The Toxic Housewife

(June 2007) There are acorns on my coffee table. They aren’t there to be eaten; they’re just there because one of the boys in my house -- either my 12-year old stepson or my 42-year old husband -- took the time to bring them in and deposit them there instead of in the trashcan. There are BB gun pellets on that same coffee table, along with a generous scattering of them on the hallway floor that I keep stepping on and that results in my continually doing a deranged sort of sliding dance whenever I enter that part of the house. There’s also a BB pile outside in the backyard. Next to the rusty beer cans that are now embedded with holes. There are clothes piled everywhere: in the basement, on the arm of the living room couch, along the stairs to the second floor, in the guest bedroom, and on my side of the bed. And they aren’t even my clothes. There are mounds of Kleenex on the floor and dishes that made it to the kitchen counter but -- for some unknown reason -- eluded getting into the di...

(April 2007) I was never the type of girl who dreamed of a fantasy marriage. I suppose when I was younger and was truly a girly-girl, I had some idea in my mind of a Barbie doll-type, Cinderella-esque match made in heaven. I hoped for a He-Man prince to sweep me off my feet, but never quite knew what that involved. All I knew was that I’d better be prepared with a rather poofy dress so there was never any danger of my Rainbow Brite underwear showing when the sweeping took place. As I grew older, I shed all those mincing girl fantasies and concentrated instead on the type of man I felt I could partner with for life. My husband would have to be funny, of course, and he’d have to enjoy doing the taxes, the ironing, and the cooking, since I hated all three. It wouldn’t hurt if he were rich, either. But the most important thing about our marriage, I decided at fifteen, was that we’d be partners: he’d wash, I’d dry; he’d sweep, I’d vacuum; he’d clean the car, I’d fold the clothes; he’d buy t...