Damn My Ex 

so my ex, marie, was nuts about the color purple. not the movie, the actual color. marie had the brilliant idea that she wanted to dye her hair purple. i suggested highlights or something, but she had her mind set on bleaching her hair and then dyeing it.

so we head to the beauty supply store. we find the bleach pretty easily and move on to find the dye. i pick up a tube called “violet” and show it to her. marie says she thinks she wants the “cranberry”. i tell her that cranberry isn’t purple at all. unfortunately, the tube was clear so you could see the dye. the cranberry looked purple to the eye. i tried to explain that it doesn’t necessarily mean that it was purple. just like paint dries a different color than it looks wet, i figured hair dye was the same way. i couldn’t see why they’d name the color cranberry if it was purple. violet, however, is practically the same as purple.

naturally, i’m the dumb man who doesn’t understand hair. she grabs the cranberry.

short story long, marie bleaches and then dyes her hair. when the towel came off, her hair was pink. PINK!

to make matters more interesting, we had made plans to go to a steakhouse (with a down under theme) that night. despite looking ridiculous, she decides she wants to go anyway. needless to say, we were stared at the whole evening.  months later, i see a commercial for said steakhouse that was strikingly similar to this story. i think they owe me a free steak or something.

my ex, marie, was interesting to say the least. she hailed from the great granola state and was a poor representative of the residents.

so, one day (actually many days, but i’m referring to one in particular), she was upset about something.

“what’s wrong, honey?”

“nothing”

“nothing?’

“nothing”

“you seem upset’

“i’m not upset”

“you seem bothered”

“i’m not bothered”

“you just seem like something’s eating at you”

“nothing’s wrong”

“okay, but it just seems like something in your little world isn’t as perfect as you would like it right now”

she was like this for three or four days. finally, she starts SCREAMING at me for not caring about her. how could i not notice what was going on with her? i told her i had been trying for all this time to tell me what was upsetting her. classic marie: “nothing’s upsetting me. i’m not upset, i’m irked” “so when i’ve been asking you what’s bothering you and you’ve been telling me nothing, if i had asked if anything was irking you, you’d have told me?” “yes”

excuse me! next time i’ll have my thesaurus handy.

i’d like to tell you marie was lazy, but that’s such an understatement. see for yourself:

i worked outside in the sun and heat.  i walked a lot but made good money for it.  i figured that if i’m working outside of the home so marie doesn’t have to, the least she could do was put down the game controller (mario 64 if you care) and wash a dish or two.  in my dreams.  what actually happened was we ended up with a path through the living room to get from the bedrooms to the kitchen.

i got fed up with it.  in five minutes, i had cleaned up a huge area of the floor, filling up three 55-gallon trash bags.  i made marie an offer.  i offered her a dollar a minute she cleaned the apartment.  i suggested fifteen minutes a day would be enough to clean the place in a week or two.

her response?  me wanting her to do anything was controlling.  in the following argument, i learned that it wasn’t that it was degrading asking her to clean.  it was controlling asking her to do anything she wasn’t inclined to do on her own.  despite the fact that she would get paid more than i did to do it, i was trying to control her.  i wish.

if i controlled her, the place would be clean, and the princess would still be stuck up in that damn tower.

so my then girlfriend, marie, had a son.  great kid.  well, she decided to go after her baby’s daddy for support.  according to her, he was her “one and only”.  okay, whatever, good luck!

test comes back: not him.  a little more digging and i get the story.  he was in the military back in texas (she had just moved here).  he’d have her over with a bunch of buddies, and she’d get wasted drunk.  she didn’t really remember anything that happened at the parties after a couple of drinks.  according to her, she only had sex with him a couple of times that she can recall.

my thought? maybe his buddies showed up at the parties for his great party favors.

so marie, my then wife, and i went to a fast food seafood place.  you know short bob gold’s, and she tells me to get her extra hushpuppies.  so i come back with our order and extra hushpuppies (3).  she flips out, flips out!

apparently,extra means at least a dozen.  what did i end up getting her to get her to shut up?? two dozen, that’s 24 hushpuppies “on the side”.

and you thought this post was about boobs.

so marie and i are sitting in the bed of her truck after class let out, just talking like normal.  we’d been seeing each other for a couple of weeks.  nothing had happened yet, but, ya know- i was hoping.

she drops this bomb on me: “my baby’s daddy called from my old hometown.”

“uh-huh, did you tell him to go to hell?”

“i was gonna, but he asked me what my ring size is.  so now we’re engaged, but nothing’s changed between us.”

i was working as a server when a stack of pans in the back of house fell on my head. obviously, i was in pain.  worse than that, though, i was getting disoriented and confused.  probably a concussion, right?  so i call my then fiance, john, who was of all things, a nurse.

i explain to john what happened and asked him to take me to the hospital so i wouldn’t have to pay for an ambulance. (i know, i know, my employer should’ve done that.  what can i say? i was 21 and stupid.)

his response? basically, what the hell was i thinking, why did it go and do something so stupid, did i know he just got home from work and was really tired, did i have to go right now, and could he get something to eat first.

he finally picks me up and drops me off at the hospital, after he stopped at a drive-thru. yeah, he dropped me off.  he tells me later that i was probably faking and i wasted his time.  i was stupid to go to the ER, and i was going to have to pay for it.

i’m fine, thanks for asking, honey.

marie ate a lot. A LOT.  i mean, two gooey butter cakes by herself in one sitting.  an entire tub of meringue cookies.  unbaked muffins.  you know, just the batter?  uncooked pie crust.  a real health nut.

post-divorce, we’re talking on the phone.

“by the way, my doctor told me that i’m hypoglycemic,” she tells me.

my thought, you eat so damn much, how can you tell?

so marie starts getting child support checks.  she decides to spend it on whatever she wants.  so she buys two gooey butter cakes.  you know, the essentials.

she goes into her room, and eats them both.

she comes back out with the empty boxes.  i ask if she really ate them both.

“yeah, is that a lot?”

so marie had a daughter, my step-daughter.  her baby’s daddy finally started paying child support.  my thought is, okay, that money will so help pay the bills.  food, rent, electric, etc.  nope.

marie says that since the check came in her name, she could do whatever the hell she wants with it.

ok.  so i started charging her rent.  time to pay up.