When the phone rang last Friday I was excited to see the local post office’s number show up on my caller id screen. Phone calls from the post office mean I have a package.

Packages mean thin mint cookies, or books or cute tops from online clothing boutiques.

(My husband always says packages mean higher credit card bills but that’s because he is a bit of a fuddy duddy and hasn’t discovered the joy of trying to rip into an over-taped card board box with your name on it.)

“Hello?” I chirped while wondering what sort of goody was going to be waiting for me at my mail box.

“Hi Tanis. It’s Roy. Just calling to let you know there is a package here for you.”

“Oh goody!” I enthused.

“Er, this parcel, it’s um, well, it’s rather big.” Roy offered slightly bashfully.

“Oh really? Maybe it’s the fish tank I’ve been waiting for forever!”

Silence.

“Er, if you say so.” There was something in the tone of Roy’s voice that caught my attention. He sounded embarrassed. “All of the ladies here keep coming by to take a look at the box,” he admitted while sounding he’d rather be having his teeth ripped out with pliers than having this conversation with me.

My inner warning signal started to ding rather loudly.

“Oh!” I couldn’t remember ordering any online um, toys, and my mind was drawing a blank.

“Um, ya. I think someone’s having a little fun at your expense,” my elderly post man apologetically explained.

“Really? How odd!” By now I was abuzz with curiousity. What in the hell could that parcel be that caused the post man I had known my entire life and who grew up with my uncles and my father to sound as though I had just caught him surfing a gay porn website?

We made arrangements to meet later on that day at my mailbox where he would bring me my parcel and save me a trip from driving into town. My post man rocks. (Except when he calls me to yell at me for not picking up my mail. Which he ends up having to do fairly frequently because I tend to forget the mail and it builds up until you can’t even manage to jam one more envelope into the tightly stuffed box.)

That afternoon, on a dirt country road beside a row of metal mail boxes, my mailman pulled up beside my truck and slowly got out of his truck.

“Hey Roy!”

“Afternoon Tanis. This parcel is awfully big. Hope you have room in the back for it.”

“It must be my fishtank! I’m so excited! I’ve waited for months to get the danged thing. I finally had to resort to getting a friend from the States to ship it to me,” I babbled on as I opened the hatch to my SUV.

“A friend eh? Hope it’s a good friend,” Roy snickered as he puttered in the back of the mail truck.

After tossing a volleyball and a soccer ball into the back seat I turned around to face him, about to tell him that ya, it was a good friend when I caught sight of the parcel.

My jaw just dropped.

Roy looked at my face and burst out laughing. “I warned you someone was having a joke at your expense,” he chuckled as I blushed from my toes to the roots of my hair.

“I’m gonna kill that bastard,” I half joked, half promised.

“Ya, you should have seen the look on the girls face at the office. I only wish I could see what the customs people thought when they scanned your parcel,” he grinned.

Shaking my head, I grabbed the oversized box and stuffed it into the back of my truck. “I don’t even want to think about that. I can’t believe him!” I groaned.

“I think someone needs to get a special parcel of his own. Like perhaps a glass dildo or a kit for erectile dysfunction,” he helpfully offered as he waited for me to sign for my delivery.

It was like I was in the twilight zone. I was having a conversation with an almost 70 year old man, a man who grew up with my father and sings in the local church’s choir about sex toys and practical jokes.

Oh ground, you could open up and swallow us both at any time, I plead silently as I closed the hatch.

“Hahaha,” I halfheartedly offered. “I’m so sorry Roy. Adam has a twisted sense of humour. Too much time on his hands. He’s an unemployed, uneducated Yankee who I kinda feel sorry for. Like a dog you don’t want to kick, you know?”

“Oh I’m not so old that I can’t enjoy a good practical joke,” Roy smiled as I hastily scrawled my name on the paper on his clipboard.

“Well, that’s good to know,” I stammered, because what the hell else could I say? This wasn’t exactly a conversation I ever thought I would have with the man who knows every member of my family and my husband’s family.

