Husband Clothes

Man, my husband was getting on my nerves SO much last week, I could barely even blog. Every post started and ended with “I want a divorce,” then I had to delete them. Because this blog is to help me handle things with humor, not with anger. But as you know, in marriage, sometimes there’s anger. And other times there’s humor:)

ANYWAY, in the midst of all of my anger, I kept thinking “Man, I really want a divorce. Like tomorrow.” Can’t list all the reasons, because then I’ll get mad again. But mainly they were because my husband is not really taking care of stuff, which is forcing me to take care of way, way too much stuff. I am working from 9am to 9pm myself right now, having a baby in 6 weeks, have a 7 year old at home from school, taking him and his brother to lessons for stuff, plus husband still working from 9am to 2am each day…I really need my husband to pull his own weight. And he can’t seem to….plus he was getting an attitude when I get testy due to all of this. Sometimes he’s just so out of touch…

So I was really down and feeling quite angry. Then suddenly I made a horrible mistake. AND THIS WAS A STROKE OF LUCK THAT HAPPENED RIGHT IN TIME. We got my husband’s car registration stickers in the mail, but I forgot to give them to him.

So, he got a parking ticket for not having the registration. But not just any ticket. A ticket that requires him to go to DMV or a police station, get a signature from an official, and only THEN can he send the fine. Oh my. And this is all because there aren’t stickers on his license plate (the stickers I had on my desk for um…days? or maybe weeks???).

I apologized to him. His response: no response. As in, he acted totally normal and calm and nice. How could a person act calm and nice after getting that kind of ticket? I don’t know–perhaps we should all ask my husband.

Also, we had a little chat. Before the parking ticket, about his attitude at my testiness over him not pulling his own weight. I told him he needs to get back in touch with reality and cut me some slack. There’s NO WAY I have the energy to try to keep my tone nice and dainty as I remind him of crap for the millionth time right now. In addition, I explained, I need HELP, so he needs to start acting like I’m almost 9 months pregnant and STOP acting like I’m Hulk Hogan or something.

Low and behold, I think he understood. We went to the park with the boys and my husband OPENED MY CAR DOOR FOR ME. I almost fainted. And then felt really super relieved. It’s sooooo good when things seem bad, but suddenly your spouse listens and understands and responds. Wow. I am having such a nice day because of that.

We’re having a sleepover for my son’s party–it’ll be much less expensive than the hosted party at a party place or even Chuck E. Cheese…Plus, all of his friends have had one, and my son is just dying to have one. I will be here by myself of course with a house full of boys (because my husband will be working all night as usual)…

I thought, well, my husband could buy the birthday cake. That’s a pretty fair contribution. Well, actually it’s a pretty miniscule contribution, but my husband can’t help his work schedule right now, and basically, he’s at work 24/7. We see him 15 minutes every morning as he runs off to work. BUT he likes going to the store–gets him out of the studio. So I thought, CAKE. He can do that.

No, he can’t do that. I specifically wrote “Please get a standard, normal birthday cake.” He knows exactly what that is. Instead, he got this:

This is a great cake. And as you can see from the sticker on it, it’s the moistest cake I’ve ever eaten! However, I can’t write “Happy Birthday” on this cake. I know, that’s getting picky, though I am really, truly so not the picky type–I can barely even explain in words to you how UN-picky I am…and I think I need therapy to learn to be more picky, but thats a story for another day. I suspect we’re about to enter an economic depression in which people will not even get to have a homemade birthday cake–so don’t get me wrong, I understand that my son is lucky to have a cake of any kind.

But while we still have the opportunity to buy a standard birthday cake, I’m going to take advantage of it. We went to the store together, and my son chose this:

So we’re all squared away for the party tonight. And now, onward my friends. I have a ton of work to do. It’s really stressing me out. Having a house full of boys from 6pm this evening until 12pm tomorrow is frighteningly the LEAST stressful part of this entire week. Sure, husband could have saved me that one little chore of buying the cake. But now we have 2 cakes. That’s kinda nice. I’ll eat the moist one by myself to reduce my stress levels. BTW, I have 6 weeks till baby is born and have gained only 13 pounds. (Usually people gain 20-35 pounds or more by delivery.) Must be the MOWING. So, I could probably eat 5 entire cakes and be fine. And I am so stressed out, I may very well do that.

