Husband Clothes

There’s a post on this blog somewhere when I made fun of my husband’s financial know-how. Well, I’m going to have to take that all back now because of something very sketchy I did.

If you have said or done something dumb lately, or need a boost in confidence for whatever reason, I’M WRITING THIS POST FOR YOU. When you start feeling down, you’ll be able to think to yourself, “Hey, I may have screwed up. But at least I’m not as dumb as Holly Kay.”

I live in Southern California where rent prices are atrocious. Our rent is almost $1600 (and our apt is definitely one of the cheaper ones in our area, I know sad…I wish we could live in the dangerous part of town where rents are less than $1,000 but I can’t as I have to think of our children…) ANYWAY…

I was just balancing our checkbook. Low and behold, look at my carbon copy rent check. I should have written the $1600 check to our landlord. Well, I didn’t. Guess who I wrote the $1600 check out to. Multiple-choice:

1) I wrote my rent check for $1600 to myself.
2) I wrote my rent check for $1600 to my landlord’s dog.
3) I wrote my rent check for $1600 to a pizza place, Round Table Pizza (like Pizza Hut but tastier).

Unfortunately, if you chose #3, you were right. Yes. I wrote a check for $1600 to a pizza joint. (NO, I didn’t even do this while ordering pizza. I simply wrote the check out to the pizza joint for $1600 and gave it to my landlord.)

Off to clear up this chaos. Hm, and I was kinda hopin’ to work today. Oh well. Don’t care. Don’t care about check to pizza place. Don’t care about work. Only care about my children and husband today. (Clearly, the insomnia has taken a toll on my pea brain. Will continue to try new sleeping routines and hope they help.)

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.

Last night, I FINALLY accomplished my 3-month goal of getting into bed around 11:30 pm. This was a HUGE feat and took me many weeks. I gradually had to work my way down from somewhere around 2:00 am (and I may be lying to not tell you how late I was really staying up, but let’s assume it was 2:00 am). Please note: This story references “hot heroes.” However, my husband is most definitely the the hottest hero in my eyes, despite that he slept and snored through most of the following events.

Then, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I hear SCREECHING tires, the LOUD and cursing voice of a male very near my window, and a super loud car motor SPEEDING off!!!! THEN I hear my neighbors talking outside (and one of them is veeery cute, so it quickly occurred to me that I’d better go make sure everyone’s safe, um hm). I go downstairs, and they give me the full story. Turns out cute neighbor guy–we’ll refer to him as My Hero from here on-was the one who yelled.

Turns out My Hero yelled curse words because two THIEVES threw a big metal thing through the driver window of MY car in attempts to get my GPS thing. (This was left in my windshield by my husband last time he used my car. I failed to remove it because I don’t like using it, or understand how it plugs/unplugs into my car.)

Um, have you seen how crashed up my car ALREADY WAS?? (If no, here’s a photo.) Thanks thieves. Anyway, THEN, I called the police to file a report. But WHAT LUCK, way, way, hot police officer came to take the report!!!! YES! So many handsome men paying so much concerned attention to me.

Then MORE LUCK. I called the car window repair people. Tomorrow they’re coming to fix it. No rental necessary. Labor, parts and all $275.

Only remaining problem: How can I ensure no one gets in and drives my car away before tomorrow? It is, after all, pretty much open to the public, if you will. Then, I had a total “Husband Idea.” LEAVE THE GLASS ON THE SEAT AND IN THE FLOOR. Perfect deterrent. No thief is going to sit on this much broken glass to steal a car that looks like this. And they are certainly not going to take the time to clean it. HA. Genius. Thanks.

I suppose I should be irritated about this situation, but actually I’m feeling very 1) proud that I got in bed at 11:30 pm, though it was 3:30 am when I got back to bed, 2) happy my husband was home “early” yesterday so he was here when this happened, 3) blessed at the two handsome heroes who protected me–you can call it “informed me of information” or “took a police report,” I call it “protected me”, and 4) grateful that no person or property was hurt except my already crashed up car.

What an interesting weekend considering my monotonous life. Perhaps things are heating up around here! I’ll keep you posted.

