Death of a Deer

Carl killed a big nine-point buck with his bow last night. I had mixed emotions while Carl and the girls emitted a palpable excitement throughout the house. When Carl told me over the phone that he would be late getting home (groan) & the size of the animal, Katie actually jumped, clapped and squealed. That's the reaction Carl wanted, so I'm glad someone obliged.

I'm happy for him, don't get me wrong. However, while he was sitting in his deer stand or dragging this dead creature around Labette county to show his buddies, I was helping Katie with math (actually, I was frustrating Katie to near-tears), trying to keep Hannah from screaming at Hailey so that Katie could have a "quiet study environment", making supper, shuttling Katie to girl scouts, delivering Hailey to basketball practice and going to the grocery store. I don't know how single moms do it.

I finally plopped myself in bed last night at an early 8:20, more-than-ready for my TV veg night of Heroes. Carl arrived two minutes later, full of what he calls "the juice" (really an overproduction of adrenaline), anxious to tell me every detail. "You've got to come out and see this BUCK! It's HUGE!"

"You want me to get up???" I nearly asked, but refrained. I vacillated between being thankful that my husband of fourteen years still wants to share his exciting moments with me and being seriously annoyed. Those same fourteen years have provided me with enough practice that I was capable of successfully concealing most of the second emotion by responding, "How about at commercial break?" He and Katie danced out of the room, pleasantly leaving me alone.

Five minutes later Katie returned with a digital camera full of pictures of the dead creature. What is it about men that makes them think their wives would prefer looking at a bloody, dead beast to watching, say, the last half on an uninterrupted episode of Heroes? I thought I had married a city boy, but it turns out I had actually married a closet cave-man...who is now "out."

I finally obliged, making a trip to the garage and taking a cursory peek over the Tahoe. "Wow. That's amazing. It really is big. I'm going to bed now. You need to get to bed, too, Katie."

"Aw, Mom. I wanted to watch him clean it." Who's child is she?

"FIFTEEN MINUTES," I conceded and returned to bed.

A couple of decades ago my high school English teacher required that we write a time-line of our lives for the 20 years following graduation. I vaguely recall my own time-line, which in no way resembles the life I am leading. Of course, no one plots chronic illness into their twenty-year plans. Neither do they include children with any kind of defect. Those are obvious. However, having grown up in a family of non-hunters, I also did not even consider that at some point I might have dead animals hanging anywhere on my property or a husband beseeching me to agree to stuff and mount said dead animal's head...inside my house. Ugh. Life really is what happens while you're making other plans.