But at least we’ll have a fun party!!!! We will miss Dad, though. (But supposedly, he’ll be home this weekend! That would be GREAT. We shall see.)

I just read a really neat article called What Moms Can Learn From Dads.

The article mentions how there are more and more families these days run by stay at home dads. Our family was one of those for a few years, so this topic interests me a lot even now. It was fascinating, though difficult in many ways, to see the differences in my husband and myself as stay at home parents.

The article confirms a really odd thing about women and men as parents. When dads stay home with children, apparently they have NO issues relaxing when they need to and getting their wives to take over. However, as most of us knew long before reading this article, stay at home mothers tend to have a really hard time taking one or two evenings a week to get their own stuff done–and even when they do, lots of people think they’re selfish for it. But not dads, oh no, they aren’t at all selfish for needing a break. Isn’t it strange how dads seem to get more of a break from themselves and society too?

Well, in our case though, people were also quite judgemental about the dad being at home. They definitely felt that I should be staying at home, and my husband should be the one working out of the home. (He did work while staying home, but he did projects from home–like I do now. We just kind of switched roles several years ago.)

Why is everyone so judgmental, darn it? Hey, how did I stray from the topic of parenting to the topic of being judgmental? Whatever, heaven knows it’s not my job to change anyone. I can barely change my own bad habits enough to get myself in bed by 12:00 am. But do you see how I’m trying. See, it’s 11:40 pm now, and I am signing off. Goodnight.

So, what happens after I mow the lawn on Sunday? My husband made the situation about 80 times more volatile by purchasing and assembling the patio furniture he’s been dreaming of. Why didn’t I accompany him to the store??? This is a question that might haunt me for the rest of my life.

First of all, we have no patio. We have concrete squares I (of course) laid out and intended to put a very small table and chairs on top of at some point.

Oh, but no. My husband found a table at Costco that he’s been talking about for weeks. It sounded pretty bad. White plastic, round, round bench attached under the table. But the bench OPENS for easy sitting. This didn’t tempt me in any way whatsoever to spend the $200 this table apparently cost us.

But he kept talking and talking about it. Finally I thought, okay, it’s going to look HORRIFIC. But let’s just take a look, and then he can return it for a refund. I mean, it sounds like something you’d see in a school cafeteria or fastfood restaurant, but how bad can it be? And how big could it possibly be? Our yard is small, but he promises the table is small too. Worst case scenario, he’ll take it back to the store.

Um, no he can’t. It took him 4 hours to put that piece of crap together. He said it was so big that he had to take it out of the box in order to get it into the car. No box + 4 hours to disassemble + my husband is SO IN LOVE with the table = there is NO WAY on earth he’s returning this thing.

Please, take a look at the photo of this thing and tell me: Does this table look “great” in our yard? Would you want to climb over those benches to try to sit down? Let’s be generous and lower the bar a little: Does this table look acceptable for any home-related use?

I suspect you will say “No, it does not, Holly. It does not.” But I’m very curious. Tell me your opinion.

PS. Perhaps I’m being a LITTLE sassy by putting the table in the corner so that it stands crookedly, half on grass, half on concrete stairs. But I don’t want it to kill all that grass. Plus, in the corner, I can’t see it when I look out the windows, which helps my mood.

Last weekend was the first weekend we got to see my husband in over a month! And, ironically, the weekend was HORRIBLE. Saturday was pretty uneventful. My husband slept till 3pm, which was extremely irritating, but I was able to do my work without his help, got it all done, and moved onto Sunday.

Sunday we had much to do. And I had told my husband this on Saturday night. We have to get things arranged for the baby–he’s due in 6 weeks. As many people know, but apparently my husband does NOT know, women who are 8.5 months pregnant are not supposed to climb on high ladders, lift heavy things, or mow in 105 degree weather.

Hm. I just posted a whole long story about why I had to mow yesterday while my husband sat inside. It wasn’t interesting, and despite that my husband is a wonderful man, that story would convince you otherwise. Therefore, I’m going to let you know up front: He wanted to mow for ONCE but insisted on doing it at 6pm.

But see , I’m 8.5 months pregnant and had a trillion things I needed my husband’s help with yesterday, namely going to Costco by 6pm (when it closes)–with husband, per mucho heavy lifting. So, it’s not in any way going to work out to start mowing at 6pm–not even in a parallel universe. It’s not even going to work to mow at 3pm. And as we all know, MY HUSBAND CAN’T DO A DARN THING BEFORE 3PM.

