Naked Friday

Naked Friday is something that Chuck and I implemented years ago. I’m sure the name was given to deter the kids of faking an illness to stay home from school. Every couple of months Chuck takes a Friday off. We spend the whole day together doing whatever we want. This weeks Naked Friday intention was adulting, and that’s exactly what we did. You know those things you put off because you just don’t want to do them. Well, we did them all, except our taxes.

Our timing this month wasn’t the best considering the kids had a half day of school. Not a deal breaker just meant we needed to be gone by the time they got home. Love my kids, but they are not included in this day. It’s our day. Our marriage survives because we are selfish. We do a lot without the kids. I have friends that don’t understand that concept and that’s ok. No two relationships are the same. Different things are required for different people. Maybe it’s the only child syndrome, but I’m needy as hell. I need to be the center of his attention, with no distractions. I’m high maintenance and not embarrassed about it in the least.

I’ve been trying to be kinder to my skin so I’ve taken a break from the tanning bed. Let me just say self tanners are a lot of work. I’ve finally narrowed down one that smells great, is easy to apply and the color is good. The bad news is I swear it never dries. I recruited Chuck to get the spots I couldn’t reach. I stood around like a ginger bread man for about an hour, until I felt it was safe to sit vulnerably on a towel and make some phone calls. I called to cancel our cable service. That alone is not an easy feat. Needless to say I survived, and we will be saving $120 a month. Absolutely ridiculous that it took me so long to pull the trigger. We even got the receivers dropped off to the UPS store. That could have easily been enough adulting for the day but we kept going.

Cell phones are another huge pain in my ass. I hate that bill. Mainly because I think it’s insane how much we pay, but I also can’t stand hearing “when am I available for an update?”from my spoiled ass kids. I really don’t care what phone your friends have the fact that you have one at all is a privilege. I believe in the “hand me down” method. Yes that’s right, mom pays the bill, so mom gets the new phone. The nice man at the AT&T store made it fairly painless. He gave me instructions on how to do the transfers at home. With the switch of a few SIM cards, hours of backing up, and a few swear words, everyone was back in business. I swear if I hear “it’s not fair” once today heads are gonna roll.

So now we’ve cancelled cable and upgraded phones, now onto the camper. We have a beautiful travel trailer that we have not physically seen in over 2 years. When we bought it back in 2013 and we had it on a seasonal lot. The kids were younger and it worked out great. Once they got older and more involved in travel sports we didn’t use it nearly enough to justify the cost. We began renting it out through Camper Connection. They do all of the work. They store it, rent it, move it, clean it and we collect a check. Not a bad gig but we have decided that we really just want to be done with it. We need to sell it and financially focus on other things. We drove over to the dealer and took a look at it. She looks great. Apparently they already have her rented for 3-4 weeks this summer but Jermey totally understands that the market is good and we are leaning toward selling. Now to just make the damn decision and pull the trigger.

Right next to the rv dealer was a Goodwill. Of course not swinging in for just a minute would be criminal. We perused around the isles and the only thing we found was a spritz cookie press. It’s the old metal one that both of our moms used to make holiday cookies. I’m a sucker for older things. It was in the original box that was covered with a ziploc bag that had to be 30-40 years old. I imagine it sat in the back of some grandma’s cupboard for years. I snatched it up for $3.99. We will try to make edible cookies and new memories with it.

I thought we’d head down to the west side and hit up New Holland brewery. Chuck is out of gin and we were both getting a bit hungry. It wasn’t until we got down there that we realized it doesn’t open until 4. Considering it was about 2, there was no way I was killing 2 hours for a bottle of gin. We walked down the block and hit Arktos Meadery. The inside of this place was the perfect mix of hippy meets Hansel and Gretel. Chuck got a few samples and quickly learned what he did and didn’t like. Neither of us has a good poker face. He paid the tab and we were off. I think that almost counts as bar hoping. Maybe not. Either way we felt very hip. I even paid for parking with an app.

Now that he had some mead in him we had to get some food in his stomach. He loves Gita Pita. Parking is always a nightmare, but I was feeling pretty good about my inner city skills at the time. I pulled around the corner and there was a spot. Of course I had to parallel park. After 3 attempts with the help of a back up cam, I totally lost my street cred. The fact that there was car behind me with a couple Gen-X’rs smoking weed watching me the whole time really only increased the level of humor of the situation. The good news is he got his steak shawarma and I got my gyro. I also talked him out of the scooter rental thank God.

Our last stop was Mega Bev. Mega Bev is to Chuck what Goodwill is to me. We got his gin and a couple bottles of wine. He looked at the mead, but just couldn’t do it. He will try it again I’m sure. Once the taste of the last one is gone.

Marriage is hard. Marriage is a lot of work. It requires patience when you have none, and forgiveness when it seems impossible. I posted a picture on my Instagram yesterday and someone commented that “you guys are so cute”. I almost felt like a fraud. Don’t get me wrong I think we are pretty fricken fantastic too, but it’s not always easy. There’s a fine line between being transparent to help others, and being vulnerable with your private business. I’m staying on the side that says I’m not perfect, and if you ever want to talk about how hard marriage is, or how quickly a bad decision can change your whole life without the power of forgiveness and grace, let’s meet for coffee.