"What The Hell Is This Dead Animal Skin Doing Here?"
My husband and I separated 2 years ago and share our 2 homes. He is full time in our vacation home, a log home on a lake, and I am full time in the marital home with our 2 sons. We try to alternate weekends so he spends time with our sons, and I can enjoy the vacation home. He keeps the lake home perfectly clean and decorated with fine antiques.
Lately, I have been luckier in love and dating. I’ve been with Rex for four months, and my husband has started to date a few women and the relationships have not progressed. Rex and I have enjoyed spending weekends at the lake since Labor Day. When it started to get colder out at the end of the summer, we started using the fireplace. There is a thin, oriental rug on the floor in front of the fireplace.
One fall evening after taking a shower together, Rex and I found ourselves warming up on the hearth in front of the fire. My plush robe kept falling off my shoulders, casting a warm glow from the fire onto my bare breasts. Rex couldn’t keep his hands off me, and we quickly ended up naked on the rug in front of the fire. We grabbed a few pillows from the couch for strategic cushioning while we made love on the floor in the glowing light from the fire.
Rex later commented that there should be a bear skin rug in front of the fire, but we are both against animal cruelty.
I was out shopping for housewares weeks later when I came across a synthetic animal skin rug. It was only $40. I bought it and kept it in my car. I told Rex about it, and it was fun to think about trying it out the next time we needed to keep warm in front of the fire at the cabin.
My husband and I switched houses last weekend. Rex and I have plans to be at the lake over the winter so we figured we would leave the rug there until inspiration struck us. We draped it over a railing near the steps to the sunken living room.
Often, my husband is critical of the way I leave “his” house. Maybe I don’t make the bed perfectly, or I leave a streak on the stove or crumbs on the kitchen counter. He is quite persinickety about things. I expect to hear criticism about my housekeeping shortly after we change houses for the week. We generally make this change on Sunday night. Last week, I didn’t hear any comments.
Finally, on Wednesday night my husband called and said, “What the hell is this dead animal skin doing here?” I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was for my lover and I to put under us while we made love in front of the fire, so I said, “Oh, you mean my yoga mat?” He practices yoga three mornings a week with an instructor. He knows I don’t practice yoga. I didn’t have the heart to tell him what it was really for, so I stuck with the yoga mat story and told him he could use it, too, if he wanted. I clarified my story by saying it was my kind of yoga. Because he needs to keep his house perfectly neat, he asked me what he was supposed to do with this rug. When I suggested he just leave it there, he said “Uh, I don’t think so.” I simply asked where he was going to put it. He replied, “In the hall closet”. It was his idea to separate. I suppose this is an example of we “should be careful what we wish for.”