So I got REALLY pissed off, and mowed at 12. I can’t even talk about it any further without breaking something really expensive that my husband owns. I almost divorced him on Sunday over this. I am not sure how I thought that’d work out with the baby due in 6 weeks, but somehow I felt it would be fine.

ANYWAY, my husband now claims that I didn’t explain the Costco 6pm,  million errands I needed his help with thing (though I clearly remember explaining it about 5 times before I mowed in a REALLY loud voice–even all of our neighbors heard it, that’s how loud my voice was, and I was yelling about it as I mowed. So I’m not sure how my husband missed that. After all, he was sitting on the couch in the living room, which is divided from the yard only by a screen door, which is very easy to hear through.)

But in his defense, he did BELIEVE he intended to mow at 6pm and he does BELIEVE I failed to explain why that wasn’t going to work out.

Whatever. The lawn is now mowed. We are not divorced. That is a miracle, but it is true. I am still kind of fantasizing about moving to my Granny’s house and having a homestead with a big garden, cows, pigs, chickens, and never seeing my jerk husband again. And marrying a really hot country guy who ALWAYS mows and NEVER wears a shirt and who …

Sorry, gotta stop. I now need to write one additional post, which will include a somewhat hideous photo (in my opinion), and which unfortunately also relates to the lawn.

I need to start this post by saying that my husband is one of the most WARM and LOVING fathers ever. He’s extremely attentive and dedicated to our boys. When he spends long weeks at work, he insists on spending whole weekends with the boys. I’m always welcome to go along of course, but whether I do or don’t, he insists on taking the boys out from morning till night and spending every waking moment with them. He doesn’t need a break from them. He doesn’t get bored and need to do something else. Being with his boys is fun for him. There is nothing more important to him on earth.

So, his thoughts and feelings on being a father definitely never needed any improvement. However, there are also fathering skills. These have needed quite a bit of improvement and have caused a few issues, I’m tempted even to say serious ones, though now they are resolved.

For a long time, my husband didn’t believe in saying “no” to children. He felt it was better to “trick” the child into doing what you want them to. This alone almost lead to divorce because when I DID say no, I’d get constant dirty looks from both husband and son, and my husband would shake his head and stuff like this. Way too annoying to put up with.

He also wants to overindulge the kids. Toys and candy. He would have no problem giving them two to three toys and two to three huge desserts every single day. I think this might be a hero complex of some kind. I don’t know what it is, except that it can get really irritating for me.

Thankfully, we’ve evolved and changed. Well, I guess I should say my husband has evolved and changed. I started ready to compromise on our child-rearing practices. He wasn’t. He had his own ideas of how things should be (without having consulted a single soul). How did this get resolved? Well, my husband had to work out of town for 6 months and was amazed at the positive changes in our son when he returned. My son was much happier and healthier due to consistency, reasonable boundaries, and having learned the meaning of “no” when necessary. It was obvious that our son was doing very well.

Now my husband even gives our sons time outs when they’re bad! I’ll always be the stricter parent, but that’s ok. We agree enough to be really consistent with our children, and it shows in their confidence, behavior, and habits. Not to toot our own horn or anything…I don’t often talk about my boys on this blog (as I have a whole ‘nother blog for that), but they are GREAT kids, and I am extremely proud of them!

This is going to be short, though I could easily write eight pages on this topic.

As some of you may know from prior posts, my husband does NO housework. Not even the “man” stuff like mowing (well, he has done that twice in the year we’ve had a lawn–and each instance resulted in daylong dirty looks from him; also, I am the one who planted the lawn, so I don’t really think we can count those two mowing instances now that I think about it…)

ANYWAY, the one household-related thing he does is run errands for us. He rents movies, goes to the grocery store, stuff like this.

But most of the time, when he goes to the grocery store for stuff, he creates havoc. A LOT OF HAVOC. It doesn’t matter how many items he’s getting–four, two, one–there are going to be issues.

The other day, for example, I said, “Hey, we should probably stock up on rice.” (I know, I’m behind. Now that Costco NEVER has rice on the shelves, Holly Kay’s going to stock up. Good thinking…)

So, there are two main choices if you want a tasty, yet quality, “big” bag of rice–Mahatma and Gold Star. I asked my husband to get 2 big bags of Mahatma rice. I explained, “These bags will cost like $7, but the same size of the Gold Star will be like $20!!!”

