...when The Big Boy and I got married, I had a five year old, we were young and talented and making money. Life was good. We bought a house at the golf course and met some really fun people and had some really fun times. In retrospect, I should have been more grateful. At the time, I just thought I was fat. I wasn't. Phone rang yesterday and it was a friend from then. Checking up on mutual acquaintances. And this story came up and...I hadn't forgotten it but I hadn't thought about it in a long time. Which is sad because THIS story? Is hilarious and when you get older? Stuff like this just makes you roll your eyes.
After we'd been married a couple of years and decided that yes, we wanted to have a baby because...he wanted to have a baby, I started the tickfuck that is infertility treatment. I got up every morning, drove 110 miles to Bham and had a sonar and bloodwork, drove 160 miles to school where I was working on my graduate degree and put in a day, called the clinic and found out if I needed a shot that night and if I did? Drove 90 miles to the only pharmacy in this end of the state (at the time) that sold the $120-a-pop shots, then drove 30 miles back home. And got up the next morning and did it again.
It wasn't pretty. We did this for most of four years. It takes its toil (This was a typo but I'm leaving it)...we spent more on The Nice Kid than we spent on that house on the golf course. Looking back, she was the better deal. That house had a narrow hall.
One New Year's our best couple friends had a great party...I still think this is the best idea I never had. New Year's Eve. Nine o'clock. Champagne and dessert. People eat dinner somewhere else, have a nice romantic time, get in the mood and then show up for...the party. It was a hit and I still think it was the best party ever.
The Big Boy, his friend and his friend's friend, got into the tequila. This is NOT good at any time but on this night? It was REALLY not good. We had picked up The Big Kid and her best friend from the ice rink and had them with us, and when we got ready to leave...it got ugly.
We're backing out of the party driveway, ME driving of course, from the party house and TBB starts yelling at me to close the garage doors. You know...THE GARAGE DOORS AT SOMEONE ELSE'S HOUSE. Sorry, bud, MY REMOTE DOESN'T DO THAT. He didn't get any nicer and the situation didn't get any better and we start home. And he is muttering. Over in the passenger seat, muttering to himself. And we get home, raise OUR garage door, start up the steps and he says, and I quote:
"Yeah. Been trying to trap ME with this baby shit. I'm not trapped yet."
YOU'RE not trapped? YOU'RE not trapped? You STUPID SON OF A BITCH...YOU'RE not trapped? I've been driving my ass off and shooting hormones into my butt and serving as a guinea pig at UAB and...WHO'S trapped?
I saw red. Not light pink but "I will kill you" red. The color of murder. And we got to the top of the steps in the den and I turned around and swung with every needle-injected/driven out/too tired to see bone in my body. I fully intended to kill that dumbass.
Problem. We had white marble tile. Shiny white marble tile. And I had taken off my heels and was wearing cream stockings. To go with my cream cashmere. I looked really good but...slick hose? and slick floors?
When I swung he ducked and I spun around and when I did the floors and my feet did things and...I fell over backwards. (Which was his fault because if he'd kept his STUPID FACE in front of my fist? My momentum would have been halted.) When I fell over backwards? I fell into the Christmas tree.
Which fell over backwards. With me on top of it, thrashing around in the pine-scented chaos.
There was water and paper and gifts everywhere. Everywhere. And when I got up, for the sole purpose of KILLING that asshole, my cream cashmere sweater dress had Christmas ornaments hanging all down the back. Just like...hooked in. Dangling. All down the back.
TBB is no dummy and he immediately took off out the front door. I went after him only so far as the gravel driveway and...OH YEAH! I had no shoes. So I went back in and locked the doors and went to bed.
No one can remember if he got back in the house or prevailed on a neighbor to take him in. I sort of think he got into the garage and slept in the car because I ALSO sort of think that I had hidden the car keys in the deep freeze and it took me two days to remember it.
I wish I'd been born with more of the knowledge it's taken me so long to acquire. I sure did go through some STUPID stuff to get to here.
To this day, TBB swears he didn't say that but...there were witnesses. He did. Say that. The picture really is us, back in the day. I've found an on-line site that will print it into an Andy Warhol-type five-foot tall canvas. Christmas present, I be thinking.
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