I'm about to be a widow

Aah fall...cooler weather, beautiful leaves changing, sweaters, deer season. Deer season - a time for wives all over the world to have alone time from the beginning of November till the end of December. Whether we want it or not.

Mr. Wonderful lives all year in anticipation of deer season. Hunting is his favorite thing to do. I used to be jealous of the deer because he wanted to spend all of his time hiding out in a tiny box, dressed up like the monster from a lagoon, waiting to spot a creature that's too beautiful to shoot; not spending quality time with me watching TV. But I now realize that it's what makes him happy and he's much nicer when he's had his time in the blind.

When we were first dating, he took me hunting once. Did you get that? Once (by my choice). I had a few preconceived notions about how the hunt would go. I figured we'd sit in a cushy little blind and be quiet for 5 minutes or so, and I thought all of the animals would come parading out of the woods. Mr. Wonderful laughed for a long time when I told him that. What really happened went something like this:

Me: Where are they?

Him: Shhhhhhhh, you have to whisper or you'll scare everything off!

Me: Oh, sorry. When will they come out?

Him: It might be 5 minutes or it might be 5 hours.

Me: Oh. (thinking to myself 'this is going to be hard')

Him: Look, there's a deer!

Me: Where?

Him: About 15 yards to the east from us.

Me: Which way is east?

You get my drift. This went on for at least an hour before I figured out that I was supposed to be extremely quiet and still and just look out the window. Because my hubby is so wonderful, he gave me the comfortable chair to sit in. I appreciated that. Did you know that if you roll a heavy chair over a plywood floor that it makes a lot of noise? It does. I learned very quickly that I had to keep the chair still. The next hurdle to get over was the fact that the blind was very small. I couldn't even straighten out my legs - it was that small. Being a naturally squirmy person with aching joints, sitting very still was really hard. I learned to move like a sloth...slow, carefully, without sound. I got pretty good at it, too. I was starting to wonder how long we'd be prisoners - um sitting inside the blind. To my horror, Mr. Man showed me that his blind was well stocked. He had drinks, one

comfy chair and food. Yep, he brought food. We wouldn't go hungry. Hooray............not. To me, that just meant that we'd be there even longer than I had anticipated.

I had come prepared by bringing a book to read because I knew that I have the attention span of a squirrel. The only problem with that plan, was that to hunt, you generally go at dawn or dusk. The little buggers don't like to parade around in the middle of the day where they can be easily seen. How crazy is that??? Anyway, we were in the blind at dusk and the sun tends to go down really quickly when you're hoping and praying for daylight when you're reading to combat boredom. My planning ahead didn't work all that well.

I was beginning to get pretty antsy and wondered how long I could remain still and quiet. I couldn't see a darn thing out the window because the light was so low, my tired old eyes couldn't make anything out. Maybe Mr. Wonderful felt the tension rolling off of me. Or maybe he heard my teeth grinding together or my muscles stretched so tightly, they were making noises.  He finally had pity on me and told me that we could leave. You can't imagine the joy I felt. I was happy that I could move around. I was happy that I could talk out loud. I was happy that it was over. Right then and there I decided that I was not a hunter girl and that I should let my man hunt all he wanted. Without me.

So now, I'm happy, he's happy, we're happy together. Besides, how could I refuse my Manchild something he loved to do? Who can resist that pretty face?