Several years later at a black tie charity event Bob wandered over to the silent auction table, after a martini or two. There on the table was an autographed Denis Savard Blackhawks jersey that no one had yet bid on. Well, Bob being both a Blackhawks fan and an old friend of Denis’ (really they had met once or twice not gone to summer camp together) put down the minimum bid of $350. It was late in the evening and he was concerned that no one would bid on it. Just to walk you through the logic, he wasn’t concerned that the charity would lose out; he was concerned that Mr. Savard would somehow be aware that no one had bid on his jersey and would have his feelings hurt. This bit of vodka-induced empathy led us to be the proud owners of one Denis Savard autographed Blackhawks jersey. It also led to a heated discussion of silent auctions, alcohol and finances.

Last weekend was the Blackhawks’ Fan Convention. It was requested that Bob attend in a professional capacity. Still a big fan, however, and coming off their recent Stanley Cup win this was not a big sacrifice. In a less than professional capacity, he apparently meandered over to the area in which all things Blackhawks were being sold. Now to be fair, he did not buy a jersey. Nor did he buy anything Denis Savard related. He did, however, buy a pair of hockey gloves. Not just any gloves, but a pair that had been worn in a game by a player this past season who is no longer on the team. I don’t know which player (I might have been more forgiving if they had belonged to Dustin Byfuglien). I do know that they were $150. Again to lead you through the maze that is Bob’s logic: Bob used to play and coach hockey and when our basement flooded a couple of years ago, his hockey gloves were destroyed. These new/used gloves were the same price as a “decent” new pair at Sports Authority (a claim yet to be substantiated) and they had the added bonus of being game-worn memorabilia. And unbeknownst to me, Bob had been planning on adding hockey to his midlife-crisis-health-fitness program. Did I mention this purchase was not in our rather strict budget? Um, did I also perhaps mention that the last time Uncle Bob busted out his skates was more than nine years ago? Most of the time Bob and I are on the same financial page, but last Saturday afternoon my fifty-something year old husband morphed into an eleven year old. His transformation was made complete with the explanation an eleven year old would offer after having made a rogue purchase, albeit a part of last year’s Blackhawk Stanley Cup winning season.

We rarely attend black tie charity events these days and I don’t think Bob would be tempted by a silent auction if he were exposed. Hockey season is over and the Blackhawks have traded about two thirds of the players that comprised their championship team, so it seems Bob and I may be immune to these Blackhawks related conflicts for the foreseeable future. And everyone knows there is almost no fighting in football.

Recently Bob entered into a fledgling bro-mance with a guy from the health club. We’ll call him “health club guy”. They struck up a conversation in the locker room (please.. in towels) and made plans to play racquetball. Bob had been wanting to start playing racquetball as part of his midlife-crisis-health-fitness plan in addition to swimming and running. And as luck would have it, health club guy was looking for someone to play with.

One perfunctory trip to Dick’s Sporting Goods for the necessary equipment: glove, goggles and a new racquet (he had two perfectly viable racquets, but claimed they were unacceptable due to their advanced age – new technology in racquets and all) and Bob was off to his play date. Maybe it was the new racquet, but Bob and health club guy were a bit mismatched. Apparently the midlife-crisis-health-fitness program had been such a success that Bob kind of whooped his new buddy’s butt.

Undiscouraged health club guy invited Bob to play again. Bob agreed. To me Bob waffled: he had a busy week; it wasn’t much of a workout; health club guy wasn’t that good; the chosen day wouldn’t work, blah, blah, blah. He phoned health club guy to bow out and I listened as he almost broke their date. When he got off the phone they still had tentative plans to play again.

“What the hell was that?” I asked “Why didn’t you just cancel?”

“I told him I wasn’t sure if I could make it.” Bob defended

“But you don’t want to play.”

“I know, but he sounded sad” Bob said finally.

First of all – really? A grown man (who Bob barely knows) sounded sad that he might not get his ass kicked at racquetball again?

If I am to accept that, them why would Bob lead the poor guy on? Bob knows this bro-mance isn’t going anywhere and yet he won’t cut him loose? He doesn’t want to be the bad guy. If Bob were honest with him, health club guy would more than likely recover and get back to trolling the locker room for a new less fit racquetball partner. That would be the right thing to do.

I can only hope after all this time that any women Bob almost broke up with when he met me aren’t still waiting for him to call.

