My Year of Meaningful (2011)

A couple weeks back it was mancakes' birthday. We always write each other elaborately mushy bday cards. Yeah yeah, to the utter disgust of my friends (we're talking 2-pagers, here). Whatever, it's just our thing. But after 5 years of writing elaborately mushy bday, anniversary, anniversary-of-1st-meeting, xmas, and valentines day cards, I find it getting harder to be creative and actually come up with kickass mushy stuff to fill up 2 pages with, that hasn't already (a.)been said by one or the other before, or (b.) become cliché.

I deduced that this is because I only start writing the card a day or so before the event, and don't really have the juice to think of something sensational in such a hurry. Gotta get a new gig that gets the creative and sentimental juices fowing a bit more. I now have decided that the key is to start stockpiling thoughts and come up with inspiration throughout the year. Which actually is probably also good for my consistant personal affirmation of the fact that I didnt marry a douchebag.

Now, I don't know if TheHubs reads this... he knows it's out there, but we haven't talked about it (he's very respectful of my obsession with top-secret journals) so if you're reading this and you just happen to be him, just pretend it's your birthday again. If not, I'm working on material for xmas.

Right. I love the mancakes because he does stuff which is just so NOT classicly male. Revert to the photo, above. We were at DunnesStores the other day and saw their new winter stock. (Yes, winter is coming, GROAN, there goes my love affair with autumn - leaving me high and dry and strung out on mass quantities of apple cider tea that I didnt get to finish before the cruel irish seasons turn against me) Anyone who knows me knows I absolutely love fleece. As far as materials go, fleece and flannel are my most favorite things in the world. Keep your stinky silk and satin and wooly shit. Give me fleece. Then, give me flannel. After that, whatever, it's all sheep to me.

The fleece robes pulled me over to that section (we were actually there to buy groceries) like moth to flame. The rest went down something like this:
Me: "WOoooah fleecey robes... Baby don't you think we should each get a fleecey robe to run around in this winter?"
He: "OK. Which ones?"
We poked around in the racks, he asked if I didn't think they were only for girls, I said no, and we each got a red one with white snowflakes. Noted the fact that they were only 15 bucks, and continued on with life.

WTF!?!? How lucky am I? Of COURSE they were probably girls robes! Jesus hell, they were even hanging on the same rack as barbie pink, powder blue, and lemon yellow robes of the same style. We picked red because that's a somewhat-masculine looking colour. But the hubster doesn't care, I just said "no" when he asked the question, he was like: "cool.", and now we are officially MATCHING fleecey-red-robe-with-white-snowflake wearers! What other guy on this planet would agree to such madness. He even put the grocery bag down to TRY THEM ON FOR THE RIGHT SIZE (find out he's a 14-16 in ROBE-SIZE) over his clothes. In PUBLIC! He's the best. OK he insists on full-on nudity under-robe, whilst I would be more partial to as-many-layers-as-possible (this was the one pre-requisite to buying the fleecey wonders - typical) but I don't care, I'm still just marveling at the whole concept every time I see them hanging on the wardrobe. What a cool guy.

Maybe I just had too many boyfriends who were overly macho and wholeheartedly anti-cheeze (I tend to be attracted to the stud-cum-rockstar type), and I just keep forgetting that I managed to catch a winner who doesn't play up to that stereotype all the time. But we've had these fuzzy snowflakey things for nearly a week now, and I'm still just fascinated by it.

(BTW it looks so damn cute on him)

I was told by my roommate, back in 2000 when we rocked up to my house in Pretoria with matching top-of-ear-piercings, that there are a lot of guys out there who would be way too insecure, uncomfortable in their masculinity, scared of potential-commitment-issues, and what-what-what, to even hold hands with their gf in public... let alone roll with matching body piercings after only 1 month of dating. I just threw it up to the fact that H. was not a wuss bag, and already happened to be into stuff like tattoos and even had his ear pierced way back before I met him. But she was right. I realize now that He doesn't care about that shit, he just goes with what he likes and doesn't give a rats ass about what the guys would say. We like alot of the same things... ear piercings, champagne, cheeze-ball holiday card rituals, and fleece included, and that's cool with him. On the same tip, I just recently thought about my ex in Aus who I was nearly going to MARRY, who had way earlier announced that he would not be wearing a wedding ring when we got hitched. Serious red-flag issues there.

May I also indulge, while on the subject, and say that I'm really loving the new hairstyle. Granted it's not a hairstyle, per se, rather it's me begging, bribing, and pleading with him not to go to the haircutters. I just love it love it love it. I can't believe I survived all the many bad Cork-haircuts this long. I've ALWAYS liked medium-length hair on guys, and yet it never occurred to me that it would look this good on my manchop. He protests a little bit ("It's a mullet! You're making me have a mullet!"), and then I explain to him that no, if it was a "moo-let" (as he'd say), then there would be no hair hanging over his forehead and ears. A moo-let requires SHORT hair on top AND sides, which he doesn't have at all. Then he says he doesn't like it how his "hair gets caught on de shirt collar always", and I proceed to grope and molest him and all haircut-talk is forgotten.

OK one more (IMHO) hilarious thing about the manckaes that I dearly love, and I love it so much it is going to get me in trouble one day because it will become predictable. His ability to be distracted if you know which buttons to push. Yeah, this is a really selfish thing, but I dearly dearly love it. I just want to pinch his little dutchy cheeks!!! He's always really tired at night, and has a gift for being able to fall asleep within 1 second of hitting the pillow. Not so for me. I always want to have a little pre-sleeping chat (it's a totally lame girl thing, I know). Him: "Baby I'm so tired, can't you just let me go to sleep & talk about it tomorrow?" I beg. He pleads. I beg, he begs. Then I give up and say ok, just go to sleep. Then I pull out the big guns-- and this is what I love: "Baby, who's your favourite coach in the Premiership League?" And like a rocket, he's off! "Oh definitely Rafael Benitez. You knew that didnt you?" Me: "Oh yeah, I forgot. WHy? I didn't think you like Liverpool?" Then we're off. Him: "Oh well he's much more down-to-earth than that asshole Jose Marinho, god I hate dat guy. And it's not that I like Liverpool it's just that I like some of their players, you know like Steven Gerard is awesome and didn't you think they were amazing in the chapionship game against AC Milan this year? And I used to like Newcastle but they fired Bobby Robson and. . . " Before you know it, sleep is no longer a matter of negotiation, and I'm well entertained until I can finally get myself to get some shuteye, or segue the conversation into what I wanted to discuss in the first place. I adore this guy . Liefie if you're reading this, you probably knew that was my trick didn't you? Thanks for playing along anyway. :-) soooo cute.