I’m talking about far more dastardly deeds than just doing The Deed. I’m talking about dreadful, heinous acts that I perform for my husband. Things like watching movies starring Kevin Costner or listening to Rush. Oh, the humanity.

Now, I’m not one for chick flicks. I do not indulge in watching the Real Housewives bicker with each other and pull one another’s hair. I rarely make my husband go shopping and when I do, I never make him hold my purse. If anything, he’s the one constantly asking to go shopping, insisting he needs a new pair of shoes because his casual brown ones are scuffed.

With this in mind, I think it only fair that I get excused from having Texas Hold’em poker tournaments in my house. Whenever such a manly activity occurs in your home, you find yourself futilely fighting the stink of dude for weeks. Your house continues to smell like old sweat socks, cigars, Jack Daniels, and balls for what seems like an eternity. As a woman who has never so much as jokingly asked for a Coach purse, I’m fairly certain my nose should be excused from these offenses.

I’m fully supportive of my husband getting his dude on as long as it does not occur in my house. I also do not want to participate in activities teeming with testosterone. The thought of having to endure a film about cars driving fast or furious, or–heaven forbid–both fast and furious is enough to make me want to launch myself out a window.

Why is it that we live in an age when being pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen is not enough for me to be considered a good wife? Seriously, I like being pregnant and I hate shoes, so I could easily fulfill the 1950s protocols for being an ideal housewife. Sure, I hate cooking and I refuse to mop floors but I rock at being pregnant and barefoot.

But no, to be a good wife you now have to care when the NFL draft will occur. Not so that you can cook your mate a hearty meal for the festivities, but because you’re expected to have opinions on which college QB should be a first round pick. I can’t take it! It’s too much pressure to emulate dude culture! I just want to read my book!

Seriously, can’t we just have sex instead?

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The children and I stand together, unified in our love for their father, as he turns the  kitchen upside down, slamming cabinet doors, whipping through shelves, tossing contents aside as he searches for any amount of it.

Mom. You did this to dad. My sweet children shoot an accusing eye at me.

My tears fall thick and fast. Yes. I know.

We listen as their father shouts to the air. “Damn it! I can’t believe there’s nothing in the house!”

“Please.” I reach for him, searching his eyes–hoping to see the man I used to know still inside. “I can go get you some. We’ll go together. You and me… it’ll be all right.”

I am the one who has done this to him. The one to blame for what the children are now witness to this weekend morning.

No one had warned this man in 1995 about striking up a conversation with a dark eyed, raven haired woman from Colombia. He had no idea all that came with a woman who as an infant was nursed on a mother’s breast milk that was equivalent to a double tall breve latte.

Before I darkened his door, this once even-keeled man’s lips had remained virgin to the roasted bean.

And now, he was hopelessly enslaved to a lifestyle he never imagined. In the same way as Robert Downey Jr’s father had been the first to place the maryjane pipe in li’l Bobby’s mouth and flip that switch; it was me who had seduced this unsuspecting man into taking the ceramic demitasse of Colombian espresso I had placed before him seventeen years ago, masking the devil’s beverage behind swirls of sweet cream and two sugar cubes.

“Kids.” I turn to my children. “Kids. Go on upstairs. Your dad will be okay. I’ll take care of it.”

“Yeah, mom, but he needs an ogre name for the days we run out of coffee.”

I shoo the children upstairs so they no longer have to see their father in his dependent condition. I take my husband’s trembling hand in mine.

“Come on!” I say as I push him out the door while shoving his coat at him. “The kids will be fine. Starbucks has this new House Dark Roast! You’re gonna love this stuff–it’ll make you feel like the back of your head is going to blow off.”

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I’m not a hypochondriac, not normally. But then I had kids and I was sure that I had a brain tumor.

Turns out, it was just the kids. As I age, I’ve realized that I want to live for a long time… so now I’m paranoid that I’m going to die.

When you’re young, you spend the first 20 years wanting to do everything but not having the means or permission to do anything. You spend the next 20 to 40 years working your ass off to have everything people tried to stop you from having. You’re paying tuition, unless Junior decides to pass on college. But then you have to keep an eye out for the dead bodies in the deep freeze and the mail order brides from Asia charged to your account.

At about 40 you realize–STFU!–you actually have time and money. Life is GREAT. The next day, you discover Web MD.

You have it all, but now you’re developing stress incontinence and your husband is developing erectile dysfunction. You’re taking pills for blood pressure and anxiety and he’s taking that little blue pill. Life’s big joke: You finally have the privacy to buck like monkeys and his junk decides to stop working and you can only go about ½ hour between pee breaks. Honestly, he’s just not that into golden showers.

Menopause rears its three ugly heads. You’re having hot flashes and taking hormones. He’s trying to be anywhere, as long as it’s away from you. You’re sleeping in separate beds like Doris Day and Rock Hudson (you see how that turned out.) He’s going deaf. You’re repeating yourself. The older you get, the more you forget. That cute pregnancy brain you have takes a turn for the worse, until you’re one forgetting away from starring in The Notebook.

