Blue Butter

  When you see a person seeking happiness outside himself, you can be sure he has never found it.

I can remember reading this when I was a teenager.  I’ve no idea where I found it, but it’s just one of those things that stuck with me all these years.  Of course, depending on the current events in my life, I’ve managed to redefine it in my mind to fit whatever justifications I was trying to convince myself of.  Bottom line, though, it is what it is. 

I think we spend way too much time looking for outside factors to bring us happiness.   Even hokier is the fact we find comfort in denial and then paint it a lovely shade of purple and rename it as happiness or maybe even love. 

When did it become OK to make the sacrifices I see women make for the sake of the loves of their lives?  And why is it no one seems to know the difference in alone and lonely?  You know, a little soul searching is always a good thing.  If we spend so much time on all of the outside factors, important as they are, how are we supposed build a foundation from the inside out? 

After a very long talk with one of my dearest friends, here are the conclusions we arrived at:

• If you have time on your hands that can be considered as wasted time, only because Mr. Wonderful left for work, a night out with the guys, some silly ball game or even a trip to the bathroom, that’s not so good. In fact, that’s not good at all. Take advantage of time alone.
• If he rolls his eyes at you when he thinks you didn’t see him and then covers it up with, “Oh, baby, I was just kidding”, that’s no good either. And if you’re like me, it’s also not good for his health. Enough said.
• If he counts the change you bring back to him after having driven your own car into town to run an errand for him, again - not so good. In fact, he may be interested to know that a nickel actually stings a pretty good bit when it hits the side of his head.
• If, when he shows up at your house to watch a movie, carries in a bag of laundry and asks you to wash it for him, but then acts as though your request for him to change the light bulb you can’t reach is akin to asking him to let you paint his toes a lovely shade of red hot rosy, guess what? Yep - not so good.
• If you find yourself constantly making excuses for dates he’s backed out of at the last minute, but strangely only happens when you ask him to go somewhere that might require his “inside voice”, you might want to rethink the fact you get stuck at more than your share of hunting camps to help “knock the dust around before hunting season starts”. Knock the dust around? Hell, that means bring the Pine Sol, the bleach and clean sheets and towels. And if I wanted bleach hands, I’d stay home and clean my own house.

If we’re able to slant it just a bit, a different image appears.  I can’t imagine not throwing out my own declarations of, “You’re driving me crazy.  Go home.  Call me tomorrow.” from time to time.  And roll his eyes?  That’s when I would introduce Mr. Flexible Eyeballs to the evil eye.  His eye rolls have nothing on my evil eye.  That would pretty much eliminate his desire for such petty acts of passive aggressive behaviors.  And counting his change?  Yeah, right.  I’d like to think I would find an eloquent way of reminding him of a few facts: first, I’m a lot of things, but a thief is not one of them.  If I feel like I need his money, I’ll own up to it.  I certainly wouldn’t sneak a five dollar bill out of his change from buying root beers and Rolos because “it just ain’t an appropriate baseball game without Rolos”.  Further, if he’s so concerned with the money that leaves his pockets, then maybe he should take his money, his pockets and his ass out of my life and do it before the Law & Order marathon starts!

Of course, I don’t condone humming nickels upside his head, but what I am saying is I’ve yet to see a man go to Lowe’s and choose a doormat, so why would women allow themselves to be positioned as those very things?  A bellyful’s a bellyful.  Men, much as they love Lowes, have no idea welcome mats are even sold there!

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