“You let me know how that all works out for you Tanis. I’ve always wondered,” he giggled as he got in his truck to drive away.

“Very funny Roy! It’s a fish tank! A fish tank!!!” I hollered after his truck as he pulled away chuckling.

Damn you Avitable.

Sleep with one eye open dude. Cuz your turn is coming.

Adam had carefully labeled EVERY side of the box too. For maximum embarrassment.

See? A FISH TANK. NOT a buttload of anal bleach.

Warning: This post is extremely graphic and in completely poor taste. Please skip reading if you’ve just eaten, are squeamish or have a severe phobia of vaginas. That means you, big brother Stretch.

Jumby was in the hospital for almost three weeks. While it was mostly routine as I (impatiently) waited for him to dutifully recover from the penile enlargement he insisted on having at the age of five, it was a long and tedious three weeks.

Having disabled children in one’s family means there is a high likely hood one will overdose on cold hospital cafeteria food and make eyes at all the cute residents. It’s just a fact of life.

Still, after the initial two hours, I was pretty much ready for Jumby to be sprung and released back into the wilds of my care. However, the health care practitioners thought differently. I was forced to twiddle my thumbs and peck away at my blackberry while cursing out loud in front of all the pediatric patients about what an absolute atrocity it was that there was no available wi-fi.

So it was with great fanfare and much ado last Thursday when Jumby and I were finally granted the keys to the kingdom and fled from the sterilized confines of the hospital ward we had been living in.

After picking up a celebratory slurpee and driving home I put the little duffer down for an overdue nap and with great relish plopped my arse down on the couch, opened up my lap top and inhaled the sweet fumes of the Internet for the first time in weeks.

The house was quiet with the exception of the hum of my computer and I kept hearing a sound I attributed to a baby bird outside my window. It was starting to drive me a bit insane so I went to close the window next to me only to realize the window was shut.

What the heck?

That’s when it dawned on me the sound wasn’t a baby bird but a baby kitten mewling it’s first sounds of life.

Greeeaat. Just my luck my first afternoon home and my daughter’s cat decided to bring forth the life swollen in her belly. I needed a bunch of kittens in my house like I needed another hole in my head, I thought to myself cynically as I closed my laptop and got up to search for the new litter.

Hunting around the house, I opened closet doors, searched my kids rooms, the laundry room, basically anywhere it would look attractive and safe for a first time mother to populate the world.

Nothing.

Then I thought, try looking under your bed Tanis! Cursing under my breath about what a pain in the tookus that would be to clean up if that was were the darling cat decided to pop actually was, I padded into my bedroom.

And just about had a heart attack.

The damn cat wasn’t having her litter under the bed, she was having them ON my bed. At that very moment!

Gagging a little bit I died a bit on the inside when I noticed all the goo smeared all over my bed. The very bed I was wanting to crawl into and take a nap after I had checked my email. The very same bed now soiled with the inner liquid remnants of labour. Ugh.

Still I was curious so I reached out to pet the cat (I’m not completely heartless; it wasn’t that long ago I was splayed out and in labour. We momma’s feel one another’s pain,) and check to see how many rodents were squirming around kittens had been born.

That’s when I noticed something akin to a water balloon sticking out of my cat’s ass.

Can we say Tanis freaked right the farck out?

So I did the only thing that made sense to me at the moment when I realized something was going horribly wrong with my daughter’s cat’s birth process and may soon have a medical emergency on my hands of the feline variety.

I twittered.

Then I called my husband (who ignored my call), my father (who told me not to worry), my friend (who laughed at me) and the vet (who placed me on hold and forgot about me. Twat.)

Apparently the males in my life aren’t as useful in moments of feline distress as I would have hoped them to be.

So I went back to twitter. And freaked out in a spectacular fashion.

For all of my fellow tweeters who encouraged me to stick my hands in and help a cat out, I have this to say to you: You are all out of your ever loving minds if you think I was touching that hot mess.

My bedspread, the one I had so lovingly picked out to complement my bedroom decor looked like it was straight out of a crime scene from a serial killer’s latest killing spree.

