marriage
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts

Miss Mild Manners Apologises to KH of Hollywood

1.5.09

Dear, dear, dear. The next time Miss Mild Manners takes a lengthy European rail vacation, she will make sure her errant younger sister, Miss Wild Manners, has no way of rifling through her affairs and finding her account logins.

While happily travelling abroad, Miss Mild Manners happened upon a newspaper article claiming that Tom Cruise is rather upset with his wife, Katie Holmes {dear sweet thing}, for taking up smoking again. Truthfully, Miss Mild Manners was shocked to the very core to imagine that winsome, charming young lady risking her good looks and health by succumbing to that most scurrilous of habits. Not that Miss Mild Manners did not once flirt with the devil's weed in a brief experimental phase during her adolescent years, but near discovery in the Young Ladies' Rooms at the local Lacrosse courts during one's youth had visions of Miss Mild Manners' carefully groomed reputation and perpetual position as Teacher's Pet flashing before her terrified eyes and indeed, was the epiphany that caused Miss Mild Manners to turn resolutely onto the path of all that is well-behaved and becoming in a lady.

But we digress.

Upon her recent arrival home and tending to affairs, Miss Mild Manners was mortified to discover that certain correspondence intended for herself had been intercepted in her absence and responded to by naughty Miss Wild Manners. Read on and you will begin to understand the horrifying nature of this transgression. Miss Mild Manners sends her abject apologies to the recipient of this ill-conceived advice {while secretly hoping it works}.


Dear Miss Mild Manners

Please help me. My husband seemed like the catch of the century when I first met him but more and more each day, I'm feeling like he's on the last train to Kooksville and I don't want to meet him at the station. I'm tired of being told what to do. My friend from Cali suggested I contact you. Would you have any advice as to how I can get my life back?

Yours in hope and desperation ~ KH


Dear KH

This is your lucky day! Boring old Mild Manners is dressed in her best gloves and stockings on some moth-eaten Magical Mystery Tour overseas but you really need my help, not her prissy preachings, so it's all good.

The best way out from under Tom's Thumb is to make him want to leave you. This disfunctional way of dealing with relationships has provided many an unhappy spouse with the perfect way to bail out while retaining a huge chunk of community property; all this with the blessings of the spouse who mistakenly thinks he or she has instigated the break up, thanks to overwhelming guilt for being the breaker-upper instead of the breaker-uppee.

The answer to your question is simple.

Start pretending to smoke. He'll think it's a filthy, disgusting habit. You will become tainted and impure in his eyes and no amount of Scientology Sparkles will remove his nicotine-stained judgment of you. Whatever you do, don't really smoke. You don't want to replace one unhealthy addiction with another. Just light up any time you expect him to enter the room, then act as guilty as hell and watch his attraction to you decrease in direct proportion to your perceived cigarette-fumed transgressions. Do not under any circumstances give in. If you should start to weaken, if you should start to falter in your resolve, remember the immortal words of Winston Churchill:

We shall fight on the Longbeaches...

We shall fight in the Chesterfields and in the Bond Streets;

We shall fight in the Dunhills;

We shall never surrender ...


Go get 'em, Tiger!
Miss Wild Manners
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How on Earth-Hour???

29.3.09

by SHELL SHERREE

You know you have severe tardiness issues when you're late for Earth Hour...

... as we were.

Yes, I'm ashamed to admit that even in our own home ~ without going anywhere; without putting on makeup and getting tizzied up in the good clobber {and that's just hubby ~ let alone me}; without the flurry of last minute feeding of kitties and possums; without setting the timer on the video ~ we still couldn't manage to turn up on time.

It started off well enough but became Mission: Impossible when hubby decided to cook risotto for dinner.

Don't get me wrong. I love that he cooks for us. He's a fantastic cook. He can find his way around fresh herbs and spices without any help from a compass or Wii Cooking Mama.

But he's meticulous. Thorough. Each ingredient that requires chopping is slowly and methodically assessed and dissected so that each piece is the exact same size as the next. And if someone manufactured spirit-levels for chefs, we would own one.

Viewing hubby's prepped food would send an obsessive compulsive straight to Nirvana, though the trip home again could be delayed quite significantly by the sound of one hundred-times-washed hand clapping. {Don't worry, though. This überneatness is healthily counterbalanced by a disturbing habit of tossing eggshells and vegetable peels into the sink. We haven't had a sink with a garbage disposal since 1998.}

While Slow Food proponents around the globe might be rejoicing at the sound of all this, I, on the other hand, watched in horror as the clock ticked inexorably towards 8:30pm and a C minus in Social Conscience.

