Late one evening, I rolled awkwardly onto our bed. My lower back was in spasms. Rolling seemed easier than my usual approach: the Fosbury Flop.
My husband looked at me, breaking his concentration from a rugby game, a minor match he’d recorded and didn’t really care about. “You OK?” he asked.
I moaned. “How long until the game’s over?” I asked.
“Ten minutes or less,” he said. “I’ll fast forward through all the scrums and line-outs.”
“Who’s playing?” Asking this question checked off two of the tick-y boxes of our vows: love and honour.
I can’t remember who he said was playing (“listening” was not part of our vows), but I do recall my husband followed it up by quoting from The Simpsons. It was the episode where Homer was fully engaged in a soccer match he really shouldn’t have cared about. “Marge,” my husband said, imitating Homer, “I’ll just kill myself if Portugal doesn’t win.”
We laughed. He fast forwarded. I squirmed.
A few minutes later, the TV now off, he emerged from the bathroom.
“Can you get me a Tylenol?” I asked.
“One or two?”
“Just one.”
He gave me a pill.
“Crap,” I said. “I don’t have any water.”
“Have mine. I have two,” he said, handing me a murky glass. “It’s my glass from last night.”
I swallowed the pill. “I feel a bit like Shakespeare’s wife,” I said. “Like you’ve just left me the second best bed in your will. Which he did, by the way.”
“D’oh,” my husband said, resurrecting his Homer impression. “I… feel… stoop-id.”
He turned off his reading lamp. I put in my earplugs.
Minutes later, he sighed. It must have been loud because I heard it in spite of the orange foam shoved into my ear canals.
“That sounds like a bit of stress,” I shouted. I was on a roll: I could check off “love and honour” again, twice in one day.
“I’m just meditating,” he said.
“You’re levitating?” I said. I wiggled one of my earplugs free.
He laughed. “This is levitating.” His middle finger rose.
“Do you think normal people have these sorts of conversations before bed?” I asked.
My earplug was back in before I heard his answer.
~~~
Do you watch sports on TV?
Do you have any bedtime rituals that are rated “G”?
Ha! “This is levitating.” NICE ONE, Mr. Ironic Mom!
We’re in the thick of March Madness (college bball) right now, at which point my husband actually goes mad. He even takes a couple days off of work. For a sport. I know we’ve been together a long time (10 years) because not having his full attention used to bother me, and now I’m thrilled – it’s almost like the Fates are TELLING me to fill up the living room DVR with “Twilight” and “The Carrie Diaries.”
Every morning I awake to find my husband (15 years I think) playing games on his Smartphone – CandyCrush is the latest craze. Once he realises I am awake he turns the radio on to Talk Sport and the TV on to watch YouTube videos of real-time train journeys. By which time I’m ready to get up to escape to the real world!
Isn’t marriage grand? 😉
I’m going to remember to ask “whose playing” from now on when Mark is watching Rugby in bed (often!) because I’ve clearly been missing out on super easy “love and honour” credits for almost 18 years! 🙂
We’re only to almost four years, but this will be us. No doubt in my mind. Mainly because we already sound like this.
I love you and your husband’s ‘Gilmor Girls’ type banter. Don’t know if that sounds like a compliment of your relationship – but it was meant to be.
Well Joe and I have our moments. I thought this was really funny. Think we’ve had it too.
This is too funny! My German husband and I have conversations like this all the time! —Jadi
LOL! The exhaustion of parenthood! You two are great 🙂
They do. My husband and I follow just about everything we say with “Oh, and suck it.” Example: “Thanks for doing the dishes tonight, babe.” “You’re welcome. Oh, and suck it.” Of course, we’re not necessarily normal. 🙂
LOL…I think I’ve had a few conversations like that with my better half, thought it not over sports, it more over a book I’m reading. Thought ours usely end with me telling him “to bite me” to which he will; then he turns out his light and says good night.
We steal the kids’ DS Nintendo thingies and have Tetris wars in bed. It’s like foreplay. Well, except when Mark beats me. Then I sulk and stay on my side of the bed.
Laying next to your husband in bed is not nor ever will be on my bucket list. However, i do know that our relationship is built on not just one but two middle fingers…make that 4. My middle 2 vs. his middle 2!!!
Reblogged this on Denisse Gomez.
Yes, marriage is a bed of roses. Too bad your husband didn’t remove the thorns.
We’re only at 10.4. Are you telling me this is what I have to look forward to???
“This is levitating!” Nice! We have a lovely morning ritual. Most days he gets up first and then brings me a cup of coffee in bed, which he delivers singing a song that he makes up as he’s walking in. It always has some rhyming variation of “show me your. . . “
hilarious!
We do watch sports on tv, both of us, so it’s no big deal.
And I refuse to talk about chemical wars in bed.
Love it!! You end up doing the same thing with teenage sons. Feigning interest in sport statistics to check off “mothering” boxes.
I’m pretty sure year 12 is silk and year 13 is lace.
Naturally, 12.7 is Tylenol.
The wife:
Cuddles up with me to watch TV.
Gets a backrub.
Sleeps woth her left leg on my back.
That about covers it.
And I’ve been marrid for 18 years. You’re a newb, Leanne.