Husband Clothes

Ladies, in case you haven’t seen this wonderful article, it shows that guys create 7 hours of housework for ladies a week. And you know it’s true because it’s in Science Daily. (This is not The Enquirer, my friends. This is real stuff that’s been studied.)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080403191009.htm

I by no means want to say that ladies MUST be the ones to do the 7 hours of housework that guys create. However, in my situation, it will not be done if I don’t do it. I know because my husband and I almost got divorced over a 7-year fight trying to get my husband to be responsible for the dishes. For the majority of this time span, my husband didn’t have a job (not entirely his fault), but I worked full-time and attended graduate school at night. Now, if you have seen my husbands “handy work” (click here and here for examples), you can understand that I don’t particularly want him “helping me” with cleaning under normal circumstances–just when I had a full-time job + grad school (oh + pregnancy), and he was unemployed, it seemed like kind of a logical idea.

Anyway, he later got good jobs and many of them, and I finished gradschool, and the dishes no longer mattered as much. (Sidenote: My husband HAS done the dishes, meaning place them in the dishwasher, 2 times during our 9-year marriage. Neither of those times occurred during the 7 year battle.) OH, and another important detail: while most men create 7 hours of work, I think it’s safe to say that unemployed guys probably create at least 14 or 15 extra hours of work around the house. It’s simple physics: space, time, and mass. Mass in house for long time = many messes in many spaces. However, mass not in house = less time = fewer messes in fewer spaces.

Wow, I just realized that my losing the 7 year war over dishes kind of makes me an expert at something. HE HE. YES, I am the master doormat of housework. Just what I always wanted to be.

Whatever. I’m good a lot of stuff besides being a master doormat. Like Russian language and living in Moscow as an illegal American immigrant for 3 years. (I was young and stupid.) How many housework doormats can say THAT, hu??

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There is a disturbingly uncanny phenomenon that happens in our home about once every 4-6 weeks. I clean the bathroom big-time about once each month. (YES, that’s rare. SORRY. But that isn’t the disturbing part.) I’m talking about the Ajax comes out, tub gets scrubbed, floor and baseboards–it all gets a major overhaul. It takes like 4 hours. That bathroom sparkles and shines when I’m done, and it feels like spring every time I walk into that bathroom.

Here’s where things get psychic (or mean). It just so happens that my husband SHAVES about once every 4-6 weeks (hence his similarity to Grizzly Adams described here, till he shaves and is bald again.) SO, how is it that for each time he has shaved during our 9 years of marriage, he chooses the morning after my 4-hour bathroom scrub down? To be sure the psychic element is clear, I want to phrase this very precisely: When I don’t clean the bathroom, my husband doesn’t shave. When I DO clean the bathroom, my husband DOES shave the very next morning. For 9 years, he has done this like clockwork.

It may be important to mention that for the small, in between bathroom cleanings (Windex on the sink, mopping around the toilet–hi, 3 guys live here, gross), the shaving does not occur. Lazyhusby, are you out there? Please tell me why this happens. But I’m not feeling picky here–any husby (husband), just tell me why you think this takes place. Is my husband psychic? Is he just mean? Or is this some type of subconscious thing, kind of like right after you change the kitty litter, kitty immediately must let it rip…?

PS. I just realized, I may need to clarify for guy readers: The reason this is ironic is because hair on multiple surfaces is very difficult to clean up. Therefore, each time you shave, a pretty major bathroom cleaning must follow. (Yes, I know, you “clean it yourself.” But I think it’s safe to say that most ladies have to finish the job off. And by “finish off,” I mean “redo completely.”) Please note that your efforts do make the job easier and are greatly appreciated, which is probably why you don’t get griped at much for this, despite that it’s irritating. It’s just kind of an irritating fact of life that’s not your fault.

P.S.S. Every heard of “vacuum electric shavers”? Well, you need to. Here’s one below–4 stars, 190 customer reviews. Looks like a winner. I’m buying one.

Well, looks like it’s that time again. The grass has grown completely out of control. I keep thinking my husband will mow it (as he promises to do it every weekend), but no. Well, what did I expect…I was the one who single-handedly layed out this grass in the form of sod, after all. By the way, I was nearly lying down on the ground (okay totally lying down) when I snapped this artistic photo. Yes, that’s extreme, but I strongly felt that lying down would provide the best possible view of the length of the grass.

I suppose I should just go ahead and accept it right now: if the lawn is going to be mowed, I will probably be the one doing it…Wonder what would happen if I never mowed it? (This is not rebellion, as it would in no way influence my husband to mow–I’m actually just curious what would happen–like, would it STOP growing at some point?) I might just do that instead of mowing. It’ll be kind of like a research project.

