The hubs and I are as different as night and day, but these
differences are what makes us work. The
biggest source of discontention around here is our outlook on taking care of
ANYTHING. My motto: If you’re
going to do something, do it right the first time. His motto:
We ain’t takin’ ‘er to the fair.
So with that said, let’s get started on some examples of why I continue
to wear the pants in this family.
CARPET CLEANING. The hubs let Thing 1 take
orange pop into the living room. Yeah,
well you can guess what happened.
Spilled, half of it. HE doesn’t
tell me. THING 1 tells me. I then asked where. Thing 1 showed me. Sure enough, glowing like a black light on
blood, is a huge orange stain. Thing 1
apologizes to me. HE apologized??? No, this won’t do. I said, “Honey, you know you aren’t to bring
pop in here so you shouldn’t have, but Daddy also knows the rule and he’s in
charge. He shouldn’t have let you bring
it into the living room.” (Aren’t my
parenting skills to be envied??)
So the hubs comes home for lunch, I said, “Did you guys have a
spill last night?”. He stops eating mid
bite and doesn’t answer me, but instead looks at Thing 1 and says, “You told
her?”. Yeah, nice play moron!! Teach the kid to lie and withhold information
from his parents. Brilliant!! Whatever.
Not going to give the blow by blow of that argument that was held later
out of Thing 1’s earshot, I’ll just get to the point. You see, the hubs is a dumbass when it comes
to adding A+B=C. He just goes straight
to “C”.
On any stain, (we have dogs remember), he will dab the offending
spot with a towel using only his fingertips for pressure. Remove the towel and run his hand over said spot. If it feels dry, he’s done. He may or may not treat spot with any carpet
cleaner. He thinks if the area feels dry
on top, he’s done his job. But is always
so confused when the spot has to be treated again, and again, and again. He even said to me once, “I don’t know why I
can’t clean up spills like you do.”.
Now the irony in this is that he works in insurance, Risk
Management to be precise. He deals with
flooding and the like so should be well familiar with the term wicking. Nope, he’s not. I had to literally explain to him that spills
on carpeting is reverse wicking in his world.
THEN he finally got it. Not
really sure where he thinks all that pop went when his towel ends up primarily
dry but thinks the area is dry. Yeah,
just push that shit deep in the carpet and the padding, it’ll never
reappear. Fuck me running.
CAR UPKEEP. Oh this one is
good and still pisses me off. We had
taken our financial planners advice and bought new used cars a few years
ago. Great cars, love them, both
SUVs. My hubby’s is substantially larger
than mine and while he loves it and loves driving it (I think it elevates his man
status in his world), he cannot ACTUALLY drive it. Parking to be precise. If I had a fucking dime for every time he
pulls that thing in the garage leaving me 3 inches of space to get into
mine!!
Now because I know how he is, I repeatedly told him the first week
of having these cars that he needed to pay close attention to where he’s
parking so we could get the doors open comfortably without dinging the other
one (reminder: we have small kids = car seats.)
So what does this dumbass do about four days into it? Parks damn near on top of me, and puts a nice
ding on my rear quarter panel. Looks
like somebody took a fucking tack hammer to it!
I’m pissed b/c I’d already been reminding him. THEN, the very next day, he opens his
passenger door and is again too close to me, and scrapes his door along my
driver’s side door. I actually blew up
at that one because while these cars are “used”, they were still very new and
in very nice condition. Mine is black so
it shows everything. It was wintertime,
the car was a lovely shade of the dull gray haze from all the shit they spray
on the roads. After I said, “Why can’t
you pay attention?!?”. He looks over his
shoulder and says, “Your car is dirty.
The dirt will protect it from getting marked up.”. Oh, ho, ho.
REALLY?!?!?! HE’S
CLUELESS!!! So I just took a deep breath
and said, “No, you’re wrong. The dirt
actually makes it worse.”, and walked back in the house. Yeah, his little door sweep on my “dirt” is
now my own little vertical EKG reading of my rage from the grit really getting
those scratches nice and deep.
But the story doesn’t stop here.
