Lady Sitter vs The Viking

 

It has become apparent that I need a Lady Sitter.  With my best and wonderful friends so far away, it’s difficult to fit in long coffee sessions complete with laughter, tears and hugs.  Something magical happens when women get together.  They share their pain, making the heartache easier to bare.  They share their anger and by doing so, rob it of its power.  They share their joy, tossing it in the air so it settles like fairy dust on everyone’s shoulders.  They share their humor, so laughter can chase away the darkness.  And they share their wisdom because their experiences are different than your experiences and maybe that small spark of knowledge will transform your life.  At the end of the day, every woman requires comfort that can only be found with other women.

And before anyone accuses me of sexism, let me just say that men probably need the same sort of thing but I’m a woman and have no deep knowledge of how men work beyond their stomach.  It’s not my area of expertise.  I can only guess that during long fishing trips or huddles on the sports field or in the deep recesses of Princess Auto or Home Depot, men confide in other men.  Maybe that’s what Rugby is all about – one giant Man Hug and then beating each other to a pulp.

Perhaps The Viking has a microphone attached to the air compressor and while I’m in the house putting this post together he is pouring out his anxiety regarding my cooking.  Maybe his frequent trips to the Parts Storage unit is a cover for a short but intense sharing of emotional trauma with some other guy that works from home and spends his entire life in his wife’s company.  Or perhaps it’s an Osmosis kind of thing whereby they just stand in the general vicinity of each other and suddenly their mojo is brand new again.  A King of the Hill sort of thing.

I bring all this up because I’ve found a thing that The Viking sucks at.  That’s right…..Mr. I’m Right All The Fucking Time has an Achilles Heel.  He’s not actually perfect.  I realized this problem last weekend.  We were having dinner out with friends and I had spent an hour and a half showering, applying make-up*, creating a hair masterpiece and pillaging my wardrobe for something to wear.  When I was finally done, I was feeling a bit like Cinderella on her way to the Ball.  I have lost a significant amount of weight and was hoping for a jaw drop or applause or a gentlemanly bow.  What I got was……..nothing.  Well, not quite nothing.  He said, “You look fine”.

A girlfriend or a Lady Sitter would have squealed in delight, called me ‘Girlfriend’ and twirled me around to see every angle.  They might offer a tweak here or there to maximize the affect.  They most certainly wouldn’t have given me half a glance and a grunt.

But, I’m a self-contained woman; one who doesn’t need compliments because I usually give myself my own compliments, Victory Dances and High Fives.  Unfortunately, it seems like I’ve burned through all my own self-congratulations and now find myself needing a compliment without anyone to give me one.

I understand that it’s not in The Viking’s character to hand out compliments, willy nilly, with complete abandon but, would it kill him to give me a “Great job, Babe!” or a “Wow!  That was a fantastic dinner!” or even a “Way to not fall down in the hallway!”?  Instead, I get “You’re going to burn it if you don’t turn down the heat” and “Don’t trip on that piece of litter in the hallway” and “Put that Box Cutter down right fucking now!”  Sure, it’s all great advice, but they aren’t compliments.

It is his only fault though; well, that and his propensity to throw tools when he gets frustrated.  Everything else about him exceeds my expectations.  And this is where I thought a Lady Sitter would come in handy.  I don’t need help with picking out drapes, but it would be awesome to have someone to go to the theater with, or a work-out pal, or a person to discuss Ancient Aliens with**.  And it wouldn’t hurt if he liked to cooked and vacuumed, either.

The rational part of my brain said, “Any good Lady Sitter would be hideously expensive, and we don’t have that kind of money laying around”.  With that being the case, maybe I could teach The Viking how to compliment me?  That shouldn’t be too hard; I’m quite easy to please.  Unfortunately, I’m a terrible teacher – just ask Mim about the ‘Math and Hair Brush Incident’.

So, I did what any rational person who is terrible at teaching would do.  I visited The World Wide Web and found this:

http://www.complimentgenerator.co.uk/

And then I thought, I have a vibrator and now a Compliment Generator so if I find a reliable jar opener I may be an island unto myself.  Hmmm…..that’s probably not true because The Viking:

• changes the oil on my car
• takes out the garbage
• fixes everything that I break
• cooks for me on Saturdays and if I accidentally pulls his pants down he’ll just keep on cooking with his pants around his ankles
• he brings goodies home from the store
• cleans the litter box (that on its own is worth keeping him around)
• he sent me a dick pick once when he was away from home
• eats all of the food I make even if it’s so bad I can’t eat it and
• puts Band-Aids on my war wounds.

And now I feel ungrateful.  There is no reason I can’t pause before leaving the house and look up a compliment for myself.  I’m sure he would rather wait that couple of minutes if it means he doesn’t have to compromise his strict rules.  It’s probably because compliments embarrass him and he assumes they will embarrass me as well, which is totally not the case.

What ever the reason, I still need a compliment once in a while so I’ll bookmark The Compliment Generator on Google and be happy with that.  Really.  I will be just fine with an impersonal, computer-generated compliment that has nothing to do with subject I needed a compliment for.  Honest.  It will be fine.

 

*I rarely wear make-up any more except for occasions because…..well, there’s no reason for it.  The Viking just says “Why the fuck are you putting that shit on your face?”

**He doesn’t believe in Ancient Aliens!  In fact, he starts howling like a deranged Malamute to express his utter disdain for the subject when he catches me watching one on my computer.