celebrated their 33^rd wedding anniversary this year; I think they should celebrate that.  3’s not so big of a deal when you compare it to 33. 

To me anyway. 

So on that note – Millhouse, I love you.  Happy Anniversary.  Let’s do this again next year, same time and place.

Millhouse is off gallavanting with my father again.  Now I should be glad that they are spending quality time together and that they get along well enough that they can go out as often as they do.  Trust me I know I could have it way worse than it is.  But it is where they go together that concerns me.  Everytime my husband and my father head out, they head for the same place – the strip club.  Not one specific strip club mind you, they strip club hop.  We are lucky enough to live in an area where strip clubs are in abundance and all within walking distance from one another. 

So just about every month they have a ‘boys night’ where they go out and stay out until about 5am and I stay at home googling diamond engagement rings.  Now staying at home at night while they go out and have a night out doesn’t bother me.  It is the next day that bothers me.  They are both wrecked the next day and that’s what I don’t like.