oh deer

Can we talk about this mounting thing again? Cowboy asked as we strolled no where in paticular.

It was one of those weekday nights where we could be together and just be. Light skies mixed with light winds reminded us of last year when winter coats and snowstorms were more frequent than April showers and all the May flowers.

What about it? I asked, anticipating the only disagreement we've ever had and not solved.

Cowboy wants space in our house for the heads of animals he's shot... the birds, the rodents and especially the deer. He thinks it will give the home and outdoor ambiance. I don't disagree. I think it will look like a cemetary.

I just don't think this man-room idea is going to work, he said. Mounts need higher ceilings.

When it comes to interior decorating, Cowboy and I match like pink and navy blue: feminine, masculine and flattering on any skin tone. He likes earthtones and I prefer neutrals and greens. He prefers simple and I prefer practical. Awesome.

But our design has one flaw. Cowboy blueprinted a house with high walls specifically for the shrines to fallen fauna.

Naturally, I'd prefer a shrine to Satan.

Even when I design this man-room idea, he said, it won't have enough space for the bucks and their antlers, he said.

This is working better than I expected, I mumbled to myself. Originally, I told him to hang such artifacts in the mud room where the water heater and dirty shoes go. No one will bother them in there, I said. Exactly, he said, because there's no room for them in there.

The man room was my middle ground. Build me a house with a kitchen, two bedrooms and a writing space. When we assemble the addition, you can have a man room with camo curtains and antlers on the wall. I'll never go there and I'll never complain.

I can't build those walls as tall as the house itself, he said. But the antlers need tall walls. Astetically, it's unattrative.

Unattractive is death in the living room, I said. We may have dead creatures in our home, but they'll reside in the freezer where they belong.

We continued to sashay the sidewalks I fear my children will never recognize. Where we'll live, roads consist of gravel and stone and "side walks" are made only when a person creeps through cramped space. Stop lights don't exist and parking meters are as distant as Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren.

Deer mounts honor the animal, he said. They recognize its dignity and valor.

If you wanted to honor it, you'd bury it, I said. Do you stick the heads of dead grandparents on your wall?

Mounts seem a little barbaric, and maybe they are, he said. Maybe that's why I like it. Can't we make some sort of compromise?

Hello! I said. Living here is a compromise. Have you met MoNa? She's especially bitchy to the Northern Plains...

I know, but hunting and nature are just part of who I am, he said. I just think we should find a space for them in our home.

I shook my head. Space for them means none for me.

To be continued...

In-law insanity: Cowboy meets the fam

Afraid but not alone, I’d driven those miles many times in three years. Five hundred miles to my hometown.... turn south at Fargo and you can’t miss it. 

Cowboy and I were driving to Omaha. A trip my Volvo could do in reverse, but one foreign to the man from Up North.

The journey was one of endings and beginnings. Vinny’s final voyage was Cowboy’s first. First to Omaha, first to the family, first time to meet the in-laws in Iowa. 

Terrified, I’d taught him the card game of my birth. Euchre. Known as the game of bowers where the right Jack is higher than any ace, some in-laws attempt a first game with my uncles, and then never return for a second. 

Don’t let that happen to you, I said to the Cowboy. You have to get to know them. They aren’t going to get to know you.

I’m not worried, he said.

Well I am.

Cowboy’s good with meeting new people. He doesn’t shy away from shaking hands and story-telling, the customary get-to-know-you rituals. But my family is as tough as it is big. (My mom is one of 11 children and I’m one of 39 cousins. We served 60 people that Saturday.) If you’re going to bring someone new into the family, they seem to say, he has to impress us. We won’t bother to impress him. In fact, it’s the opposite. The uncles find it funny to scare future family with phrases like “With which hand do you smoke your crack?” and “Don’t trump my ace, you bitch.”

Without knowing it, Cowboy was under the second-most pressure of any decedent of of Eldora and Paul. My father is known as one of the most vicious. Known for his taunting and teasing, many cousins warn their mates to avoid him.

The only uncle worse is one of three Uncle Bills. For those unfamiliar, you’ll know him by his neck: it’s thicker than my thighs. A two-time war veteran, Jujitsu champion and narcotics enforcement officer, Uncle Bill searches all the boyfriend’s pockets and wallets... in search of paraphernalia of the drug and birth-control persuasion.

Uncle Bill wouldn’t make it for Easter, but I was scared anyway. I won’t baby-sit you, I said. I can’t. You’ll have to make conversation with people you don’t know all on your own. 

Don’t worry about me, Kate, he said. I’ll be fine. 

You don’t understand.

My mom, though, she knew it too.

She and an aunt took me dress shopping, a custom customarily sans-man. 

You’re going to let him meet your grandmother, without you? she asked.

Guess so, I said, shrugging my shoulders like I didn’t care. And when it comes to my grandmother, I didn’t. I cared about their first impression, yes, but was I worried they wouldn’t hit it off? No. 

