Is it February yet?

Well folks, it's that time of year again. It's the time of year when the temperature finally drops below the range of instantly searing your skin. It's the time of year when the spawns of the devil (otherwise known as children) return to school to bother someone else other than their parents. It's the time of year when you realize there just aren't that many days left before Hallmark begins to incessantly ram Christmas down our throats. And, in millions of households across America, it's that time of year when beer consumption increases at an alarming rate, when large men in packs attempt to "cook" meat using an open flame, and when women everywhere are pretty much left to themselves for days and nights at a time. Yep. You guessed it. It's Football Season.

It's interesting to me how men spend their time during the rest of the year when it's not football season. Most men I know really don't rally around any one subject or activity for any considerable length of time. Mostly they hop from one unfinished home improvement project to the next. Sometimes they might take up another routine past time, like poker nights on Tuesdays or basketball on Saturdays or maybe even the gym every other day. But mostly, between the months of February and September, if my husband is any indicator of the male population at large, they just listlessly pass the time between the seasons. But once you start seeing commercials with helmets and funny shaped brown balls, then that's when, in my opinion, life goes to hell in a hand basket.

The annoying thing for me is that it really doesn't seem like football ever goes away. When it's not the actual football season, the men around me talk about which player is doing what and for which team. They are really good at remembering all these ridiculous stats of how each player did over the last season, who all the coaching staff are, where these players graduated college and what team traded them and for how much money. But ask my husband what my cell phone number is without looking at his speed dial and he's completely at a loss.

When the "season" finally starts to get underway, the conversations about all things football really take off, kinda like the terrorist "chatter" you hear the FBI and CIA talk about on those 9/11 specials on The Discovery Channel. Suddenly ESPN or ESPN2 is constantly on the tube, and NFL.com becomes my husband's favorite website. He pays a lot of attention to training camp issues, injury lists and team rosters. And the damn "season" hasn't even started yet. It's not enough that football is on for basically five months straight. They have to prolong my agony by televising the pre-season, which is just a big lead up to the "real" season. Who cares about the pre-season? None of that counts in the grand scheme of things, and all that ends up happening is star players get hurt and bounced for the season. And depending on the player, in my household that news is met with a wailing and gnashing of teeth of biblical proportions. I thought it was touching that my husband cared so much for his favorite players that he would be that distraught over their ill health. But it's not because he feels all warm and fuzzy about that person. It's because it messes up his Fantasy Football picks. (We won't go into Fantasy Football this time kids. I'm saving my rancor on that subject for another day.)

Then, sometime in September, the "real" season FINALLY gets underway. And boy oh boy does life in my house change drastically. Sundays are no longer for family outings. Sundays are now decreed as "mother-daughter days." My husband tells me sagely that Juliana needs more one-on-one time with her mother and that we should take this opportunity to spend some quality, uninterrupted time together. Translation: go out and go shopping so I can watch my games in peace. I'm willing to bet that if I went out with her and dropped several hundred dollars at the mall he really wouldn't notice or care. I'll have to try that this next weekend to see if my hypothesis is correct.

Monday nights are no better. I get home after working all day, tired and beaten, and I can't even relax in a manner of my choosing. I'm forced to sit and watch The Game with him and actually look like I give a rat's ass about it. The one good thing about Monday night football is that he is so into the game that he doesn't care if I cook or clean or whatever, so I guess it's actually a good thing. He just wants me to sit next to him while he discusses which plays could work and what mistakes were just made in the play and how the team could be doing better. Meanwhile, I'm mentally going over my next week's grocery list and what I'm going to wear on Tuesday and whom I'm going to lunch with.

Now, this whole football thing really wouldn't be so bad if the games happened only on Sundays and Monday nights. I can handle one day out of the week to do as I please and go shopping. And I can handle losing control of the TV and ordering pizza for dinner for one night out of the week. But then, sometime around week 12 of the season, they start adding in Thursday night games. Then, to make matters worse, week 15 ushers in the Saturday night games. That only gives me Tuesdays and Wednesdays to watch TV that I want to watch. It's a good thing they haven't figured out that Friday nights are lacking football games. At this rate, my social life beginning the middle of December is either going to go WAY down, or it's going to go WAY up. I haven't made up my mind about that one yet, but I'll keep you all posted on what my plans will be. Maybe I'll have Saturday night girls' night out while he's sitting in our basement watching the idiot box. But I will tell you one thing (and honey, if you're reading this, pay attention): I will NOT be sitting in front of a TV in a sports bar on New Year's Eve. My husband will just have to settle for watching the highlights the next day. I can't believe that they would schedule a game on New Year's Eve, and I'm not giving up one of my favorite holidays in favor of the pigskin. It's bad enough that football has also managed to devour the entire Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. For the love of all things holy will they just leave the "family" holidays alone? Why can't they make football season in the middle of the summer when there is nothing else going on? The final nail in my coffin is the fact that my anniversary falls right smack in the middle of the playoffs. No spontaneous romantic weekends away for me, especially if the Redskins end up in the playoffs. (Which, by the way, is likely to not happen in the foreseeable future, so maybe there's hope for that romantic weekend yet.)

So, for basically the next five months I will be what a lot of police wives like to call a "single wife." I will have whole blocks of time completely at my disposal, and where I don't have to worry about any kind of demands placed on me by my husband because he will be too busy with his "games." Maybe I shouldn't feel so badly about this. Maybe I should embrace this freedom and really run with it. I think that weekly manicures and pedicures may just be around the corner, and Juliana and I can do some serious damage in Hot Topic if left to our own devices. You know, I'm beginning to think that maybe football season isn't so bad after all. Honey, here is the remote. I'll be back in a few hours, and I'll call you when I need help brining in my shopping bags.

Marie is seriously weirded out by that Thanksgiving turkey they serve to the football players that has six legs attached to it. If anyone can tell her what the hell that's all about, write to her at poisongirl@hobotrashcan.com.

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