Sunday, September 27, 2009

Success or the lack thereof

During a recent dinner, the Diva was prattling on about how her teacher has been asking for parents to volunteer in the classroom.
“So I told her you guys could do it,” she said, “since neither of you have jobs.”
Husband and I looked at each other.
“Honey,” I said. “Your dad is a firefighter.”
“Yeah. But that’s all he does, put out fires.”
We’ve never bragged much about ourselves, but maybe we should start, since our daughter apparently thinks our major life accomplishments involve knowing the words to “Rock Lobster” and being an excellent finder of post-storm worms.
Then last week, I received a notice from the Social Security Administration helpfully advising me of the benefits I’ve earned in my lifetime. It listed my annual income for the past quarter decade.
I was appalled. Let’s just say that if I had been responsible for paying back my college tuition, I might currently be up to the fall break of my sophomore year, not including beer money. (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for the college fund.)
What is success? Obviously it’s in the eyes of the user of the word. But society traditionally defines it as equivalent to making money, at least when it’s used in tandem with a type of career.
“She’s a successful writer,” for example, does not really translate into, “She’s very talented, and the manuscript she has written looks marvelous in the bottom drawer of her dresser where she keeps it.” That’s just an example.
When we decided to adopt the Tyrant, Husband said to me, “If we do it, then this is going to be your thing.” He meant that I would have to push other career goals aside and focus on the raising of our brood, at least temporarily. He wasn’t being sexist. It didn’t make sense for him to quit his stable job to stay home with the kids so that I could start looking for a job, right? Plus I have always thought full-time employment seemed highly overrated.
The ugly truth, I suspect, is that I am afraid of failure, and so I welcomed the opportunity to step down from the high dive and focus on swimming across the pool. Raising a family, I thought, was predictable and doable and impossible to fuck up. For some reason I have not let myself think ahead to the teen years.
Hot Firefighter Husband harbors no such fears. After the Diva came home seven years ago, he had a mid-life crisis and left his long journalism career to become a firefighter. There have been obstacles along the way, but overall the switch has been a remarkable success for all of us, particularly those of us who’ve always had a hankering for men in uniform.
Now that I’m writing again, it feels like I’m inching my way toward some small semblance of success. I would like to think there is some earned money potential in my future, but based on the last 25 years it seems unlikely.
So what is success? I’m a full-time mother working two (very) part-time jobs and blogging. This year I will make enough money to buy a 1998 Buick LeSabre with 108,800 miles, a new TemperPedic mattress or some low-end breast implants. But since we’re living in a house we can barely afford and sending our kids to a pre-school that costs more than community college, I think we’ll spend the money on boosting our supplies of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, dental floss and bleach, all of which we utilize at an alarming rate, though never at the same time.
I’m trying to redefine success for myself and my family. I want my children to believe that being successful includes being happy and productive, even if the products involved are homemade chicken noodle soup and clean matching socks, but first I have to believe it myself. And if I’m wrong about this and success does indeed relate to how much money you make, then I might as well keep plugging along at trying to change society’s definition. After all, at this point, what have I got to lose?

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

She's mean and she hits. I want to hit her back.

