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#165 - moo. look at me, i'm domesticated!
September 07, 2001 @ 4:50 pm

I grew up in a house where my Dad guzzled beer at all hours, and if there was football showing on TV, it was on OUR TV. My siblings and I dreaded football season. My mother's family didn't do the guzzling beer 24/7 watching the game, but Thanksgiving was generally spent with family as the women cooked, then a giant shared meal together. Followed by the men settling in to watch college football while the women cleaned up and the children were booted outside. Ditto Christmas.

I was surprised when I got to high school and didn't mind that going to home football games was pretty much mandatory. We had a great team. Who were in a terrible league. The scores usually ranged from 48-72 Us, 0-7 Them. Usually closer to 72-0.

When I met my husband, the things that appealed to me about him were the things that set him off as different from the rest of the boys at my school. No, he didn't act all girlie or wear dresses or anything. [That one time doesn't count. He was doing it as a favor. For my school project. Oh, never mind...] They were all jocks or metal heads or nerds or dufuses. He was not any of these things. They all treated women like shit. My sweetie did not. Bonus points for him, he didn't seem to care about sports. Of course, since football game attendance was mandatory, I didn't think anything of us going to games together. It was just expected.

Changes only started happening once we moved in together. Slowly, sports began to be displayed on my TV. *MY* tv. I didn't mind at first. Ever since hearing in college that the Super Bowl is studied in economics as a marketing phenomena, I've been addicted to seeing those new commercials every year.

Since then, I've been to Sonics games with and without my sweetie. We went to a bar across from Key Arena with a friend to watch a Championship game against the Bulls one year. It was nuts. We try to make at least 1 or 2 Mariners games a year, since being part of that wild 1995 season when we got addicted to the roar of the crowd and Randy Johnson's arm.

But this does not seem to be enough for my husband. I didn't notice what had happened to him until I began to work part time, so I wake up after him. And every morning when I wake up, he's got the TV on ESPN. When did my Sweetie start watching ESPN? And evenings? He's watching Sports Center. I'm female. I should not even know what Sports Center is. But I *do*. Because he goes off on how hilarious these guys are.

And then there's his channel flipping. He's always been a channel flipper. He can't stand to leave the channel on what we're watching during commercials. I try not to get to antsy, worried that we'll miss the beginning of what we were watching when the commercials end. But now? He *pretends* to flip, until he gets to ESPN. Then magically he stops flipping. And no matter what the hells on, he begs to just watch this one last clip before putting it back on our show.

That was IT. I kind of exploded. For me, it was a little explosion. But now he knows that I find it ridiculous that whenever I walk into the room and he's got the tv on, it's on ESPN or a game. It's just bizarre! So now he tries to sneak-flip. He waits until the show is over to flip to ESPN. Then like a giddy school boy he races through the channels to get that 3 minutes of ESPN before the next show starts, like he needs his hourly hit or something.

So the other week when he started a conversation saying he'd done something bad, I thought he'd actually been fired. Nope, he'd just joined a Fantasy Football League. And he felt guilty or whatever telling me about it. I'd heard about this before. I thought it was just emailing stats & shit. I grinned and told him he was being silly. I didn't care. Then they had their draft and he called me at 6pm to tell me that he forgot to mention the draft was tonight. So? What the hell does that mean? Apparently that means hanging with 9 other friends of his boss, drinking beer for 3 hours.

Oh GOD. He came home and told me we had been invited to M's place to watch all the games on his "borrowed" Direct TV system. M, the most rip-roaring, falling-down drunk I've met other than my father. Except M. is pretty funny when he's drunk.

Still. What the fuck??? When did my husband turn into a fucking testosterone machine??? He works out. He jogs. He lifts weights. He goes out with coworkers for drinks on Friday nights. I just know one day I'm going to come home from work, and there will be a little frilly apron waiting for me. His idea of a present or something. Maybe a new vaccuum with a red ribbon on it. Wilma's pearls. June Cleaver's dress. And the Beave will come roaring out of the bedroom to make a mess of things so I'll have to clean up after him.

Job? What job? I have to go make my husband a martini now!

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