The Secret to a Happy Marriage

I’ve been married more than once, so trust me… I have knowledge of what does and doesn’t make a marriage work… well that, and having witnessed many marriages that have endured the test of time too.

There are some definite do’s and don’ts if you want to live in unending marital harmony.  Unfortunately though, most of the work is left up to the female side of the partnership.  Of course most things, if done right are done by a woman.  There are a few exceptions to the rule, but I can’t think of any.  

The other thing is this… This is where most people get tripped up.  This is a secret; there are “levels” to the do’s and don’ts.

Level One Don’ts:  Don’t move his hunting stuff into the rain, touch his shotgun, mess his dog, and don’t dent his truck.  If you’ve got those down, you’re home free.  

Level One Do’s:  Do make sure there is plenty of his favorite sandwich fixin’s and midnight munchies around, make sure he has clean socks and underwear, his dog is fed and that you don’t leave his truck on empty.  

Level Two Don’ts:  Don’t stand in front of the TV during the big game and tell him you’re pregnant… (Timing is everything).  Don’t pour the milk on his co-co puffs before he gets to the table… nobody likes soggy co-co puffs, and don’t flush the toilet when he’s in the shower.

Level Two Do’s:  Smile when he says his parents are coming for dinner tonight and it’s already 3:30.  Put his keys where he can find them, because you know he would never find them if you didn’t, and always buy and send Birthday cards to all of his family members especially to his Mother because he won’t remember to do it himself.

Level Three Don’ts:  Don’t call where he works and ask for him unless someone is dying or an immediate family member has been in a serious accident.  Don’t Move in with his parents or allow them to move in with you.  Don’t ever tell him that you have some extra money stashed in a cookie jar or other hiding place because he will suddenly have some need that he didn’t have before he found out you had any money.

Level Three Do’s:   Do be sure he KNOWS that you love him.  Do ALWAYS be a good secretary.  Do always remind him of important events and appointments and keep track of all of the finances.  Do sure the checkbook always balances, the mortgage and the utilities are always paid first.  Do always have dinner figured out or at least the restaurant where he IS taking you, because if you ask him what he wants for dinner he will never have an answer. 

Knowing these things goes a very long,, long way to help you have a successful marriage… but there is one secret I have kept to share for last, and it is the KEY to a happy marriage… If you do nothing else, utilize this one key and it will take you far…

Let the man THINK he is in charge!

 

How Many Shoes & Purses Does One Girl Need?

Accessories are important to a girl.  After all we need something to draw attention to our perceived flaws.  Nothing can update a wardrobe faster than a few new accessories.  We are taught this at a very young age.  What little girl didn’t get dressed up in a new dress without ruffled socks and new shoes?  Sometimes at Easter we also got a new spring hat too.   Even we tom-boys had a dress in the closet someplace.  Momma always made sure everything coordinated for church on Sunday and the knots were combed out of our hair and all the dirt was cleaned from under our fingernails.

Then we get a bit older and 5^th grade comes and so does blue eye shadow and lip gloss… 7^th grade comes and now it is ALL about fashion.  Yep, we girls do pretty well until 7^th grade then our self-esteem is suddenly messed up forever.  Some girl always has prettier hair, prettier skin, is skinnier and better dressed… several girls who fit that description gather together into a clique and suddenly we find we don’t fit at all.  This is when we feel the need to have (heaven forbid) brand named clothes.  After all, ALL the pretty girls have them… it goes to reason that if we have brand named clothes we can be a pretty girl too.  Thus begins our own personal obsession to look just right ALL of the time.

We have already ditched the blue eye shadow and moved on to more natural or glamorous makeup and our  application techniques are improving daily.  The tom-boy is now fashion conscious and beginning to see why Mom was so strict and firm about keeping our patent leather Mary Jane’s out of the mud puddle and our clothes clean… after all, “ladies” don’t do that…   We find ourselves buying teenage girly magazines.  We have to know what is hot and what is not for ourselves now.  We are getting a little old for Mom to pick out ALL of our clothes.

