If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon (31 page)

The thing is, our daughters aren’t even into the double digits yet, which means we still have the bras, braces, dating, driving, drinking, boyfriends, birth control, cell phones, and college debates ahead of us. These years will not be easy on any of us, I fear, but I am confident that my marriage can survive them because Joe and I agree that our children are the most important thing in the world to us. When we are at a frustrating future impasse, we have vowed to remind each other that our daughters’ happiness, safety, and general well-being will always come first. We can agree on this because everyone knows that blood is thicker than water. It’s also much harder to get out of the carpet.

See? It Really Could
Be Worse

All husbands are alike, but they have different faces so you can tell them apart.

• OGDEN NASH •

 

 

My husband, I am proud to say, has a sixth sense. He does. He knows unequivocally, without the faintest shadow of a doubt, that
my fucking shoes are going to be the death of me
. Interestingly I do not own just one pair of poisonous footwear. Pretty much all of them but my tennis shoes and hiking boots fall into the lethal-shoe category, and really he’s only expressing his immeasurable concern for my well-being, not accusing me of
putting my very life at risk with my vain desire to be slightly more fashionable than the gal we buy our avocados from at the farmer’s market
. Nevertheless, I have to hear over and over how violently he disapproves of my sandals/slingbacks/slip-ons/ stilettos. Because he is clairvoyant, okay?

Apparently the mentally elite are drawn to their own kind, because Joe also insists that I have a unique superpower of my own. You see, I can jinx things. Stop! I’m serious. By merely taking the time to verbally acknowledge some blessing—“Wow, what a beautiful day! I’m glad that wind finally died down,” or “Can you believe the girls have been playing quietly for two solid hours?”—I automatically flip an invisible switch that powers up some mysterious and malicious force of nature that will put a swift and ugly end to the stroke of luck in question.

“It’s supposed to be gorgeous this weekend,” I’ll remark casually.

“Aw great, you jinxed it,” Joe will accuse, shaking his head sadly and looking up at the sky to scan for the thunderclouds that he expects to appear at any minute.

“I didn’t
jinx
anything,” I laugh. (Well, I used to laugh, when I still found it amusing that someone could actually believe that another person—let alone the person they chose to marry—could beget misery without even so much as a nose twitch. Now being called the devil incarnate on a daily basis is just fucking annoying.) “I’m appreciating our good fortune. How can that be bad?”

“Nope, you jinxed it,” he’ll insist. “Thanks a lot.”

At least you’re not married to him, right? Or any of the dozens of guys brutally affectionately immortalized on the next many, many pages. When you’re done, go ahead and count your blessings. Despite what Joe would have you believe, it won’t jinx anything. Probably.

I can’t stand the way he sneezes. They are really loud, really dramatic, and so out-of-the blue, they frighten me. I’ve lived through earthquakes that haven’t scared me as much as one of his sudden, deafening nasal-passage clearings. I’ve learned to live with them, even though I’m completely irritated and unnerved by his each and every involuntary expectoration. But here’s the big
oy
: Now that my son is fifteen years old and manly, his sneezes have started to rival his father’s, decibel-wise. I pray that my future daughterin-law has more mettle and patience than I do.

—Nancy

 

What’s with the early morning farts as they are peeing? Sometimes I ask myself how I could love a person who pees and farts at the same time.

—Robin

 

He is a very messy eater! Even if he’s dressed up in a suit and tie. In fact, at the last function we attended a couple of months ago, after a few drinks he ate his prime rib with reckless abandon. Fortunately, the lights in the room were dim and everyone was drinking. The next morning when I was packing, I was shocked to see his clothes looking like a two-year-old had eaten in them. He had food all over his tie—I think he dipped it in his plate. His pants were covered from front to back. I had to soak his white shirt in Biz. I made him take them to the dry cleaners because I was too embarrassed, and we still haven’t picked them up. I wonder what they thought.