We recently had a slight reduction to the incoming cash flow and it required that I take a closer look at our budget. And much to my dismay I discovered that if we stay right on track with my current bill paying strategy we will pay off our debt…..ummmm……never. To add insult to injury, any vacations or surprise home maintenance bills will just increase the debt that we are not paying off. And savings? Well, that is just a silly pipe dream. Behold, my friends, delusional accounting. Awesome!

So the belt tightening begins today. Marshalls and I have broken up; Banana Republic, I don’t know you anymore and Ann Taylor, lose my credit card number. That part is relatively easy. Our gym membership is going to be suspended; much more of a sacrifice for Bob since I haven’t even seen the parking lot of that place for a year. And we have reduced our dog walker to two visits a week.

Now to the real sacrifice: Starbucks. I bring my lunch to work and have justified my cappucino habit with the huge savings that not purchasing lunch implied. But now, even my dear Starbucks is on the block. Today I attempted to bring a thermos of coffee to work (still a Starbuck’s product -VIA) but apparently this thermos was last used to transport liquid rubber. Nothing like giving up sweet nectar to be  mocked by a foul tasting coffee colored liquid in its stead.

Don’t get me wrong, I realize that I have it way better than most. I am not in danger of losing my home and both Bob and I are gainfully employed. I am not really even complaining. I am mostly just mad at myself for not having really looked at the “money in” and “money out” columns more closely before. I knew that I was doing a lot of juggling, but I didn’t realize that it was because of a lack of actual money. In my mind it was because the furnace broke or because we went on an impulsive shopping jag at Dick’s Sporting Goods.

There is some relief in knowing the real deal, financially speaking. Our revised budget will take a little getting used to and maybe a new thermos. It doesn’t come as a huge surprise, however, that we were living above our means. That is the American way after all and we are nothing if not patriotic.

Bob (he’s just so cute) saw what he thought was an “article” on what he thought was WebMD’s website. The story claimed that a housewife had discovered a new and uniquely successful tooth-whitening product. The “article” claimed that, just for the low, low cost of shipping and handling, a sample of the two tooth-whitening products would be shipped to you. That seemed benign enough. What could go wrong? Gladys had discovered the dental fountain of youth and she was willing to share.

Now, I don’t fault a guy for wanting white teeth. I am a big fan of white teeth. I do, however, fault a guy for missing the fine print. And I kind of want to fault him for not noticing that this was an advertisement and not an “article” because, really, how often does an “article” in the Wall Street Journal, for example, try to sell you something?

You see where this is going, right? Bob unintentionally joined not one, but two tooth-whitening clubs. While the original charge was minimal, the ongoing charges were about $100 a month each. With the click of a mouse we were potentially down $200 a month. But our teeth would be super white, you say. In theory that would be true, except that the product was actually the same tooth-whitening product that our dentist gives us only in a strength that would require one to have granite teeth to withstand.

After a few phone calls the damage was mostly undone. We ended up down about fifty bucks and one shipment of tooth-whitening acid. Then this morning I found another charge, this one for a company that protects your identification. How is that for irony? A company that protects your identity whose business practices include signing you up without your explicit knowledge. Yeah, I totally trust them with my identity. I said as much to the representative who tried to talk me out of canceling our membership.

I fully expect more charges to appear, but I have always been crazy diligent about checking our bank activity. Now I am kind of curious to see which other clubs Bob has made us members of. Oh, and Bob may or may not have lost his debit card privileges, at least where the Internet is concerned.

I am always surprised to hear young women speak about marriage as if it is a conclusion. It may be the end of a search for a mate, but it is just the beginning of the real journey. That awesome wedding is a distant memory of a great party five years in when you are having the same argument for the twenty-seventh time. Compromise becomes crucial and meaningful conversation requires honesty and vulnerability.

Don’t get me wrong: most of the time my marriage makes me feel loved, safe, happy and cared for. We are usually on the same team working toward the same goals. I am blessed to be married to my best friend in the whole world. The downside of that scenario is that when your best friend in the whole world hurts you, it’s hard to know where to turn. Ultimately you have to turn back to the source of the hurt, knowing he hurts too, and work it out.

I love my husband and my marriage; I just hate being a grownup sometimes.

Today I have been married for eight years. To the same guy. For eight years. For some that may seem like a very short time and for others an eternity. Our marriage has outlasted both my mother’s marriages, though to be fair only one ended in divorce. I have never lived in the same house for eight years and have only lived in two cities for that long. So it feels like a substantial amount of time to me.

