impacted ear wax or almost a year of marriage

We're getting close to our one year anniversary. Time goes by quickly. Lives just don't happen, they get built bit by bit, day by day. Find better ways to deal with each other's nuances. And you learn intimacy on many different levels. Like ear wax.

Apparently the hubby's left hand isn't as dexterous with the q-tip to sufficiently rid him of his super industrial strength ear wax. And now he finds himself with a bit of a plugged up ear. So, all those times I didn't think he was listening to me, perhaps he actually didn't hear me. Though he has seemed to have adapted to life with waxy ears by having super sensitive hearing. But extensive amounts of ear wax seem to be some sort of evolutionary protective function, though in today's world it still provides them with some evolutionary protective function, a legitimate excuse for not listening to their wives! lol! OK, so that other time they were actually ignoring you, but that other other time, they just couldn't hear you.

So while the hubby stayed home, I went to a family party and sang karaoke. My cousin's boyfriend bought this karaoke system that is just like those karaoke private room places, complete with multiple versions of each of the songs. And ate on the hubby's behalf: crispy pata, balut, and oysters. I only had a bit of each. Even though healthwise I still have a few credits to spare on this kind of food, my body just can't take it and he really can't eat them at all. We all watched my cousins kids learn to play with each other. Shaolin and Eagle Claw go in and out of being best friends and being deathly afraid of each other. It's usually Shaolin scared of Eagle Claw. Eagle Claw has learned to share when it's convenient for her. But her younger cousin, I'll call Clone Boy, because he looks exactly like all the guys in this family when they were that age, has figured out ways to edge his way around her. Like she was playing with a magnadoodle toy, then he sat in her lap and just shimmied himself in front of the toy. She made way and he got the toy. And the youngest cousin shared some fruit by the foot with Eagle Claw, split it roughly in half, told her that she had the bigger piece while gulping down her half before she could measure the sides up. Eagle Claw as the oldest of the newest little ones here is a bit of a force of nature and she's rough, even rougher than all the boy kids.

Anyway, the hubby calls to ask me to pick up baby oil and one of those aspirator things (like a suction eye dropper thingy) as he has researched that these two things may be able to penetrate the industrial strength wax build up. Afterwards, I make my way to WalMart at 11pm. I should have brought my hiking running shoes. WalMart is already a crazy place during the day, but the fact that it's 24 hours makes it especially crazy. I hit the hour when all the merchandise and products get refreshed, so while dodging the other neon-blurry-eyed shoppers I have to keep from getting run over by the neon-blurry-eyed workers moving large palettes of stuff around. Fortunately my familiarity of large box marketplaces allowed me to run from one corner of the building to the other in record time properly locating each of the items with relative ease. I resisted the temptation to look around. Those 2 DVDs for $11 bins are always so tempting to rummage through even though you know they're just full of grade B shlock that A-list actors did many moons ago and wish were never seen again. Like Gigli. And I'm a sucker for the toy section because there are inevitably toys that are lying around those aisles that you can mess with.

Driving home alone, I realized it had been quite some time since the last time I was driving home late from somewhere. I actually don't remember the last time I did. As I recall I did it much more often when I wasn't married and even more so when I was single. The hubby is still working off part of the dowry agreement that included in there somewhere seven years of driving me places, so I've become more of the public transit person who gets a lift home later. I even thought about getting a lift to the party with my parents, then hitching a ride back from my sister but decided not to. I enjoyed recalling memories about all the places I'd driven home late from. But I also noticed the empty seat in the car and how I had to blast the radio to keep alert. And while every aspect of singledom and dating is discussed with a fine tooth comb, you never hear about the idiosyncrasies of marriage because a) they're excruciatingly boring or b) people who have been married a while just don't notice them anymore to make a point out of them. And only now and then you might have a married friend who confirms your suspicions that no, you're not the only couple who fights over the blanket in the morning (which we solved by having our own blankets, but yet some times I still find myself wrapped up in his blanket).

On paper, married life is rather dull. And on many a day it truly is. But it is strange how sharing the dullness of life with another person can feel like the greatness adventure you've ever been on.