Thoughts.com Blogs - Chapter 2 - The new clothes, the new FOTY

After being in the office about a month (Previous to going into the office FOTY (Father Of The Year - full of sarcasm) was on "the road" and only ventured into the office "on demand" or each Thursday for the team meetings) Foty suddenly wanted to go shopping. Now most men, including my ex-husband detest shopping, unless it was for a HUGE TV or surround sound for the HUGE TV or if it was a grab and pay event. Meaning he knew exactly what he wanted and exactly where to get it from. None of this shop around bizzo that us gals love to do. What's $10 bucks savings he'd say, just get the bloody thing from here and let's go home!

So when he announced on the Saturday that he needed to go to our local Myer to "look at" a few new business shirts, I was surprised. But being a regular shopper I happily went along for the ride.

This particular time shopping he didn't grab and pay. On this occassion and the several weeks that followed he started procrastinating over shirts and not just your plain coloured shirts, he was looking for coloured ones with patterns, checks, stripes, indented patterns etc. He also started looking at matching ties. He had over 20 ties in his wardrobe but he wanted newer ones, ones that then matched his new designer shirts.

I asked at the time why the sudden change in taste regarding the shirts - he was always pretty conservative, only occassionally going out on a limb with the latest trends. His answer was that he sees guys around the office with the trendier look and he thought he should "get up" with it.
Acceptable I thought, and encouraged him to shop with confidence!

Another new addition to his shirts and ties were cuff-links! He purchased a pair with me and said "HIS DAD" gave him another pair.

Shortly after the new clothes started coming into his wardrobe so did a new hairstyle. Now he's always used Gel in his hair - but suddenly Gel was not enough, suddenly he needed "WAX" and not just your standard wax, it had to be a certain brand - and he "sniffed" it before he made his decision on which one to purchase.

I also recall him getting some Men's Cologne ... from one of his clients, and not a cheap bottle if I recall !!!! Now he didn't really have clients in the men's cologne industry - his business was MEDIA.
But me being me, didn't really bat an eye lid - even when he started wearing the new cologne instead of the Tommy Hilfiger he used to love!

He also upgraded his jogging gear - he had started running at lunch times at work - lucky him to have the time to do it!

This was followed by him shaving his legs!!!!! Now I know us girls do this - but he has extremely hairy legs, and for as long as I've known him this hasn't bothered him!
But suddenly he had to shave his legs every 3 weeks. Then asked me how to avoid in-grown hairs and started to use my loofer each day!........ he also shaved another area of his body - which, lets just say women get professionals to do for them.!!

Now at the time all these things were happening, I just put them down to wanting to impress his new boss with his appearance etc. But then one morning he got into the shower, butt naked off course, and I suddenly noticed his bum! Now I don't mean I hadn't looked at it a million times, but on this occassion it was lily white! Well not really, but in contrast to his back and legs it was really really white.

Finally after a few days of looking I asked him if he'd gone to a solarium! To which he answered "Yes, thought I'd give it a try." He then went on to explain how they had some special deal where you got so many visits for blah blah dollars!

That was totally out of character for him - he had naturally Olive skin and tanned very easily - so why the hell did he need to go to a solarium. In fact he'd gone too many times in the one week and was actually a bit sunburnt!

There seemed to be an increase in work functions that we were invited to, which I went to most of them, but he went without me if I couldn't come

All the while this was going on, he was paying me more attention than usual, and I even got a bunch of flowers once a month! Mind you he started coming home later from work and changed from his personal mobile phone to a work funded one - which meant he was now supposed to be contactable 24/7 (which he isn't for me anymore!).

In hindsight all of these changes coincided with the attention being given by Young JS!
But they were quite spread out over probably a year ....
Should I have been suspicious... once again in Hindsight absolutely! Should I have just trusted my husband? I thought you were supposed to be able to!??.

coming soon - Chapter 3 - Grand Final Day 2006