Shake-N-Bake

                           
My marriage right now is boring. Bo-to-the-ring. It's like a Shake-N-Bake chicken dinner

    It's okay. It's not bad, it's actually quite tasty. But it's boring. It COULD be a chicken cordon bleu
                         
but I forgot to thaw out the chicken and there wasn't enough prep time. Is this metaphor making any sense at all?

We've been together for almost 16 years, we've been married 14 and a half years. It's expected. Sometimes things get boring. There were years of our marriage where we barely looked at each other. We waved from across the dinner table because work/kids/life was so hectic. That's okay. EVERY marriage is like that. It goes up and down, up and down. If you have never looked over at your spouse and thought, My God! We're stuck together for the rest of our LIVES?!?! then you haven't been married long enough. But you're not allowed to say that. We've bought into this silly lie that marriage is supposed to be this fairy-tale where everything is great all the time and it's exciting, and there are flowers showing up at your door every week, and you're ripping each other's clothes off all the time. Marriage is cleaning socks, and waking each other up at 2 am because one of your kids have vomited, it's going through bills at the dining room table, and sitting together on the couch wearing sweatpants. Mostly, it's not glamorous. Sometimes, it's a lot of work. Sometimes it's amazing and beautiful. Sometimes, it's just boring.

My husband has been traveling a lot the past few months, so he'll be gone for 2 weeks, home for 10 days, gone for 2 weeks, home for 10 days....

I miss him when he's gone and we try to connect on the phone as much as possible. It was really hard this last go-round because he was in California and working long hours. By the time he was done work, I was asleep. So we existed on random text messages and phone calls on the weekend. He came back 5 days before Christmas. It was the best gift. The kids were so happy to see him.

That evening, he took the kids to StarWars and I unpacked his bags and did laundry. Don't feel bad for me, I preferred it. I am not a StarWars fan. As a matter of fact, I hate StarWars and I'd rather pull out my eyelashes than waste 2 hours of my life watching StarWars. It's just who I am.

That night when he got home, we laid in bed and had a chat. We discussed one of our biggest issues-the fact that our children are always around and that we never have time alone. It's bullshit and I'm tired of it. When there are kids always around and awake you can't ever play the piano when you want to play the piano and when you do it's not Beethoven's 5th. It's like playing chopsticks frantically and quietly-in the dark. It's truly a sad state of affairs. It makes for Shake-N-Bake marriages.
"From now on - everyday, we are going to go into our room and lock the door for a whole hour. No kids allowed. One full hour," I said.
He looked at me suspiciously.
                        
"Yes, yes we can. We're doing it. The kids can fend for themselves for an hour in the evening." It's true. They can fix themselves food, perform every task they need to perform, they both have cell phones to call 911 if the house catches on fire. We are basically gloried chauffeurs at this point. We financially support them and remind them to do their homework. That's about it.
"But what if they suspect something?" he asked.
"I don't care. I'm tired of going to insane lengths to pretend that we never play the piano. Besides, we don't even have to play the piano. We can just watch a show, or hang out or whatever without the kids being around. We need to train them that sometimes we need time alone and if the door is locked, they need to leave us alone."
"It's not going to work," he said.
"It will."

The next night, after dinner and showers we kissed the kids and told them that we were locking the door to our bedroom and not to bother us. They looked at us suspiciously.
                           
"We are starting something new. It's called mom-and-dad alone time and from now on, that is how it's going to be everyday."
My 10 year old shrugged and gave us a look that said, I don't care about you bitches. My 12 year old was super upset about it.
                
"You better not do anything GROSS!" she declared. Excuse me? Who does she think she is?

We went into our room and locked the door. Then we waited. We heard screaming in the hallway. The girls were fighting with each other. My husband gave me the look.
No. "Screw it. Let them fight until the death. We are not going to open that door. It's their scheme," I assured him.
We didn't intervene and before long, the screaming stopped. A few minutes later - I saw the shadow of feet underneath the crack of our door. Then, my 12 year old yelled, "What are you guys doing in there?"
Oh, what the f**k.
"Nothing. Go away!!!"
"I need a towel."
"There are towels in your bathroom."
"They aren't clean."
"There are clean ones in the dryer."
"But I want the striped one. It's in your room."
"NO. GO AWAY! IT'S MOM-AND-DAD-ALONE TIME!!!! We are NOT going to open that door for 42 more minutes."
"I HATE you guys," she said before stomping off.

