In ten days I will have been married for eleven years. I have been looking at the same dirty socks strewn about for over a decade. I have been nagging at the same man to pick his wet towel off the bathroom floor for 4015 days.

Not that I’ve been counting or anything. I’m just really good at arithmetic at the top of my head.

Heh.

During these eleven years of wedded bliss *twitch* I have learned a thing or two.

Thing one: Boo has vile gas when he eats cheese. He loves cheese. He eats a lot of cheese. Consequently, I have no nasal hairs left as they have been singed off by the wickedly foul odors he likes to emanate in my direction.

Thing two: If you don’t keep score, no one can lose at the game of marriage.

I’ve learned a few other things along the way, like how a grown man needs constant nagging reminding to cut his facking toenails yet will always remember to when he runs out of beer. I’ve learned how nothing will deter a man from constantly grabbing at your funbags of love, not even having to roll up the ole beavertails to stuff them into your bra after your wondertitties have been sucked dry by the vampires you call children.

But no marital lesson has been as important as learning how to forgive and move on.

Which isn’t always easy. Especially when you are nine months pregnant, having gained over a 100 pounds, can barely fit behind the wheel of your van to drive to buy milk for your toddler demon spawn and all you can dream about is that last bit of mint chocolate chip ice cream waiting for you to lovingly devour when you finally arrive back home, only to find an empty container and a spoon sitting inside of it while your husband is burping up minty fresh breath.

It took a while, but I finally forgave and moved on.

It’s not always been easy but I have learned the fine art of forgiveness. Let’s face it, eleven years of marriage has given me many an opportunity to practice this art.

Like the time Boo gave me a can of tuna and a chocolate bar for my 26th birthday.

Or the time he gave me a shop vac for our anniversary. I wasn’t bitter. Not at all. Not even after having scrimped and saved to buy him the set of golf clubs he had coveted only to receive a vacuum for HIM to use in HIS shop.

Forgiveness allowed me to move on and not wrap said golf clubs around his neck.

I forgave you, Boo, for the time you laughingly told everyone that I was caught picking my underwear out of my arse by your boss. I forgave you for the time you announced to your family that I had to go shopping for new jeans because “the ole girl is finally filling out and putting on some weight.”

It wasn’t easy, but I forgave you.

I learned how to forgive him for making us chronically late for every family function we’ve attended in the last eleven years because of his incessant and annoying need to ‘finish the next level’ of what ever video game he was playing while I run around like a mad woman trying to get myself and the kids ready to leave.

I even forgave him for running out of gas when I was in labour with our son Bug. Sure my contractions were less than a minute apart. I understood how he may have simply forgot to fill up the family vehicle the night before I went into labour after I politely nagged reminded him we needed gas. He was dealing with a hormonal, bitchy cow and was distracted by my girth.

I even forgave him while he chatted up a storm with the gas station attendant while I had to squeeze my legs shut in order to prevent giving birth in the front seat of our van while he laughed about outrageous gas prices and how ridiculous it was to run out of gas while your wife was eight centimeters dilated and her contractions were coming every twenty seconds.

We made it to the hospital. Barely. So what if Bug just about fell on his head onto the floor. I forgave you, Boo.

I have grown to be a better person than I would have been if I hadn’t got knocked up married him. He taught me how to laugh it off and move on.

Even when he forgets to put down the toilet seat thereby ensuring my ass will take a dip in the icy waters of the porcelain throne as I fumble in the darkness to relieve my now stretched and damaged bladder in the middle of the night.

It’s not always been easy. I still don’t understand how I can send him to the grocery store with a list and he still manages to forget items that are clearly marked and underlined on the list clutched in his hands. Items necessary to the happiness and survival of his self family members. Items like toilet paper.

I forgive you, Boo, even though I know you will do it again. And again. And again. Because clearly, this is NOT your fault.

I love him. And I know he loves me. Even when he brings home monstrosities like my darling Bertha and then runs away with his tail tucked between his legs leaving me to look at the piece of shat rust bucket sitting in our yard, advertising to the world that we are the neighbourhood’s token rednecks, I forgive him.

I know you meant well. You did your best. Even if you and I have a different definition of what your best really means.

I forgive you, Boo.

Eleven years have brought about a lot of forgiveness. Not that I’m tracking it or keeping score. That would be wrong. I just want to let him know that I will always forgive him. Even when he accidentally flips over our brand new lawn tractor because he was drag racing it with his buddy.

I love you and I forgive you Boo.

Remember this when I tell you about a little accident I may have had the other day involving our atv and my car. Try and remember how much I love you and all the times I have forgiven you for misdeeds, no matter the cost to our bank book, my pride or my abused uterus.

Keep in mind that while I was cleaning our yard up and doing chores that should, by nature, fall under your pervue, I may have had a little more fun than I intended with our quad. I may have gotten carried away and in so, accidentally bumped into my car with our quad while driving in reverse.

It wasn’t my fault. Accidents happen. I wasn’t showing off for our kids and my friend fooling around. I was working. It had nothing to do with the fact I was laughing my arse off and not paying attention to what was around me.

It was an accident. Expensive, perhaps but an accident nonetheless.

The important thing for you to remember is no one was hurt and cars can be fixed. It’s just money after all. Isn’t that why you work out of town?

Don’t worry Boo. No matter what I will always forgive you.

Even if you flip out when you read this and see what I did.

I forgive you.

I look forward to Boo coming home. Really, I do. It’s nice to have a man around to hold me take out the garbage.

But now that he’s home, I wouldn’t mind seeing the tail lights of his car drive down my driveway as he hits the road.

My loving husband is driving me nuts.

