The King: I saw a totally business-type lady walking in downtown today. She was wearing a business suit and everything. She looked a lot like how you look for work.

Isabel: So?

The King: Her shirt was tight and you could totally see that she had both of her nipples pierced.

Isabel: Was it hot?

The King: Um, it was early afternoon, so it wasn’t cold. Yeah, I’d say it was warm out.

Isabel: No, did you find it hott?

The King: Oh. Yeah, it was pretty hott.

Ladies and gentleman, my husband.

I was too young to remember, but my parents often told the story about the time our family television exploded, right in the middle of Mork & Mindy. They decided, right then and there, that they didn’t want to bother getting a new TV.

And so they didn’t.

We were the only family I had ever heard of that didn’t have a TV in the house. My parents weren’t necessarily opposed to TV in general (we were totally allowed to watch TV at friend’s houses), they just weren’t that into TV.

When I was in middle school we finally got a TV. I don’t know where this TV came from since I know my parents weren’t too thrilled about having it. I’m thinking one of my uncles gave it to us. Each of us kids were only allowed to watch seven hours a week. One hour a day. On Sunday we had to submit our Weekly TV Watching Schedule to my mom, for her approval. This plan worked for a while. And then, for whatever reason, we got rid of the TV again.

While I was in high school, I’m pretty sure we had a TV. But it was teeny tiny and didn’t have a remote. We also didn’t have cable. But dude, we could have cared less. I was busy reading books, doing homework, and um, making out with my hot high school boyfriend. In college, again, I had a TV but could have cared less.

During this time I missed out on the greatness of “My So-Called Life” and the first bit of “Friends”. I was busy in class, or studying in the library. What TV I did watch during my college wears was only on MTV. (You know, back when they played awesome videos.)

After college I moved back in with my folks and worked at a convenient store*. I began dating every boy that lived in my small town, so my nights were spent out with friends and on dates. No time for TV. I never even gave TV a single thought.

Never, ever.

While working at the convenient store I spent a lot of time with my co-worker, Gretel, and her family. I remember going over to her house after work and hanging out in her bedroom, or changing our clothes there before going out. Her parents were always there, sitting on the couch in the front room, watching TV. Every time I saw them doing this I found it to be so odd. It was something I had never seen. Never ever did I come home to find both of my parents watching TV. Usually I would find my mom at the kitchen table reading a book. My dad would be out in the yard, feeding his horses or checking on the flower bed.

I remember thinking how odd my friend’s parents were. I truly felt like they were pathetic. I didn’t know what I expected them to do every night, but I knew they were wasting their time, sitting on that couch watching “Blossom” reruns.

When I was married to my first husband, I worked during the day and he worked evenings. That meant I was all alone after I got home from work at 3:30. Which meant I had a lot of time to fill. Which meant I started watching a lot of TV. I discovered “That 70’s Show”, “Seinfeld”, “Will & Grace” and my love for “Friends” grew deeper by the second. I also found “Absolutely Fabulous” and “Keeping Up Appearances” and fell madly in love with anyone that spoke with an accent and referred to cigarettes “fags”.

After my divorce, I packed up all my things from our house and moved into my old bedroom at my parents house. I took my small TV and placed it on the top of my chest of drawers.

And there it stayed.

I started my day with Matt Lauer in the background and finished my day curled up in my little bed, clutching the remote and thanking my lucky stars that my TV had a sleep timer.

At this point in my life my love affair with TV was well into the “I would die without you stage” and was climbing higher by the second.

The King and I got married, and had nothing else to do in our tiny studio apartment besides watch TV in the evenings after working building our first house. Then we got a satellite and millions of channels and then TiVo came out and dude, life truly began for us.

Now that The King is gone every night building the new house, Babboo and I sit at home alone. I usually don’t watch TV when it’s just Babboo and me. Instead we cook dinner, read books, look at pictures and play with his toys. After The King comes home and we put Babboo down for the night, the TV comes on.

Our minds shut off, and life begins again.

I love TV.

I love the shows I watch. I love the characters. I love the stories. I love how they make me think. Or how they don’t make me think. I love how I can sit on the couch, next to my husband, and relax. In between funny dialogue and travel shows we pause the TV and recap our day at work, at the house, and with Babboo.