Telling myself to pull it together, I hauled my arse off of twitter to go and see if the world had ended in my bedroom like I was sure it must. Peeking through the fingers tightly covering my eyes, I was relieved to find out my cat wasn’t birthing water balloons but instead had just pushed out another slimy black kitten.

That’s when I noticed this:

And vomited a little bit in my mouth but not enough to deter me from grabbing my camera so that you all could share in the gorey glory with me. I am nothing if not thoughtful first and foremost.

Heh.

It was right about then that I started wishing Jumby and I were still in the hospital.

I bent down to have a little talk, eyeball to eyeball with my labouring cat, about safe sex and abstinence when she blinked at me, stood up and turned around so that my eyeballs were now in direct line with her back end.

That’s one way to end a conversation effectively.

Why am I watching this? I asked myself. Visions of my daughter popped in my head and how excited she would be that her cat had finally delivered the highly anticipated kittens. Surely she would be disappointed if I didn’t give her an accurate play by play description of the miracle happening before me, I thought as my stomach threatened to return the contents of the slurpee.

That’s when kitten number three decided to pop out like a groundhog and check the weather.

Really, the similarity was uncanny:

My husband (who has a stick up his arse about having cats inside the house instead of outside in the giant 20 acre yard we own) would be so pleased to hear about today’s exciting events, I grinned.

That’s when I noticed yet another pool of seepage spreading across my bedspread and with my luck into my brand new mattress. Yum.

As per a helpful twitter suggestion, I ran to the kitchen to get a garbage bag to slip under the blanket in hopes of keeping my white mattress white. When I returned with my prize clutched in my hand I was treated to a new surprise.

I mean, really, a woman can only share so much. Bad enough I was going to have to burn that bedspread but I had just finally worked that pillow into perfect comfort.

So I did what any pillow lover would do. I yanked it out from under her and hid it on top of my dresser and then went to go grab a stiff drink.

Suddenly, I noted the time. Crap on a stick.

There was much squealing and excitement as my children discovered the joy of life festival taking place in my bedroom. I made them put away their knapsacks and wash their hands and swear on their lives they wouldn’t touch any living breathing creature in the room because the last thing a labouring cat needed was to be molested by two over-excited preteens as she tried to squeeze her offspring out.

I may or may not have laughed a little at my son’s extremely white face after he viewed the carnage of birth on my bed. I never claimed to be mother of the year, yo.

Hours later and the cat still had a huge pregnant stomach. It was starting to become obvious if she didn’t hurry up and have these kittens I would be sleeping on the couch.

Greeaat.

By 11 that night she still only had three kittens with more on the way. I looked at her, she looked at me, and we squared off. Who was going to get the bed for the night.

I’m bigger, bitch, I told her as I carefully put her and her kittens in a box and carried her to my daughter’s room.

My bed only has room for one pussy and it ain’t yours, darlin.

Later that afternoon, a full 24 hours after she popped out her last kitten the birthing cat from hell gave birth to two more tribbles kittens, one of which was a still born.

With a luck of triumph on her face, she jumped out of her box and carried each of her kittens back to my bed.

Where she takes them every day after I lovingly remove them every night.

Something tells me that I’m not going to win this war.

As my husband has joked more than once, apparently there is room enough for more than one cooter in my bed.

Whether I like it or not.

Yesterday was my husband and my 12th wedding anniversary.

Twelve years ago yesterday afternoon, I stood beside Boo and promised to love him forever.

I did not, however, promise to obey him. Why start out the marriage with a blatant lie? The only thing I obey is traffic laws and that’s iffy at best.

It’s hard to believe the two of us have managed to kill celebrate twelve successful years of married life. Especially when one takes into account I couldn’t stand the man when he was six year old, wearing a brown and orange horizontal striped shirt and begging to take me out for a horse back ride.

Harder still to believe I haven’t killed him yet. Especially since I’ve been known to hurl hammers at his head from time to time. The man has quick reflexes.

