The Perfect Thing

I live in an old house with drafty windows, not enough outlets, and no square corners at all. It has lots of character though. And it has some really, really beautiful features that made us fall in love with the house, including a lovely old front door that's made of panes of beveled glass framed in dark oak. So it's a little hard to explain why we had the door covered, for years, with a nondescript curtain. (It came with the house. See what I mean? Embarrassing.)

Anyway, we'd always meant to replace the unappealing curtain. We only needed to decide what we wanted instead.

And then, one day, figuring that we only lacked the proper motivation, I got rid of the curtain. I've seen this sort of thing before, where as long as you have something good enough, even when it's not actually all that good, like an old sofa from the thrift store, you will have it forever. I suppose that would be a good moral for a story on sustainability, or reduce, reuse and recycle, which is not what this story is about.

So anyway, we were left with a wonderful view of our lovely, beveled glass front door, and absolutely no privacy. And it worked. We were motivated.

One day while my husband and I were out having lunch together, I pointed out the pretty pane of framed stained glass hanging in the restaurant window. "That's what I want for our front door," I told him. "It doesn't cover the whole window, but it covers most of it. And it's pretty. That would work."

He pointed out the obvious - that with glass clanking against glass every time we open and close the door, something is going to break.

I pointed out the obvious - that I'm not quite that stupid. Of course I didn't mean actual stained glass. Just something like that. A wall hanging made of cloth, maybe.

OK. That made sense. We agreed.

Time passed, and we kept our eyes open for the perfect thing, while carefully not walking around half naked in the vicinity of our front door, or at least I did. It's possible my husband forgot. I mean about the perfect thing, not about not walking around in our underwear. Mostly.

One day we were having lunch together again in that same restaurant. (It's a really great restaurant.) And I pointed to the stained glass and said again that I wanted something like that for our front door.

And once again my husband said, "But not stained glass, because that would break."

And once again I agreed.

And so we went to an art fair, which was the perfect opportunity to look for the perfect thing for our front door - the stained glass-like thing that wasn't stained glass - that would restore our modest standing with our neighbors and finally replace the unattractive curtain.

And we found it.

And what do you suppose we found? Do you have to ask? We found stained glass, of course. It was beautiful, and it was perfect. Except for, oh yeah, the whole being stained glass thing.

We rolled our eyes at ourselves, and then we walked away. We thought that maybe if we kept looking we'd find something else, something perfect that wasn't made of stained glass. Maybe we would return and find we'd changed our minds, and the stained glass thing wasn't really perfect after all. With luck, we would return and find that it had been sold to someone else. But instead, we returned, and it was still there, and it was still perfect. And we bought it, and we hung it, and it's perfect.

It turns out that you can put little silicone bumpers on the corners, so the clanking isn't too bad. And you can be kind of gentle when you open and close the door. And you can remind yourself of the intrinsically transitory nature of beautiful things made of glass, like doors, and stained glass, and such. And you can share a little laugh with your husband over human foibles and the blessing of frivolous problems.

Red Shoes

I bought a pair of high heeled shoes the other day – tomato red and spiky. They're really great shoes. Very sexy.

If this were a romance novel, my husband would take one look at me in those shoes, throw me over his shoulder, and search out the nearest flat surface.

Sigh.

The reality is that my husband is great at rocking my world, but it doesn't have anything to do with sexy shoes. At least not so far. And frankly, if things like slutty shoes were important to him, he should have married someone else, someone who wouldn't have waited this long to get around to buying some.

So, I've been trying to imagine how he'll react when he gets a look at these amazing shoes. He may go all Neanderthal, but I kind of doubt it. I can't help but think he's more likely to get very, very tense, the same kind of tense that men get when their wives ask them if these pants make me look fat, only probably a little worse, because he will have no prior experience to guide him. Face it, the right answer is "no" or even "NO!" And any man who has ever had even a little time to think about it knows that, or at least he'll know it the second time he's asked.
 
But here's a situation my husband's unlikely to have anticipated, and where he has no prior experience to guide him. A little marital landmine. It almost makes me feel a bit sorry for him.