As we learn this new ‘fashion’ stuff for ourselves, we start by copying what those pretty girls do… it takes time to find our own style, we are more comfortable copying the pretty girls than being ourselves.  Most of us wonder who “ourselves” are anyway.  So in the meantime we copy what the pretty girls do and what the fashion magazines tell us we should and shouldn’t wear and how we should look doing it.  The magazines tell us what shoes and other accessories are in style… and so it begins.

We begin to acquire said “stylish” clothing and accessories… One pair of jeans, one pair of earrings, one pair of shoes, and one purse is only the beginning.  We are hooked.  We begin “collecting”, but since fashion is ever evolving we never stop.  We are hooked just like a drug addict except a new pair of shoes gives us the ultimate high…

By the time we graduate we have quite a growing collection of shoes.  We could easily fill a storage tote with them.  After school we find ourselves needing at least one good purse to carry all of the “stuff” we didn’t need in high school and is now essential to keep with us as a ‘grown up’.   The problem with this however is just one purse isn’t enough.  We need different sizes depending on where we are going and what we need to carry, AND we find ourselves needing a purse to match one outfit or another, one pair of shoes or another… and with each season styles continue to change so we must acquire more of the said baggage just to keep up.  Just when we believe we don’t need anything else and our wardrobe is complete something new catches our eye…

For me, it took literally years before I realized I could (if I had to) get by with a good black purse and although it might not be the newest each season it was dependable and I could drag all my stuff around in it from season to season… But where’s the fun in that?  Where is the little boost we get from a new purse or pair of shoes?  Let’s face it… we need at the very least 4 of said black bags (and shoes to match).  A ‘dressy’ bag, an everyday bag, a small one when we need to travel light, and the great big one that we can carry everything we own in.  No wardrobe is ‘complete’ without such basics.  But… black can get boring...  

Between Easter and Labor Day white is acceptable and highly desirable.  But, white gets dirty so easily… Summer can call for a splash of color too, and of course sandals… not just one pair either.  We need some dressy ones for church and special occasions.  Some casual ones and of course we must have at least one pair of flip flops or their equivalent.  And then… the seasons change again and sandals just aren’t “practical”.  When winter comes we need at least two pair of boots.  One casual and one on the more dressy side.  It never ends.

We find ourselves trying to be satisfied with the collection we have acquired over the years, but fashions change and so does the amount of cargo we must carry in our bags.  Styles continue to evolve and heaven forbid we neglect the second pair of shoes at the” Buy One, Get One 50% Off” sales!  Who can pass up a bargain like that?

At some point we realize that our shoes and bags are taking over our closet and we see we only have four options.  1.) We can find a better way to organize our prized collection.  2.) We can store some away and rotate them with the change of seasons.  3.) We can part with a few (only a few) of them.  We give them away, donate them, consign them and even put them in yard sales, and 4.)  We can move to a better dwelling with more closet space.

I just LOVE stumbling upon a box full of purses at a yard sale!  Designer purses under $5.00!  Some as cheap as $1.00… who can resist?  And just as good… finding shoes in my size too!  Yard sales and clearance sales… how can a girl resist?  We can’t.

Our husbands will question us with the famous words: “How many shoes/purses do you need?”  And time and time again we say we are done and have enough, while secretly we know… 

We need just one more.

Toothpick? No Thanks.

I believe everything has a purpose, even me.  My purpose now that I have raised my children is to sit in my chair and write total nonsense for your entertainment.    

I have a toaster on my counter that I plug in to the wall, I can drop slices of bread in, push a little handle down and in a couple of minutes I’ve got toast… the toaster has a purpose, as does most of what is in my house.  Toasters pretty much have only one purpose, they toast stuff.

Sometimes things have more than one use.  I like this for several reasons.  It’s like multi-tasking in a way.  Mutli-tasking can be time saving if done in a sensible way, of course it can also be an overwhelming disaster if not kept within some type of parameters too.  Mutli-use items are great though.  I have lots of them around.  Like plastic storage containers; not only are they great to keep food fresh, but you can store just about anything in them from craft items to nuts, bolts, and clothes pins.  Then there are things like a paperclip.  Paperclips aren’t just for holding papers together, they can fix the chain inside a toilet tank in a jiffy, and they make a handy dandy key chain in a pinch too.