Low and behold, my husband buys Gold Star. So, in one grocery trip, he got 2 bags of rice and managed to spend $43. I enjoyed that quite a bit. Wouldn’t you?

PS. Because of this incident, I now have new “instructions” on how to request that my husband pick up store items. (Yes, that’s correct–I’m being disciplined, if you will, for my husband’s error.) I am NOT to call and ask. I am NOT to send an instant message. I am to EMAIL the list–this way he can check it by cell phone in the store. Got it.

I was so thrilled to read Mathew Baldwin’s recent post on Defective Yeti (hilarious and interesting blog, might I add–do check out his stories about his wife, whom he calls the Queen, especially the story called “Beaurocracy“).

But back to my original point. This writer, tech guy, dad, and husband seems QUITE WITH IT. So when I saw his recent post on NOT owning a cell phone, I was surprised, but then relieved.

I also have no cell phone. My friends reading are going “Don’t lie. You HAVE one, you just don’t use it.” Well friends, I haven’t bothered to tell anyone, since I literally NEVER use my cell phone and actually kind of hate my cell phone for that very reason.

But I have lost my cell phone. Don’t worry, I deactivated it temporarily. Beyond that, I can’t make myself care enough to decide how to proceed. I’m having a little quandry–get a new cell phone? I don’t want a new one. I hate it because people call me on it and leave important messages–but it’s never charged. When it is charged, I can’t find it. I stopped giving the number out long ago, yet my doctor, dentist, places like these, they just can’t stop using that number. I think my contract is up too. I was thinking switch to a pre-pay type thing, that way I’ll have the phone for emergencies…but I don’t think they’ll let me do that with my current number.

So, as my quandry continues, I’m paying the $30 or $40 per month just to keep the number. Till I decide. Yes, that’s wasteful. My father would NOT be happy about this. But that’s okay, because I’m in my thirties, so I don’t really have to consult with him on this.

Anyway, I love the reactions Matthew posts–particularly those for years 2005 (Irritation) and 2005 (Derision). I’ve gotten these responses too, but not for not having a cell phone, just for never using it. It was kind of nice to see that at least one other fellow human also has yet to catch up to this particular mainstay of modern technology.

PS. Did I mention that my husband DOES have a cell phone, and that he paid way more than one of his car payments to purchase it? But see, unlike me, he needs a cell phone because he can’t remember his work or home phone numbers. That’s a whole ‘nother post though.

I am wearing my husband’s underwear today. I hope that’s ok with everyone. No, I’m not talking boxers–which I don’t wear, but which really wouldn’t warrant a post on a blog–well, unless the boxers had pictures of naked girls on them or something. I’m talking standard Hanes briefs. (Not the small briefs, as I wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of those, heck no.) Just the regular, standard men’s underwear.

It’s not kinky or me trying to be some kind of sexy tomboy type Hanes model or anything. (And believe me, at these late stages of pregnancy, I don’t think I’d sell TOO many pairs of Hanes to the guys by modeling them anyway…)

It’s because I haven’t done laundry in a very long time. I’m having laundry problems. Very serious ones. So serious that they’ve led me to wear a man’s underwear for the first time in my entire life.

The only other choice was the underwear of my skinny little 6 year-old boy. That just seemed wrong. It also seemed tight.

So, you might want to know how it feels to wear a man’s underwear. (Or if you’re a man, we’ll assume you know how it feels to wear your own underwear, but perhaps you are curious to know how it feels to a woman.) To be honest, it feels very comfortable. There is a nice big waistband. I like that. Mine don’t have that. They have little bitty waistbands so as to prevent lines that show through clothing. Probably this big man waistband is showing through my clothing in a very big way. Ha ha. How attractive–that kind of puts the finishing touch on my whole late-pregnancy, need haircut, man underwear lines showing through maternity clothes look. I can see the envy written all over your face right now.

In addition, they are kind of hot, not as in sexy, but as in too warm. They are made of a thick cottony material. I prefer the thin material mine are made of. Wonder why men’s underwear are so darn thick? Most likely support needs. Yes, that makes sense. Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers. I’m just lucky to have underwear to put on today.