Ha ha! I’m cracking myself up. I had a flashback on several assumptions I used to make about marriage. I wasn’t even one of those “I’ll find my knight and white castle” type girls. I was more one of those “please don’t let my husband turn out to be an undercover drug addict/criminal/person with 10 wives in other states” types. I specifically remember being SURE that marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Yet I still had no idea. Here are some of my thoughts from about 10 years ago:

1) Warnings about finances causing trouble in marriage don’t worry me at all. Our finances will be FINE. Hello, two people = twice the money = we’ll pretty much be rich.

2) Everyone says you have to communicate. OF COURSE we’ll communicate.

3) Why does everyone think children cause stress in marriage? As long as I marry a nice guy, this will be noooooo prooooblem. (Note: I did marry a nice guy. The topic of the problems a nice husband can cause with child-rearing needs a whole long post. I’ll write one soon.)

4) Women don’t want to have sex when they’re married? That’s a bunch of fluff. Not me. I’m sure we’ll have sex daily. Probably more than once each day.

5) Why do people say women get really bitchy and don’t care about their appearance after they get married? NEVER! I will make time to focus on me and I will make him help me. (And I just assumed this plan would unfold simply and easily.)

6) Why does everyone say it’s hard to handle your spouse’s habits day in and day out? That won’t really apply to us. We already know each other’s annoying habits, and we’re okay with them.

7) When you are married, you never feel lonely because you always have someone to talk to and sit with. (HA HA! Try NEVER. Married people are waaaaay too busy to sit and talk. And when they’re not busy, they’re too annoyed or trying to have fun and relax for once. Please.).

8 ) I don’t care if my husband gets fat. And he won’t mind if I get fat. We love each other, and our love runs much deeper than weight. Also, we won’t get fat because we’ll be on a lifetime good health plan. That’ll be one of the many things we do together as a couple. I will always have plenty of money and time for proper meal planning. We will be so healthy.

9) People talk too much about the hardship of sacrifices in marriage. Please. First of all, my husband would never ask me to give up anything really important to me. Secondly, even if he did, I will be happy to sacrifice for him because I love him so much.

10) When things get hard, which they won’t, we’ll just always remember that DIVORCE is NOT an option.

Any married people totally cracking up right now? If so, I’m glad I could put some humor into your day.

Does your guy seem to get a lot of traffic tickets? For example, does he get traffic tickets that make your car insurance twice that of any other person you know? I would LOVE to tell you exactly how much we pay in auto insurance per year, but I have to pretend like I don’t remember. That’s what I tell anyone who asks because I am SO ASHAMED.

I am very happy to say that over 9 years of marriage, my husband has gone from receiving approximately 3 tickets per year to about one every other year. Not bad–I mean, as long as your standards are bottom of the barrel, as mine are.

My favorite ticket was the time he came to California about four years ago. We were soooo poor. We couldn’t pay for a room/apartment near his job, couldn’t figure out the bus schedule (or even if buses even went to his job location), and couldn’t afford to rent a car. SO, he bought this $500 clunker that was like 20 years old. He said insurance came with the car. I asked him to double check as that sounded strange. (He said he trusted the used car salesman–always prudent.) He mentioned that he needed to get the tail light fixed too. Soon after, he said he’d taken care of these things. Mm hm.

One week after getting the car, he got pulled over. $200 ticket for broken tail light. And the officer was going to give him a $1500 ticket for no insurance, plus mandatory court appearance. (My reaction: GOOD MOVE HONEY. Did the officer mention if we can pay that traffic ticket with a credit card?)

My husband explained to the officer that the car dealership had told him insurance was part of the package but he didn’t have the documentation on hand. So the very, very, very, extremely, SO VERY KIND police officer gave my husband the benefit of the doubt, omitted the mandatory court appearance, and made the ticket $200 (tail light) + $300 (no evidence of insurance or something like this). Whew! (Are you a police officer? If so, I love you because of this incident. In a nonsexual way of course, though has anyone noticed how attractive police officers tend to be? WOW.)

So my husband fixed everything, but he continued to get tickets. Till one day a judge blessed him out in court over a wreckless driving (due to speeding) ticket. I have no idea what was said, but after that, the tickets suddenly stopped. Now only one ticket every other year. I count my lucky stars every night. I love my husband, and I feel much better about his safety now. And our cars. And our finances. And our marriage.