There are some items that have limited uses though.  A remote control is really only good for the device it is intended for and a light bulb is pretty much a light bulb… okay, there is probably some crafty person out there with a glue gun who has another idea, but I’m not talking crafts, I’m talking about practical everyday uses…

One of the items with limited uses that come to mind for me is the toothpick.  Yeah, it can be jammed into something to make a tighter fit, but basically it is for what the name intends… picking your teeth, yep getting the ick from between the pearly whites.  I think whoever came up with the idea was pretty smart and toothpicks should say they are approved by the American Dental Association right on the box, but they don’t.  I think that is some type of conspiracy by the manufacturers of dental floss and the ADA myself, but what do I know?

We have toothpicks at our house, but please don’t tell my husband.  I keep them hidden.  I keep them for those limited purposes.  1) to jam into something for a tighter fit or 2) serving bite size little foods I don’t want people putting their paws all over and 3) cleaning gunk in hard to get to places.  I’ve resorted to dental floss for the ick between my teeth… not to conform with the ADA and dental floss company conspiracy, but so my husband never sees toothpicks in our home.

See, we have a serious toothpick problem.  I used to keep a little container made especially for them right on the table with the salt and pepper shakers.  Dear husband however, would not just use one or two for the intended purpose, but he would take a few extra and put them in his shirt pocket.  Since he quit smoking several years ago he developed the habit of chewing on a toothpick instead (no, he didn’t eat them). 

The toothpick problem came from him putting the toothpicks in his shirt pocket.  You ask why is that a problem?  Dear husband never remembers to take the excess toothpicks out of his shirt pocket.  That is the problem.  

Why is that a problem?  Well… toothpicks end up dropped in the bedroom carpet when he takes off his shirt at night.  This is a hazard for the vacuum cleaner.  This is even a greater hazard for bare feet, especially when you run one in between your toes.  It is no fun at all, I promise. 

Toothpicks also end up in the laundry and go through the washing machine, and end up in the little holes in the washtub for one thing.  It wouldn’t be so bad if that was all.  Tooth picks end up in the lint trap too.

We had to replace our dryer a couple of years ago.  We pulled the dryer hose out of the back of the dryer and up through the hole in the floor where it vents out, and guess what we found?  Yep… tooth picks.  We didn’t just find a few toothpicks either.  There were enough toothpicks for a bunch of beavers to dam up the Mississippi river.  I’m not kidding either.  I think if the fire marshal had checked our dryer vent prior to this discovery our home would have been declared condemned because of the hazard.  It is a miracle that we have not been burned out of our home because of tooth picks.

Toothpicks that go through the laundry don’t always get caught in the lint trap or dryer hose.  There is a much greater hazard than that of a fire.  When the lint trap and dryer hose fail to catch laundered toothpicks the laundry catches them.  Most of the time when getting the clothes out of the dryer and folding them or putting them on hangers the toothpicks will either fall off the clothes or will be stuck to the clothes and be obvious so I can pick them up or off as the case may be.  Other than the annoyance it’s not a big deal.  Then there are times when the toothpicks go undetected… this is a serious problem.

Have you ever been poked by a toothpick before?  I have put on a shirt once or twice and have been annoyed by the sharp end of a toothpick, and have let my dear husband know of my discomfort.  He too has suffered from this on occasion.  I have threatened to take the toothpicks away for years, but never followed through with it… then one day, I put on my bloomers  and… you guessed it.

My dear husband has been banned from toothpicks or toothpicks have been banned from my dear husband.  FOR LIFE! However you want to say it, they are no longer in contact with one another under our roof.  Toothpicks have been confiscated, destroyed, or hidden under lock and key in our happy little home… which will remain a happy little home as long as my dear husband has no further contact with toothpicks.  I only ask that should you see my dear husband with a toothpick that you notify me so that I can confiscate it or contact an attorney should he refuse to give it up.

Toothpick Free Zone = Happy Little Home

(previously posted on former blog)