My inner screeching banchee grappled with my inner Dr Phil until I discovered that lying prostrate on the sofa with a bottle of gin for five minutes is an excellent home-made spirit level. Armed with a new resolve, I boldly offered myself as a sous-chef in an effort to get us over the Thin Green line. Though a little rusty, I used to hold an Honorary Speedy Gonzales diploma for my food prepping. I figure there is a time and a place for precision, like brain surgery and Swiss clocks {damn, is it already 8:20pm?}, not onions and mushrooms.

It was a valiant effort, but at 8:30pm, the arborio was still drowning in a sea of stock and only time could save it. Another sixteen point three minutes, to be precise. But after finally sitting down for dinner on the deck, we stayed in candlelight for a full hour anyway, then added a little more as the CFC-free equivalent of several Hail Marys. I don't know if it counts, but it eased the guilt somewhat.

I only hope we aren't 'outed' by Google satellite maps. I bet they didn't turn those off for Earth Hour. Damned modern technology.
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Behold the Baggy Greens

18.1.09

by SHELL SHERREE

Another cricket match went down-to-the-wire at tea time, with Australia barely winning today's one day thriller over the tenacious South African side. Rewind several years and I'd never have imagined I'd be describing using the words 'thriller' and 'cricket match' in the same sentence.

After some years of stealthy indoctrination by my hubby (aka brainwashing), my attention span for this sport has become quite self-impressive, influenced in no small part by the gentlemanly manner of the whole thing. In the drinks breaks, I half expect them to wheel out a trolley laden with pots of tea and tiers of cucumber sandwiches. Or segments of oranges, at the very least.

In the beginning, I could only watch the one day-ers. On the other hand, my hubby (ever the traditionalist) had a tendency to pooh-pooh the "pyjama cricket", so nicknamed because the players wear a rainbow of colours instead of their cricket whites. I'm quite convinced that the one day format came about at the urging of the team housekeepers, anxious to give the whites a decent chance at a hyperextended Napisan soak. Never understimate the sway of a perfectionist launderer.

While my hubby is a staunch believer that test cricket is the only 'real' cricket, I was grateful for the derring-do and thrill of the one day matches instead. I thought test cricket was something only a narcileptic (and my husband) could enjoy. And why nod off through five days of a Test cricket match when you can watch the Readers Digest condensed version instead?

Now that I've built up my cricket-viewing muscles, however, I have a greater appreciation for the finer subtleties that Test cricket offers, not to mention their brighter-than-bright whites. And if anyone doubts Aussies can get the job done without taking ourselves too seriously, just look at the endearing name given to the cap proudly worn by Aussie test cricketers since around the early 1900s: 'Baggy Green'. Not 'Cap of Champions' or 'Hat of Honour', but 'Baggy Green'. (And great for hiding grass stains. A coincidence? I think not.)

Ironically, just as I'm starting to enjoy the War and Peace of cricket, more and more people are skimming the text message of cricket: 20/20. Get your fix in three hours or less. It's a buzz, for sure. But I haven't built up my buns-of-cricket-viewing-steel for nothing, damn it! Every test that comes around, my hubby and I will be watching. And watching. And watching. Which reminds me, I have a load of whites to start soaking.
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Misplaced: One Golden Globes Ceremony

13.1.09

by SHELL SHERREE

Does anyone know someone who knows someone whose hairdresser's uncle's accountant might know someone who works at the commercial TV stations and can come up with a logical reason why none of them showed this year's Golden Globes ceremony? I thought not.

Thank Heavens for pay TV.

Our special Economy Footy package usually only gives us permission to watch sports channels, black and white movies from the pre-Talkies era and lifestyle programmes that show you how to make a guest house from five years' worth of Paddle Pop sticks, twenty-one pairs of old pantyhouse and a hot glue stick.

This time, however, it came through for us. After cable surfing for long enough to see a frantically silent heroine rescued from the train tracks and a handbag fashioned from recycled fruit juice tetra packs, I located the elusive Golden Globes broadcast.

Imagine my chagrin to find that I'd already missed the first hour. Simon Baker presented an award in the first hour. I'm not sure which award he announced but it could have been Best Sandwiches by a Catering Van and he would have my undivided attention.

My hubby was grateful we didn't miss one of his personal favourites: Renée Zellweger. He said how lovely her gown was. (I said she could spend a bit more time eating the Best Sandwiches by a Catering Van.) He thought all his Christmases had come at once. (I thought her stylist was one branch short of a Christmas tree.) Then he put on his glasses and realised she was not naked under her diaphanous black gown but was wearing a flesh-toned corset. I rested my case. He decided life was better without glasses.