One day we were all riding as a family and came back home from wherever in
the hell we went. He’s pulling in the
garage. He knows I’m watching and he’s
determined to get it right…for once. I’m
holding my breath and my fingernails have made half moons in my palms from the
fists I’ve clenched. I’m silently
chanting, “You can do it. You can do it.”. He makes a dramatic point of pulling very far
over from my car to park and lo and behold, HITS THE FUCKING HOUSE!!!! I said not a word. I just got out, grabbed a kid and went inside. He backed that beast of an SUV up, assessed the
damage, reparked, came inside. Proceeds
to tell me that it’s just surface scratched, it’ll be okay, the house is okay. Yeah, because he’s the resident scratch
expert, right? I go look at it and
realize that okay, this one is easily fixed.
Some good elbow grease and wax and/or buffer will take the house’s wall
paint right off. I knew I’d be the one
to do this so I just went about my day.
The next day I came home from work and he says, “Hey, I got that paint
off my car.”. I stopped mid stride,
slowly turned around, afraid to hope, afraid to believe. I said, “Really? Cool, I’ll go take a look.”. I went out and looked and sho’ nuff, white
paint is gone, but now it looks as though a cat has used the corner of the
front bumper as a scratching post. Full
on cross-hatch. (See super duper art
teacher Mr. Tonda from the 4th grade? You were right and I would need to know about
this later in life.) Like 20 children
decided to make tic tac toe boards at the same time, one on top of the other. I’m done here. Just really done. I’ve no more energy. I go back in and said, “Yep, it’s gone. How’d you do it?”. You can probably guess how he did it already,
and you’d be right. Fucking
sandpaper!!!!!!!!!! Do we need to have a
little refresher course on touching anything gritty on paint?!?!? I mean, seriously!!! I just gave him the best tutorial ever after
I blew up over my driver’s door EKG and he forgot!!! (I think the shrinks call that repression –
pushing those unpleasant memories to the back of your mind to forever be
forgotten) Whatever. He used sandpaper on the paint of his
car. See, went right to “C” again. Bravo, hubs, bravo. Now you can wear your dumbass badge of honor
on the bumper of your car.
KITCHEN UTENSILS. I’m cleaning like a mad
woman a while back. (I go in fits. I mean I keep a neat house always, but
sometimes I get in the zone and do deep cleaning.) I happen to spy the crock by the stove
containing kitchen utensils and thought, I’ll bet there’s dust and crumbs in
the bottom of that thing. Crumbs attract
mice, mice attract cats, cats scare my dogs, my dogs will freak out and throw up,
I’ll have to clean it up and this will prevent me from doing my deep
cleaning. I’m good at A+B=C. Actually I rule at it. Well that and stain lifting, but I
digress. Maybe I should have just went
with it all so I could have shown off my awesome stain lifting abilities to rub
it in the hubs’ face, but it’d probably be lost on him and it would just create
more work for me in the long run. Yeah,
I’ve got literary ADD today.
Alright so I start pulling utensils and notice one of my uber nice
flippers. (If you’re reading this, what
do you call them?? Everyone has a
different name.) Well, these flippers
are that Cephalon brand or whatever the hell it’s called. But it’s nice end cookware that I
cherish. I see several burn marks on the
actual flipper. Goddamn it!!! The hubs!!!!!!! I already knew how this happened.
He likes eggs and will make them for himself on the weekends. When making them, he proceeds to lay the
flipper on the side of the skillet to rest as opposed to the fucking stainless
steel double ass spoon rest we HAD to have on our wedding gift registry. (Metro)
He doesn’t like to get the counter dirty you see. Well in doing this, there are now a series of
burn marks on the plastic of the flipper.
Ruined. Once again, we have
anything nice, it’s not the kids that ruin it, it’s him. That night I just asked him if he could
please not rest the spatula on the side of the skillet anymore because it’s
ruining the flipper. You ready for this
one? His response, “Is that what’s
causing all those marks?”. He was
serious as a heart attack too. I was
like, “Yeah. Add plastic to heat, it’s
gonna melt.”. Him: “God, I didn’t even think about that.”. Surprise, surprise. Yet another “C” moment.
I’ll stop the tirade at this but will also share that in my
favorite ever dutch oven by Cephalon (I really need to look up that brand’s
spelling), he also proceeded to use a knife to cut into a pot roast I had
made. Our little resident scratch
expert, our devoted little “C” man, cue the bell….didn’t even think that knife
would scratch the Teflon coating. Thanks
hubs because that pot roast WAS “fair” worthy.