Between fighting him off every two seconds last night as he groped for my boobs, putting up with his perpetual requests for a blowjob and having to defend myself as to why there were no towels in the bathroom when he got out of the shower, I’m ready to be a semi-single mother once again.

I mean, dude. Really. It’s not like there were no clean towels. It was just that I forgot to put them away after washing, drying and folding them. They were sitting neatly folded on top of the dryer which you would have noticed when you walked into the laundry room to toss your dirty clothes on the floor (instead of the hamper neatly sitting two feet away) had you opened your eyes.

Or stopped thinking of blowjobs for all of two seconds.

Please don’t hold me responsible for the lack of butter in the house. I don’t cook. How the hell should I know if we don’t have any butter? Or milk. (Heh.)

There was beer. That ought to count for something. I should get points for thinking of you.

When I asked what you wanted for your belated birthday supper and you waggled your eyebrows and said a love taco, I thought you meant MEXICAN food. Not sex. Sheesh.

Don’t be mad at me just because as you pulled down your pants to hang your willy in my face and made lewd comments about having something good to suck on your daughter walked in. I was on the couch trying to read blogs and ignore the tube steak being waved in front of my nose. I didn’t ask you to tug the Pickle out to play show and tell.

Keep your snake in the grass so I don’t have to lie to your daughter and tell her you were just showing me how your zipper keeps slipping down.

When your son asks if I want to play with his brand new juggling balls that is not an invitation to grin like a mad man and offer me your balls to play with.

I don’t know if you know this, but our kids, they aren’t two and three anymore. They are growing up. They know what you mean. They are starting to figure out that their parents are perverts.

This is my polite way of telling you that you need to stop threatening to tie me up and spank me for being such a naughty girl when our kids are hanging on our every word.

With my luck one of our beloved demon spawn is going to start prattling on to his or her teacher about how their daddy likes to punish their mommy in the bedroom.

I’ve already got a reputation. Let’s not add to it shall we?

And when I ask you to pick up strawberries, ice cream and some whipping cream it is for the cake I baked for your birthday. It is not an summons for seduction and sex games thirty minutes before our dinner guests are scheduled to arrive.

Unless of course you are offering to scrub out the guest toilet and quickly vacuum so they don’t know we are sloths. Then I may be inclined to show my gratitude in a horizontal position.

But you didn’t offer. Too bad for you.

I love my husband. Really, I do. But somehow he seems to have mistakenly confused me for some local nymphomaniac porn star while he was away at work.

Twenty four more hours and then I’m home alone again.

It seems like an eternity.

Damn I suck as a wife.

Just not in the way Boo would like.

Note to self:

When your handsome and delightfully thoughtful husband surprises you with an unexpected over-the-top romantic gesture while you are sitting on the couch in a stained tee shirt, grubby sweats and your hair resembling something insects may call home, perhaps it is in your best interest to can the smart talk and look directly into your husband’s baby blues and tell him how much you love him.

This would be preferable to the route you chose, asking him if this is a make up present for some wild night with an unknown toothless stripper that he is harbouring oodles of regret and guilt over while picking the underwear out of your butt crack.

Dear self, instead of asking who he paid to wrap the ridiculously small package with the pretty ribbon and sparkly paper, it would serve your best interests if you just told him how lovely the wrapping job was. Instead of reminding him that he has over-sized man hands with fingers that resemble large beefy sausages and how he can barely manage to pick his own nose let alone fumble with a roll of tape for the woman he unwisely professed his love to a decade ago.

Self, it may behoove you to just keep your freaking yap shut as your carefully unwrap the pretty package under your husband’s loving gaze. Just accept the fact that your husband is obviously more thoughtful and romantic than you and enjoy the moment. There is no need to remind your lovely man that he married an asshat. I’m sure he knows this rather well by now.

And dear self, when you finally open the small velvet box to reveal a beautiful set of diamond solitaire earrings that sparkle as though a million suns were caught and trapped beneath their glassy exterior just for you, perhaps it is in your best interest to just remain silent for a moment and revel in the love your husband is so willingly bestowing upon your sorry ass you.

That would have been a much wiser course of action than opening the box and having your jaw gape open, only to quickly recover and look at him and ask him, “How the hell did you pay for these?” in a screechy shrewish manner.

Dear self, while you gazed admiringly upon your new sparkly earrings and mentally kissed the days of having to wear cheap fake replicas purchased from Wal-mart goodbye, perhaps you should have just humbly said thank you to your darling husband and kissed him for his wonderful generosity.

Surely that would have been much nicer better than examining the jewels and remarking on how small the earrings looked in the box. Did you really have to tease your husband and ask him why he didn’t get you bigger stones? I mean, really Self, sometimes even I want to kick your ass.

It would have been much more to your benefit if you had simply tried the earrings on and commented to your fabulous husband on how large the earrings look in your ears. Because, as I’m sure you know Self, all men like to be told how large their stones are.

Perhaps next time, if you heed my fine advice dear Self, you will simply be able to bask in the joy of knowing your man loves you enough to surprise you with shiny expensive baubles as you enjoy gloating and bragging showing off your new trinket to all your friends.

Maybe next time you won’t have to break out the knee pads and faux leather whip while prancing around in killer stilettos in a desperate effort to pry your feet out of your mouth and earn the jewels already bestowed upon you.

Maybe next time dear Self, when you ask your darling husband if you’ve been a naughty girl and ask if you need a spanking, he won’t look you square in the eyes and say, “Don’t tempt me Tanis.”

Learn from me Self. I’m the dumbass with the shiny new sparkly diamonds and the slightly annoyed husband.