You downsize to some hip “multigenerational” subdivision and buy a maintenance-free villa. Shorts pulled up to your neck to keep your boobs from getting stepped on and wearing diapers disguised as granny panties. Mr. Sex Machine sports a bald head and pregnant belly as he walks the neighborhood talking to strangers, his black socks hanging out of his Teva sandals and his shorts pulled up under his man boobs just to keep him from kicking his old man balls as he walks. You wait around wanting to do shit but your kids are too busy. Your license is expired and Alzheimer’s makes GPS useless. There you are wearing diapers, drinking your meals, no teeth, blue hair, and then you die.

I have a cough. I’m 39 and I’m pretty positive that I’ve got treatment-resistant tuberculosis. At least, that’s what Web MD says.

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Don’t argue about the small stuff and then dip your husband’s toothbrush in the toilet. Better known as, pick your battles.

So, when it comes to which restaurant we choose or which contractor we should hire, I’m usually pretty agreeable. When it’s an important decision like what are we going to name a kid or the finish on our new faucets, I expect him to defer to me.

When my husband chose Eddie Haskell to remodel our house, I didn’t argue. He wouldn’t have been my first choice. My husband based his decision on important things like quality and price whereas I would have gone with personality.

Seriously, the “Hello, Mrs. Marler, you look lovely today” shit got really old. I’m guessing he didn’t think I could hear him berating his employees with language so foul that June Cleaver would reach for bleach over the soap.

Though I was turned off by the disingenuous suckass-ishness of our contractor the only thing I truly cared about was proper warning when creature comforts such as water or electricity were to be shut off for extended periods.

Though he was a “yes ma’am” to my face, he was only telling me what I wanted to hear as far as deadlines and cost.  Irritated that conditions weren’t met, I did something out of desperation: I packed up the family and moved in with my in-laws for a few days.

At my in-laws’, I observed their different decision-making dynamic. My father-in-law lays down the law and my mother-in-law re-writes it through complaining. Apparently it wasn’t until years into their marriage that my mother-in-law adopted this tactic. My good-natured father-in-law even described her as “not having an opinion for 40 years and now she thinks she knows everything.”

This statement caused me to rethink my position. It made me wonder if, once their kids were grown and daily activities weren’t so busy, the little things now seemed worth the fight. I love them dearly and respect their 55 years of matrimony, but I don’t think I could handle the daily bickering. I would rather not be agitated all the time. After all, in an emergency, I can always bust out the old fashioned passive-aggressive toothbrush dunk. And neither of my daughters has to be saddled with a stripper name.

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This is eerily similar to every photo taken of me in high school. Except I had curly hair. Which somehow makes it worse.

There were two things I wanted to accomplish more than anything at sixteen: marry Keanu Reeves and have EVERYONE think I’m awesome at EVERYTHING. Hermione Granger meets Rachel Berry. So sad.

I competed in a state competition for French impromptu speaking and got third place in the whole state. My teacher told me that my third place ribbon was due solely to a lack of effort on my part and that it was very disappointing.

Dudes.

I spoke.

In French.

For fifteen minutes.

About what I like to do on Friday night or some crap.

And I was the third best at it among people who did that in the ENTIRE state of Florida.

AND I AM NOT FRENCH.

I just said, “I’m sorry” and went to my hotel room and cried the rest of the night. I would have very much liked to have been one of the kids sitting at the back of the auditorium of that competition proclaiming the utter bullshit of it all.

That girl who wanted to be good at everything grew into the woman who had to be good at everything, too.

Enter second child. Having that second kid threw everything out of whack. Maintaining a perfect house, hair, clothes, cooking, reading list (what? shut up.) would have entailed giving up sleep. Or sanity. Or one of my children. That seemed… drastic.

Epiphany: Rachel and Hermione? It’s okay to just hit “good enough” most of the time while being “absolutely great” at a few really important things.

My “good enough” today is getting the toddler to count to ten in (gasp!!) just one language. My “absolutely great” is sitting on the floor with him and building a city with a birthday cake building at the city center. “Good enough” is taking the clothes out of the dryer and putting them away… in the future. My “absolutely great” is respecting myself enough to curl up with a good book instead. Or catch up on reruns of The Big Bang Theory.

I might never make a Halloween costume or cross stitch a pillow because there are “good enough” alternatives out there, but if one of my kids (or husband) tells me they want to join the Peace Corps or become an investment banker, then I will love them and be proud of them and support them. I’m an Aiming Low Woman.

My God, I am the adult sitting at the back of the room proclaiming the utter bullshit of trying to do it all!

And I think that might the biggest “absolutely great” I have going on.

Seriously, sometimes, it really is a good idea to hit “reply all.” Using reply all correctly would prevent my brother-in-law from sending me accidental love notes, for example.

It is a common occurrence for my sister to send emails that copy both my brother-in-law and me. To which, like a good, technology-dependent sister, I’ll respond almost instantaneously. I’ll reply all so that we can have a little pretend conversation online. Then, it will happen: My brother-in-law will respond without replying all. Invariably his response is something like, “I don’t know, whatever you want. Did you call my mom? I can’t wait to snuggle with you.”

There is never a time those words are not off-putting coming from your brother-in-law.