—Karin

 

He will wear a nice pair of slacks with the most worn, loose, disgusting socks you can imagine. Or he will pair super-old white athletic socks—you know, the ones that have turned dingy whitish gray and no longer have any elastic in them and may even have visible holes—with a decent pair of shorts and Pumas.

—Eileen

 

He has a tic—he clears his throat all the time, even while he is eating—that drives me crazy! He does it until it hurts or he is hoarse and cannot stop. It is maddening.

—Laurie

 

My husband completely lacks the ability to plan ahead. I’m not talking about planning a vacation or even a nice dinner out. I’m talking about anything that should happen beyond this particular moment in time. He can read the news, watch baseball,
totally oblivious
to the fact that the kids aren’t dressed, the dogs haven’t been fed, you know, all the usual daily occurrences that he seemingly cannot predict. He’ll say he’ll be home promptly at 6:00, and then after I have employed my super investigative powers of questioning, he’ll admit he has a conference call at 5:45. Like he can magically transport himself home in seconds. I think I’ve figured this one out, though. He’ll do anything I ask so as long as I just treat him like an entry-level employee, and all is well.

—Donna

 

It trips my liberal do-gooder guilt switch and drives me nuts that my wonderful husband won’t use things up and instead will open/get out a new [roll of toilet paper, loaf of bread, jar of peanut butter, etc.] while the other one still has lots left. When it leads to things spoiling and going to waste, it really bugs me, but I know he’s not going to change.

—Rose

 

It never fails . . . I am scrambling in the morning to put myself together in a reasonable fashion and get to work on time and it’s like he has radar for what I’m going to do next or where I’m going and he gets in my way. If I see he’s left the bathroom, I try to slip in and get my makeup on and my teeth brushed in privacy, but no sooner do I have paste on the brush than he walks in and starts brushing his teeth! Or I’ll be reaching into the glass cupboard to get a coffee cup down and he’ll stand right beside me and reach into the cupboard for something else instead of asking me to pass him something. No matter how hard I try to reverse my morning routines from his, it’s almost like he’s my mirror image.

—Grace

 

When he eats soup or stew, he siphons off all of the liquid first with his spoon first, then eats what’s left.

—Lisa

 

When I walk into the kitchen after he has unloaded the dishwasher, my mind instantly starts playing that
Sesame Street
song, “One of these things is not like the other . . . one of these things just doesn’t belong.” I have found potato peelers in with the forks, measuring cups with drinking glasses, and cooking utensils shoved in miscellaneous drawers. He’s not mentally challenged, either.

—Kandis

 

My husband dresses like he’s still in college. He wears the same T-shirts he wore when we were dating (almost ten years ago). I can’t get him to dress like an adult and it drives me nuts.

—Deilia

 

It drives me crazy when my husband takes credit for something I said or did. If I say something funny or do something amusing, he will tell the story to friends with him in the starring role. He doesn’t do this all of the time, but he’s done it enough so that it is annoying. I don’t even think it’s on purpose, so maybe I should be happy that he thinks of us as one!

—Kristin

 

The thing that consistently irks me that I consistently forgive is the abyss between the kitchen counter and the dishwasher. Apparently, the activity involved in getting dishes from the sink/counter/table actually
into
the dishwasher is my man’s Kryptonite.

—Jenny

 

He is obsessive about washing his hands. He has to do it literally hundreds of times a day. I guess it’s good that he’s so clean, but really?

—Laurabeth

 

He never changes the clock in his car when it’s Daylight Saving Time. I can’t just look at the clock and know what time it is, I have to think about it and do math. Currently, for example, when I look at the clock and it says 6:30 P.M., I have to stop and think, wait—that means it’s really 7:30 P.M. It’s a small thing, but it bugs me.