I don’t expect my husband to do much housework. BUT garbage and mowing are his jobs. As you can see, this in no way means that he DOES them. (And, yes, I have told him. Crying, screaming, cursing, asking nicely–none of it matters. One year, we almost get divorced over housework, but that’s a story for another day. I’ve grown weary. It’s much easier just to simply have very low standards.)

PS. I keep hearing about this monkey grass stuff. I think ALL of our grass might be monkey grass. It grows really fast and in big clumps. Does this sound like monkey grass? Does it look like monkey grass? (By the way, the really tall thing in the foreground is just a weed. Also, all of the greenery around the flower garden are weeds.)

*Remember, MOTHER’S DAY is coming up on MAY 11. See ads on the right to places that have GREAT gifts as well as GREAT sales right now.*

Does your guy LOVE to store tool-related things that he never uses? Mine sure does. Especially cords. All kinds of cords. Phone cords (including the curly ones that no one can use anymore because they don’t have phones with cords), orange cords, black cords, cords with colored knobs at the end, cords with heavy black boxes at the end. He should open his own cord store. Well, one day, we learned a lot more about cords than we ever wanted to!

Valuable Safety Tip #1: Don’t ever use old cords, especially thin cords. They can catch on FIRE. I know this because once I was sleeping and my husband woke me up at 3am asking, “Do you smell smoke? I smell smoke. Where is it coming from?” It took me several minutes to understand what he was asking–I mean, how often do you wake up to someone asking you if you smell smoke? So, we went together into his studio where he worked (and used “the cord” with his computer). Oh, we smelled smoke alright. But we couldn’t see it. Everything looked fine.

That brings us to Valuable Safety Tip #2: Beware when you smell smoke in a room and the electricity suddenly shuts off. Why? Because this may mean that an outlet is catching on FIRE. So, we were standing there going, “hm, smell smoke, but all’s fine.” Then the lights shut off, and since it was night, the room was TOTALLY dark. This is the only reason we were able to see the source of the fire–because thank heaven, when outlets catch on fire, apparently the fires are usually small at first–like 4 inches high, but look out, they double in size every 2-3 seconds!!!!

I’m so sorry to say that the next moments are a blur, but I seem to recall both of us running around the room in circles and not doing anything useful for about one or two minutes as the fire grew larger (in all, it got about 3 feet tall in all). Then I THINK my husband somehow put out the fire using a blanket. He put it out very quickly, so almost no harm done. I am very grateful for that. (Had either of us known this of course, we’d have been checking cord in our house like crazy. By the way, by “house,” I mean “apartment.”) SO, in the end, all was okay. And you might want to check your cords.

(Sidenote: If you’ve had a small fire in your apartment, note that the magic Arm & Hammer Eraser things will not clean it. I know, they clean everything, but they will not clean black smoke residue off of walls, even if it’s only a little.)

I was looking in the refrigerator to fix breakfast, and I found the container of salsa below. For added effect, the photo is upside down, as was the salsa container. (Must add–it’s NOT because my husband was drunk and eating salsa and chips. He was perfectly sober last night, and I found it this morning):

I don’t understand why this was in the refrigerator. It’s empty. It’s dirty. The garbage can is right beside the refrigerator. In fact, putting it in the trash would have been EASIER, because then no need to even open a fridge door, just throw in trash.

Questions to guys: I just had a suspicion that this is not accidental. After so many reminders, why would he keep doing it? I am thinking there may be some type of thrill involved with this “empty things back in the fridge” thing. This HAS to be intentional, or at least serve some purpose. It just has to. These guesses may be way off, but let’s consider them a place to start. Could it be that:

1) When you insist on putting empty things in the fridge, it involves some type of trick you are playing? Kind of like: “I’m going to play a trick on people and make them think there’s salsa in here! They’ll never know the container is empty! hahahah!” ???

2) Putting empty things in the fridge stem from feelings of rebellion? I’m saying thoughts along the lines of: “I will show that biotch girlfriend of mine who’s in charge. I’ll put this d&^%# empty salsa container upside down in the fridge. That’ll show her to try to boss ME around.”

Anything of this nature? Sorry, if I seem really off target, it’s because I truly don’t get it. But I’m kind of interested in learning.

Hi. Make me feel better about this. Every guy does this, right? You have hangers all over your house that look just like this, true?

In case these photographs seem perplexing (because they are), let me fully explain them. The first photo is a hanger. No, the hanger did not come like that. It was a perfectly normal, metal hanger. Straight edges, triangular shape. Like all hangers.

