If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon (21 page)

My husband—a prominent architect—keeps buying these ugly printed
jackets with tigers and such on them at the swap meet. He insists on
wearing them in public because he thinks they are cool. I’ll sneak into
his closet and throw them away, but he just keeps buying more. Is this
male menopause?

ILEANA

 

 

Joe doesn’t like accumulating stuff, so it makes sense that he doesn’t much care for trolling for it in the first place. To my husband, braving any sort of retail establishment is a task to be endured when you absolutely, critically need something, like sour cream or a raccoon trap or underpants without holes in them. If my husband determines it is time to buy, for example, new basketball shoes, he drives straight to the nearest sporting goods store, tries on three or four pairs of sportspecific sneakers, purchases the most comfortable one, and goes home. That’s it! He never gets sidetracked in the pool-toy aisle or sucked into trying on a dozen or more pairs of sunglasses or considers how his ratty old socks are going to look with his shiny new shoes. He doesn’t stop to wonder if there might be anything else in the store worth checking out; once he’s made his predetermined purchase, the goal is accomplished and he can head back home to putter in the garage. Honestly, it must be nice.

Although he’s not a born shopper, Joe has made great strides in the area during our marital tenure. For instance, when we’re on vacation, not only will he occasionally suggest a stroll through the local shopping district to check out the native wares, but he has even learned to feign interest in the items I show him, and he hardly ever hovers anxiously in my shadow, checking his watch every thirty seconds and sighing dramatically. Definitive proof of how far he has evolved in this area came on the morning of our ten-year anniversary, when he presented me with a thick envelope. Inside the envelope was a lovely card, and inside the card was an even lovelier surprise: Ten crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. Now, a Benjamin a year for all of the compromise and sacrifice and that forsaking-allothers business—plus doubling the size of our little family at the expense of ever being able to bare my abdomen in public again—may not seem like all that much, but my husband knows that I rarely spend money guiltlessly (although I admit I somehow still manage to squander an unseemly ton of it on God only knows what), so I was a pleasant combination of stunned and delighted.

“The deal is,” he said, immediately putting the brakes on my growing giddiness, because I just
knew
he was going to say we had to do something awful with it like put it in the bank or use it to stock up on unstained Tupperware with matching lids and a new water heater, “you have to spend it before we get home tomorrow.” We were going away for a whopping thirty-six hours to a romantic little town an hour away. In order to spend that kind of dough, the next day and a half would have to feature a
lot
of shopping. That, gentle readers, was the real gift.

We bought two cast iron urns for the front porch first—something I’d wanted since we bought the house, but there was always something on the endless home-improvement list that seemed more urgent. Or maybe I’d just not happened across the right pots, but
there they were
and conveniently I had a fat wad of cash in my pocket. Then we found a quaint little garden shop and chose flowers to plant in them. Up and down the main drag we traipsed, passing up only the stores that sold taxidermy or old-lady clothes. I splurged on an impractical floor-length skirt, three pairs of nearly identical earrings (without even a single eye-roll from Joe), and a gold Buddha wall plaque for the garden (again, not even a sarcastic smirk); while I wasn’t looking, a pair of ceramic lovebirds flew into my shopping cart. “How much do you have left?” he’d ask excitedly after each purchase. I know what you’re thinking—that he just wanted the whole thing to be over and done with so we could go back to the hotel and have sex. But it wasn’t like that, I swear. He was noticeably enjoying watching me enjoy myself, and he even insisted on paying for all of our meals out of “his” money (which was technically “ours” but not, you know,
mine to do with as I pleased without asking for his input or permission
), because the grand was specifically earmarked for extravagance. He even made a game out of it, saying things like “You got that, moneybags?” when it was time to pay, and shrugging as I handed over one crisp bill after another as if to say, “My lady likes to blow the dough. What can I say?” I have never loved my husband more than I loved him that day and a half. Like I said, I know that money can’t buy happiness, but it turns out it can rent it for a while.

For fixing things around the house,
nothing is handier than a man with a checkbook.

