CrankMama

My Canadian Ex-Husband & Other Shameful Secrets

I have an ex-husband who is Canadian.  He and I were married for 3 years and are now quite good friends.  After our divorce, I fell in love with and had twins with a man I did not ultimately marry.  He's still a very involved father in the twins' lives and he and I are also, in our way, friends. 

I have not typically trumpeted the details of my personal history at the various social gatherings I have attended these past years.   I usually let people assume, as they do, that my current husband is the father of all of my children.  Most of the time, this lack of information sharing is natural reticence.  Reticence and cool remove are rare jewels in a culture where gloppy personal stories are shared like fudge at every gathering.  Besides, I like my peeps a little shy so that when they do reveal their secrets, it's like winning a lovely prize.

On the other hand, I like the sassy fun hip people with a past.  I love the courage and folly of bad life choices and stories of fun drunken debauchery and bad boyfriends and torrid travel romances.  I can view a divorce (or 2) or a kid out of wedlock as a colorful part of someone's past, but I've never wanted to be someone with a past.  I want to be the funny  wacky, but still pure & innocent sidekick.

The truth is, I'm a little embarrassed when I do get close enough to someone to tell them my story.  I'm always afraid that they'll see me as this single mom, smoking cigarettes, while her bastard children run around the yard in dirty diapers.  Or as a bitter cynical divorcee who got married in the nick of time. 

Even with this, I'm still often chosen to be the funny & wacky sidekick to smartass babes with dark pasts and I love that role because we've all got our secrets.  And in the end, everyone needs a good belly laugh from someone who *knows* them in that "I've been there too, sis" kind of way.

Hi. My name is Rachael and I have a dark and sordid past. 

You?

I Better Be Good In Bed

A Wifely Apology:

I'd like to officially apologize.  While the acid comments over breakfast are most likely quite funny (especially the bitter ones about materialism, capitalist pigs, and Republicans) I know sometimes it's better to wait until the dinner hour to throw around swear words and make references to the Mindless Masses. 

Though 40 hours of cheerfully granted alone time might have been sufficient, in some circles, to jumpstart cheerfulness or recapture some youthful effervescence, alas they were unequal to the task.  And while a seething undercurrent of resentment is indeed quite sexy to some men (as are sweatpants and oily hair I'm told), it may not after all be your particular cup of tea.

Hormones, wine for dinner, and no exercise since 1975 are excellent cornerstones of a certain kind of mental health, I'm sure, but don't seem to work as well for me.

For these reasons and above all because you haven't yet put me on the cover of Bad Wife Magazine, please accept my nomination as the officially adored mascot of all of us here at CrankMama.  You surely deserve more than you've been receiving...

I remain, ever your faulty but hopefully never boring wife.

Lipstick & Heels, Please

Dear Sassy Girlfriends,

It's been too long since we shared an evening together with cocktails and giggles.  There are many reasons that a night out is becoming an absolute necessity, including but not limited to the fact that:

1. Today is Family Day -- which means Daddy works in the yard for 40 hours while Mommy stays inside and referees fights over stuffed cats, shooshing yellers so that wee babe won't wake up.

2. Once wee babe wakes up, we're heading to a Mormon Family get together where they'll be no nice sassy friends like you, no cocktails, and no swearing

3. Daddy has just given Mommy an assignment.  It goes like this "Honey - would you please help the kids make a sign that says "FREE" so that we can get rid of this aluminum ladder? Wouldn't that be fun, ladies?"  Yes, dear.  That would be TONS of fun... especially when I put the sign on a few things I've been meaning to clean out of the garage...items in or around your tool bench.

4. Mommy doesn't like making signs with children.

5. I haven't talked to a woman about non-kid/ non-husband things in about 1 million years.

So, dear girlfriend, save me from my plight.  Let's dress-up, wear lipstick and heels, and put our funk on!!

Love,
CrankMama