I would say it's working out pretty well. It's been over a week and the kids have stopped bothering us, but my 12 year old is still not happy. Every time we have mom-and-dad alone time she's like
             

But mom-and-dad alone time is not just for piano playing. It's for legitimately having alone time together to re-connect. The other night we were having mom-and-dad alone time and I was telling my husband that for the New Year I wanted us to do the Marriage Challenge.
"What's that? It sounds like a lot of work. Isn't marriage the challenge?"
"No. It's like you do a different thing together everyday. One day you send a flirty text, the next day you do a date night, the next day you write down things you like about each other...."
He laughed. "I guess, whatever."
Then he started telling me about wing chun, which is this martial arts thing. "How do you know so much about wing chun?" I asked.
"I study it. I watch videos about wing chun, I read about it."
"Whoa! I didn't know that. That can be part of the marriage challenge. Tell each other something that the other person doesn't know about them."
"What is something I don't know about you?" he asked, interested.

I thought and thought and thought. "I really like lemons. I use lemon juice in my rice, I prefer desserts with lemon. I just am obsessed with lemon."
"I already knew that."
Damnit! I thought and thought and thought. "Okay. Once, when I was 8 years old, I was playing outside and I had to go to the bathroom. I was playing a game so I was holding it in. When I finally went, it was an emergency. I ran inside and when I sat down, I peed like a gallon. Except that the toilet seat was down and so I peed all over the toilet seat and onto the floor. That actually happened."
"Dude! You've told me that story like, a million times."
Damnit! I thought and thought and thought. I had a good one. "Sometimes, I pick my nose."

Yeah, I said it. Sometimes, I do. I'm not ashamed. Of course, it's not my preferred method but sometimes you just have to do it. Not compulsively, not a lot. But once in a while, it happens. Everyone picks their nose. If you are reading this right now, you've picked your nose at some point this month. If God didn't want you to pick your nose, he would have made your nostrils smaller than your fingers. Even Queen Elizabeth picks her nose.
                                                
If it's good enough for the Queen, it's good enough for me. Everyone picks their nose at some point, it's what you choose to do next that defines you as a person.

I was confident that I had finally told my husband something he didn't know about me. He looked at me like I was insane. "Not ONLY do I know that you do it, you like to describe your boogers to me. You say shit like, That was a really crusty one or You should have seen how green it was."

NO! That just can't be. I am a disgusting animal. "How can you love me?"
             

I still was yet to figure out something he doesn't know about me. Then, I got it! "When the Powerball goes over $100 million, I buy one ticket. Probably, once a month."
"Are you telling me you're a compulsive gambler?"
"No! It's only $2 a month. I pay with change I collect in my ashtray. Sometimes I will also treat myself to a gas station fountain drink. It's my dirty secret. I'm embarrassed about it."
"Well, have you ever won?"
"Like, $7 one time."
"I didn't know that about you!"

SCORE! I did it! I embarrassed myself a lot in the process, but that's the story of my life.

"See, that's a marriage challenge thing. We can do trust falls, we can put that in the challenge...."
"What's a trust fall?" he asked.
"You don't know what a trust fall is?"

I stood up. "Okay, now get behind me. I'm going to fall backwards and you're going to catch me."
I lifted my arms up and let myself fall. He caught me. "For a second, I considered just stepping aside and letting you fall," he said with a smile.

"But you didn't, and that's why it's a trust fall. Now it's your turn."
He stood in front of me. Then he turned around and looked me up and down. "This is not a good idea. I'm going to kill you. You might die."
My husband is a big man, and I am a tiny, petite woman. I scoffed. "No way! I'll catch you."
He laughed, "This is going to end badly."
"Come on! It'll be fun."
He could't do it. He tried but he could't. We were hysterically laughing. "Come on!"
"No! I'm scared."
"If I fall, the bed is behind me. It'll be fine. That's why it's called a trust fall."
"You are going to be crushed!!!"
"No! I'm going to catch you."
"You cannot catch me!"
"My love is going to catch you."

He lifted his arms up and fell back into me. I tried to catch him. It didn't work. We fell onto the bed, he crushed me. We laughed so hard that tears came down our cheeks. "I would say that went well," I said between giggles.

That's what we do during mom-and-dad alone time- talk about nose picking and practice trust falls. That's how we take things to the next level. We're spicing up this Shake-N-Bake marriage...