On the way home from the gym yesterday, the Tyrant yelled from the back of the van, “Mom! Open it!”
I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw she was holding a bag of potato chips. “Mommy’s driving, sweetie,” I said. “I’ll open it when---” THWACK. The bag of chips beaned me in the side of my head.
“Well, here they are,” I said.
So you’re on the edge of your seat reading this, I know. Did I slam on the brakes? Pull over and scream until my throat was sore? Eat the chips myself?
No. First I again took note of my 2-year-old’s remarkable aim. Then I opened the chips and tossed them back to her.
She ate one. “I don’t yike these,” she said. She emptied the bag into the cupholder and took a cereal bar out of her backpack. “Open it!”
“Honey, I’m not going to open any---” THWACK. That aim is something, I tell you.
I opened it and tossed it back to her. “I don’t yike it!” She threw it on the floor. Those of you familiar with my chronic roach problems are probably having an “aha” moment right now.
For a long time the Pterodactyl has been terrorizing the family. His screech contains some sort of sonar that penetrates the brain and he’s irritatingly adept at inventing behavior designed to drive me wild -- emptying a basket of clean folded laundry, scribbling on his sister’s favorite artwork, throwing a pencil at me because I didn’t draw an airplane the way he envisioned it.
But he’ll be five in a couple of months, and he’s becoming ever-so-slightly rational. Last night, after I took away his Blankie and Blue Puppy and Fuzzy Pillow because he called me a mean mom, he calmed down enough to get his treasures back and then asked me sweetly to snuggle with him. “Do you still think I’m a mean mom?” I asked. He pulled my face close to his. “Yes,” he whispered. But I didn’t care because at least he was going to sleep.
It’s the Tyrant who has everybody on the run now. We're all bearing scars from her. The boy has a bloody scratch under his eye. My elbow is bruised. She hits. She throws. She bangs. She scratches. She yells. She tells me to go to Time Out about 12 times a day. She’s crazy cute, and she loves to look at me, raise her eyebrows up and down, nod and smile, like she’s letting me in on her secret. But I don’t know her secret. I just think she’s nuts.
My friend Sahmmy (www.sahmmy.com) was appalled at the driving/potato chips story. “Uh-uh. No you didn’t. You pulled the car over, right? And threw the chips away?”
Sahmmy reasons that if I don’t nip this stuff now, the Tyrant will evolve into full-fledged delinquency by kindergarten. “What are you going to do when she’s 13? If she’s even around when she’s 13,” Sahmmy said. I allowed myself for a brief moment to think of an adolescent Tyrant living under a bridge with an eyebrow ring and a tattoo of a cobra around her leg. Ew.
Husband and I are struggling with the discipline thing right now. Discipline is hard work. I don’t like discipline. I much prefer yelling, evil eye stares and stomping my feet. I like my children to be slightly afraid of me so that they can’t tell that I’m actually afraid of them.
I’m not opposed to pops on the bottom. That’s what we call them, because I think it sounds better than hitting my child on the butt. But I don’t think they work, mainly because they’re not painful enough, and I’m not talking about physical pain because I absolutely would never do anything that caused a child more than a second of slight physical discomfort. No, I’m talking regret here. And think about it. Faced with a choice between, say, getting a flu shot and actually getting the flu, but still having to take care of everyone around you as they themselves get the flu and never actually getting to recover yourself except during the long uncomfortable nights when you’re shivering from the fever, wouldn’t you go for the easy short-lived pain of the injection? I’m just talking hypothetically here.
Anyway, a child psychologist recommended a book that essentially lauds “Time-Outs” as the cure for all bad behavior. It’s a decent-sized paperback, and serves as an excellent nightside coaster. The actual Time-Out philosophy has not worked for several reasons, the main one being that the Tyrant will not stay in Time-Out unless we sit on her, and even then we have to sit on her hands, too, or she’ll leave bloody scratches on our backs. She’s very strong.
Our latest tactic has been to put a hook-and-eye lock on her door so we can lock her in her room for Time-Out. I had been holding the door shut, but I started getting calluses on my hands and they hurt, so I asked Husband to install the hook-and-eyes. So far it’s working, though not necessarily as a deterrent. It’s mostly working as a chance for me to catch my breath, regroup, and say, “my children are adorable. my children are adorable. my children are adorable,” 20 times in a row.
If you don’t, upon spending significant amounts of time with young children, begin to have a better insight into child abuse, you need to have your empathy box refilled. I’m not talking about systemic, chronic abuse. I’m talking about the young woman who snaps in the grocery store parking lot because her 4-year-old unscrewed his sippy cup and dumped orange juice on the baby’s face. And the woman was up all night with the baby and hasn’t eaten anything but Cheez-Its all day. How hard is it for that woman to keep her hands to herself in that brief, maddening moment?
I'm not talking about the zany, hilarious stuff. As I'm writing this, for example, the Tyrant is lining up Dixie cups on the window sill and putting a dollop of bubblegum-flavored toothpaste in each one. I'm okay with that. I'm referring to the bad stuff. The hitting, the defiance, the absolute refusal to do something as simple as not spit chewed-up chicken nugget at the babysitter.
It’s hard. It’s very hard. I’m not Mother-of-the-Year, and I know there have been many times that I’ve handled the discipline thing wrong. But I thank my lucky stars every day that my kids came along after I’d been on this earth for nearly four decades, giving me time to ripen and mellow like that excellent Chardonnay I had the other night. Thank goodness I have the patience, or maturity, or age-induced anger management skills, whatever it is, to keep from harming my children.
It’s true that I want them to be afraid of me -- but not because I would ever harm them. As Sahmmy says, it’s good to keep them a little off-guard. I want them to fear me because I’m just a little nuts. Poor Tyrant. I guess that’s where she gets it.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Today by the numbers