Play cards with her, I said. And when she tells you to eat something, just do it.

Six hours, 60 wedding dresses, and the one I’d picked out weeks before later, we arrived at a home minus one Cowboy. 

He’s at the boat, Grandma said, gambling with the boys. 

So, what’d you think of him? I asked.

Well, he kept leading trump aces, she said. An evaluation meaning: he’s got work to do. 

*Sigh*

The next morning, grandma’s kitchen resembled an elementary cafeteria with relations eating with their fingers and crowding the center table. The noise level rivaled that of Superbowl Sunday and one child even stood in the corner and covered his ears. Oh wait... that was my dad. And then another child threw jelly beans at my aunt. Oh wait, that was my dad too.

Cowboy didn’t seem to mind. He did OK with names... all except for one. I introduced him to my Aunt Karen, but he called her Aunt Shirley. He learned the names of my cousins and remembered the names of the relations he’d met gambling the night before. 

Signs pointed in the right direction, but the true test was when I left him to his lonesome. Anxious for my bridal shower, another sans-man activity, Cowboy navigated the river of uncles and moseyed over to the big kid’s Euchre table. At the big kid’s table, only experts are allowed, as the number of players double and the speed of play triples. 

My mother, myself and my grandmother at my bridal shower in Manchester, Iowa. Thanks for the photo, Aunt Bev. :)

You’re going to leave him with the uncles alone? my cousins asked. 

*Gulp*

Do you know how many times we’ve walked into places where he knows everyone and I know no one, I answered, nonchalantly. This happens to me all the time without so much as an introduction. This is my one chance to get back at him, I said, wiping the sweat from my brow.

By the time I opened my presents and read from recipes I’ll never be qualified to cook, even if I’d wanted to find Cowboy, I couldn’t. He talked to one cousin about wiring projects and an uncle about cattle. Words like “Cat 5” and “cattle magnet” escaped their lips. Words foreign to me, but cozy to the Cowboy.

I may have driven him 600 miles from his land of origin, but with my family, he was already home.

Valentine's Day shooting spree

I don't like traditional Valentine's Days.

One of the reasons is because the day is named after Saint Valentine, the patron of love, lovers and friendship. Some say Feb. 14 is the anniversary of his beheading in 270 A.D. And today, we celebrate that death with cupids, arrows and chocolate-covered strawberries. I don't know about you, but 1700 years after I die, ya'll better still be in mourning, ok?

I don't like Valentine's Day because the last truly awesome one I had included a couple's skate to the sweet melodies of Celine Dion's "Because you loved me." I wore a turquoise Alaska sweatshirt (thanks Aunt Michelle) and as we held hands, my soon-to-be sixth grade boyfriend perspired the Pacific Ocean through his fingertips. (Giddy up, Danny J).

Last year, however, was almost as good.

After a recent break up with a guy I probably should've never dated anyway, I took Carrie Underwood's "Get Outta this Town" literally and headed south, south to the Big-O where fellow Creightonian editor Kelli Mutch agreed to be my date. If we we're going to be single, we could at least be lesbians about it.

So we joined forces with a few fellow Creighton alums and at Alpine Inn, ate fried chicken with our fingers and skipped the beer and drank the grease instead. Could we get some extra napkins? we asked. Sure the waitress said, handing us a roll of paper towels. Romantic.

There, the North Omaha view consisted of raccoons and feral cats eating chicken bone residue and posing for photographs in the moonlight.

From there, Kelli and I traveled to mid-town where a man had tatooed his head with an Irish flag the size of a deck of cards. He told us he was a rugby player from Council Bluffs, set to move to Colorado. He bought me drinks and I accepted. He asked to hang out sometime, and I declined. Happy, happy Valentine's Day, indeed.

So this year, I told Cowboy to knock it off with the jewelry and the candy. I'd prefer a heart-shaped pepperoni pizza from Papa Murphy's, please. Shocked but not offended, he obliged until his friends invited us over Saturday night for ribs, potatoes and Rock Band, the game where boys become superstars and girls laugh at the color-coded guitar strings and male octave ranges rivaling those of  Mariah Carey herself.

Those ribs kicked the crust off my pepperoni pizza, and frankly I prefer the company of friends for Valentine's Day. Friends kick the candle out of dinner for two in a crowded restaurant so dark you can't read the menu.

But even though I don't believe in Hallmark-y weddings and holidays, I do believe in gifts.

For Valentine's Day, Cowboy gave me these:

Because nothing says "I love you" like terminally diagnosed long-stem gerber daisies.

As for me, for Valentine's Day, my gift to Cowboy was this:

Because nothing says "Happy Valentine's Day" like blasting the brains of "big game" animals.

Sunday we ordered stuffed crust pizza and rented movies like "Knocked Up" and a Blockbuster exclusive called "I love hate Valentine's Day." I never watched the latter because I fell asleep during the former. The next morning, Cowboy washed the dishes. Now that my friends, is true romance, and proof Saint Valentine did not parish in vain.