Oh baby baby, how was I supposed to know.
Look who we have guarding the frontlines of our television! Everyone got one at Di’s wedding but of course, Y being Y, he somehow managed to leave with eight. He thought they were the coolest things and, I have to admit, I think so too. Second only to marbles, which I have this weird fascination with.
Congratulations, Di and Raph! From the black bridesmaid dresses to the fun-nest doorgifts ever, your wedding was just too cool. Love you.
(Photo taken from dawnwoo.com.)
The long weekend is almost over and in between mild panic attacks at the thought of going back to work and withdrawal symptoms of the like, I realise I’ve spent much of the last three days crying.
Y has been away on a dive trip since Thursday night – he just got back a few hours ago – and in his absence, I’ve been crying over both episodes of Grey’s Anatomy that I’ve watched and pretty much every other episode of Brothers & Sisters, the first two seasons of which I finished just before noon today. I even watched all the special features.
These two are my current absolute favourite TV serials because I’m a complete sucker for brilliant TV writing. I wish I could write like that and I wish I could work on shows like that. The fact that I have no experience, seriously doubtful ability and live a million miles away from Hollywood doesn’t matter when I’m daydreaming. Oh, to be able to draw people in and create something that so many people can relate to and love, even when it hits a little too close to home.
Brothers & Sisters does that for me in so many ways I cannot even begin to tell you. It’s also got me thinking about fidelity, which comes up a lot in the show. I’ve always reserved a special anger for men who cheat, as some have discovered, but what I’ve been thinking about is the woman’s right to know.
I’d want to know if my husband cheats and I’ve told Y that at least twice. I would rather deal with the reality and the pain than live in stupid, if blissful, ignorance. To me, the only thing worse than being cheated on is not knowing, especially if everyone else around me knows. Because when the truth comes out, and it often does eventually, I’m going to feel a thousand times smaller and more humiliated. Or at least, that’s what I imagine anyway.
The thing is, I’m starting to wonder if everyone else feels the same way. After all, there’s the other school of thought, the idea that what you don’t know won’t hurt you. And until this weekend, I’ve always insisted that the woman should know. But what if she doesn’t want to?
Would you want to know if your partner is cheating on you? Would you tell your friend if you know his/her partner is cheating on them? My answer is yes and yes. Unless you tell me otherwise.
I blog from the guest room, having been unceremoniously downgraded because hubby has taken ill with viral fever. The doctor says it could even be dengue or measles, the latter of which would mean hubby is contagious.
I feel as if I have a headache but I don’t know if it’s just my mind playing tricks on me. A colleague is also down with measles.
For everyone’s sake, I shall quarantine myself at the first sign of a fever, but for hubby’s sake and my own, I hope I’m strong enough to ward off any viral attack. Actually, I should hope it’s nothing more than a viral fever.
Him: You always destroy everything of mine that you use.
Me: That’s not fair! Name one thing I’ve destroyed.
Him: …
Me: Go on! Name one thing.
Him: If you had driven my car and gotten into an accident, you would have destroyed my car.
Me: ??!!
This would be even funnier if I hadn’t wanted to kill him.
Since getting home at 4am Saturday morning, I have spent the following 37.5 hours resolutely at home, save for the 2 hours I spent eating out last night. It’s a 3-day weekend and I’d had big hopes for a great couple days with hubby, who I’ve really hardly spent time with in the last few weeks. But he had an all-day thing yesterday and we had a fight first thing this morning and so all those hopes have gone to moot.
At first, I was furious. How dare he spoil my plans for a nice, relaxing long weekend? But having had a chance to calm down, I realised this was a good time after all. The last thing I want is to go to work with a quarrel looming over my head. I’d rather sulk and fume in the privacy of my home, thank you very much. And what better opportunity to think long and hard about marriage and the future than a couple of days with nothing planned?
So that’s what I’ve been doing all day. Just me, my laptop and a bunch of movies for company. In between scenes I jot down thoughts and delete them, write blog posts and twitter updates and then erase them all. Writing has a wonderful way of clearing my mind and organising my thoughts, though I’ve always struggled with putting my darkest musings out there. I am a much more private person than I’d like to think.
E: I see that you guys are more in love than when you were here. And you’re so blessed, with beautiful friends, home, career… life!
Me: We’re so incredibly blessed. I keep telling Y that. And I think it’s a mixture of us both understanding each other more, compromising more and being more comfortable about showing affection for each other around other people.
E: How great is that.
Me: It took Y a few years to show affection in front of even the guys!
