I love my husband. You can read all of the mushy reasons here. But beyond that stuff, there’s the weirdness of our relationship or rather, the freedom to be weird, that keeps me starry-eyed with this man of mine.
The thing is, we are total opposites. We don’t make sense on paper at all but yet, here we are. In love. Making and raising cute-but-slightly-weird little people of our own.
Think Dharma and Greg.
Penny and Leonard.
Lily and Marshal.
Pepe Le Pew and that cat.
Our differences strengthen us. Where I end, he begins and vice versa. And it’s all good until it’s Netflix-season, which occurs with my first upper respiratory infection of the season through the last snow storm come March. Since I am currently battling a double ear infection, sinus infection AND the flu (momma likes to multi-task), I watched Fixer Upper in (cough) a day. So Travis says to me, “I have a show we can watch together.”
I cringe and feign sleepiness. “Give me a chance,” he says. “You loved Battlestar!”
And he’s right. Despite my near-paralyzing fear of space and robots, I fraking-loved Battlestar Galactica. To this day, I’d count it as one of my all-time favorite shows. “Okay, what is it?” I say.
You should know this about Travis: He has a show sales pitch and it usually starts with the leading man. He once talked me into watching Smallville because of Tom Welling’s “flirtations smile” and farm-boy work ethic. It worked then so he sticks with this tactic.
“It’s called Arrow and the guy does all his own stunts,” he says.
I concede. We watch three episodes back-to-back. He looks at me and says, “What did you think? Good story? Intense drama? Eye-candy?”
“Meh” I say. “He’s handsome but not my type.”
“Not your type? How is near-physical perfection not your type?”
“Well,” I say. “You know if pressed, I’d always pick Chris Pratt, who combines physical beauty, humor and good personality.”
“Yes,” he says. “I can see that. But this guy, I mean…he does his own stunts!”
“Impressive but you know who I find really attractive? I’ve always been a Ben Affleck kind of girl. Ben Affleck with a beard maybe,” I admit.
“Really? I never saw that coming,” he says, as if he loves that I still surprise him.
“Well, I can’t speak to his personality but he looks like the kind of guy I could go to a baseball game with or get drunk and sing ‘Benny and the Jets’ with at a dive bar in Key West. And we’d have a chocolate lab…and we’d live…”
“In a Georgia mansion?” he says. You see, Travis and I actually got up-close to Ben Affleck’s Georgia mansion back when I was a magazine writer and did a behind-the-scenes press tour of the community where he keeps a house off the coast of Georgia so he knows as well as I do that Ben has an eye for classic Southern architecture and coastal living. See, here’s a creeper-shot I took. (It’s actually beautiful in person. This shot is terrible because it was dark and like I said, we were creeping. They may have misjudged us and given us nice wine and a golf cart to “explore” the island as if we weren’t going to go looking for Ben.)
“No, not a mansion. A beachy-bungalow,” I say. “Cool. Low-key. Off the Gulf. With wide-plank wood floors. Craftsmen details. Penny tile in the bathroom. Original subway tile in the kitchen. With an oak tree that has twinkly lights in the back and a picnic table…”
I don’t have a picture of Travis in the moment so I’ll use this one of Ben. The expression is right on:
“This is all very specific,” my husband says. “Also, I think you got more excited about remodeling a bungalow than you did about Ben Affleck.”
“See, my heart belongs to you,” I say taking his hand.
“Yes. To me and the Home Depot,” he says.
He isn’t wrong.
Do you have a “type” or are you like me and end up talking subway tile?
One Response
Well, I’ve always been an older man kind of girl — the ones who rock a rugged salt and pepper beard with strong manly features — like Russel Crowe. Always Russel Crowe. Buuuut, give me the option of Russel Crowe or a lifetime supply of hand-spun soft alpaca yarn for knitting, and I’ll always take the latter!