In sickness and in health. Yeah, yeah, I know. I said those words. So did DH. Does the "sickness" part also apply to deafness? I mean, a prolonged a case of "selective deafness"?

The selective deafness (literally) came crashing home to me one Sunday night, back when DD (darling daughter) was a baby and we were still living in the City.

DH out in the living room, watching the Yankees crush the Cardinals. No resentment from me there: DH had dutifully become a Yankees fan, forsaking his St. Louis upbringing. I appreciated the assimilation.

And hey, have I mentioned? I'm a low maintenance chick. Don't ask a lot of DH, who knocks down the mortgage payments better than I do (thank you, glass ceiling). DH is also funny as hell, plays guitar better than Clapton, and, like the best Wall Street traders, knows when to hold his positions. Couldn't ask for more, me being low-maintenance and all.

So I was cool when DH stopped buying birthday, Christmas, anniversary gifts for me after DD came along. Now was time for the 529-college saving plan. Baby music-school tuition. Top-of-the-line nanny salary.

No Gucci bag for me? I can deal.

But what I'm finding is that I cannot deal with DH's selective deafness.

I'm not an "euwwwwe" chick. I don't scream out for DH if a cockroach scurries across the kitchen. (I kill it myself quite deftly).

I don't scream for DH, now that we're in the burbs, when I'm lugging cords of firewood in from the car. (I've figured out how to kick open the back door and hold it open with my butt while I haul the wood inside.)

I don't call DH at the office to ask stupid questions ("What do you want me to wear to the client's cocktail party tonight: MILF-style or Soccer Mom-style?")

So when I do call, or scream, it's generally for a very good reason.

Okay, so last week I gave a nice shout-out to the mistress. Lest you think I'm one of those wives just blaming the other women for my husband's affair, don't worry. Two to tango, I know, I know.

So I promised you a missive to Dear Husband, after he was spotted shoe shopping with the mistress last month.

Hey DH, those really were nice Jimmy Choos you bought her. Always knew you had good taste.

Funny though. I thought your lunches were all booked up with clients, not expeditions to find three-inch heels.

I remember getting the call late in the afternoon. "Geeg, it's Rachel. Don't know how to tell you this, but I saw your DH in the Jimmy Choo store today with someone ... "

I had fun with that, later that evening, when you got home. And don't think I wasn't thinking about this when I watched that episode of Mad Men last night, where the wife is trying to get Don Draper to admit he was having an affair.

"How was your day?" I asked casually.

"So intense," you said. "Our long position in pharma is killing us, and no way we're underwriting the new allergy drug in Curtis's pipeline."

"Let me guess. You took old man Curtis out for a nice lunch at the Yale club and broke the news to him when the appetizer arrived."

"Yep. That's how I did it. But we talked about the Yankees first."

DH, you continued to describe a lunch in perfect detail — a lunch that never happened. Impressive.

"So you made it through lunch," I said. "Did you guys go upstairs and sweat it off in the gym?"

"No. He had to go back and tell his office. But it's all good. We're both Scroll & Keys — we've survived worse than this."

I just thought I'd take a late summer moment to give a nice little shout-out to my husband's mistress: Hi, hon! Love your new Jimmy Choos! Oh, your boyfriend bought them for you? Wow.

I didn't know he — my husband, I mean — had such excellent taste in shoes!

So he went right into the Madison Avenue store with you? Did you sit on his lap as Francisco, down on his knees, measured your delicate, expensively pedicured foot? Maybe you got a quick little reflexology session while Francisco disappeared into the back to gather your requests? How cool!

Did you know that that same man yells at me when I come home with a fresh pedicure from the Korean salon next to the train station? Yells at me when he sees the shoe bill from Century 21, let alone Jimmy Choo right on Madison.

When I tell him that my pedicure was a Wednesday half-price special, he says, "Screw the pedicure... shouldn't you be going to the gym?"