10 -- number of inadvisable food products I’ve consumed today: potato chips, Cheetos, raw brownie batter, Nerds, blue Icee, Mandarin oranges in light syrup, handfuls of Special K with dehydrated red berries, cooked brownies, children’s GummiBear vitamins, and sour IceBreakers.
Discussion: We’re housebound. The Diva still has a fever, Husband is working, so I’m stuck at home with one sickie and two wild animals unable to do anything because of the sickie. I’m trying to placate everyone with junk food feeding frenzies. And I admit it...I’m weak. I cannot stand idly by and nosh on carrots while there are puffy Cheetos to be eaten. Not to mention fresh brownies.
9 -- number of times I’ve logged on to Facebook
Discussion: Now that I’m blogging, I have convinced myself (and Husband!) that maintaining my FaceFriends is an important part of my blogger success. I must keep a presence! I must remind people of my wit! I absolutely must know what everyone is doing at any given time during the day! And frankly, on a day when my most stimulating conversation involves where poop comes from, I just need to feel a little bit popular.
8 -- times the Tyrant has thrown a shoe at someone
Discussion: Okay, this is becoming a problem. The Tyrant has a temper. I’ve mentioned her remarkable aim -- she can bean me in the head with any given object from 10 paces. But shoes are her weapon of choice because there are approximately 98 shoes scattered around the house within easy reach. I’m not sure what to do about it. She won’t stay in timeout, and even taught herself to escape from the belt I have used to keep her there, which I don’t do anymore since it doesn’t work, so I’d appreciate you not calling social services on me. If I take away whatever she’s about to throw, she points her finger at me and screams, “PUH-SSSSSSSHHHHHHHH!” so threateningly that I fully expect to be turned into a wart hog when she’s done.
7 -- number of unsupervised minutes it took for the Tyrant to cover 80 percent of her body in black marker
Discussion: My children have always loved stickers, and then graduated to those temporary tattoos that quickly devolve into thin strands of rubber that won’t come off the skin. In addition, the Diva has always wanted me to give her “something to remember you” before heading off to school. So I started the tradition of using a Sharpie to draw a little heart on the inside of her wrist. I thought it was sweet. This has turned out to be a mistake. She interpreted my little love act to mean that drawing on oneself is good, and one of her favorite games is called “tattoo parlor” and includes a menu of things she can draw with associated prices. The Tyrant likes this game.
6 -- minutes all three children played nicely together with bubbles before someone blew bubbles directly into someone’s face
Discussion: The Pterodactyl plays the copy game. The Tyrant throws the Diva’s eraser into the toilet. The Diva takes her Nintendo and hides under the desk. The Tyrant throws a shoe at her. The Pterodactyl eats the Diva’s Oreos. The Diva cries. The Pterodactyl spits at the Tyrant. The Tyrant throws a shoe at him. He cries. The dog eats the Tyrant’s potato chips. She cries. Bubbles finally make everyone happy. Then....not so much.
5 -- number of “iCarly” episodes we’ve watched
Discussion: To all of you people who actually measure the amount of time your children spend in front of the television, I say, good for you. I don’t. I can’t. I’m one of those people who lives in mortal fear of the cable going out, particularly on housebound days when the temperature outside resembles the surface of the sun. And this “iCarly” show, I must say, I find entertaining. Just tonight, an entirely new episode focused on making fun of celebrity chef Bobby Flay by channeling him through a character named Ricky Flame. It was hilarious! In a this-is-how-I’m-spending-my-Saturday-night kind of way.
4 -- time I anticipated having my first glass of wine
Discussion: In fact it was closer to 6 p.m. because I took the children on a bike ride so we could all breathe some fresh air and I could confine them with seat belts for a little while. The problem with having wine, though, is that while it tastes divine and temporarily lifts my mood, it also exacerbates my fatigue so that my motivation for folding the five baskets of laundry has waned. Fortunately Husband won’t be home until morning so I can just pile everything on his side of the bed.
3 -- number of mysterious items the Pterodactyl has wrapped in aluminum foil and spread around the house
Discussion: There’s really nothing to say about this, except that I’m out of foil.
2 -- piles of poop the dog deposited in the front yard
Discussion: I grew up with dogs and I don’t remember spending half my life picking up poop like I do now. When did this become a daily chore? And like it’s not bad enough to use plastic baggies to grab steaming piles of shit -- when your dog is, like mine, addicted to baby wipes, paper towels, checkbooks, Band-Aids and other paper products, you find yourself pulling stuff out of said dog’s butt so often that it begins to feel like an actual accomplishment. Seriously. It’s disturbing.
1 -- number of times the Tyrant flung herself naked off the countertop while eating brownies and landed on her head.
Discussion: Okay, just so you know, I was RIGHT THERE when this happened, and as she fell I grabbed her ankle and held it securely, so that for a moment she dangled upside down and I thought I had saved her from falling. But she’s freakishly wiry and started bucking like a wild mustang, thereby wriggling from my grip and landing on her head from about a foot or so up. I picked her up and set the timer for five minutes, which is my magic head bump number. If a child who has been bonked on the head cries for less than five minutes, we don’t worry about it. More than five requires action. The Tyrant stopped crying in three minutes. I ate her brownie.