Because, no, I will not snuggle with you and I sure as hell will not call your mother. I have my own in-laws to contend with, thank you.

Also, I don’t even want to think about you “snuggling” with my baby sister, you perv. But, hey, at least my mom isn’t offering to let him go south.

When I then try to explain to my sister that her husband wants to know if she called his mom, chaos ensues. Mostly, my sister is irritated that he didn’t reply to her directly. She’s also embarrassed that he’s accidentally asking me to snuggle him. However, on the bright side we use this gaffe as an opportunity to tease him.

We send a flurry of emails to let him know that he needs to reply all in order for both of us to get the message. Somehow, though, no matter how many times this chain of event transpires, he still does not get the message. For the life of him, he can’t figure out he needs to reply all.

In his defense, he says, he didn’t realize I was copied on those emails in the first place. I’m not sure why he thinks my sister is responding to her own messages or having conversations with herself but… there you have it, folks.

The only time this scenario ever works in my favor is when this situation happens at work. Once in a blue moon, someone will ask me to do something that I’ll get out of because they forgot to reply all.

So really, it’s not so bad.

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First, I’m going to read though the journals I kept as a teenager and laugh at my angsty teenage self. This will allow me to feel as if I’ve actually accomplished something in life, because I’m no longer worried about whether Ian likes me and if I’ll be invited to any parties that weekend.

Newsflash: Ian did like me, but not as much as he liked Sarah and no I wasn’t invited to a party that weekend because I didn’t drink.

Then I’m going to pull my hair into a ponytail, put on a graphic tee and some funky earrings and go the liquor store–yeah, I drink now that I’m an adult–and hope to get IDed.

After that I’m going to the tanning salon. What I really want is sensory deprivation tank. Those thirty-five twenty-nine years of sensory input add up. I’m pretty much touched out and fed up with the noise. And the smells. Oh God, the smells.

So seeing as there’s no sensory deprivation tank available locally and the pool is full of houndish teenage boys whooping and splashing, I figure lying in a tanning bed, slathering on some odd-smelling but strangely relaxing tanning oil and listening to ocean noises on my headphones just might do it. I’m an optimist, can’t you tell?

Then I’m off to the tattoo parlor. ‘Cause what’s a milestone without some ink to mark it? Except now that I’m 29, I’m all adult and stuff; so the tattoo will be mature and meaningful and will not include fairies, butterflies or unicorns. This is when the trip to the liquor store will come in handy. I’m going to try to stay sober until after I pick the tattoo, though.

Then once I’m dark, shiny, tattooed and plastered I’m heading to the karaoke bar. Why? ‘Cause I’ve never done karaoke. Probably for good reason. I can’t sing. But who’s going to insult my singing on my birthday?

That’s right. Probably everyone.

Then I’ll stumble home and make passionate love to my husband while smearing ourselves with the cheesecake he specially ordered to celebrate the occasion. Not my birthday. The sex. We don’t get to do it often; we need to celebrate it.

Sounds fun, right? In actual fact I’ll probably be cleaning the house, doing a teleconference or two, making a nice supper for myself and hoping my husband picks up a cake. But a girl can dream, can’t she?

How do you celebrate your big birthdays? Tell me in the comments below for a chance to win my undying jealousy.

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The only reason my husband learned to use Facebook

On our first date, my husband took me to a hole-in-the-wall authentic Chinese buffet after the lunch rush had ended. A woman who looked like a waitress simply gestured toward one of the many empty tables when we walked in because she had a chicken foot dangling from her mouth. Though completely grossed out by the poultry protruding through her top incisors, I was impressed by his creativity; this was not the typical first date. It didn’t take long for me to learn that it wasn’t about taking me somewhere I had never been; rather, it was about taking me somewhere deeply discounted. Looking back, I realize we were probably at a Chinese soup kitchen, or eating the leftovers with the employees.

I was being courted by a frugal man.

I married him despite his collection of “2 for 1” coupons for old people pie houses, “I break for garage sales” bumper sticker and claims that he actually invented the Diva Cup. I don’t even bother rolling my eyes anymore when he slams on the brakes to retrieve a rusty wrench from the side of the road on the off chance it may be a Craftsman. Sears is not closing 100 stores because of poor holiday sales–I believe guys like my husband who take advantage of the generous lifetime warranty on Craftsman tools are responsible.

When I saw my husband had recorded a TLC show called “Extreme Cheapskates,” I was really tempted to erase it from the DVR. My husband does not need affirmation by self-proclaimed penny pinchers with their goat heads and reusable toilet paper that he is not the only one who refills his own condiment bottles with extra packets procured around town.

I don’t know if my husband recorded the show for thriftiness tips or to expose me to whack jobs so I would appreciate his mainstream frugality. Either way, a box of animal crackers, a bottle of water and a googly-eyed Halloween decoration for a grand total of $1.29 is not an anniversary present. It is an “X” on the irreconcilable differences box.

Early in our marriage it was decided that I would be the spender and he would be the saver. My husband simply adopted the “Cheaper to Keep Her” mantra. Which is a true statement now, but if he puts the finishing touches on his second generation reusable tampon prototype, he’d be smart to set me up with the goat head guy.