The Ted Nugent School of Home Decorating

The wedding yesterday was beautiful. The church ceremony was blissfully short (really short- I don't think the ceremony itself was more than 15 minutes), but it manged to cover everything. Molly was a gorgeous bride in a unique linen and lace dress. I made it through the ceremony free of excess emotion, and very much enjoyed the reception.

It was great to catch up with Seattle friends and acquaintances. Over dinner, I shared with my table my latest romantic tribulation.

When the guy in question first answered my ad, I was impressed with his response. He seemed intelligent, stable, and nice looking. And, he raised yellow Labs.

The first night we talked on the phone it went great. Granted, our interests were different, as were our upbringings and well, almost everything else but there still seemed to be some kind of connection. The next night was a shorter conversation but it went well too. The third night seemed to be keeping up the positive trend, but then I asked him to tell me more about his house in the country. First of all, from this point forward if a man mentions that he lives in the country I am going to run like hell. A living situation anything more than 15 miles from a major city makes me break out in hives. My no more than a three minute drive to get a Diet Coke rule is going to remain firmly in place. Besides, people who live in the country tend to be loners, and /or huntin'/fishin'./campin' types. The signs that this guy was both were becoming evident even through my...well, let's call it my shroud of optimism.

He was telling me about certain features of the house, so I asked him how it was decorated. He monotonously named off every last piece of furniture. Then he mentioned that both of his bathrooms had the same shower curtain: A hunting scene of hunter, pointing dog, and water fowl. Yes. This was indeed the first sign of trouble. Then he got to the part about the two deer head "trophies" mounted on the living room wall.

I'll admit it: I can be obnoxiously blunt at times. My response to his wall carnage was something like: "OhmyGod, I could NEVER live in a house with dead animals on the wall!"
A well-adjusted guy may have been able to laugh this off, but this guy was anything but well adjusted. We'll get to that in a minute. First I want to talk about what my former business partner Patsy would have done in the same situation. Patsy was a long haired, 95 pound, born again Christian with huge saucer eyes, and the thickest, most exaggerated southern accent you've ever heard (despite the fact that she hadn't lived in Oklahoma for almost thirty years). Men found her adorable, or as she would put it "Cute as can bay." If she, inevitably, sniffed out John's financial situation and found it favorable she would have said of the living room Bambis "Yew dew? Whale, ah just thank that shows what a masculine man yew are John. Ah jus' luv men lahk yew." Then she would have used her feminine wiles to learn more about his financial situation, and if the cash and prizes added up would have considered him for her 4th husband.

I am seriously hoping to fall deeply in love. I'm not out to 'win' some jerk just because he has money.
And I don't even think the jerk in question here had any real money. But that's not the point...

Ok, after my lack of favorable reaction to his decor he went into a frighteningly muted, clenched-teeth tirade about how it's his home and his wall so he could have his deer there if he wanted. Ok then. I asked him where the anger was coming from and he explained that his last wife hated the deer too and would insist on covering them with sheets when they had company over. Deer heads draped with sheets. Tee hee. Anyway, then he launched into a new tirade about how she was a control freak and how he likes the way he decorates and... well, between this and the fact that in all three nights he had barely asked me any questions about myself, at this point I was done.

Happily, all the women at my table agreed that he sounded like a world-class jerk. My favorite response though was from a voice-of-reason kind of guy named Dave. Dave explained that he and his fiancee were in the process of building a house. They were designing the house to have a workshop out back for him, and a room in the house just for her so they could both have their own spaces to pursue their hobbies- or just be alone at times. Dave suggested that if a man really needs to have deer heads in his home, that it would be best for him to have them in his own little part of the house, not where his wife would have to look at them every day. I couldn't agree more. It wasn't the deer heads that were the deal killer (I'm not vegetarian so I'm not hypocritical about people killing animals)- it was the uncompromising attitude. And, ok, I won't lie: I do think animal trophies in a living room are in poor taste. Not to mention bad feng shui.

So that's been my last few days. Frankly I'm more fixated on being worried that I had a big piece of dark green lettuce in my teeth in some of the wedding photos (why is it always something with me?) than I am in thinking about this guy. Despite everything I've been through with men, I remain hopeful. During the wedding vows, Molly and Patrick stood facing each other with both hands joined. As Molly spoke, Patrick lightly rubbed his thumbs over her gloved hands in a gesture that spoke volumes about love, connection, and adoration. That was the closest I came to crying during the ceremony because I so want that in my life. I've gotten snippets of it here and there, but it's never been mine to keep. I don't want to close with an "I hope...: sentence, so I'll simply sign off here. Back this evening with more Tacoma photos.