I’m very sorry if this post is a little too graphic for your taste. I will sincerely try to tone it down tomorrow. And will hopefully do laundry between now and then, as the next step is actually wearing my husband’s pants.

Check out this really interesting article about marriage and relationships from Psychology Today. My favorite quote from the whole article from page 2: Compatibility is overrated.

THANK GOODNESS. I have often become very worried about this very issue in my marriage. My husband and I are quite happy together. But you look around and see those couples who have hobbies together, have similar social habits, similar jobs, similar personalities–it can make a girl say “Hm. Is it okay to be this different?” (Okay, in my case, I usually ask, “Hm, is it okay that my husband is this different?”)

I’m talking differences of the extremely obvious type. For example, I was an English teacher for a long time. Now I write books about English. My husband speaks English with a heavy foreign accent, NEVER uses the word “the” (ever). True story: he once wrote the word “pennies” spelled beginning with “pen” + “is” in a memo to me. Put all of those letters together–does that spell “pennies”? NO, it does not. Try being an English teacher and getting a note like this from your husband–I PROMISE, no matter how much you love him, it will cause you to become paranoid about your compatibility together.

Oops, I just got the urge to list a few other things that caused me to worry whether we are compatible. Anyone mind? If not, here we go:

1. I am social. To says my husband is “not social” doesn’t quite cover it. I LOVE hanging out with family at huge family gatherings. However, at these events, you will find my husband sitting in a corner with his head down on a table or his hands covering his eyes. It looks very odd, and it makes my family nervous.
2. I like keeping up with current national and world news. He has a very limited “news scope,” if you will. Also, I love anything and everything on topics like health, psychology, pop culture, celebrity gossip, basically any and all updates about most things. My husband likes updates about new softwares and only news from Russia and other former CIS nations. Don’t let me even try to talk psychology or pop culture with this man. He has no clue what the “Brady Bunch” even was. I am NOT kidding.
3. I like doing things early and during the day like normal people. He likes to begin his day at 10pm and get everything done by 6am, then go to sleep. Kind of like a bat.
4. I like traveling to different cities and countries. He likes staying home to be sure he doesn’t “miss out” on something or heaven forbid “risk” a possible deadline that may occur months from now. Granted, we have a few saving graces here. One is that my husband is from the wildest country EVER, so even living with him and talking about his upbringing is almost better than a real trip abroad. Two is that he has still traveled a great deal and to countries I would love to visit–he tells me about these places, and that’s fun. But still, real travel= rare or nonexistent for the rest of my future. Incompatibility big time.
5. I am responsible. He doesn’t think or care about being responsible. I keep up with health, renewing driver licenses, things like this. My husband doesn’t forgets things like his own birthday. His passport expired 5 years ago right before he went to Canada for four months. He’s from a DIFFERENT COUNTRY but can’t go there due to no passport. For several years.
6. I am not a big person on degrees. Associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, Ph.D. Whatever. However, I do like a guy with a high school diploma, and I’m not entirely sure my husband ever got one. I suspect he didn’t attend his last 2 years of high school. Granted a war was going on in his country. Also, he did get a bachelor’s, then a master’s degree in fine arts. But still, every time I try to ask about the high school diploma, both he and his mother get ALL dodgey-eyed. Whatever.
7. I always had a very strong work ethic. My husband has no work ethic unless he loves his job. In his movie jobs, he has always worked till the wee hours of the morning and is a model employee because he loves this line of work. However, he has had other jobs where he actually SLEPT. Yes, SLEPT AT WORK. Yes, while we were married AND following and preceding long bouts of unemployment. (Note: This aspect of our incompatibility actually did almost lead to divorce after 1 year of marriage. But then he caught on and got his act together. But not due to work ethic. Due to wife trying to kick him out.)

I’d say these examples prove that my husband and I are what you’d call incompatible at the most basic levels, wouldn’t you? YET I am very happy with him. He takes such good care of us. He’s fun. We have dreams together. We have already made many dreams come true. We have great children and have made a wonderful family together.

So, I love this article. It proves that there’s absolutely no reason my husband and I need to be compatible. And thank goodness for that. Because we have only three things in common that I can think of after about one hour of pondering the topic: shared ambition, lots of respect for each other, and both really value family above all else. Oh, and we both know Russian, oh, plus neither of us are Russian. Okay five things in common. That’s all. (And one of them is something we’re both not. I’m not even sure I should count that one.)