—Scarlett

 

My husband not only passes gas whenever he feels like it, but he tenses up to “push” it out and then sighs loudly with satisfaction. Being in the same room is bad enough, but he also does it when we’re cuddling on the couch. My rule about it is that it has to be away from my general direction. It hardly ever works.

—Danielle

 

So, we’re curled up on the couch watching a really good movie when I hear this sort of crunchy, snappy sound. I look over and see my husband totally engrossed not just in the movie, but also in picking at his nails or some dry skin on his foot! I know he does it subconsciously, but man is it annoying. I try to ignore it for as long as I can . . . about forty-five seconds . . . and then I smack him and ask him lovingly to please knock it the hell off.

—Carmen

 

He wears shoes until the soles literally have holes in them. Once, the sole of his shoe actually flapped away from his foot as he walked, and when I got him new ones, he said, “Why? What’s wrong with the ones I have?”

—Tricia

 

My husband is a brilliant man but sometimes his ADD gets the best of him, like the time he couldn’t find the phone. He looked everywhere . . . and finally found it in the freezer. Or the time we couldn’t find the garage door opener for two weeks. One day I was transferring his wash into the dryer and heard a funny clunking sound. I thought maybe it was a belt buckle or loose change. No, it was the missing garage door opener that was a stowaway in his pants pocket. I love my husband, but one of these days I’m going to strangle him.

—Rachel

 

He eats ice cream every single night, which sucks for me because I’m trying to keep in shape, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that he leaves the damned spoon in the sink
every single night
. I mean what the hell, it’s a spoon, one tiny spoon, and he can’t bring himself to wash it no matter how many times I ask. So every morning I get to be reminded that
he
gets to eat ice cream every night and I don’t. I swear I’m going to start leaving them on top of the remote, or under his pillow, or up his you-know-what!

—Julia

 

He blows his nose into the air without a tissue. He says nothing comes out, but sometimes it does.

—Lynn

 

He lets our yard, especially in the back, get way out of control and then he invites all these people over for a barbecue and is hustling an hour before and has it looking great for our guests. Unfortunately it’s only about five times a year that we have a nice-looking yard and it’s not even for
us
, it’s for our guests!

—Amanda

 

He can’t bend. When he looks in the refrigerator, if he can’t see an item from where he is standing, it must not exist. I think he thinks he gets bonus points if he doesn’t have to move anything around. I have actually labeled the refrigerator shelves so I can provide more direction: yogurt, back of B1; cantaloupe, left side of A2; carrots, right vegetable bin, under the onions. He also won’t eat the last of anything. If there are seventeen chicken wings, he’ll only eat sixteen and leave the last miserable one sitting in there until I throw it out.

—Cheryl

 

When he clips his toenails he does it on the front porch . . . like our neighbors really want to see that disgusting sight. Ick!

—JC

 

My husband does not know where the dirty clothes go (same place they have always gone), does not know where the dishes go (even after he got them out), has more shoes than a woman and gladly leaves them out for everyone to admire, continues to pile garbage upon garbage in the can instead of changing the garbage bag, could not put a toilet seat down or close a shower door even if his life depended on it, and leaves his spit bottles sitting wherever he last used them (he dips Copenhagen).

—Crystal

 

He bites his nails. I don’t mean he just bites the edges off; he chews them down to the quick. He then proceeds to crunch on the pieces for hours while on the computer. It drives me crazy! Recently, he had to go to the urgent care clinic and spend $100 because his finger was so raw from his biting it that it got infected.

—Lynn

 

He eats sunflower seeds in bed. Then he will leave the gross bag full of spit shells on the floor so I have to clean them up. To top it off, when I’m sitting next to him, the sound is awful (crack, crunch, spit), and they kind of smell bad. Oh, he eats them on road trips, too.

—Karin

 

He smacks his food. Just the other day, I asked him not to. His response was, “What is ‘smacking’ anyway? And how do I stop?” Umm, it’s chewing so loud I can hear you smack your food around. Should I demonstrate with my hand?

—Tara