|
My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
|
10:44 p.m. - 2010-12-20
Hiya, Yippee Skippy Girl here. Okay, not really, but it's rolling up on Christmas and putting on some dorky good cheer seems in order� Not something you'd ever anticipate needing to say, but I'm quoting myself so I know it was said. Yesterday Mick and I were in the kitchen and Princess is standing just outside the kitchen doorway in the front hall. She's got her ears perked and a hopeful look on her face. Recently we've been trying to talk to and pet her a lot more so she doesn't skew off into hypochondria to get attention. Because, you know, when she rucks up her hip we dote on her and then when she's well Princess goes back to being 'the dog'. She might not do tricks, but she's not dumb. If a limp and a whimper are going to get her extra pats and lap time from Mom and Dad�uh huh. So to that end we've been paying more attention to her. However this is starting to backfire on us and now she's up our ass all the time for cookies and walkies. Mick is especially bad about spoiling her with cookies. She doesn't need to 'sit' or anything. If Mick's near the dog cookie jar then Princess gets one. Just because. So now even if she's just been outside 5 minutes ago or still has a cookie hanging out of her mouth she's right there mooching for more. "Go out?" "Cookie?" "Pet me?" "More cookie?" "Go out, right?" Princess has lost sight of the big picture. Hence, "The dog has unrealistic expectations." Though speaking of cookies, the human kind in this case, Wolf went off to school this morning toting a couple of gallon sized ziplocks full of cookies he baked himself. Yesterday he and I sloped off to Sam's. We bought two huge buckets of chocolate chip cookie dough and a bag of M&Ms. The last few years I've opted for the ready-to-bake dough over doing them from scratch. Stifle the gasps of horror, okay? Nobody has ever spat them back out and denounced me from on high, "FAUGH! Shameful slattern, thou hast gone against nature and humanity with these false cookies! Shame on you! A thousand curses upon your house for 7 generations!" The 'recipe' is dead easy. Let the dough warm and soften until it can be smooshed out flat. Scoop out big lumps of dough, smoosh dough on a cookie sheet almost to the edges, sprinkle with M&Ms, bake. Cool and then slice into squares with a pizza cutter. I have the big heavy industrial half-sheet cookie sheets and get about 3 dozen cookie squares per. The warehouse buckets of dough do about 2.5 batches, so two buckets equals approximately 15 dozen cookies. I know chocolate chip cookies, even ones duded up with M&Ms aren't especially Christmassy, but again nobody's ever thrown them back in my face and demanded pfeffernusse instead. They get eaten, gladly. And I never lie and call them 'homemade', at most I'll say they're 'fresh baked'. So yesterday it was Wolf's turn to smoosh and sprinkle. Watching him struggle to scoop out the dough and the difficult time he had getting the dough evenly smooshed I realized how unacquainted my son is with his hands. Something which was hammered home a bit later when he tried to slice a bell pepper and cut his finger. (The pepper was a snack, not part of the cookie baking.) I've always assumed that between the video games and his father's extreme knackiness with tools and such that Wolf would have very clever hands. He doesn't. Hopefully the art lessons, which have been deferred until the new year, will help my boy become more familiar with his hands. I'll also be telling the ex to give Wolf some lessons in tool usage. Mike is a terrible teacher, communication is not a strong point, but he has more opportunity to teach Wolf how to wield a hammer and a drill than I do. Besides, I'm already down for teaching Wolf to shave, drive a car, and cook. The fricken ex can at least come across with some instructions about hand tools. Heh, I've been wracking my brain for the correct way to tell this without holding my husband up as an ignoranty or a fool. I, for one, found the whole thing adorable and hilarious and Mick thinks it's funny too and doesn't mind in the least that I tell it, so no one should get the idea my guy is a dope. But� Last night Mick comes downstairs to use the can and come in here for a quick visit and some smooching. A couple lip-locks later we compose ourselves and I ask, "Whatcha been doing, hon?" At that I slotted off into helpless giggles again and Mick good naturedly waited until I laughed myself out so he could kiss me some more. You know what the truly cool thing is? Mick never, never, ever gets squiffy when the gaps in his cultural literacy butt against my trash basket trivia hoard of a brain. Mick thinks the encyclopedia in my skull is wonderful. He's forever bragging about my IQ and how great he thinks it is to have such a brainiac wife. Not that knowing about 'Beowulf' makes me a genius or anything, but you guys know what I mean. My whole life men have given me grief because I knew things they didn't or could out-think them or kick their asses at Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. And Mick? Mick thinks I'm amazing. A treasure. A joy. He believes it's his privilege to be with such a one. He's delighted and honored I chose him. Mick never lets a touchy ego get in the way of learning something new or thinks he has to best me or shame me somehow to 'get even'. His genuine admiration for all the stuff I know is so sweet. I don't have to hide or falsely defer or bite my tongue or pretend to be wowed by the pontificating of some dimwit whose ability to get an erection is based on how often he can make me feel stupid. Mick never feels like he has to put me in my place or hurt and shame me so he can assert his manly superiority. On the contrary, Mick bases his self-worth as a man on how happy he can make me. How safe and valued and appreciated I feel. On how much I get to be my whole self and not some whittled down, squashed in, subdued thing who has to lower and make little of myself so Mr Man can stand on my back to have his place in the sun. You tell me who the dumb guy is. The one who might not know about 'Beowulf' but loves, honors and delights in a brilliant woman or one who only feels like a 'real man' when he's doing a woman down?
|