• ANONYMOUS • (BUT IF NOBODY CLAIMS IT SOON, I AM TOTALLY CALLING IT )

 

 

When Joe and I moved from our last house to the one we’re in now, we decided to do all of the packing and boxing ourselves and then hire a moving company to take care of the transport. But when you have two Type As living and working together, here’s what happens: Three days before the movers are scheduled to arrive, you have padded, packed, and labeled every single household item you own, including the pots and pans, phones, plates, trash cans, TV, towels, litter box, and bed linens. The only article in the house that’s not nailed to something you’re leaving behind is a single, rapidly disappearing roll of toilet paper. So you walk around in the empty-butfor-stacks-of-boxes space aimlessly until one of you grabs your cell phone and calls U-Haul and rents a truck. You know it’s probably overkill, but you have to do
something
.

“We’ll just get a head start on things,” you tell each other.

Five hours later every single picture, pillow, and piece of furniture you own, plus the leftover packing supplies and a smattering of potted plants, is neatly crammed into the truck’s spacious cargo hold.

“All that’s left is the garage,” he’ll say proudly. “Do you think the movers are going to be mad?”

“Who cares?” you’ll say. “We just saved ourselves at least a thousand bucks. Plus there’s plenty of stuff in the garage, isn’t there?”

Um, yeah. There’s plenty of stuff in the garage, all right. You’ve got containers, shelves, and boxes teeming with flat-head and Phillips screwdrivers, a dozen nearly identical regular hammers, and several of the ball-peen, claw, club, and sledge variety. You’ve got crates stuffed with clamps, crowbars, chisels, and caulk guns; vises and wrenches and pliers (oh my!). Every size and shape of screw, nut, bolt, brad, hook, anchor, latch, and tack is generously represented and sorted into neatly labeled drawers. There is one entire wall studded with enough cutlery to fillet an ocean of fish, an impressive collection that includes drywall knives, putty knives, pocketknives, taping knives, finishing knives, and whittling knives (oh yes, he can whittle; go ahead and cue the dueling banjos from
Deliverance
). The garden section rivals Home Depot’s, with mowers, blowers, hoses, hoes, shovels, sprayers, rakes, edgers, pruners, trimmers, and a smattering of spades and shears. A tangle of wire cutters, wire strippers, earmuffs, and goggles hangs next to several pairs of work gloves attached by carabiners to warped, worn old tool belts. Over there you’ve got your trowels and torches (because you never know when setting something on fire might sound like a good idea), brushes and rollers, tapes and staplers, levels and ladders—and all of that mess looks like a kid’s plastic play set next to the power tool section, home to the loud, lethal gear that requires protective eyewear and prayers to operate: the drills, drivers, saws, sanders, planers, routers, crushers, and grinders that are absolutely, without question, going to claim one of your husband’s limbs—or at least a digit—sooner rather than later.

I adore my husband. He loves to do fix-it tasks and building projects all around the house. Unfortunately he is the most disorganized human on the planet and cannot remember where he puts his tools. He is constantly asking me if I have seen his measuring tape/hammer/head/ whatever, and I do my level best not to say, “Well, if you think of the last place you used it, walk there and look down, and you’ll see it!” I do refrain, because I adore him, and I greatly benefit from all of his work, once he finally finds his tools.

JULIE

 

 

As it happens, the movers had more than enough to do. It took a team of four burly men twice as long to load up the garage as it took Joe and me to pack the entire contents of our threebedroom home. We congratulated ourselves on our obsessive collective initiative and bantered about some ideas for how we might spend the money we had saved by doing so much of the work ourselves.

“What would you do with my tools if I died?” Joe asked in earnest one day as we surveyed his thousands of dollar’s worth of construction paraphernalia tidily arrayed in the new garage.

“It’s my dowry,” I said jokingly. I was still marveling at the fact that he didn’t say his “business” or “truck” or even “cremated remains”; that his biggest posthumous concern would be his garage full of mystifying gizmos.

“That’s one lucky son of a bitch,” he replied, shaking his head wistfully.