PS. Are you a judge? If so, you may be the one who fixed my husband’s driving problem, so I will do anything for you that is morally sound… Need a free babysitter for your children? Need a maid? Need some one to do your online shopping for you? Need money? I’ll send any sum. You saved me thousands of dollars by scaring my husband. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Hi! I have gotten some very interesting emails this week. My personal favorites are the ones where guys are asking about my husband’s job. Nothing about girls or marriage. No, no. Just questions about jobs and money.

Alrighty. I love talking about jobs. In fact, I have the very odd hobby of job searching. I have a full-time writing job (from home). It pays nicely, and I love it immensely. So, I don’t need a job. But I NEED to job search. It’s probably related to filling a dysfunctional void of some sort–kind of like alcoholism, except instead of never getting enough whiskey, I never get enough job searching. (I just reread that, and it frightened me. Oh well.)

Um…yes, this brings me to my story about my husband’s job. OH, it’s related to animation. (Due to that detail, he may force me to remove this post–should this happen, I apologize in advance.)

If you or your husband wants to work in the movie industry–you could be in for a doozy of a time. Let me recommend Gnomon (wierd name, but very high-quality, famous school.). IF you have like $20-30,000 for your husband to attend a program like this, this could be a quick, easy path for you–assuming he’s talented and a go-getter type. We did not. So, if you are like us, here are some possible challenges you could encounter:

1) As your husband learns his trade, he will be on his computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and unemployed for at least 3 years. Actually, I suspect this applies to numerous techie job–not just animation. Of course, some men would work in the day learn at night…I’m sure that’s nice for you.

2) Your husband’s going to “need” to buy lots of computer equipment in order to GET projects, and later a job–so this will be around $15,000-20,000 altogether. Not buying the equipment will mean that you’ve survived the 3 years of unemployment for nothing. Again, this pretty much applies to all techie jobs.

3) If you’re like me, you’ll get lucky and live on the East Coast, while all movie jobs are on the West Coast. BUT your husband will get offered contracts, not jobs, meaning you will now get to pay for 2 places, so he can go, but you can stay and maintain your full-time job with benefits in Virginia. (So you would be a single mother to your first child, oh, and pregnant with your second child. Also, you might have horrible morning sickness, not for 3 months like most people, but for 6, while your husband is away). This will last at least 6 months. And it may happen 2-3 times before your husband gets a full-time job.

4) Then you will move to California, quit your job, and never see your husband again because he’ll be working all the time. HAHAhahahaha. (This is a joke, but not so funny.)

5) It’s not over. Now your husband will need to “specialize.” So, get ready for him to go study in Canada at Vancouver Film School for 4 months while you stay in California with your, now 2 children, as a single mom. Oh, don’t expect him to have a valid passport. He might forget to renew it, as he forgets to renew his driver’s license (which he now has 3 of, which is not really legal–but it’s due to living in 8 cities in 9 years). Point being: you might freak out for 4 months while your husband is in Canada studying, as the passport law changes–you will be worried that they will not let him back into the US.

Okay, but it’s not this hard for everyone. It’s also not this easy for everyone. My husband is very talented both artistically and in science, so once he got his first real job, things moved extremely quickly. He has friends who have had the same job for years but want out and can’t find anything.

Finally, he didn’t job search. I job searched. For years, I sent out 10-50 resumes a week, along with demos. Yes, this was very dysfunctional of me. Of course, my husband should have done his own job searching. However, as I mentioned in a prior post, his theory was you apply to ONE job and wait for the answer before applying to the next job. Guess how often companies like Dreamworks answer–NEVER. Unless they want you. That wasn’t the case. Fortunately, it was fine with him to “let” me take over and start sending out stuff like mad. And it worked very well with my job searching..um..hobby.

These things said, this was fuel for our marriage. It was very hard, but at the same time, we are both risk-takers and like setting goals. We are not afraid of tough times and can handle stuff. Now that things have been settled for a few years, life is pretty good. But this is NOT the road for everyone. We have seen a few divorces among friends already due to the work hours alone! Beware of demanding techie jobs…beware.

This post is mainly for the guys out there. I got my first Guy Feedback that I am mean and materialistic! You are probably saying it in a joking way, as in “you’re so mean” being sarcastic code for “you’re sooooo tolerant and nice based on what I read on your blog.” If you ARE serious, though, you should enjoy this post. (And ladies, I already know you will because it’s about men and how they are about their cars.)

