Turtles, Tits, Boredom, Butter, and Other Reasons for Divorce

I am ridiculously pleased to report that the word “tit” originally meant “a small animal or object.”   This is a vindicating validating victory for A-cup women everywhere!

No, I was not cruising tits (of any size) on the internet.  If you check up on me and such searches show up from this IP address, Husband and Sons are to blame.

You know the truism about sons trending toward women like their mothers?  Not so.  The bras I find in this house that don’t belong to me are double Ds (Older Son’s girlfriend spends a great deal of time here.  I figure, since she will one day be choosing my nursing home, that I’d best be nice to her.  And no, neither she nor Sons know about this blog.  They wouldn’t be interested, anyway; they’re sick to death of the posts I tape around the house for them).

I was researching the Tufted Titmouse.  Three Kamikaze tits have, in the last two days, smashed into my sliding glass doors on a Divine Wind (and now you know what Kamikaze means).  Now, my sliding glass doors not sparkling clean – they clearly are not a shining flight path to freedom.  Holy martyrdom it must have been.

I heard each tragic crunching THUNK, since I’ve spent my spring break nursing a sinus infection, hunkered down with an afghan in my favorite chair.  The first bird left a splotch of grey pinfeathers stuck to the glass.

I’m near tears over these stupid birds.  They’d been frolicking in the fountain, which Husband insists upon starting up way too early every year.  One day, I will look out there at the cascades of ice and the frozen struggling pump and decide to divorce him.  “Yes, your Honor, my grounds are a fountain on my grounds.”

An old friend of mine divorced her husband over a turtle.  She made him turn the car around one day and drive 20 miles back to check on a big turtle they’d passed.  It was trying to cross the highway; her husband had refused to stop.  Returning, they found the turtle in the median, as she knew they would.  Her husband pulled to the side of the road, stomped over, and threw it out of the ballpark.   He got back in the car, saying that he hoped she was satisfied.

She wasn’t.  She made him search the field and find that turtle, in case it had landed on its back.   He did so, holding it up from afar for her to see.  She claims it was just a rock – they were in New England, after all, where rocks are the first field crop every year.  And so she left him.

Another friend divorced her first husband over boredom.  You’ve got to admire that sort of straightforward honesty – most of us would scrounge up a betrayal of some sort to use as a convenient conventional excuse.  But she told her attorney – and her ex – that she simply couldn’t stand having him mushroomed on her couch for the rest of her life.

Then there’s the friend whose husband liked his meat well done, leathery and gray, “just like his mama used to make.”   My friend is a rare woman.  She filed papers after a fancy anniversary celebration meal.  The waiter had politely suggested that her husband consider another entrée, since the chef did filet well and refused to prepare it well done.

I myself recently considered divorcing over a stick of butter.

No, this did not involve marital relations – at least of the physical sort.  I was making cookies for a funeral reception, and had of course chosen complicated ones – a German lebkuchen glazed in chocolate, with flowers on top crafted of nuts and dried fruit.  I left the baking until the night before, and then procrastinated even longer when a friend (unmarried) stopped by that evening for a glass of wine and a chat.

I know that Husband will divorce me one day over my procrastination.  I continue to procrastinate despite this.  I really don’t believe that I’m passive-aggressively wishing he would.  Really, I don’t.

So Friend and I were sipping a nice Zinfandel and laughing.  I decided to get the butter out of the refrigerator to warm up while we were talking – proudly taking the first step in a baking project that was bound to take until midnight.

There was no butter.  I’d bought all sorts of esoteric ingredients for the damned cookies (dark molasses, exotic spices, blanched almonds and that candied fruit you have to drive all over town for if it’s not Christmastime).  But I hadn’t bought butter.

We use our garage like a pantry; during our tenure, no car has ever darkened its door.  Husband does our shopping (I know; I’m a spoiled woman), and often stashes extra supplies out there, particularly in the winter.  So I asked, in all innocence, if he had any butter tucked away.

He did not.  Further, he took this as a personal insult, since he provisions us and was already annoyed about my mismanagement of this cookie project.  I assured him that it wasn’t a problem, and that I’d go out to fetch butter later.  Husband insisted upon going out right then himself, in a huff.

When he got back, my friend and I were still sitting at the table.  Husband threw a pound of butter on the counter.  And then another.  And then another.  Seven pounds, in all.  I only needed a stick.  Friend finished her wine and said brightly, “Well!  You have baking to do – I’ll see you soon!” and retreated to her lovely peaceful husbandless home.

The cookies were wonderful, and the funeral was a fine one.; Husband did decide to attend with me.  Funerals have a way of melting away what doesn’t matter and clarifying perspective – superfluous solids sink to the bottom, leaving the gleaming ghee. We went to the service not speaking and left paired as happily as bread and butter.

Besides, Husband takes care of dead titmice.  And he scrapes splotches of dried dead feathers off the window.  He likes his steak rare, he is kind to turtles, and he says his cup runneth over with just an A.  It’d be foolish to divorce him.

***************

So I went to the OED to verify the “tit” definition I cited above.  I failed to find solid proof, although a small horse was mentioned.  Find Mike Bergin’s delightful discourse on tits and mice at http://10000birds.com — I had all I could do not to plagiarize it. I imagine he has more experience with tits than I, so I’ll take his word for it.  Really, I don’t care.  I’m sticking with my titillating story.

And, as it turns out, the birds killing themselves in my yard are Cedar Waxwings.  But I don’t care.  Cedar Waxwings don’t have the prurient draw of Tufted Tits.  And I’ve already written about earwax.