This morning, the first morning of our thirteenth year of marriage, I am rather dazzled by the fact the same man has loved me for all of this time. Still loves me and still can make me laugh like no other and make my heart thump in my chest.

I am a lucky gal, yo.

So for today, for just this once, I’m breaking my husband’s rule of not plastering his face on the internet and letting you into our lives together as the Redneck Marital Unit.

I told you, I never was any good at the whole ‘obeying’ thing.

(14 weeks pregnant with Frac. I am KLASSEE.)

I love you for knocking me up with back to back pregnancies. Every woman should know the joys of trying to breastfeed a four month old baby while fighting off morning sickness. Since I have no recollection of ever getting romantic with you after our daughter’s birth I’m totally blaming you for our son’s conception. You may deny it to this day still, but I totally believe you had sex with me while I was sleeping. I would never be dumb enough to get pregnant that quickly. 

Really.

Boo with Bug at the hospital.

I love you for the way you are with our children. The way you chase them around the house while making monster sounds or how you give them whisker rubs until they beg for mercy. I love you for the way you teach them to be independent adults, even if that means making them stand outside in the pouring rain with you as they each change a tire and it’s brake pads. I love you for all the nights you held our crying babies in the crook of your arm and rocked them until they fell asleep so that I wouldn’t loose my mind. I love you for the way you supported and fought with me to expand our family and bring Jumby home.

I especially love the way I just have to threaten to call you and suddenly our children morph from three horned devil children into obedient little angels.

You should know that no matter how many times you tell me you are just resting your eyes, I know you are napping on the job. The snoring gives it away. Sorry dude.

I love you for always having my back and not being scared to beat anyone who looks sideways at me.

Even if that means sitting on them and tickling them until they pee.

You are my pitbull, baby. I like it when you show me your teeth. Rawr.

I love you for all the spiders you have squished and snakes you have held. Because this just means I don’t have to have anything to do with them other than grab my camera.

I am a pansy and you like me that way.

I love you for always busting your butt to make sure things get done around here. Even if that means redoing them twice because I didn’t like how it turned out the first time. Even if it means that I distract you just as you are swinging a rubber mallet and end up completely shattering your middle finger. 

I still feel bad about that. But in my defense, you really should watch what you are doing when swinging tools around.

I love that when I have a problem that I can’t (or more accurately: won’t) fix you always man up and take care of things for me. Even if that means having to crawl underneath our deck to remove a very large wasps nest because I am scared of being stung. 

It warms the cockles of my heart to know you will willingly take a stinger for me. 

I love you for your willingness to chase wildlife around our yard just to get a photo for my blog. You didn’t grumble (much) when a family of geese honked under our bedroom window one Sunday morning and interrupted our marital mattress dancing session. You didn’t even grumble (much) when I pushed you out of bed and tossed you the camera and made you scramble into some pants so that I could get a picture of the goslings to show the kids.

Your willingness to delay personal gratification for your wife’s whims makes me want to get bendy with you.

I love you for all the times you have taken over kitchen duty so I wouldn’t have to. 

And I love you even more for never slapping my hand as I sneak a fresh slice of meat before dinner is served and lecture me about ruining my dinner. Or at least I would if you would stop that shit.

I love you for thinking I’m beautiful even when I look like this. Or when I’m wearing grubby jeans and digging in the garden. And I thank you for all the times you have overlooked my hairy legs.

Nothing says true love like offering to braid your wife’s leg hairs for her.

I love you for loving me even when I drink orange juice straight out of the carton or whipped cream from the can. 

I will love you even more if you would stop putting empty milk jugs back into the fridge though.

Just sayin’.

I love you for putting up with all my twattiness, craziness, quirks and foibles for the past twelve years of marriage and even more time before that. I love you for the strength you have given our family and the love you continually shower us all with.

I love you for always coming back home with a smile, a bag of dirty laundry and a waggle in your eyebrows.

But the reason I really, really love you:

You are a very talented man.

Wink, wink.

Thanks for marrying me. I’m a very lucky lady.

(Waggles eyebrows.)