Well, I guess I am kind of mean sometimes…but more on that later. However, being materialistic is definitely NOT one of my (numerous) vices. In fact, like many women, I get nice stuff for everyone except myself. AWWWW, did I make that sound sad? Because it’s not at all sad. In fact, I LOVE it. I refuse to get myself stuff, and I brag about it. I like old stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I look nice in public–hair fixed, makeup on, etc–BUT I prefer old stuff for most situations. Also, I don’t have lots of stuff! As little as possible. Sometimes I get dirty looks from people who think my used furniture is strange or that my crashed up car is ugly. Guess what. I don’t care because I save money, and I enjoy it.

My husband, on the other hand, is somewhat materialistic. He’s not horrible about it BUT he has two huge things–his car and a gargantuous TV he forced me to buy. (By “forced,” I mean that these expensive things cut through the essence of my soul. Yet, he kept lecturing me for weeks about why he really “needed” each one. And I am way too busy for lectures, plus they annoyed me and put me in a bad mood, so finally, I gave in).

Again, this post is for guys. I know exactly what will sway you–pictures of cars. Now, look at the photo of my crashed up 7 year old car on top and my husband’s nice new BMW on the bottom. Then go ahead and tell me: Who’s materialistic now?

Wow, it’s 1:30am, and my poor husband is still at work. I am so glad I already posted the mean post about how he wasted a lot of money, because I would feel kind of bad about posting it now…Well, not that bad I suppose. Who am I kidding? I love mean posts about guys, especially the ones I post about my husband.

So, I was going to try to wait for him, but I am falling asleep sitting up. He hasn’t worked this late since…hmmm, probably since we moved to California 4 years ago. Wow, time flies.

Notice, I don’t gripe about his work hours. A big part of that is that I like not being forced to watch new movie trailors and You-tube videos every 5 minutes, which is what happens when he comes home. Another big part of it is that I know what it’s like to not have enough income to pay bills. SO, I gripe about many things, and all for excellent reasons, but never my husband’s work hours. I’m just glad he has a good job and loves it even though it’s hard.

Hi, I was just reminiscing about all this money that my husband has wasted over the years. I think I need to start a new blog called Pushover Wife. Two large sums wasted:

1. Wasted Money on Expensive Gym: We lived in Arlington, Virginia, and my husband wanted a gym membership. There were 2 gyms very close to us: the YMCA and the REALLY super expensive gym in the Ballston Mall. So, of course, my husband needs to choose the expensive one at the mall because of “the hours.” (What hours? He had a part-time job!) Whatever. So, he gets that one. $70 a month. Yeah, so YMCA was only $30–the HOURS, he needs the convenient hours. Then guess what. HE WENT TWO TIMES IN A YEAR. Then to stop the membership cost us $200. So, let’s do the math: $70 x 10 months (or more) = $700 + $200 = $900. There we go, $900 wasted dollars. Yaaaaaaay.

2. Unnecessary Waste on U-haul Moving Van: Soon after this gym catastrophe, we moved from Arlington, VA to Reston, VA. My husband was in charge of the moving van. Thank goodness, because he literally did NOTHING else–except load the van (but that’s van-related). Didn’t pack one, single box.

I advised him to call friends to help us move our things. Oh no, he says, I’ll do it myself. Okay, honey, do it yourself. That’s a really smart plan–that’s why everyone always avoids calling people for help when they move–because it’s just plain smart. This was only one of his many brilliant moving theories. We have moved 8 times in 9 years of marriage.

So, he loads the van and drives it to Reston. Well, low and behold, he was so sore after loading all that stuff in the van that he could barely move for days. We reserved the U-haul for one day. ONE. Guess how many days it sat in front of our apartment? FOUR DAYS. This made a LOT of people mad:

1) Obviously, it made me mad. My STUFF was in the van, not the apartment.

2) It made our neighbor super mad. This was the guy who had the parking space beside us, as in, beside our MOVING VAN in the space sized for a car. His family gave us dirty looks for that until they moved out of the complex. So embarrassing.

3) It made U-haul furious. They YELLED at my husband when he drove the van back. Total cost for one day: $75. Total cost for 4 days: $300. Flat out waste–may as well have thrown $225 into a garbage can.

Tip: I’m putting a link to Upack here–it’s a company that helps you move by driving the van (but YOU pack the van). Used them to move from Virginia to California–saved LOTS.