“Can we not talk about this?” I asked. I was already feeling a little maudlin—moving does that to me, plus being pregnant added a whole new layer of hormonal sentimentality—and the hypothetical bereavement and remarriage discussion wasn’t helping.

The thing is, Joe loves his tools. And he uses them not only often and eagerly, but with great skill. He doesn’t like it when I touch or move them, and lending them out is not even an option. (It’s not that he’s not generous, but ever since I let a girlfriend borrow one of his
nine staple guns
to hang some stupid curtains and neglected to get it back, he’s gotten a little guarded.) Even when I use my own tools—yes, I have a few
and
I know how to use them—he hovers annoyingly behind me, asking exasperating questions like “Are you sure that’s level?” and “You’re not hanging that on a paint chip again, are you?”

“You are
so lucky
,” everyone who has witnessed the fruits of his handiwork is fond of telling me. And for the most part, they are right. Joe can wire an entire house, install plumbing, outfit a walk-in closet with professional-looking shelves, and build a door frame—that’s square, even—from scratch. He can put up crown molding, switch out light fixtures, and cut and lay tile. He knows how to frame a room, throw up a wall, and hang, tape, sand, and patch drywall. Friends and family alike marvel at his proficiency, and I don’t begrudge him the praise. He absolutely deserves every bit of it. But every once in a while, I’d like to be able to simply
call a fucking plumber
, just like everyone else.

My husband is the handiest person I know. He will fix anything and does a great job at it. But when he says he needs to put something together, the kids and I run the other way. He has this habit of getting really mad at the person who is helping and no matter what you do, IT IS WRONG! You can do everything right and if one thing goes wrong—such as a screw that won’t go in right—it is your fault for not holding something right or for not handing him the screwdriver right.

KRIS

 

 

On any given Saturday, I might suggest one of a million possible fun family activities: a trip to the zoo, a day at the beach, a drive up to wine country, some margaritas in the backyard.

“Sure, sounds fun,” Joe will reply absentmindedly. “Only I
was
going to build you that bookcase you wanted . . .”

Oh, how I want that bookcase. I crave it with every atom in my being. I’ve mentally outfitted it with just the right ratio of knickknacks to books and chosen the photos I’ll display on top of it. It’ll be beautiful
and
functional, a workhorse and an heirloom all wrapped up in one spectacular maple package. That bookcase is the answer to my organizational prayers. Having it will change my life! So I load up the car and the kids and head off on another single-parent adventure—and I can’t even complain about it, because when I get home, the tools are put away, the sawdust is a memory, and my new, expertly crafted display of woodworking is bolted securely to the wall I had chosen as its home. It’s a beauty, too. The edges are meticulously mitered, the top and sides are sanded smooth, and the entire piece is perfectly plumb in every way possible. Ethan Allen, kiss my ass.

It’s not just my decorative whims that demand my husband’s every spare hour. The bigger culprit is the parade of home repairs of which our charming little vintage farmhouse is in perpetual need. Rarely does a week go by when a toilet doesn’t plug, a pipe doesn’t spring a leak, or some aging appliance or other doesn’t stage a mutiny.

“Sink won’t drain again!” I’ll shout to anyone or no one, cursing softly under my breath at the pool of stagnant, soapy water before me.

“I’ll fix it later,” Joe’s voice reverberates back to me from somewhere in the silently decaying bowels of our home.

I survey the piles of syrupy breakfast dishes and sticky utensils and coffee-stained mugs, and let loose another string of whispered profanities.

“Later
when
?” I bellow. The deafening silence in reply is all I need.
Later when I get around to it because it’s not like I’m sitting around watching
Glee
and popping bonbons over here, in case you hadn’t noticed.
It’s not that I don’t believe that Joe can fix the sink; I’ve seen him do it enough times to be utterly confident in his abilities. It’s just that like a lot of husbands, he has this annoying thing called a
job
, and most days he’s expected to show up at it. So off he trots to work, closing the door on his troubles for the next nine hours as he goes. I’m the one stuck looking at the mess, and it makes me want to tear all of my hair out.