Lack of correct underwear aside, Globes for movie categories dominated proceedings. This was probably for the best, as the winning TV shows seem annoyingly absent from our commercial channels, thus rubbing our noses in what we are missing out on. Maybe the Mad Men at the TV stations hid them under the same 30 Rock that they used to hide one Golden Globes ceremony and a fetching black corset. I (and my hubby) live in hope.
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When Hubby's Best Mate Has to Go

11.1.09

by SHELL SHERREE

My hubby has finally had a parting of the ways with his best mate. They'd been together for thirty years. And they were a tad too close for my comfort. After all, I've only known my hubby for twelve years. Even a rug rat (ok, a large one) could do the maths and figure it out; his best mate has been part of his life more than twice as long as I have.

Before the psychoanalysts amongst you tut-tut off emails of concern that I'm way too clingy and perhaps a touch paranoid, allow me to elaborate. If they'd just knocked around together in a typical semi-detached bloke way for a thirdish of a lifetime, I'd be cool about it. Peachy keen. Happy for my hubby to have someone with whom to share the highly overdeveloped sports stats sector of his brain (which has been the subject of much debate in government secret agencies because it shows up like Christmas tree lights on satellite pics of our region).

But no, it doesn't stop there.

His best mate has clung to him like doggie doo to a shoe. (And think of a Great Dane named Dumpster, not a Chihuahua named Princess.) His best mate has been there for all of my hubby's youthful Aussie Rules footy club post-match celebrations. These were back in the days when they bore a startling resemblance to 'The Club' plonked into the middle of 'Don's Party' - or so I hear. Fortunately, I wasn't there. Unfortunately, my hubby's best mate was, and serves as a constant reminder of my hubby's former beer capacity at the height of its glory. His best mate is also a walking Wikipedia on my hubby's previous girlfriends and has them and their bra sizes filed away in his memory banks to be drawn on at the most inappropriate times.

Of course, his best mate was at our wedding. But he didn't stay at the reception after we left. Oh, no, no, no. I concede that he refrained from shave-creaming our car with graffiti and raiding the loos to weave clumsy toilet paper macrame decorations, but it was probably just to save himself the embarrassment of motoring up the coast in a cream bun on wheels. That's right - his best mate came along on our honeymoon with us.

In spite of all this discomfort, I had learned to accept his best mate and it wasn't through any urging on my part that my hubby made his decision to cut the ties. After all, they'd been through a lot together and his best mate was unreserved in his affection towards me. No, my hubby had been tossing it around for some time. He thought he may have outgrown his best mate. He felt like a new lease on life. He figured if he really couldn't cope without him after a brief adjustment period, he could get him back.

His best mate has been witness to three decades of my hubby's life. And even though I was happy to have a fresh start, too, I could totally understand how bereft my hubby felt when he shaved off his moustache and washed his thirty year old best mate down the bathroom sink. At first, he felt like he'd rinsed away more than just whiskers. But as the days wear on, he's starting to realise those memories are still with him. They're dancing with his sports stats under the disco-ball in his brain.
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Men in Tights

26.11.08

By SHELL SHERREE

My dear aunt Norma (87 years of age and extremely sparky) sent me a news clipping from her local Canberra Times. I'm sure she intended to enlighten me on the native Animalia that proliferates on her doorstep. It was a lovely article, proving to me that the Possums Private Club (of which I'm an honorary member, as you'd know if you read one of my earlier posts) has a reach that stretches furry, far and wide - something that should stand me in good stead when I travel.

Not that I'll ever tell her, but what really caught my eye was printed on the reverse side of the page, in the Odds and Ends. It mentioned a Japanese man who has started an online campaign to legalise marriage between humans and cartoon characters. I googled it and sure enough, here's what Taichi Takashita has to say.

“I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world,” he wrote. “However, that seems impossible with present-day technology. Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorise marriage with a two-dimensional character?”

It got me thinking. Who would I choose? Who would choose me back, assuming they or I could exercise some advanced form of extra-pixelatory perception?

Further contemplation led me to the realisation that all the comic book heroes who sprung to mind looked mighty fine in lycra. (It's a relative thing. Any daydream of the week, I'd choose a Bonds singlet, gluteus maximus-hugging jeans and a bit of imagination rather than spandex and a graphic outline of turkey giblets. But as with cycling, it appears that superheroes need a bit of aerodynamic assistance and denim simply doesn't cut it, let alone the potential problems of fading after repeated washing.)

So who would it be? Superman? Batman? Spiderman?

Then I realised how stupid the whole thing was. I'm already married!!
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