Conversations With The Husband Dude

When I write about my conversations with The Husband Dude, I get people asking me all the time, “Did you make that up? Did that really happen?”

The truth is, except for some slight hyperbole here and there, some condensing, and maybe editing out some things that are boring or don’t need to be blasted on the internet, my stories and conversations are all true.

I mean, really, you can’t make most of this up. In fact, it has gotten to the point that The Husband Dude will say, “Put THAT in your blog!” 

Or more often, “DO NOT PUT THAT IN YOUR BLOG!”

He knows I’ve got the mind of a writer, and I can’t help but view life in terms of how I would retell the story later. He’s gotten used to it.

All this to say, I’m back with more conversations.

The Catman

The Dude, preparing his coffee as Luna comes sauntering across the counter. “No, no. Get down.”

Luna ignores him and rubs his arm.

“Get down. You’re getting hair everywhere.”

Luna responds with his squeaky meow and rubs The Dude’s arm some more.

I pick up the cat and put him on the floor. “I’m always the bad guy with this cat. You grumble a lot but I’m the one who always has to be the bad guy.”

“That’s not true. I hate that cat.”

“Really?” I smirk. “I watched you contort your body into positions I didn’t even know you could do just so you could get out from under the covers without disturbing him this morning.”

The Dude shrugs. “He looked comfortable.”

“We once watched an entire episode of a show we don’t watch because Luna was sitting in front of the cable box and the remote control didn’t work.”

The Dude waves me off. “He was cleaning himself. I didn’t want to disturb him.”

“You won’t make up the bed if the cat has settled into the covers. You always have to pet him and scratch his ears before you leave for work. You won’t get up from the couch if he’s lying on your lap. The other day, you sent me pictures of kittens for adoption at the shelter.”

The Dude gives me side-eye. “What’s your point?”

“You’re officially a cat man.”

He shakes his head. “No, I’m not. I hate that cat.”

I shake my head at him. “You always let him curl up with you at night and he always heads straight for your lap when we’re watching TV He never gives you a warning bite like he does with The Kid and me. The two of you are totally bros. It’s officially a bromance.”

“I hate cats.”

“Then why was Peter Criss your favorite member of KISS? He’s the Cat Man.”

The Dude is silent and I can see the look of realization on his face.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “You aren’t losing your man card.”

He mumbles again, “I hate that cat.”  Then he proceeds to open a can of tuna for his lunch and pours the juice in a bowl for Luna.

“Yeah,” I chuckle, “keep telling yourself that…”

Chicago’s Greatest Hits

We are watching a documentary about the band Chicago. The Dude says, “Isn’t that cool? He just wrote that song, sitting on the floor at almost four a.m. and all he did was describe everything. He wrote a song about writing the song!”

I squint a little. “I don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“I get describing everything, but I don’t get twenty-five or six to four.”

The Dude looks at me like I’m growing another arm out of the side of my body. “It’s the time. It’s twenty-five or six to four.”

“I get that it can be twenty-five minutes to four o’clock or six minutes to four o’clock, but how can it be both?”

The Dude blinks.

I blink.

“He means it’s twenty-five minutes or twenty-six minutes to four o’clock.”

I blink.

The Dude blinks.

“Oh,” I say. “Mystery solved. Carry on.”

He smirks. “How long has that been bothering you?”

“How old is the song?”

“It came out in nineteen-seventy-one.”

I nod. “That’s the year I was born.”

“Yeah.”

“That would probably be how long it has been bothering me.”

The Dude nods.

“You know, my first exposure to Peter Cetera was when he did that song for The Karate Kid Part II.”

The Dude nods again. “That was a great song.”

“Did you know that I never knew Peter Cetera was in Chicago until you told me that when we first got married?”

The Dude is silent for a moment, then, “Huh.”

He sips his coffee.

He gives me side-eye.

There will be no further questions.

The Polka King Incident

“My show is coming on,” I tell The Dude.

“Wait!” The Dude grabs the remote. “This is almost over.”

 “But you’ve seen this documentary already and I can watch the end of it later.”

“I promise it’s almost over,” he assures me. “You’re going to like it.”

The documentary ends and we change it over to my show.

“What did he say?” The Dude asks. “What happened? What’s going on?”

I roll my eyes. “Well, apparently in the first ten minutes we missed all the drama because Jax cheated on Britney and had sex with Faith and then Faith recorded their conversation on her phone and James stole her phone and sent it to himself and gave the recording to Lala who played it for Adriana who told her to play it for Britney at the housewarming party and Britney was drunk and got upset so she played it for all of the guests at the party in front of Jax and then she kept screaming ‘Why me?!?’”

He blinks. “All of that in ten minutes?”

“Yes. And we missed it. But it’s okay, because thankfully I know how the documentary about the Polka King of Pennsylvania ends even though I already knew how it ends because we just watched the fictional movie about it with Jack Black as the Polka King.”

The Dude pauses, then, “But Jack Black really nailed that character, though, right?”

“Don’t talk to me.”

The Polka King Incident, Part Two

“My show comes on tonight,” I remind The Dude.

“I’m just going to watch Andy Griffith until it comes on, okay?” he says.

“Okay.”

As soon as the credits start to roll, I pick up the remote.

“No, wait!” The Dude stops me. “I want to see who played…”

I give him a full-on look. “This better not be another Polka King incident.”

The Dude blinks.

I blink.

“But Jack Black really nailed that character, right?”

“Don’t talk to me.”

Probabilities

“I had a dream last night that Luna had kittens,” I tell The Dude.

He looks confused. “Like actually gave birth to them or just had some with him?”

“He actually birthed them. I was holding him and he started convulsing like he was having a seizure. Then suddenly all these kittens started popping out from….well…somewhere…”

“I can top that,” The Dude says.

“You can top a male, neutered cat giving birth to kittens?”

“Yes,” he responds. “I dreamt that X apologized to us.”

I look at him incredulously. “X? Apologized?”

“Yes. He sat us down and he said, ‘Dude, Kat, I’m really sorry for x,y,z. I’m really sorry for what I said to you both.’”

There’s a long pause.

We both laugh.

“You win,” I tell him. “There’s waaaaaay more chance of Luna giving birth to kittens than X apologizing.”

We give each other a fist bump.

A Man of Few Words

I’m a writer. I’ll text a dissertation and cover three topics at once. The Dude is a man of few words, as illustrated in this text:

Of course, I’m also really bad about getting distracted, especially if I get a text at work, as illustrated by this text exchange:

But what it all boils down to is this (HAGD stands for “Have a good day”):