But I also hate that I love TV so much. I hate that so much time is spent on the topic of TV. Although I don’t hate it enough to change it. And really, truly if I did decide to throw the TV out the window, like my parents did, I am not in a place in my life where I could fill that time.

My point to this post?

I guess it’s that my parents are clearly better at filling their free time then The King and I. And while that’s good for them, I feel bad that they have no idea who Sayid or Barney are.

And really, how can they live without having seen Jack standing on the beach?

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*I’m getting a lot of slack for referring to the gas station I worked at a convenient store and not a convenience store. But dude, where I’m from I swear it was called a convenient store. So I’m sticking by that…whether it’s right, or not.

When we were frantically putting the finishing touches on the first house we built, The King tried anything he could think of to get my motivated to paint more trim. The one that finally worked was when he promised me that when I had finished painting every piece of trim in the house, he would watch all of the Lord of the Rings movies with me.

I switched my trim-painting-skillz into high gear and completed the tasks at hand.

I then borrowed the extended version Lord of the Ring DVD’s from The King’s parents and excitedly began making plans for a weekend hulled up inside the house watching all 9 hours of LOTR. That’s when The King was all “I didn’t say I’d watch all three of them. Only the first one.”

Whatever. He lied.

I was confident that if he’d give the first LOTR movie a chance, he’d fall in love with the story and beg to watch the other two. I mean, that’s what had happened with me. I fought tooth and nail against liking the movies, but after watching the first one with my girlfriends, I was sold. I saw the other two, all by myself, in the movie theater.

To be fair, The King watched the first 30 minutes of the first LOTR sometime last year. He bitched and moaned about it so much that I gave up forcing him to watch it with me. What was the point, you know?

Last month I fell back in love with the Lonesome Dove movies after watching the prequel, Commanche Moon. I told The King that I wanted him to watch Lonesome Dove with me as my Valentines Day present. He quickly said that wasn’t going to happen and then sent me three dozen roses.

The King felt a little guilty about this and half-heartedly agreed to give the first (and only the first!) LOTR another shot. We began watching it last Saturday night.

(Thanks to Metalia for her photoshop skillz.)

He fell asleep after the first eight minutes. I paused the movie, woke him up and we continued on our trek with Frodo.

And then he fell asleep again.

Again, I paused the movie, woke him up, and we started it back up.

When he fell asleep 28 minutes into the movie (again!), I paused it and started watching something else, while The King slept the night away.

On Sunday night, we tried watching it again. And again, he fell asleep after about ten minutes. I was so into the show that I didn’t want to pause it. So I just kept watching it. Plus, let’s be honest, he just didn’t like the show.

I guess I’m on my own.

And I guess that’s okay. I’ll take one for the team and not force my poor husband to watch (and like) Frodo and Samwise. And the next time The King asks me how I want to celebrate Valentines Day, I won’t mention Lord of the Rings.

But I can’t promise that I won’t bring up Lonesome Dove again. Because, while I’m sure he won’t like elves and hobbits, he might just like cowboys and indians.

So tell me, do you ever take one for the team? And if so, what is it you do?

In cast you missed it, the lovely Jenn over at OperationPinkHerring got engaged during her recent trip to Spain. I could not be happier for her and her Matt, er, I mean Joel. I continually refer to Joel as Matt. It’s easy considering he looks like this:

I seriously got tongue tied when I got to meet Jen and Joel last September. I wasn’t prepared for how pretty Jen was or hot Matt Damon-esque Joel was.

In honor of said engagement, a virtual engagement party is being held today for OPH and Matt Joel.

See, I did it again.

I never had an engagement party, which is odd since I’ve been engaged twice. So while I haven’t had an official engagement party, I have had two weddings.

Let’s talk about the second one, since it’s the only one that “stuck”.

Okay, so since I had had a previous wedding, that my parents so graciously paid for, they weren’t thrilled to pay for a second one. I don’t blame them really, but I was in no place to be able to afford a dream wedding in Mexico. (Boo-hoo!) That meant The King and I were paying for most of our wedding. (His parents footed the bill for the food which, lets be honest, was our biggest expense).

Which meant we made our own decorations. For reals. We bought flowers from the local flower wholesalers, a ton of tulle, glue guns, ribbons and wire and got to work in The King’s mom’s kitchen.

Believe it or not, I hadn’t put much thought into what the plan was for the wedding reception. Something about blue. And yellow. And watering cans and a shiz full of live daisies.

