Wearing Me Down and Buying Me Off

I've been thinking a lot about the stealth co-habitation maneuver my guy pulled on me and I have come to realize that he has been slowly, steadily working me over for months! He makes jokes and little comments about "our wedding" all the time. Before you go rushing to the mailbox to see if your invitation has arrived I want to assure you there is no wedding plan, or date, or even a rough draft. At first these comments made my heart race and my flight or fight instinct kick. Now they have been occurring for so long and with such regularity that they are the familiar pattern of our patter. Their absence in our conversation would be abnormal and the more detailed the "jokes" get the less I panic.

If you've read all my posts, you know my guy is a younger man. Much younger (it's all very legal in even the most conservative parts of the world). I have a son, he's grown up and on his own. My biological clock moved out the day the boy did. I love my son dearly, I am proud of him and I learn from him constantly, but his fate as an only child was sealed loooong ago. Period. My guy thinks he wants kids. Then other days he might not. So he says, but he makes comments about having kids a lot. Not quite as much as the wedding plans, but enough that I have stopped trying to keep count. To be clear, I don't hate children. I love kids, hence the making a living teaching them karate thing. I love teaching kids. I enjoyed raising mine. I am done now. Move on. Ahhh but dogs, I grew up with them, everyone in my family has at least one and I miss mine dearly (she died in her sleep at 13, the old girl was a puppy to the end of her days). So, my guy is trying to bribe me into a "white picket house" - I insist it will be too drafty - with the promise of puppies. Two to be exact. Shepherds or labs, possibly a mix of the two. Rescued puppies because everyone should rescue an animal rather than buy boutique  pure bred dogs with all their inherent health problems, and bizarre personality traits that excessive inbreeding creates. It's working, I've already picked out names for them.

Jerry Hall once said her mother told her a woman had to be a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom, well I've become a label whore in the kitchen. We'll leave the bedroom for a later blog. This is the opposite to my outlook on fashion. I wear what is a little bit different and what flatters my frame. I refuse to wear something unflattering or outright ugly just because it is "trendy" or some celebrity who was paid to do so, wore it. I believe a sweatshirt, regardless of how expensive it was, is still a sweatshirt and is best suited to the gym (I'm looking at you BENCH), but I will absolutely drool over Kitchen Aid. It is my weakness, and my guy exploits it mercilessly!

Ok, maybe I brought it on myself by not being able to pass the kitchen appliance section of any department store without having a peak. Soon he was ogling with me, comparing stand mixers. I had secret pipe dreams of the Architect but figured it was out of my league. Then on my birthday, there it was, the mother of all stand mixers, the one I had not even dared to consider, the Professional 600. Next he brought over the Kitchen Aid spatula set he won as a tie-in promotion with laundry detergent. This morning I mentioned we needed a pair of kitchen scissors, a new Kitchen Aid knife set, including scissors, now sits on my counter.

And so slowly, using the power of suggestion, endless repetition and Kitchen Aid my acquiescence is being bought, bribed and indoctrinated. I may cave a little. I may even cave a lot, but puppies are the only creatures I'll be raising. Period.