Stephanie Says.. Take a walk inside my head

In the car, on the way home from work

Kenny (Since he’s not just my husband, he’s my boss): Remind me to give you your paycheck.  I wrote it today.

Me (Happy that more money will go into my “Saving to visit Scotland Pile”): Scotland?

Kenny: Uh Huh.

Me (Knowing that Kenny doesn’t wanna visit anywhere outside the United States): You know, if you don’t want to take me, my Daddy said he’d go.

Kenny: Maybe he could pay for it.  That way we could buy something I’m interested in.

Me: Like Johnny Depp.

Kenny: No.  I have no interest in him.

****************************************************************

At work. After hours. Me playing videos on You Tube.  Kenny doing whatever computer genius-y stuff he does when the official work day is over.

Kenny (Noticing loud music coming from Mike’s computer.): What are you listening to?

Me: Evanescence.

Kenny: Growl. (When he’s sort of annoyed, he actually says the word “Growl”.  So this is him saying the word, not making the sound.) Does this mean you’re in a bad mood?

Me: No.

Kenny: Good.

Me: It means I’m thinking about high school.

Kenny: High School?

Me: Yeah.  Next I may play Roxette.

Kenny: That makes more sense.  They may have been popular when you were in high school.  Evanescence was just a few years ago.

(At this point I am both annoyed at being called old and proud that Kenny knows what music I play when I’m in a bad mood.)

****************************************************

Kenny walking by while I’m playing Yoville, a virtual world on the computer.

Me: I’m buying a bathtub!

Kenny: What?

Me: I’m buying a bathtub.  I’m so excited.  I’ve been saving up.

Kenny (Looking at the little virtual store from which I am selecting my virtual bathtub): Buy a laptop instead.  It doesn’t matter if you’re clean, but you always need to be able to log on to the Internet.

 

 

Sitting at the food court, me eating Chic-Fil-A, Kenny eating noodles.

Me: Are you glad you married me instead of getting a Cadillac?

(Let me explain.  A Cadillac is Kenny’s dream car.  He always points them out to me when we’re traveling.  He also jokes that I am his Cadillac, meaning he spent money to get married rather than buy his car.)

Kenny: There’s no way to answer that.  I obviously didn’t buy a Cadillac, so I don’t know if I’d be glad having it.

(At this point I am only mock indignant.  We’ve been married twelve years and have had this conversation-or some variant thereof-many times.  I’m not anywhere near June Cleaver territory on the scale of perfect wives, but I’m not totally terrible either.)

Me (After five minutes or so of mock pouting and bickering): But I’m the best wife you’ve ever had, right?

Kenny: That’s a safe bet.

*******************************************************

In the kitchen.  I’m spinning around singing some kind of song that has been floating around in my head for the past couple of days and Kenny is doing his best to put up with it.

Me: I wonder how much of me is who I am and how much is who you made me to be.

(I don’t mean “made” in a forced sense.  I mean influenced.  I was still a teenager when Kenny and I first started sitting together in church, riding around in cars and generally causing rumors in our small town church.  Therefore, I’ve been around Kenny for about half my life and there are many areas in which he played teacher/instructor/professor to my teenager/student/brat.)

Kenny: There is no way to determine that.

Me (as if Kenny hadn’t said anything): I mean, I don’t dress up.  I don’t wear make up.  I barely brush my hair.  If I were married to a different man, do you think I’d do those things?

Kenny: If you had a stupid husband you might.

************************************************

At Wal*Mart after church, looking for chili mix.

Me: Can I ask you a question?

(This is my standard way of approaching any topic that makes me anxious or uncomfortable. Kenny knows this.)

Kenny (who is now on guard): You just did.

Me: Did you tell people at church that you want me to drive?

Kenny: What?  No, I don’t think so.

(A note is in order here.  I have a license.  I have driven.  Kenny says I drove for about a year before I didn’t anymore. I don’t remember that part.  I just remember being terrified.  I get scared easily anyway in unfamiliar situations, and driving compounds this fear a hundred fold. Kenny, who is afraid of nothing-not spiders, not death, not the dark-has picked up on this fear and much prefers to do the driving himself.  Since I prefer to let him drive and since we work in the same place, this usually isn’t a problem.  Every now and then, however, someone will see the license in my purse or not understand my jokes about why Kenny had to go to Nashville to see “Wicked” when he doesn’t like musicals and the conversations begin anew.)

Me: Well, I heard you said you wanted me to drive, but that I was scared.

(Which I am.  Very much so.)

Kenny: Would it be convenient if you could drive?  Sometimes.  But does it terrify me when you do? Yes.

(At this point, he is raising and lowering his hands like one would a scale)

Kenny: So would I rather be inconvenienced than terrified?  Yes.  So it’s not a problem.

***********************************************

At work.

Me (after proofreading an obituary that included the deceased’s places of residence, club memberships and hobbies): When I die, are you going to put my whole biography in there?

Kenny: I don’t know.  I might just say “Dead. Now.”

I was in the kitchen the other day singing

“You spin me right round

Baby right round

Like a record baby”

Kenny (who is used to me bouncing around like a human jukebox but never pleased when it happens) interrupted me.

“You know that song is not relevant today.” he said “No one knows what a record is.”

“I do.”  (At this point, I was a little indignant.)