We didn’t have elaborate vows when we married. It just didn’t seem like “us” at the time. Our ceremony was brief and to the point and I loved that about it. Had we read or written vows they would have seemed scripted or been sarcastic and snarky as is our general mode of communication. We knew neither would do justice to our wedding day.

What I didn’t know then that I know now is how much we would be able to count on each other in the hard times. We have counseled each other through jobs and career changes. We have held each other up through the deaths of both of our fathers. We have consoled one another over the losses of three dogs who were our family. We have worked hard to negotiate the tough times in our relationship and have committed to making our marriage a sanctuary instead of a condition.

Bob and I also lived through the longest house search in history and found a real home in our house and each other. We adopted one another’s dogs and rescued two more together. We have been on many vacations where sun was enjoyed, books were read and wonderful meals were eaten. We have spent Sunday mornings in bed with newspapers, coffee and dogs. We share the same idea of down time, the same sense of humor and, some days, the same brain. Our daily life together is usually filled with laughter and fur.

Loss and struggle appear to be part of my DNA, but they are foreign to Bob. His life has been charmed in simple and normal ways. My life has been complicated and bumpy and has left me worse for wear in some respects. Bob has stepped up in so many ways to be there for me, it is nothing short of heroic. He was there for me as I fought my battle with alcohol and continues to support me as I manage depression. He is my biggest fan and best marketing rep in whatever career I am pursing at the moment. He knows my weaknesses and my vulnerabilities and truly wants me to be fulfilled and happy.

What I did know eight years ago was that Bob was my best friend. He still is. I knew then that the good times would be great. I couldn’t have predicted that with Bob as my partner the bad times are more bearable, the difficult times more manageable and the sad times less lonely. I look forward to many more years together, no vows required.

As time went on, and we became “house poor”, Hawaii moved out of our budget, but we have taken a warm spring vacation every spring for the last ten years. Sometimes it was a long weekend in Vegas and last year it was a week in Scottsdale. This year we are skipping our annual spring break. It just isn’t in the budget and while we could just go deeper in debt, which would be totally like us, we decided to be grown ups and take a pass.

And the universe has rewarded us by giving us a never-ending winter. OK, so our credit score isn’t at risk, great. My sanity is every time it snows again (like yesterday) or the temperature dips below freezing. I am really trying to be a big girl here, but the fact that the weather won’t give me a break is making it very difficult.

This is all Bob’s fault, as I may have mentioned. Before I met him I was lucky if I could finagle a Friday business trip to a warmer state where I could sleep on a friend’s couch for the weekend. He ruined me for so many things. Now I can’t sit in the cheap seats at the United Center and I take for granted that he has “a guy” at every event in the city of Chicago who can hook us up should we need hooking up. In an effort to impress me while we were dating and beyond, Bob created a monster. And because no good deed goes unpunished, I am now holding him accountable for my dangerously low vitamin D levels and whatever psychosis arises from my exposure to cold and gray weather.

To be completely truthful we are going on vacation. We are taking our second Alaskan cruise with Bob’s mom in May. It should be an amazing trip and we are fortunate to have the opportunity. But (said the spoiled brat) allow me to express my feeling about the irony of a trip to Alaska (where it is cold) after one of the coldest and longest winters that I can remember. Or maybe it only seems extra cold and extra long because I have no reason to buy suntan lotion in April this year.

But really it is more complicated than that.

I remember in a fit of teen angst telling my mother that I never wanted to have children because I never wanted anyone to feel about me the way I felt about her. Ouch, right? I apologized for that many times.I also remember saying that I wanted to be a mother because if I could bring one good person into the world with strong values and morals I would have done something significant. OK, so the indecision goes way back.

In my twenties I told my mother that if I didn’t marry by the time I turned 3o, I would have a baby by myself. My mother really wanted to be a grandmother, but she probably also knew that I was in my full of shit phase and that thirty would come before I knew it. As it turned out 30 came and went and that was actually when becoming a mother became a less interesting idea. Becoming a wife started to lose its luster as well. I had become self sufficient in many ways but what I didn’t realize was that I was developing a very unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

I was thirty-six when I met my husband, Bob. My hesitations about marriage disappeared. I never doubted that he was the right partner for me, although we definitely had some rocky times in the beginning. I was clear about one other thing, I did not want children and if Bob did or thought that he could change my mind down the road, he should bail. My mother had passed away a couple years before I met him and somewhere around that time I completely abandoned the idea of children (a psychologist’s wet dream).