Oh, he hasn't given you that disapproving little lecture? That's right, you haven't had two kids yet (and when he's with you, he doesn't have kids, either). You don't have to decide daily whether to run to the gym after work, or go straight to the big kid's hockey game, or indulge in a — oh god — a pedicure, before you hit the home front with all four cylinders running.

Oh, that's right: You can take a two-hour lunch for shoe shopping.

Right now, my lunches are spent at my desk, because I'm filling out back-to-school emergency forms, and figuring out which stores I have to zip through on my way home. You'll find me at JCPenny's, gathering back-to-school supplies.

You, you can have a Bellini at Cipriani after work (with my husband even — which is awesome, girl!) then stumble off drunkenly to the gym while he catches the train home.

Hell, after the gym you can even go to the fancy nail place that stays open until 11 pm and get that pedicure.

When my husband proposed to me a dozen years ago, he said, "You elevate me." I knew it was hyperbole, but it was pretty romantic. (And I said, "Right back at ya.")

"Together we can charm them all," he said, "We'll make our entrances. You'll whisper to me what to say."

And what not to say. That was our little arrangement. And it worked well for 10 years.

Now it's Year 12, and my whispered cues are just annoyances to him. I know we didn't write this anywhere in a pre-nup — hell, we don't have a pre-nup. But wasn't that part of our "deal"?

When did he stop taking my cues?

When did my telling him to switch ties or switch topics become perceived as an attack?

When did he start calling me a control freak?

He's fired me as his stage prompter. Now my job is doing damage control the next day.

It used to be okay when it was just us, and we made love on the kitchen stool when he would sneak home for lunch.

But now we are a family, and I have to defend more than my husband's choice of words, or choice of tie.

Now it's the whole fabric I must defend. It's the franchise. He and I have had a tacit agreement for years: He would glad hand, and I would maintain the franchise.

By that I mean, it was up to me to make sure our kids got haircuts, shook hands with grown-ups, and didn't run in the pool area.

It was my job to make sure everything looked good to the outside world. All he had to do was show up and — literally or figuratively — pat everyone on the head.

Quaint as it seems, it's worked for us, for a decade. But now he complains about the kids' haircuts. He doesn't care if they shake hands or not. He doesn't even know what the pool rules are, let alone have any interest in enforcing them.

OK, so you're asking: Why am I still here?

I think I've got a new answer this week: Monkey Branching. You know, brachiation, swinging from limb to limb. Something gibbons do in the jungle.

It's positively evil, emotionally unhealthy, this notion of keeping one hand on the solid branch of home, family and two cars in the driveway, while reaching the other hand out for some branch that may be out there somewhere.

But that's how I plan to go about searching the suburban jungle — finding something, some new guy, new while clinging to the old.

It's not like no one's ever done this before.

In high school we called it keeping another guy on the "back burner," in case some other relationship turned out not to be on the boil.

Alas, in high school, it was just you and the candidates for prom date. Now anyone on the back burner, or, to mix metaphors, any new branch, is going to have to hold not just my heart but my two children as well.

What sort of man would provide such a strong branch? Who would want to? One thing I do know: I won't be swinging on any new branches without my kids.

I know, I know.

My girlfriends, the talk show psycho-bablers, the self-help books, the marriage counselors, all say, "You have to be on your own before you can find somebody else."

Yeah, but I've been on my own before.

I'm no princess, waiting in her turret for Prince Rescue to come along. I've paid my own rent. Worked in Corporate America (high-profile and six-figures, thank you). Dated bigtime in the Big Bad Apple.

It's just that I've never done it with two beautiful pre-school kids in tow.

Monkey branching? Me? The library-helper-mom? The bake sale mom?

Isn't that sleazy?

There are the times, usually carefully chosen, when I feel I have to say something to my husband, even if it hurts. On the way home from a recent dinner party: "Honey, the Carters have been telling us since last fall that their son Justin has his heart set on Brown."

"They are calling in all their chits in hopes of getting the dorky kid in there," he says.