“Yeah”, he agreed “but you’re old.”

Not sure how to take that.

 

In the meantime, here is a quote from Kenny:

We were walking along in search of funnel cake today and I said “You know what?  This coming June, I will have known you half my life.  Really, you will have been in my life half the time I’ve been alive.”

And my sweet loving husband said: “If you live ’til June.”

I wanted to slug him. 

 

It bothers Kenny when I walk around the house wearing a shirt that is turned inside out.

I’ve been with him half my life; I don’t think I’m about to change this now.

Anyone else have this trouble with *their* husband? 

 

A couple of weekends ago, we had a big birthday celebration for all the winter birthdays in my family.  As a result of this celebration, we (at least those of us over the age of five) played a game called “Dirty Laundry”.

Get your mind out of the gutter, it’s not that kind of game.

The object was to see how well people knew you.  A question might be “What are my three favorite books?” and the other players had to match your answers for points.  The drawing portion was fun.  We had to draw Monica on vacation, for example.

When it came to my turn to be matched, everyone had to draw my biggest fear.  Daddy and Mama said “heights”, Clay said  “the dark” and Monica said “bugs”.

They were all right.  And, they were all wrong.

My biggest fears -are- heights, the dark and bugs (well creepy crawlies).

Until Kenny gets sick.  That’s when my heart starts to go into overdrive and my palms start to sweat.

I read an article once claiming that until Celine Dion’s husband experienced his cancer, he took complete care of her.  I can emulate that remark.  Heck, I do emulate that remark.

Kenny is the strong one in our marriage.  He’s smarter than I am, more experienced than I am and usually less willing than I am to let an entire day go by spent in bed with only cats and magazines for company.

This past week, however, the flu hit our little town.  It hit hard.  It shut down both the county and the city schools and it felled my husband.  He couldn’t move, he couldn’t stay awake more than five minutes at a time and he couldn’t stop sweating and shivering.

I tried to be a good little nurse.  I fetched him Gatorade.  I gave him a wet washcloth.  I didn’t engage him in deep conversation.  I understood when he canceled his classes.

Inside, however, I was Linus with a thumb in my mouth and a security blanket clutched in my hands.

Kenny’s better now.  He’s back to classes.  He’s back to expounding on the mechanics of physics (his favorite topic in the world).  He’s back to picking up the cats just to hear them protest.  He’s back to grinning at me.

I’m glad.  Don’t get me wrong.  I know that chances are someday I’ll have to be strong.  And confident.  And capable.  And I know that in the midst of situations like this past week, I -can- be.

I’m just not quite ready to let Kenny give up those roles.

Not yet.

Not for a long time.

 

In our living room is a CD player that can handle five discs at once.  I like to put as many CDs by one artists as I can fit into the player and hit the button that will scramble up the songs.  Lately, I’ve been doing that to Point of Grace.  I like to put them on when I’m cleaning, so I may be in the basement to “Jesus Will Still Be There” and my bedroom to “Yes, I Believe”.

I memorize songs (or at least choruses) pretty easily, so I can usually sing along to my favorites.  The other day, however, I ran into a song I didn’t know.  It’s called “Waiting in the Wings” and the refrain just floored me.

I believe

Though God is out of sight

He’s working in the middle of all things

Evil may have its time in the spotlight

But love is waiting in the wings

Love is always waiting in the wings

I’ve been on stage once or twice, so I know what “waiting in the wings” means.  I had just never applied the sentiment to my life…or to my marriage.

See, I’ve been thinking about my marriage a lot lately.  Kenny and I have been together about thirteen years and had our tenth anniversary this summer.  Looking at us now, I can honestly call us best friends and partners.

It wasn’t always so.  Evil didn’t rear its ugly head in any traditional form.  I wasn’t an alcoholic or a porn star or an out and out adulteress.  But I was…and still am…selfish.  Kenny’s not very…oh, what’s the word?  Flashy…or…exciting…and I spent most of the past decade looking for something, anything, to take the boredom away, to satisfy the craving for entertainment.

I hurt a lot of people along the way, most of all my husband.  My life was a game of -Survivor- and I was lying and backstabbing left and right.

And then it happened.  I fell in love.

Don’t get me wrong.  I didn’t want to fall in love.  I’d been so in love before that my brains fell out of my head and I couldn’t think straight.  Love, to me, was dangerous.  I wasn’t happy in my stupidly selfish existance, but at least I was in control.

Life…love…and God, had other plans.  Love, real love, stepped out of the wings this summer and slowly began taking center stage.  My sedentary, non flashy husband became something else.  I saw him take care of problems for frantic customers and I began to see him as a man with solutions.

I watched Catherine Grace climb into his lap and suddenly I could envision watching him hold our own little Miracle.

When he printed off smiley face stickers for my five year old class, he became a man of ideas.  When he held our smallest cat up to his face for some nuzzling, I saw him as someone solid, yes, but someone tender.

And boom, Love stepped out of the wings and into my heart.

I’m still selfish.  I’m still a Princess, at least in my own mind.  And yes, Johnny Depp is still an acceptable gift for any and all holidays.  But love, real love, my love, resides in the form of a no longer average, no longer as boring man whom I’m proud to call my husband.

And life isn’t a game of -Survivor- anymore.