Baby is a four letter word

I'm in the midst of a huge crunch with my schoolwork and with a deadline of October 31st hanging over my head and my complete unpreparedness for that dreaded day, I'm pretty much working around the clock. Once in awhile, when I need a break from mind-numbing textbooks and research, I play this stupid online game where you have to look for words in a grid that are based on a particular topic. Dumb, I know, but sometimes I just need to not think for a few minutes.

A couple of nights ago, I took one of my brain-breaks and ended up playing a game with words related to baby shower gifts. I kid you not when I tell you that I found the words "Beeer," "whisky," and "diafram." I know they were spelled wrong, but I think those cheeky people making up the game were having a little fun. If I'd been creating that game, I would have added "vasectomy," and "IUD," but I've never been much of a kid person.

As with any split, people have asked me over the past 18 months what happened that landed us in divorce court, shooting each other looks that might just have the ability to kill. Although the marriage ended up being complicated and fraught with so many issues that led us to the demise, initially, there were only two matters of contention.

Right after Ex asked me to marry him, I sat him down and told him that there were two potential problems he might have with me, and if he couldn't handle them, I'd give him the ring back and we would just be friends.

First, I told him that I wasn't going to change my last name. I don't have anything against name changing in theory, but frankly, I have a last name fit for a porn star or exotic dancer and I love it. Really concreting my decision was the fact that, to this day, I still can't pronounce his last name right.

The second issue was that I knew categorically that I didn't want children. But Ex is a family-oriented guy, and I thought he should know that the woman he intended to marry insisted that her womb perpetually flash "vacancy."

His reaction surprised me, actually. He really didn't even bat an eyelash as he said, "As long as I have you, I don't care about those things. You're all that matters, and if we don't have children and you want to keep your name, that's fine with me."

Thinking that I had the greatest man on earth, I obviously went ahead with the wedding. And knew without a doubt on day two that I had made a monstrous mistake.

As I said before, we had a small destination wedding on a lovely island, so we chose to stay there for 8 more days following the ceremony. Two days after we were wed, he was teasing me, calling me "Mrs. [insert insanely long and unpronounceable name here]," so I teased him back, calling him "Mr. [porn star name]." He began to get angry and asked me why I was calling him that. So I, still thinking that he was kidding, joked that if he insisted on calling me by his mother's name, I'd call him by my Dad's name.

"That's not my mother's name, that's your new name. You ARE changing it when we get back home."

I was confused. "But we talked about this," I said. "I told you right after we got engaged that I wasn't going to change my name."

"And I thought that once we got married, you'd change your mind. Does this mean that you're not going to have babies, either?" he asked, voice beginning to rise in wrath.

The tempest that blew up between us rivaled the near-hurricane that had almost forced us to cancel the outdoor wedding and wound up with him curled in a ball on the floor, rocking back and forth, crying. For 4 hours.

At that point, I was torn between wanting to comfort him because I loved him and wanting to kick him in the nuts for thinking that marriage had some sort of magical quality that would turn me from the independent, self-directed, sometimes stubborn-as-hell person I am into Little Miss Homemaker. I was pretty sure that he'd spent our courtship dreaming of bare feet and a distended belly with a little alien wriggling around inside. (OK, I admit it, pregnancy freaks me out. And so do little kids. Sorry, I'm weird like that.)

There was no reasoning with him and no comforting him, since all he would say while he was curled up was, "You've cut my balls off. You've cut my balls off." Over and over and over. Imagine listening to that for 4 hours and trying not to go insane yourself.

Seeing the crazy emerge for the first time was frightening and confusing to me, but I gradually began to get angry because we had talked about this and I had been completely honest. After he finally got up off of the floor, he went into the bedroom without a word even after I begged him to talk it out with me.

And without a word pretty much describes the rest of our honeymoon, which was not the flowers and champagne and sexy time ideal I'd previously envisioned.

The entire first year of our marriage was spent arguing over the name change and babies. With Ex's dysfunctional relationship with his parents, he never even told them that I didn't want children. I've already mentioned how members of his family would grab me in very inappropriate places and ask when I was going to have a kid, so that made for even more fun in the already excruciating obligatory functions with the outlaws.

So when I highlighted "Beeer," "whisky," and "diafram," on that little game the other night, I was disappointed when they weren't the right answers. But it still gave me a laugh.