My mom and baby sister did their part to help with the preparations.

Hey, it was hard for them to fly all the way up to Seattle for the wedding. Very, very hard apparently.

Hey sis, thanks for the help. Why don’t you take a break and put your feet up on The King’s mom’s fancy furniture.

I know it’s been almost eight years, but I swear this is the help I got from them. Jerks.

In between the actual wedding ceremony, inside the Seattle LDS Temple, and the wedding reception, we decorated the little reception hall. And by “we”, I mean The King and I and all of our friends and family. Oh yes, we did. And we had a blast.

Again, we had no idea what the actual decorating plan was. We just started sticking flowers and tulle balls all over the place.

Hey Isabel, should we put more flowers above the window?

Oh yes, more flowers. And add some tulle. You can never have too much tulle.

(I love how my uncles are “helping” by holding the ladders for my two single, and hott friends. Thanks Uncles.)

The King even did some flower arranging. He just stuck his tie in his shirt and got to work like a good groom.

My friends and sister got extra creative with the table for the guest book. Again, more daisies (dude, we got a screaming deal on them) and watering cans. Yes it takes three people to place the daisies in just the right location.

It’s a good thing the caterers were focused on the food. It gave us more time to stick those damn flowers all over the reception hall.

We aren’t paying you guys to just stand there. Get that food in order!

(Oh my hell, look at all those tulle balls. They.are.everywhere!)

I don’t really remember anything much about the reception. I know here were lots of friends of The King’s parents and my close friends and family that flew up to be with us. And me, in a pretty white dress and The King is a new blue suit.

We all ate and talked and laughed. It was the perfect way to spend our wedding day.

And then we drove off, together, into the sunset.

Here’s to Jen and Joel and their engagement. May they have their own dream wedding, whatever it may be, and drive off into the sunset.

My high school boyfriend was the first boy to give me a bouquet of roses. The roses arrived at my house on a Friday night, right as I was getting ready for my date with another boy. My brother had set me up on a blind date before my boyfriend and I were “exclusive”. I was young and didn’t know how to get out of this blind date, so I went. I told my boyfriend I was going and he seemed to understand why I had to go. He was supportive and trusting. The roses were gorgeous and I felt like a queen, until I read the note; “Be good tonight.” I didn’t feel so trusted anymore. Those roses held far too much meaning than I was prepared to accept.

Like most girls I received more flower bouquets as I got older. During college nobody could afford roses, so I got daisies or carnations. All were fine by me. Flowers are pretty and I was happy to have something pretty to look at in my ugly college dorm room.

After college my girlfriends and I started a tradition of sending a bouquet of daisies and fun colorful flowers to each other on our birthdays. Nothing beats having a desk full of flowers on your special day, and we all knew it. Getting these flowers from my ladies became one of the best parts about my birthdays.

The second time I was given actual real live roses was when my (future) exhusband’s brother sent me some. He had a crush on me and wanted me to date him and not his older brother. I had to sit him down and tell him that I wasn’t going to date him and that, in fact, I was going to date his older brother. Wow, talk about delicate situation. (We all patched things up and his brother actually dated my younger sister for quite some time. That whole thing is a story for another day.)

To be brutally honest I can’t think of a single time, while we were married, that my exhusband gave me roses, or any type of flowers. I’m sure he did, I just can’t remember any specifics. I do recall him chasing me down in my car one day after I got off work. Our divorce was long final and we hadn’t spoken in quite a while. I pulled over to see what he wanted and he handed me a crap load of yellow roses and quickly confessed that he thought our divorce was a mistake. This was all too much for me to take in emotionally, plus, it was too late. Way too late. He had missed his chance and I’m pretty sure he knew it. I think he just wanted to ease his conscience.

The next time I received roses was when The King sent some to my office after my first trip out to Seattle. He continued the trend before I moved up to Seattle by sending me flowers to my office quite a bit. On the last day at my job before moving to Seattle to marry him, he sent me flowers wishing me a “happy last day”.

Less then a year into our marriage The King offered to pick me up from my office one night after work. This wasn’t something he typical did, but since I was new to the city and still trying to figure out how in the crap a person could be brave enough to ride the bus, I was happy for the ride. I waited by the curb for him to pull up and then quickly jumped in the car before the police gave us a ticket for this illegal act. I threw my briefcase in the back seat and noticed a bouquet of flowers on the seat.

