Friday, August 16, 2013

Dead Husbands



We're a super cute couple

I keep starting novels and the main characters' husbands keep dying in crazy ways like being hit by a coconut on a beach vacation in Thailand, or being tragically killed in a climbing accident on that mountain by Squamish when a peanut butter sandwich was reached for in a backpack during a rather insecure toehold.  Oh wait, that was a REAL made-up story I told to a group of fellow conventioneers in Santiago, Chile years ago.  Don't ask me why.  It really spiralled out of control and got me into a lot of trouble.  Pretty soon I was telling them all about the funeral proceedings and playing the mourning widow wearing black to breakfast each morning, and it was all very uncomfortable since none of it EVER happened.  Occasionally things pop out of my mouth that are not true and then it's just like popcorn.  Let it be a lesson, folks: one lie begets another.  (That's why it's best for me to stick to fiction.)

But this blog, after a two month summer absence whilst RVing across the continent with my dh and two noisy children, is NOT about my compulsive confabulation: it's about dying husbands.  You see, it's Saturday morning, we are still getting over jet lag, and my sweetheart had this hike planned with some of his teaching buddies over the jungly terrain of the New Territories of Hong Kong.

The problem was, that upon waking at 5:30 AM this morning, the rain was monsoon-torrential and the sky was lit up like frenetically blinking Christmas tree lights with thunder.  I begged him not to go: he shrugged, told me it would be fine, and proceeded to make coffee, scarf bananas and toast and hunt for his water-proof underwear.  And then he simply whisked out the door, all the while his three girls yelling, "We don't want you to die, Daddy/Husband.  Go have breakfast with your friends instead!  Hell, go get drunk at six in the morning. (I said that: not the girls.)  Just don't go hiking on those snake-infested, slippery, washed-out trails that are full of trees in a THUNDER storm."

These gals need their Daddy!


Alas, as many men are, he is a man who does not like to be told what to do.  So he's gone.  Meantime, I'm in my new Sofitel feather bed reveling in its intense comfort, but not looking forward to spending the rest of my life in it alone; my children are downstairs playing Wii.  At least it's Wii Fit and they're INSIDE.

We're jet lagged, and even if it's before seven in the morning on the last Saturday before school starts and I should be blissfully sleeping in, my husband's departure has at least brought me back to writing the blog.

I hope I will still be a happily married woman the next time I post.  I don't want my "new start every day" to be about learning to live alone.

I hope this isn't the last great pic ever taken of our adorable family



PS: To all of you out there who really DO have dead husbands, I apologize.  I didn't mean to be irreverent.  It's just my way of coping with fear.

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