E: Don’t you think it’s so much more beautiful that you can tell each other I am loving you more after we got married?
Me: Yep. A lot of people say that but it’s only now that I’m married that I’m understanding why.
The good thing about being a morning person is it gets infinitely cooler the older you get. Unless, of course, you’re married to someone who can most optimistically only be described as as early-afternoon person. That means I get most Saturday mornings all to myself.
The signs are all there: once roused from slumber I won’t be able to go back to sleep even if it is a ridiculous 9am on a Saturday morning and I’d only slept at 2am the night before; my sociability meter starts high and tapers down as the day goes on, the occasional evening social notwithstanding; and I absolutely loathe it when people start their day grouchy and spread their grumpy germs to everybody.
Yes, definitely that third one.
I, for one, like my mornings cheerful. It’s the start to a brand new day, you’ve got the entire morning, afternoon, evening and night laid out before you… what’s there not to be happy about? When you start the day grumpy and, worse, you don’t keep it to youself but spread those evil germs by snapping at people, banging things around or what have you, you’re effectively ruining the mood for everybody else. You can tangibly sense the shift in the air – I swear you can – especially if you’re say, in the office. And people don’t always appreciate that.
You’d think I’d have figured that out about myself by now, but I didn’t realise just how possessive I was towards my mornings until Y woke up utterly foul a couple of days ago and I freaked. I try not to fight before I’ve even had a chance to stomach breakfast but boy, was he being Oscar the Grouch.
Five minutes from the house, I gave in to my fuming and called him from the car, gave him an increasingly loud piece of my mind and hung up. I almost never do that, because I always think I’ll look like an idiot when I call back after hanging up, and I sometimes have to call because I’m well, an idiot (sometimes), but in this case, I had made pretty damn sure I wouldn’t be.
Then I went in to work, happy again. I understand if people are grumpy at 6am but between the hours of 9 to 12, there’s really no excuse. I like my mornings, you see.
Y and I got our very first Christmas tree this year, a thousand thanks to Wan Yen.
As we were putting it up together, I realised that decorating a Christmas tree is one of those things that sort of get ingrained in you, especially if you, like me, grew up with a Christmas tree most years. And it isn’t until you’re married and attempting to put one up with your husband that you realise that everyone does it slightly differently, and everyone comes with preconceived notions – or lack thereof – of how it should be done.
People ask all sorts of questions before they get married to each other: life goals, family plans, likes and dislikes. You think you know a person, but really, until the occasion arises, you’ve never asked what they usually eat for reunion dinner on Chinese New Year’s eve, how they decorate their Christmas trees and what their Christmas lunch entails.
It’s only when the time comes, in our case three years into our marriage, that I realise Y doesn’t really know how to put up a Christmas tree. And I am reminded afresh that we are actually two different people from two different backgrounds coming together to make a new life.
I am reminded that we have different habits, different traditions and different memories of the same celebrations. It’s kind of cool, the fact that I am reminded of this and the fact that we’re making new traditions together. Not that I have decided if an annual Christmas tree is going to be our tradition. We’ll see.
Someone asked me for a copy of my CV for reference a couple of days ago. In my eagerness to help out as soon and as best I could, I searched out mine and Y’s CVs (because I thought his might be better) and sent them right over. How did I find Y’s? Well, I found it the same way I did mine – through Gmail. His Gmail.
I’m usually fairly careful about not invading Y’s privacy even though we are married and all, but whether I was keen to, like I said, help out as soon as possible or simply forgot in the heat of the moment, I didn’t tell Y that I was logging on to his Gmail, searching out his CV and forwarding it on.
I knew he wouldn’t mind sharing with this person, and I guess I subconsciously figured it was okay. Anyway, I didn’t/forgot to tell him. Until this person thanked Y for it and he got all confused. And then he asked me. And then I realised.
Oops.
Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.
We’ve had this discussion with other married friends before. Is it okay for married couples to go into each other’s emails? I generally go through all Y’s physical mail because he doesn’t open anything and I take care of the bills, usually what they all are anyway. But email seems different somehow. More… private, as opposed to even SMSes which he has me check for him when the phone is out of reach and he’s too lazy to get up.
In fact, up until this year, I didn’t even know what his email password was. The only reason I finally knew was because I came up with the new one.
We have married friends who share email addresses and we have friends who access each other’s emails. Y isn’t for reading each other’s emails and actually, neither am I. Not for poking around purposes, anyway. But should spouses be given access? At what point does it become an invasion of privacy, even for married couples? Or, as some people might argue, is there no such thing?
