I’m Pretty Sure I’m Only 65 Percent Crazy

On Saturday we went to a small reception to celebrate a family member’s marriage. His parents threw the gathering for those of us who couldn’t attend the wedding out of state.

Now, before marriage and kids, getting ready for an event wasn’t that complicated. I only had to worry about what I was wearing and how I looked. But now I have a husband and one teenage son left at home. If you’re in the same boat, you know what that means. It now falls on ME to make sure EVERYBODY is ready to walk out the door in the proper attire.

Easier said than done.

It started with me asking The Husband Dude what he would wear.

“A tank top and shorts.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. Why? What are you wearing?”

“A dress. I mean, not formal, but a dress.”

“It’s just a get-together, right?”

“It’s a wedding reception. We got a real invitation and everything.”

Blank stare from him.

I know he’s trying to figure out the correlation between receiving a real invitation and what he should be wearing. The thing is that I have a theory that the level of invitation you receive dictates what you wear.

For example, a verbal invitation dictates casual dress.

A black matte three-piece card with silver glittery embossing on it is probably going to elicit cocktail attire from me.

A beach-themed invitation means coconut bra, no?

This particular invitation was not formal, but there were flourishes.

Flourishes.

Flourishes do not mean an old ratty tank top and shorts with holes in them.

Am I right?

The Dude replied, “I guess I’ll wear my jeans and my black shirt. I’m riding the bike today.”

This is another thing. In good weather months, we never drive anywhere as a family. The Dude rides his motorcycle, and I have to drive The Kid (our 15-year-old son) and myself in the car. Sometimes this irritates me. But then I remember our road trip last summer, and I remember that by the time we made it from Tulsa to Abilene, he was ready to drive straight to the airport and fly home.

To be fair, I WAS being a bit of a nag. You know, saying dumb shit like, “Why are you running through a stop sign?!?” and “That was a pedestrian!”

I mean, who wouldn’t get pissed off about that? I have no idea why I Googled “places to file for divorce in Fort Stockton”. So, yeah, maybe a little transportation separation is healthy for our marriage.

Still, I can’t help but sometimes feel that he’s married to “Lady Blue” and I’m just the side chick. On the other hand, there are plenty of men who would probably not put up with my level of batshit crazy, so maybe we’re even that way.

For the record, I’m only sixty-five percent crazy. The Husband Dude would tell you that number is probably more like ninety-five percent, but this is my story, and I’m in charge of the random percentages and statistics. Besides, I calculated it.

Each of my parents got some batshit crazy from their families and passed that on to me. So, we’ll just say they gave me a total of fifty percent. This was before I got married and had kids. I also have this theory that getting married automatically increases your crazy by ten percent, generally sometime between the cocktail hour and cutting the cake. That brings me up to sixty percent.

Then I got pregnant. That’ll increase you by a good twenty-five percent at least but some of that goes away after you give birth. So, I kept five percent which brings me up to sixty-five percent. See? I’m only sixty-five percent crazy!

Oh wait…I did forget to figure in the other stuff. Even though you lose some of the pregnancy crazy, there’s the lack-of-sleep-crazy, potty-training-crazy, do-your-fucking-homework-crazy, and my-kids-are-teenagers-and-know-everything-crazy. That road trip last summer had to have added another forty-five percent and that brings us up to somewhere around three-hundred-seventy five percent.

Never mind…the lowball estimate of ninety-five percent is ok by me.

Speaking of teenagers, not ten minutes after the wardrobe discussion with The Dude, The Kid comes downstairs and I remind him to wear something nice.

“Something nice?” he asks.

“Not fancy”, I tell him. “Just nice. Jeans are fine but wear a nice shirt, not a T-shirt.”

“Jeans? But it’s like eighty-seven degrees outside.”

Like father, like son.

I just spent forty-five minutes painting a different look on my face, shoving my Girls into a torture device called a “halter bra” and shimmying into control-top underwear that has pushed all the fat from my belly up under my armpits, but y’all just keep bitching about having to wear Big-Boy pants, m’kay?

As soon as we show up to the party, I point out to The Kid that the wedding couple are both wearing jeans and nice shirts. This seems to placate him.

But The Dude, on the other hand, can’t wait to point out that the host is wearing shorts.

I’m about to go on a diatribe about how it’s better to be safe than sorry. I’m about to point out that his sister has laid out their mother’s good china on the dining room table, and I would feel greatly under-dressed in casual attire.

I’m about to say all that, but he is too busy eating straight out of the candy bowl instead of using the dainty little spoon his sister put there to scoop the candy out.

I have told him before that he eats like a caveman, and he apparently wears it proudly like a badge. I give him side-eye and he gives me side-eye back. Then he slips his arm around my waist and picks up a real piece of china.

This is marriage.

On the drive home, I’m following behind him. I hate watching him ride his motorcycle. It’s too nerve-wracking. I’m always worried some dumbass will hit him.

Come Sail Away by Styx comes on the radio and I start getting a little teary-eyed. I’m thinking about how he’s sometimes a caveman, but he is MY caveman, and he gave me the mini-caveman sitting in the seat next to me, playing with his iPhone. I’m also getting teary-eyed because he told me once that he wanted this song played at his funeral. I can’t hear this song anymore without thinking about that.

Until that one part comes on. You know the part. It’s the musical interlude with the synthesizers that sounds like the backdrop to an acid-fueled trip to outer space. That part of the song lasts for fucking ever. Seriously…when they pressed records, I bet that song took up half of one side.

Now I know why he wants it to play at his funeral. That part annoys the shit out of me. It’s his last chance to get on my last nerve. Well played, Caveman. Well played.