The Man Cave

   DU has been a little busy beaver this weekend.  After coming home empty-handed from Henderson this weekend, his manliness, obviously hurt from not killing anything, needed to be expressed through the art of building things. I decided to be the uncharacteristic Suzy homemaker and clean the house while DU went to his motorcycle shop for a couple of hours of greasy work.  Once my work was nearly complete, I heard the distinct sound of the garage door opening, things being thrown out of the garage and wood being thrown out of a truck.  I opened the door to see the entire contents of the garage in the front yard and DU facing the wall, staring, as if trying to figure out how wood is made.  Once his meditation on all things produced from trees was over, he told me he was going to build a work bench so he could, I assume, do "man" things (ie- butchering animals, cleaning guns, playing with chemistry sets and building things out of Leggos) in his Man Cave.

   I applauded this idea and allowed him to do as he pleased.  I checked in, provided beer and dinner when needed then checked back out. 

  I'm all about the Man Cave. I'm actually comforted by the fact that DU wants a man cave.  I'm not really sure when it became popular for men to start acting like women but I'm not a big fan of it.

  I could never date a guy who isn't a man.  Let me explain.

   There was a guy who was really into me before I (thankfully) met DU.  The poor lad was in over his head, however, when I came along.  He thought that I was cool because I owned guns, knew how to operate them, killed things and could hold my own.  Unfortunately, the same could not be said for him.  He knew about guns but he didn't hunt.  Worst of all, he owned a cat and listened to Rascal Flatts. I have nothing against cats (Okay, I do.  I'm a dog person. Cats just seem like moody adolescents who are upset that you woke them up from their 14 hour coma to make sure they're still alive.) but the Rascal Flatts thing was a little much to handle. 

  Don't get me wrong, dear reader, I love country music.  It is all I listen to.  But I listen to COUNTRY.  The real stuff about shooting guns, getting drunk, losing your girl and loving your dogs almost as much as your dirty-piece-of-shit Chevy truck.Songs about God, the beauty of a full church on Sundays and a deep connection to family roots. Singers who take after David Allan Coe and Hank Williams Jr. Something was a little off-putting about a guy who likes bands that cater to 16 year-old teeny boppers.  If a band sings about finding love in next period's Geometry class or a world filled with unicorns, rainbows and love at first sight, it isn't country.  Sorry, Taylor Swift. 

  While he was a nice boy, I knew nothing short of him moving us to Alaska to hunt Moose would make any sort of relationship work. (Yes, I would stay with someone to go Moose hunting- it is my dream, after all) He was the kind of guy who went tanning, spent too much time at the gym and wouldn't know what to do with a deer if its entrails fell out as it died. That new breed of metro-sexual "man" who thinks all girls should be a size 00, wear Abercombie and look better with makeup applied via shotgun.  It was shortly after this that I realized that I prefer men who look to the end of civilization as we know it with the same enthusiasm of children on Christmas morning.  If credit card companies lost all their records, electricity fizzled out and grocery stores were depleted of all their wares; I want a man who would jump out of bed, do a dance, and go kill something for dinner.  Not only kill something but know how to garden, skin a deer and cook any sort of wild game.  Essentially, I would have done really well in the times before the wheel when cave-women would be bludgeoned in the head and dragged into caves by their adoring hairy counterparts. Not that I would know anything about that.....

   I woke up this morning to an agape mouth emitting noiseless sleep sounds affixed to the Man Cave man himself.  Once I was ready for work, I surveyed his handiwork as I ventured to my Jeep.  All of the camo and hunting implements were nestled away from the hustle of the main garage, the John boat stood stagnant in the middle, and the newly furnished desk filled the space with the smell of newly cut wood. Partially feeling like an intruder in the Man Cave, I smiled as I thanked God that DU was a real honest-to-goodness-American-made- Man-Cave-lovin-country-singing- PBR-drinkin MAN.