As forty came barreling towards me, I realized that my window of opportunity baby-wise was closing. It made me rethink, albeit belatedly, our decision not to have a family. Bob and I discussed it; my gynecologist and I discussed it and then the three of us discussed it. No one was in favor of my “stop using birth control and roll the dice” approach. I thought we should put the decision in God’s hands. If God was trying to send me a sign, the big ass fibroid tumors I developed might have been it. I got a partial hysterectomy – decision made.

You would think that someone with all the ambivalence that I felt about parenthood would just move on from this. You would be wrong. The realization that I couldn’t have children hit me like a ton of bricks. I had always know that not having children would be a great regret in my life. I didn’t know that it would kick my ass. All these emotions hit me once again when I quit drinking. Once I broke up with chardonnay and Grey Goose, I realized I could imagine a life with children. Sober I actually did have what it takes to be a parent.

I have seen all the work that goes into parenting, but I have also seen the rewards. I always loved children. I still tear up sometimes when I think about not having my own. Of course we could have adopted – hell, we could still adopt. But what I’ve realized is parenthood is such a commitment that you either have to be a little naive or totally certain. We were neither.

We have children in our life in other ways: friends, neighbors and family. My baby brother and his wife made us the fairy godparents to my first nephew. (No dummies there – make the childless couple godparents.) And he is a joy – just really far away.

So I don’t fall into an easy category. No one does if you look closely. I am clearly not a mom, but I am not child-free by choice. I am child-free by accident or by indecision or maybe by procrastination. It is a constant process, but I am making peace with it. I feel so fortunate for all that I do have: Bob, my family, my sobriety and my sanity (OK that comes and goes). And of course I do have my two canine children and they give me Mother’s Day cards every year. And Hallmark wouldn’t make a card for me if I weren’t a sorta mom, would they now?

Our everyday communication began to suffer as well.

Me: “Oh you know her. She loves bad boys.”

Bob: “Bat boys? Really?”

Me: “Yes, that is what I said. My thirty six year-old girlfriend has a a big thing for the twelve year-old boys who chase the bats at Wrigley Field.” (Another thing that I can be other than naggy is sarcastic.)

My aunt, God love her, who is hard of hearing herself, gave Bob a pair of cordless headphones for Christmas. These have been a gift for us both. Watching television together became more tolerable, but conversation came to a stand still. When he had to remove the headphones each time I had a thought (which of course I had to share) it became annoying.

In any event, the nagging commenced. I rode him like a very crabby cowgirl to get his hearing checked. He was resistant in part because his brother suffers from hearing loss and wears hearing aids. His brother was also in a band, I reminded him. And todays’ hearing aids, have you seen them?  They are next to invisible.

Bob finally acquiesced and had his hearing tested. Great right? The results: he has almost no hearing loss except in the higher pitches that would be – like – oh – WOMENS’ VOICES.

So let’s see how this worked out for me:

1. The volume on the television doesn’t change.
2. I am proven wrong – a very irritating conclusion.
3. Bob now has a doctor’s note to ignore me
4. All of the above was due to my nagging.

Bob: 1

Diana: 0

I owe Bob a formal apology. For Valentine’s Day he made plans for us to see Jeff Tweedy in an acoustic performance for charity. I gave him a hard time for this because I decided it wouldn’t be romantic. Now let be me clear: I like Jeff Tweedy very much – that wasn’t the issue. I think it was just that Bob likes him more (a story in and of itself) and somewhere along the line, I decided that in order for an evening to be romantic it has to include something that I enjoy more than Bob. I mean Bob doesn’t have to be miserable, but romance should be more about me.

Sometimes I think that I may be difficult to live with.

In my defense, my reluctance may stem from having “celebrating” at least one of my birthdays at a Blackhawks game and another at a Bears game where I sat alone (Bob was working at the game).

In any event, I am formally sorry for the grief that I gave Bob for this Valentine’s Days agenda. It was a really fun show. The music was great and Jeff was hilarious between songs, telling random stories and doing crowd control as only he can. It has been a long time since we have seen him do an acoustic show. In fact I told Bob midway through the concert, which is an annual event, I think we should do it again next year, even if it ends up being on Valentine’s Day.