But my husband, as you can see, bent the hanger upward on both sides. It kind of looks like it’s… smiling…if you will. The next photograph shows how the hanger is used. Yes, despite the new form, the hanger IS still used to hang up pants. As shown below, the edges that stick up are laced through the outer-most back belt loops of my husband’s pants.

As you can imagine, this ONLY works for pants. Don’t try hanging a shirt on there. Or a dress, skirt, sweater, or anything else. And pants, of course, become much more wrinkled on this little doo-dad, but as you know, that’s the way my husband wears his pants, so that works out perfectly.

Sunday we invited my husband’s friends over–two couples. Both, like us, somewhat new to the Los Angeles area. I fixed a HUGE spread. No joke–8 dishes. Intricate foods. And it was all good. Even King Picky Himself (my husband) complimented the food 3 times. I couldn’t believe it. So–you see all the work I put into that fun evening. And what, might you ask, did my husband contribute?

Well, what he did NOT contribute were nails–nails into my favorite living room shelf that has a back that fell off. Yes, it just fell off. I don’t know how, but it looks really stupid and embarrassing. See for yourself:

I even got nails for him! I got nails and gave them to my husband (and his hammer) and said really hurriedly, as I was in the middle of cooking the 8 dishes–”Please, please, please nail the back to the shelf, ok??? The company can NOT see this.

He says “Oh, yeah, I’ll do that in just a second.” The man was standing right by the shelf with nails AND a hammer in his hand, people. Six hours later, the food is ready, company knocks, back of shelf still sitting there, behind but kind of far away from the shelf.

As if this weren’t enough, OF COURSE, the company ended up in the living room congregated around the shelf, rather than in the dining room/kitchen area where only the side of the shelf would have been visible. (Just in case my husband is spying on my blog as I suspect he might be–THANKS a LOT for fixing the shelf like you promised.)

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Hi, I love this photo. It makes me feel better about my life. Sent from a nice girl in Washington, DC. Her boyfriend is “taking charge” of emptying the trash, and this photo proves it.

Does this photo make me feel good because my husband is good about emptying the garbage? Oh please. No. This photo makes me feel good that I have overcome the desire to ask him to do anything around the house ever. I know he’s not going to do it. There’s no point in asking, cursing, screaming, or even bringing it up. Granted, it took me about 5 years of time and lots of emotional turmoil, plus many sad days, and a few marriage counselors to learn this little trick of the trade (the “trade” being my marriage. Ha ha, good one! Get it? Trade easy life for life of taking out other peoples’ trash). Some guys learn. Mine doesn’t. Unless it has to do with software.

I’m not saying her boyfriend will never help. I’ve seen it happen–just not to me. So, um, I’m just saying that I’ll, um, keep you posted on any progress reports in the coming … uh…days.

I’m really tempted to call this post “Husband Can’t Do Anything Correctly.” But actually he did lots of great stuff for us this weekend–took us to the beach, took the boys out for ice cream and park while I did housework. Plus, as I mentioned in an earlier post, he’s looking mighty hot right now.

However, let’s not get on the “husband high horse.”

Does anyone else’s husband INSIST on closing blinds upside down? I’m guessing no. My husband insists that people can see inside unless the blinds are closed upside down–yes, that means he considers himself more an expert at the use of blinds than blinds engineers and manufacturers.

Also, as you can see, it looks STUPID. I have pointed out blinds in other peoples’ homes. I have shown him blinds in catalogs. He still says the right way is for the blinds to point UP. To make matters worse, it doesn’t matter how many times I turn them the correct way. He doesn’t care. He “readjusts” them.

Also, our blinds are UGLY, but he insists that they look fine. I need to shop for some new ones.

Okay, you are really not going to believe this. I probably shouldn’t post it, because now it will actually appear that my husband isn’t only strange. It will seem that he actually needs …um..well, treatment, if you will, as in from a psychiatrist or neurologist or something like that. I must admit, this was one of those times when I stopped, did a double take at my husband, saw that he was serious, and felt sheer panic. Panic that I had married an embecile. But don’t worry, I didn’t. I just thought that because of this REALLY bizarre idea he had.

So, why was I panicked? Well, I was trying to figure out how to arrange the furniture in each room of our new place. You know, will this dresser fit along the wall where the window is, or is it too long? Where to put the couch, TV, our bed, dressers, etc for the most floor space–stuff like this. Every plan I came up with, he hated. (He’s very picky–he doesn’t really like any ideas ever. I’ve grown used to it.)

I said, “Ok. Then how do you think we should arrange the bedrooms?”

His response: “We don’t need to think about that right now. We can tell the movers to put all of our furniture in the living room. Then we’ll move it into the rooms as we figure out how to arrange them.”

Did you see that? He was not joking.