In fact, I bought the shoes for an event that won't take place for another month, so it's quite possible that my husband's first glimpse of them will be on the Visa bill. I have to think that right off the bat he'll have the wrong reaction, even though that first glimpse will probably set his heart to racing.

When he does see the shoes, on me, he will probably appreciate that my legs look great. But it's not like this is the first time he's ever seen me. We've been together for twenty odd years. He's seen me looking great before. He's also seen me cleaning the garage. He's seen me puttering around the kitchen in sweats. He's seen me with some seriously scary bed head. He's seen me with the stomach flu.

He has seen me delivering a baby.

Obviously I'm lucky that there's more to our mutual attraction than the visual. I heard from one man (for the record – someone else's husband, not mine) that seeing a baby get delivered looks a lot like seeing a deer get gutted. Can one pair of red shoes really counteract a visual like that?

And of course my husband knows me. He knows I don't often wear impractical shoes. He'll probably be wondering how the heck I'll be able to stand in them all night long. He may worry that I'm going to sprain an ankle or dislocate a hip, and it won't only be because he knows he'll be the one who has to lug the groceries in from the car while I'm recuperating. It will also be because, you know, he loves me.

To compound the problem, he'll probably have to let me into his office to change out of my sneakers before the event, because the heels on these shoes are so high and spiky that I couldn't possibly wear them to drive the car, much less to walk across a parking lot of any size.

And it won't help matters that I didn't buy them to go on a hot date. I bought the shoes to match an outfit I'm wearing to an event where we'll be playing host and hostess, standing around making small talk, drinking wine from plastic cups and listening to speeches. By the end of the night my feet will be aching, and I'll be dying to get home, take off the shoes and hurl them into the back of the closet.

It'll be totally worth it though. They're really great shoes. Just ask my husband.
 

Lemonade Stand

Yesterday my daughter and her friend had their first lemonade stand. I'd like to give a shout-out to the people who stopped and bought some lemonade. The kids were absolutely thrilled.

A couple of years ago my friend Kathy informed me that I'm obligated to stop at every lemonade stand I see, now that I'm a parent. I don't think I had ever stopped at one before. Really, who wants an overfilled, lidless plastic cup of tepid Kool-Aid? But, of course she was right.

So yesterday, on my way home from the grocery store in a car filled with melting frozen lemonade, I passed a little lemonade stand a block from my house. And I realized I had to stop, even though I was about to have more lemonade in my house than I knew what to do with. So, I backed up to the stand and bought a cup. The little girl was so thrilled that she actually jumped up and down, shrieking to her little brother, "I sold one! I sold one!" It was kind of wonderful to experience that much joy, and for only twenty-five cents.

So, I went home and helped my daughter and her friend set up their stand, and it was the same thing. It was a hot day, and there wasn't much traffic. In the two hours they sat there, they had only nine customers, and my husband was two of them. But they were thrilled with every sale they made, ecstatic every time a car slowed down. So, thanks to all you people who get it, and who stopped and made my little girl's day.

Mad at My Husband

I was ticked off at my husband this morning. Turns out it was unjustified. I had set something down, carefully, last night, and it wasn't there this morning. I was annoyed that he had moved it, and annoyed in anticipation of finding it carelessly disturbed, expecting it would take some work to fix it. Typical.

And then I found it someplace else, in the place where I had actually carefully set it down last night, unmoved and undisturbed. And I wondered how often I get irritated with my husband when he hasn't actually done anything irritating. And I wonder how that colors our relationship. Seems like we'd both be happier if I could stop it.

Tombstone Purchase

In the locker room this morning, I overheard a woman telling a friend that her husband just purchased a tombstone. She was upset, in part, because he didn't consult her about it at all. But it's easy to imagine being upset for all sorts of reasons. Why would he think, after a lifetime together, that he should do it without any input from her? I suppose it also involves considering what will become of his, and her, remains after they die, something they maybe should talk over. And what would prompt a husband to decide, suddenly, that purchasing a tombstone is urgent? And how do you even choose a tombstone - what are the criteria? And how do you know if you got a good one?

Ick.