"So when you dis Brown, and say his choice of college doesn't really matter, well sweetie, it kind of brought the dinner party conversation to a dead halt.

"Did you notice? Brown seems very important to them. Maybe next time you could say, 'Brown — great school. Fingers and toes crossed for you!'"

That's when he will jam on the brakes a block from our house and call me elitist. And then he'll get defensive: "I'll say whatever I want to say."

"Honey," I respond, "let's just play the game. Even though the less-than-brilliant Justin will never get into Brown.

"Who are we to burst their bubble?

"This is not rocket science, honey. It's just a social grace. Can't you just play along?"

Things like this are minor irritants, taken one at a time. But if he thinks those things don't add up in a small town, he is mistaken. I point that out — again, because these are the people we have chosen to live among.

The town we picked, the street we claim as ours. With neighbors — flawed like the rest of us. It's our village.

All I am asking for is peace in the village. Where our kids, a few years down the road, will dream big, dream a bit beyond our means.

So I want him to quit embarrassing himself. Actually, to quit embarrassing us.

Rules: Keep it down to two glasses of wine.

Skip the tequila.

We can always get snarky about poor Justin on the ride home.

If he does that one more time, I am calling a lawyer. That's it. He's been asked politely, with the proper phrasing from the couples counselor: "Don't say ‘You forgot to get the milk.' " Instead say, "I feel bad when you forget things like this, honey."

I remind myself: "The word 'always' rarely applies."

When he leaves the sprinkler on all night, and soaks the yard turning it into a muddy marsh, I don't always say, "We've got a gusher in the back yard ... again."

Usually I notice it when I'm up first in the morning, as I'm pouring the kids' cereal. So I dash out in my bathrobe and turn off the sprinkler.

By the time he's up and rushing to catch the train, I forget to even mention it.

I don't always use the midnight car ride home from a party to tell him that he raised his voice a tad too loud about Obama in a room full of known Republicans.

Usually I just make a joke: "Wow, you sure told them everything they didn't want to hear, sweetie."

Or, "Remember, these are the people who sponsored us for the golf club last year."

Or, "Maybe you could just tone it down a bit."

Usually, I say nothing, and silently vow to buy a pricy hostess gift, and slip it in front of the host's front door the next morning, without ringing the doorbell.

Why am I still here? Why am I still so pissed? Why am I even contemplating leaving one more message on his turned-off cell phone? So that I can record my fury, my angst, onto that little microchip in cell phone cyberspace for posterity? Lord knows he'll never listen to it. He'll hit '7' to erase it the second he hears, “OK, now, where are...”

Twelve years of marriage and it's come to this. He's not home because he'd rather be somewhere else. With someone else. He denies it but my 'wife radar' is in good working order. I'm sick of picturing who she might be. That's not even the point anymore. It's ABW: Anyone But the Wife. If I tell my girlfriends, they'll all just tell me to leave him, to throw him out. My therapist will again urge couples counseling. Tried that at Year Eight. Lasted the requisite six sessions, with promises to “renew," “refresh,” “re-purpose.” You know the drill.

Make more traditions. Make more efforts. Make more love. Thanks, Ladies Home Journal. Thanks Kathie Lee and Dr. Ruth and Shania Twain. I see it's worked out so well for you.

I could just lie here in the dark. I could start trawling the Internet for a lawyer. I could call that guy from the econ summit, that guy from that party three months ago: “If you're ever free on Thursday nights...”

Or I could go downstairs. Get a jump start making the kids' lunches for school in five hours. Or get the hockey gear loaded in the Tahoe now. Save me a few steps in the morning school hustle. Instead, I swallow an Ambien and knock myself out, just as I hear the car in the driveway. Tomorrow with the lunches and hockey skates. Tomorrow with the confrontation, or the ignoring – I’ll figure it out then, when I sit on the train in my suit from Loehman's. Maybe I'll start shopping at Saks again, like I did before the two kids.