"With the certitude of a true believer, Vellya Paapen had assured the twins that there was no such thing in the world as a black cat. He said that there were only black, cat-shaped holes in the universe."
-- Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Things I Think About While Bathing Dragons


I just finished bathing my husband's dragons.  (Don't look for symbolism or euphemism or any other hidden ism in that statement.  It is what it is.  See photos for confirmation.) 

 

There are things they don't tell you about marriage.  Like the fact that once you are married you will have to periodically do things like bathe your husband's dragons because they have been sitting on top of the bookcase in the living room for two years collecting an inch of dust and the dust has become so thick that small pieces have actually broken off and floated down in the gentle current of the fan so that you can no longer ignore the dust five feet above your head and you will ask your tall husband to take the dragons down and he will, but then he will ask you to bathe them.  No one warned me about that.  Then again, I am not sure that warning would really apply to that many wives.  Maybe the warning is something more general like, "You will have to deal with the stuff your husband owns" or "Your husband will at some point ask you to clean something that you have never cleaned before" in which case I do think, actually, that someone told me those things, and I just ignored them.  Or at least I just never pictured dragons.

I like my husband's dragons. 

I do.  I'm serious.  How can I convince you that I am not lying about liking my husband's dragons? 

How about this... I got him a new one recently.  It's small, but it has two heads, so that makes it cooler than bigger dragons with one head.  Here he is eating a fake cockroach with one of his heads. 



(Note I said FAKE.  We may have spiders and scorpions and cats and dogs and dragons and occasionally even an armadillo at our house but we do NOT have cockroaches.  EVER.  And I love that about this house.  Come to think of it, why don't we?  We don't exterminate... and we let our house get pretty dirty... and there are obviously cracks big enough for scorpions to get in so I am sure they are big enough for cockroaches too... Hmm.  Ok, I am still glad that we don't have cockroaches, but now I am slightly afraid that we have something bigger and scarier that EATS cockroaches.  Hang on while I google....... Huh.  It turns out that cockroaches actually have many enemies.  Apparently we could have wasps, birds, bats, or "other small animals" keeping our cockroach population at bay.  Hmm.  Also of note, if you want to read a sad CNN article about a guy who died after winning a cockroach-eating contest, click here.) 

Exhibit A - Dragons
(top of bookcase)
Exhibit B - Krusty
(left of bookcase)
But back to my point (the second one, not the one about things they don't tell you before marriage), I like my husband's dragons.  They go well with my Krusty the Clown doll (who suspiciously ends up in the background of a LOT of my pictures) and my Muppets and my various fortune-telling paraphernalia.  And by "goes with" I don't mean that they actually have anything in common, because they don't, I more mean "doesn't go with", as in "nothing in our house goes with anything else".  I like that. 

When the hubby and I got married, we did the whole registry thing, so yes, we have matching dishes (unless you count mugs-- I sort of have a mug-buying problem, but I do use them all-- I choose my mug each morning based on my mood), and we have matching towels, mostly, except for the blue ones that got bleach on them and turned pink (who knew blue towels would turn pink?!) and the random ones that I use to wrap my hair up in when it is drying because they are smaller), and we have... um... ???  What else did we register for?  I feel like it was a whole big deal at the time and now I can't think of anything else.  Uh... ladles?  I think we have matching ladles. 

ANYWAY, even though we registered for stuff and got new dishes and towels and bedding (BEDDING!  That's what it was!) we didn't REDO our whole lives or anything.  We moved my purple couches in with Hubby’s green couches and lived for a while in over-stuffed-living-room-semi-harmony until various events caused us to get rid of one piece of each set.  So we still have one green couch and one purple couch, except that the green couch was really ripped up from the cats (like... you could see the wood) so I patched all the corners with not-quite-the-same-green cloth because I couldn't be bothered to look more than one place and find the actual same color.  And we decorated the walls with Hubby’s samurai posters and my framed photos of my family and some cool paintings our friend made.  And of course my VCR tapes sit on the same shelf next to his blu-rays, etc. 

Christmas cards 
still displayed in May
What I'm getting at is we don’t live in a very grown-up house, and I’m ok with that.  Although, I tend to forget just exactly HOW un-grown-up our house is until I visit someone else’s and realize that all the colors in their living room go together and they have things like rugs and end tables and curtains and an acute lack of dragons.  I don’t know what other people think of our décor because not that many people really come to our house and those who do have been too polite to say things like, “What the heck is up with all the mismatched furniture and dragons and Muppets?”  But it doesn’t matter because I like our un-grown-up, dragon-infested, cockroach-free house.  I think it’s pretty awesome. 

And you gotta admit, those dragons look pretty darn good after they’ve had their bath.



Upon re-reading this, I realize that A) It is a lot longer than I realized, and B) It really has no point at all.  I fear that I have wasted your time.  Please accept my apologies in the form of this short video clip from The Princess Bride.
    



4 comments:

  1. Love it. It affirms my belief that home is exactly where your heart is for sure! Your heart is with your hubby! :-) Your house is perfect!

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  2. Thanks, Angie! :) Bring the pugs to hang out again while you are still in Austin. Then our house can be infested with dragons and pugs. It's a great combination.

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  3. I love your house too. It's not boring and there are lots of books and photos and random creepy clown dolls to look at. Who needs matching pottery barn candle holders anyways?

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    1. I wonder how different my life would be if I had registered for matching Pottery Barn candle holders...

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