He was sweet like that.

We chatted on our way home and continued chatting all the way into our apartment. We went about our regular, and boring, evening. We had dinner, cleaned up, watched TV and then went to bed. I took the bus to work in the morning and The King took the car. He e-mailed me once he got to work and told me that my flowers were still in the car and they were dead from lack of water. Really dead. He was upset that I had forgotten then and I was upset that he was upset.*

And that’s when it happened, he told me he would never buy me flowers again. Ever.

This was way back in 2001.

Let it be known that Valentines Day 2008 marks the lifting of the No Flower for Isabel Ever! moratorium as these lovelies arrived at my office.

Thanks baby, for taking on chance on me. I promise I won’t leave these in the car. Happy Valentines Day.

So tell me, do you remember the first bouquet of roses you ever got?

*The King remembers the story a little differently. He recalls me getting mad at him for something and leaving the flowers in the car on purpose! I really can’t accept this as truth as I would never get mad at him and I would never, ever leave a gift from him in the car to die.

As mentioned before, my parents house is in the middle of nowhere. Sure, there are neighbors around, but not close enough that you would want to walk to their house.

Instead you would ride your 4-wheeler. Well except that you wouldn’t really go to see your neighbors. You would hate your neighbors because of an incident years ago in which they stole some of your water rights.

What I’m saying is that things are run a little differently there then in downtown Seattle.

The number one difference between my parents house and my city apartment is that my parents have a septic tank. If you don’t know what that is, let me give you a quick explanation.

You know how when you flush your toilet you never have to think about what happens to what you just flushed ever again? Well when you have a septic tank and you flush your toilet you know that it goes into a tank that is buried in your yard. You are reminded of this every time the Septic Man comes to clean out said tank.

The number two (hee-hee, I said number two) difference between my parents house and my house is that their water comes from their well that’s located in their backyard.

So you know what happens when you combine a well and a septic tank? Well, the toilet doesn’t really flush down the stuff that’s just going out to tank your front yard.

It ain’t pretty.

Back when I was younger and living at home we suffered through a few rough months of um… toilet issues. Basically the septic tank wasn’t doing it’s job and was somehow filling up and backing up through the pipes and onto the basement bathroom floor. Basically the bathroom floor would occasionally fill up with our own poop.

And dude, there is nothing worse then the sight and smell of your teenage brothers poop on the floor where you stand barefooted after your shower.

Nothing.

During this time my entire family was forced to use the toilet at our school, work, church or at the local grocery store. During desperate times we could use the toilets at home, just as long as we flushed it all down with the bucket of water that was kept next to the toilet.

(Just thinking about all of this makes me break out and itch all over.)

Thankfully we lived close enough to the hospital where my mom worked that we could easily go there for a quick shower. The hospital permitted us to sneak inside, very early in the morning, and use the shower of an empty hospital room. But since this was my mom’s place of employment and having your entire family of 6 use the shower didn’t look to good on her Yearly Performance Evaluation, we opted to not use the hospital shower that often.

It was Every Man For Himself. All of us had to find our own place to shower.

I choose to ask my closest friend if I could shower up at her house. She was still living at home and I didn’t think anyone there would mind. Truth is, she minded. She didn’t come right out and say it, but I could tell. I only dared shower at her house the one time.

Eventually I started asking other friends if I could sleep over. I told them it was because it was too late to go back to my house, or because it would be fun to have a slumber party. But really, I was using them for their hot running water and soap.

I didn’t care if I lost all my friends in the process, I needed my daily shower. I had to get it anyway I could.

Eventually the septic tank was replaced. It cost my parents a small fortune and our entire front yard was ripped up in the process.

It was worth every penny.

The bathroom issues still run rampant when visiting my folks. You can’t flush a toilet and run a shower at the same time. Heck you can’t run one shower while someone else is in another shower. The King wasn’t raised like this, so it’s extra hard for him. Heck, I’m just glad I’m not showering down the street at the hospital.

When we first arrive there my mom always reminds The King, “When it’s yellow, let it mellow. When it’s brown, flush it down.” After hearing this he’s pretty much ready to board the next plane to Seattle.

And really, can you blame him?

So tell me, do you ever think about what happens to the stuff you flush down the toilet?

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Head over to read about my latest New Thing.

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