Everything Is Art

Within seconds of going into the Museum of Art in Little Rock:

[James bounces over to a hanging picture of two boys standing in their underwear]

James [pulling his shirt up and exposing his belly]: "Ricky! Take a picture of me and my brothers!"

Me: "James, put your shirt down! This is a museum!"

[Ricky takes a picture of James, who still has his belly bared to the world]

James: "Jessa, they expect people to do this. It's art."

Me: "I don't know you."

[I walk over to another picture]

James [loudly]: "Hey Jessa! Look at this one!"

[I ignore him]

[James bounds over and tugs at my arm]

James [whispering loudly]: "Jessa! That painting is called 'The Butthole'"

[He points to a hand drawn charcoal piece that is essentially a large circle in the middle of the paper. Kind of like Japan's national flag....if they ran out of red ink]

Me: "Excuse me, random person I just met."

James: "Jessa. Come on. Don't do that.

Me: "I'll acknowledge you when you stop pulling your shirt up in public."

James: "I'm never going to stop."

Me: "Then I don't know you. And my mom taught me about Stranger Danger...so goodbye."

[I walk away. James follows me, bouncing on his toes]

James: "I can already tell this marriage is going to be awkward."

(Place title here)

While writing down a conversation I had with James at 1:00 a.m., much to his protesting:

James: "Jessa, have you ever been on bumfights.com?"

Me: "Shhhh...I have to capture what you said downstairs. Did you say you would kill our dog from behind or eat his behind?"

James: "I don't remember...that's the point!"

[I keep writing]

Me: "It literally happened three minutes ago."

James: "That's like...a million years to me."

[I snicker, still writing]

James: "Have you ever been on bumfights.com? Jesssaa!"

Me [writing]: "What!"

James: "Stop ignoring my super important question."

Me: "No, I have never been on bumfights.com. Sounds horrible, though."

James: "It was the website in the 90s, or 1880s or something. Homeless people would get paid to fight each other."

Me: "Sounds terrible."

James: "It was. And it's exactly what you are doing right now."

Me [still writing]: "Please keep talking. This is gold."

James: "You are exploiting the tiredness of my brains."

[James wanders into the bathroom, still talking.]

James: "It's not fair of you to record conversations this late at night. It's like kicking the legs out from under crippled person who only has one leg to begin with.  Except it's with my brain!"

[shower turns on. James keeps talking]

James: "You are kicking the legs out from my crippled brain."

[I start laughing]

[shower curtain opens]

James: "Just so you know, people like you are usually the villains in Disney movies."

When James cleans the house....

After returning from his military stint, James dumped his bag of clothes in the living room. Because I promised I would not clean his crap, it was a week before he remembered to shift through the piles of military shirts, boots and heaven knows what. 
And when he finally did, I recorded the conversation because it was so freaking funny...and because I need blackmailing evidence thought the world needed to know how my husband cleans. So I started typing.....

James: "Jessa, for this marriage to work, there needs to be trust. It's in the Bible."

Me: "Ok..."

James: "So you need to trust me when I say that not everything should go on your blog."

[the dog jumps into my lap, puts its head on the keyboard and watches me type]

James: "Awww. I have to instigram this!

Me: "Keep cleaning. The dog will still be here when you are done."

James [pouts, phone in hand]: "Jesssaaaa. I'm gonna be distracted by the cuteness."

Me: "Sweetie, cuteness is not what distracts you."

James [puts phone away. Starts cleaning again]: "Aren't you glad I got you a dog?"

Me: "You are lucky you got a good dog."

James: "It wasn't luck. It was calculation."

Me: "You literally went on craigslist and got the fluffiest looking animal you could find. I'm not even sure you knew it was a dog. It could have been a small Alaskan bear for all you knew."

James: "Jessa, don't be dumb. Bears don't live in Alaska."

[I snort, roll my eyes and keep typing]

James: "It wasn't chance. You don't get that fluffly without calculating. Besides, if I stood here and told you the complicated math involved in getting this dog, you wouldn't believe me. Thats's that whole point. I made a calculated decision and [*huffing]....I'm tired, Jessa [*pouts]."

[I grin, and keep typing.]

James: "And I'm cleaning." [he starts spinning in place, arms outstretched] "You won't know what to do when you have this much apartment."

[Starts putzing around making machine gun noises and singing about piles of stuff]

Me: "I've missed watching you putz around the house."

James [stops. glares]: "YOU MEAN CLEAN!?"

[James looks down, gets distracted by his shoes]

James: "JESSA! If this dog chews on my shoes, go ahead and kill him because his life won't be worth it."

[picks up a key, goes "aha!". Continues to make plane noises.]

James: "So when I clean, I pick up things and move them to another place..and then I have to clean where I cleaned because...well, I'm cleaning. Oooh...a penny."

Married to James, there is no such thing as an ordinary Wednesday.

James' text: "You work so hard."
My text: "Nah. You work harder than I do."
James': "Nope. You eat!"
My text: "Eat what?"

20 minutes later:


Receptionist: "Hey, did you order a pizza?"

Me [looking up from my desk]: "What?"

Receptionist: "There is a pizza guy out here who says someone ordered a pizza for this office."

Me: "I'm...not...wait. What?"

Receptionist: "Someone told the delivery guy that his wife worked in this office and needed a pizza."

Me: "What the..."

James had ordered me a whole pizza and had it delivered to my office. The man deserves an award. Or a puppy.  So I called him.

Me: "You sneaky, sneaky person."

James: "What?"

Me: "Thanks for the pizza."

James: "Hey, you were hungry and wouldn't go eat."

Me: "You're sweet."

James: "...whatever. I'll buy you a damn office pizza any time. 'Cause love."

Me: "This is going on the blog."

James: "Ugh. No."


First a dog shows up at my door at 2:30 a.m., then a pizza is delivered to my office. 
As much as I love these adventures, it's a good thing James can't get pregnant. 

Election Day Should Be a National Holiday

Alarm clock refuses to go off. I wake up an hour before work and realize James is going to be late for Chinese class.

Me: "James, get up. You are going to be late for school."

[Lump on the bed next to me moves, groans, and furrows deeper under the covers]

Me [hitting him with a pillow]: "Get..." *smack "...up!"

James: "Jessa...it's election day."

[I pause, pillow still above my head]

Me: "So? You still have to go to school."

James: "Oh."

[James sits up]

James: "Well...crap."

Me: "Did you think you didn't have to go to school because today is election day?"

James: "I refuse to answer that question."

Me: "For the love of God, why?"

[James pauses]

James: "It's sexist."



For all out there who think election day is a national holiday....go out and vote like it is!