Dear C,

Well, I guess our ninth wedding anniversary is as good a time to start a blog as any, so here I am, dressed in a glamorous pair of fleece pajamas and thick white socks with little pink pigs on them. What husband could resist? Now that I think about it, the socks were a gift from my mother. What the hell do you think that means?

Anyway, I was all steeled NOT to wish the Husband a Happy Anniversary, for reasons I can no longer fathom, but I am sure they were important! Think they have something to do with the fact that I am determined to impress upon him that for the past four years we have had nothing to celebrate – no big new house, no luxurious personal sports car; not even a new baby (thank god). Not that I consider myself materialistic or anything, but it would be nice one day to take a shower in the bathroom without having to negotiate round the soap dish and surrounding block of cement that one day fell off the wall and has been lying on the floor for oh, say the past eighteen months. I’m sure people in Baghdad don’t have to put up with this.

Also, just between us, and anyone sad enough to visit our blog, I am beginning slightly to resent the old ball and chain’s lack of hair. I’d like to say that I didn’t sign up for this, except of course I did, but you know how it is when you’re young and in love – basically delusional. It’s not that I don’t love him, etc., but it is definitely getting harder to fancy him without shutting my eyes. I now believe that you are much luckier with your spouse, who still basically must look more or less the way you did when you first met him, but no doubt that all goes back to my deep-seated belief that everyone else is better off than I am. Not harder-working, more risk-taking or less fortunate in other respects; as long as they have money, they must be happy, right? Take the women whose house we both envy (you know the one I mean). What’s a little emergency surgery when you get to enjoy all that light, airy space?

BTW, think I’m going to go to hell for thinking this way, or just for writing it all down?

I shall leave you with a question for the day, which you are of course entirely free to ignore. In the ranks of personal relationships, which do you think is more hostile:

a) the relationship between husband and wife
b) the relationship between mother and daughter (and remember, for us this works both ways!)
c) the relationship between a woman and her mother-in-law?

I think this one is a no-brainer, don’t you?

Faithfully,

P.

P,

But darling, why limit yourself to so few choices? You’ve left out d)

well-meaning friends who pretend to care but are really more focused on how

much better you look in fleece jammies and pig socks than any other girl in

the neighborhood. And, of course, as we know, the choices are all really

the same as somehow the husband is to blame for all the other hostility

really. Even mothers get a pass as we can now so distinctly understand

their pain as we have become…wait, no, I just won’t concede that yet.

However, to the extent this means our daughters may one day understand how

they make us feel–o.k. yes, I am there. The martyr transformation is

complete. In any case, the main point is, as so clearly discernable in our

whining (I mean pining) for the good life is that our husbands are fully

responsible for our ability to achieve it. And this is where we have gone

so very very wrong, my friend (if only feminists had come with high heels

and make-up). As made painfully clear, I have no answers but am well able

to articulate in joyful detail how we have made bad life choices. Ta-ta for

now.

Faithfully,

C.