In a few months my husband and I will have been married thirteen years. What’s more amazing than the fact I have managed to keep a man legally bound to me that long is the fact we’ve been living together for fifteen, and a couple for seventeen. Which is exactly half the number of years I’ve been alive.

If you had told me Boo was my future husband when I was six years old and visiting his house with my daddy, I’d have likely kicked you in the shins. At that point in time I had no interest in the big lipped blond boy who constantly wore orange and brown striped tee shirts.

Life, she has a sense of humour in a dark and twisted way.

I have been in Boo’s life from the time we were in diapers and his partner for half of my life and yet the man still cannot figure me out.

It’s not like I’m complicated, it’s just I’m rather irrational (I swear it’s charming) and I happen to change my mind a lot.

(Like the time I told him not to bother buying me a wedding ring because I’d never wear it and then two days before our wedding ceremony I wept and whined because he actually listened to me and didn’t buy me a wedding ring. After banging his head against the wall multiple times, he scraped up every bit of cash he could beg, borrow and steal and dragged me to the jewelery store where I happily picked out a tiny diamond solitaire ring.

Two months after the ceremony, he noticed I wasn’t wearing my wedding ring. Yes, I had changed my mind and decided I was right the first time and didn’t want the ring he had busted his bottom to buy for me. Let’s just say he banged his head against the wall again.)

When I tell you I want mustard on sandwich, this is just means I want mustard on my sandwich right now. It doesn’t mean I’m signing a life time contract of wanting mustard on every single sandwich I will ever eat from now to till the end of time.

Sometimes a little Italian dressing on a sandwich is a nice life distraction, you know?

My husband, he bangs his head on a lot of walls. But the one thing I can never, ever fault him for, his the effort he puts in to keeping me happy. He’s constantly trying to keep up with my whims. He, in fact, spoils me even if he misunderstands me half the time.

We married young which means we married one another when neither had a pot to pee in. Literally. Boo came with a dowry of a butter knife, a used shower curtain and a broken telephone. I am not joking. Thank goodness for banks willing to give credit cards to young people in an effort to entrap them into a life time of debt.

Not only did we have two kids before our first wedding anniversary but we had more debt than should be legally allowed. Between the credit card that was racked up to buy things like food and diapers, we both had student loans tied around our necks. We came to the brink of bankruptcy more than once and if it weren’t for our deep sense of lust and devotion, I’m sure we’d have divorced due to financial misfortune more than once.

Somehow, through time and a lot of hard work (on Boo’s part, I’m the lazy one in this union) we made careful choices to slowly chip away at our debt until where we are today. Not much further ahead but just a few years shy of being mortgage free and the cars we drive are ours and not the bank’s.

Years of surviving on boxed mac and cheese and bruised bananas are slowly fading into the past.

But those lean years, when we had to pick which utility bill to pay each month because we didn’t have enough to pay them all and still feed our family, have permanently scarred us. So much so, that my husband feels it’s his duty to make amends and provide for me everything he couldn’t when we younger.

He’s sweet, if not a wee misguided. I’ll keep him though.

The past few years, despite being married to me half his life and observing my tastes and preferences, he keeps surprising me with bling.

A lot of bling.

I’m not exactly a bling-y type of gal. If the tattoos don’t advertise that, surely the nipple rings would. You’d think.

The problem with the bling he buys, well, it’s expensive. Sure it’s pretty, but not only will I not wear it, but if I do, I’m likely to either bash it into pieces as I garden or scrub toilets or I’m likely to lose it.

Evidence of Boo’s thoughtfulness over the course of the years and my inability to respect anything sparkly:

A Christmas gift he carefully purchased after tucking away money for almost a year. My tennis bracelet.Which I loved so much I refused to take off until the diamonds started to fall out of it. Whoops. I may or may not have broken the clasp on it too.

This lovely gift was bestowed to me after I wrote the Journey series, chronicling the loss of our foster-to-adopt child. Boo wanted to ease my fractured heart with sparkles. The necklace and earring set was aptly named, “The Journey.”

Boo surprised me with this ring on our tenth wedding anniversary. It had been a tough year after losing our Bug and he wanted to turn my frown upside down.

As one diamond after another disappears into the ether surrounding my home it becomes increasingly obvious I am entirely not mature enough to be entrusted with shiny objects.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate both the thought and expense that went into these shiny purchases from a man who clearly loves me. I really do. I just wish I was a woman who wanted such trinkets and who treasured them more instead of taking them off, walking away and then wondering where they went.

Because I am an irrational woman, I’m going to blame my husband for this. Clearly every lost diamond is his fault. If he had been paying attention to who I am over the last half of his life he’d have known better.

I am the girl who loses bling.

(De Nile ain’t just a river, people.)

Maybe it’s because bling just isn’t my thing. I’m a blingless type of girl. I don’t generally wear any jewelery, not even a watch. When I’m trying to impress someone I may or may not be motivated to stick a silver hoop into my ear and call it fashion.

I’m the type of gal who cuts her nails to the quick, only paints her toenails once a year and then lets the paint chip off  naturally as the nails grow out and prefers tattoo ink to hair dye. I own four pairs of shoes, two of which are shit-kickers and there are two skirts in my closet: one for funerals and one for weddings.

I am, in fact, the most non-blingy type of girl a gal can be. Always have been, likely always will be. Which is why I feel physical pain when my husband hands me small packages.

He’s clearly forgotten who he’s legally bound to. Either that or he’s wishing he married someone more sophisticated.

*scratches arm pit and resumes writing*

So, in an effort to save my darling husband from carelessly tossing more money into the wind and bringing home jewelery that will either get lost or spend an eternity collecting dust in the back of a drawer, I cleverly decided to start showing him my idea of a good time jewelery purchase.

After explaining to him that a small cost output in jewelry purchases would lead to a much larger cost savings and general satisfaction on both parties end, he rolled his eyes and walked away agreed.

Yet when my purchase arrived in a shiny black box, Boo was clearly curious to see what it was that would float my boat, save him money and perhaps earn him future blow job rights.

From the look on his face it was all too evident his imagination had never been stretched as far as it was in that moment.

Because my idea of a good piece of jewelry happens to include the word roadkill.

Oh, they tickle as they dangle against my neck.

Such pretty claws you have, my dear…

I told you I wasn’t into bling. I prefer things stuffed and mounted. It’s nature’s way of recycling.

Sadly, it became all too obvious after watching my husband recoil in terror and then laugh until he cried, that I haven’t been paying attention to him the past 17 years either.

Because if I thought I could convince the man I love that buying items from a taxidermist to decorate myself with is a good idea, I am more delusional than he is in his efforts to step-ford wife me.

Turns out, you can’t class a girl up unless she wants to be polished.

Just like you can’t force a man to buy his wife roadkill for their anniversary.