my husband's lover

my husband has never cheated on me, but he has a couple of lovers. his primary love interest is dempsey, our doberman pinscher. they do almost everything together. if you ask him about dempsey (or not) he will go on and on about what a beautiful dog, how well behaved his is, how intelligent his is and what a wonderful companion he makes. i suppose once upon a time, her said the same about me, but i don't really recall that....(sigh) i am used to being secondary to dempsey.
his other huge love interest's name keeps changing, as i give her different names, but she is generally known as TomTom (GPS sytem) or as i like to call her "Gladys". at home, my husband loves Gladys so much he will even use her to get to and from work....this is when i first suspected the love affair as neither distination has changed in years. i think he likes Gladys' voice.
on our trip last March to Artfest in Washington state, Gladys was there informing us the way from the SEATEC airport to Fort Townsend on Bainbridge island. i personally love to have a map in my lap, but this somehow undermines the magic for him and Gladys and i was not permitted to use one until i finally made a fit of things. as for me, i like to see where we are going and also where we haven't gone, i just like the general area of information - you know, in case of a side trip or something. but thats my personality - his is to take NO side trips - he likes the direct route -and so goes our differences in life's philosphy in general. what can i say, i'm sagitarius and he is a virgo!!!
so Gladys got us in trouble in Washington state by not sending us to the island via a ferry, instead we drove clear to the Canadian country line before looping around to where our hotel was, a four plus hour inconvenience. i felt smug, i must admit, i got to get a map and showed my husband the error of her ways. he defended her by saying it was his mistake by entering the question too generally and not asking for the most direct route. on that trip, i secretly changed her name to "bimbo".

For our italian venture, my husband was so excited to be including "gladys", he started to prepare for months in advance. he shopped on the internet and bought an european chip ($100) but began to have troubles when she wouldn't register. he spent weeks trying to straighten that out and it is still pending.
so, when we got to italy, he was forced to rent a cheap whore of a GPS system and it cost him another $100. I called her "two-bit". the slogan on "two-bits" packaging was "never get lost". Hoo-hoo what a joke!
"two-bit" refused to speak english or spanish or italian, any of these languages my husband is fluent. instead, she decided to speak to us in netherlands dutch, so i changed her name to "gretchen, the whore".
We listened to her say "linx de somethingerother" from the Rome airport to Gubbio not understanding a word. Good thing i could read road signs. (again, please with myself).
we all took turns trying to coax english out of her, but failed. Eventually and reluctantly, we began learned Gretchen's language.
But she wasn't done being impossible.
my husband gently asked her to show us the way to Ponte Vecchio, Firenze as i wanted top visit the uffizi gallery.
we strained to understand her while taking a mad cap tour between speeding wild vespas throughout all of florence, including ending up embarrassed a time ot two in the middle of a piazza. i changed her name to "gretchen, the maniac, tempermental two bit whore".
at last, after a suicidal romp through out the innards of florences my husband stopped and tried once more to get a language we all understood. thank god, he found a soothing british woman's voice whom i named simply "Kate". I liked Kate, she was serene and stylish, she was polite and seemed to not carry any weird issues about direct routes. we asked her the way to ponte vecchio and she toured us through a less populated, less frantic area, wider roads and better scenery....ahhhh, so nice was she, so dignified, so gentile.

but WHAT? oh hold on, shit, Kate quietly lead us toward Pisa! What?,whatthefreak?
Yes, kate was nice and proper, but she was a control freak and we could not get her to go near florence, no matter what. as a last gesture, KATE stopped talking to us altogether in an unknown territory. never to speak again. a final, "top that you stupid humans" we were hopelessly lost and had no lap-map. we were doomed to use our on common knowledge to get us out of this fix.
my husband became dispondent. we were very weary. somehow we did get to the uffizi, but only within the last hour of it being open. we were tired and our feet hurt since we decided to chuck the car somewhere near the firenze train station and walked. it wouldn't have been a bad walk, except we were tired from my husband's lover.

i am hoping this is a lesson to all men, having a lover might sound intriguing and exciting, but in the end you will end up with just another person to deal with, one who is probably harder to please than your wife and almost always certainly dumber.