**The exactitude of the above numbers has been approximated. Everything else is factual.

Friday, September 18, 2009

The worst flu symptom

I’m on the mend. The Diva has a fever of 101, headache and a tummy ache, though she claims to have a tummy ache 97 percent of time anyway so it’s hard to tell if that’s a symptom of anything.
At the doctor’s office, she tested negative for the flu, though due to last night’s horrific nosebleed that left the bathroom looking like the aftermath of a machete fight, she couldn’t produce enough quality snot for a good sample.
The nosebleed began soon after the second fever spike. My poor little Diva is accustomed to nosebleeds, unfortunately, and knows what to do, and rarely involves me unless she can’t stop the flow, which happened last night. I settled her in my bed with a couple of towels and helped her squeeze her nostrils. I rested her forehead on my shoulder when her neck got tired. I woke up Hot Firefighter Husband every 10 minutes to consult:
“Honey, we can’t get the bleeding to stop.”
“Huh? What? Just keep squeezing. ZZZZZZZZ.”
Ten minutes.
“Sweetie? Should we try something else? She’s starting to spit up blood.”
“Huh? What? She’ll be fine. ZZZZZZZZZZZ.”
Ten minutes.
Me to the Diva: “Okay, I think it’s slowing down. Just lay here for a minute while I get you some water.”
Husband: “Huh? What? She’s laying down here? Okay. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.”
It’s slightly astounding to me that this man, while at work, can insert an IV into someone’s vein five minutes after waking up -- because at home, when he’s in bed asleep, I’m pretty sure that even if the house was burning down, he would need a cup of coffee before getting out of bed.
And for a medical professional, he’s remarkably blase. Yesterday morning, he arrived home from work and saw the Diva in her pajamas, and I told him she had fever. “So....she’s staying home from school?” he asked. Um......yes, Mr. Paramedic, that’s the recommendation of every health organization on the planet right now, that a person with fever avoid all contact with living things.
Anyway, the Diva probably has the flu, despite not passing her flu test. Oink.
When her fever’s raging, she’s freezing and miserable. A little Motrin brings quick relief, and puts her on an ibuprofen high that makes me tempted to send her to school for a little while. Apparently this strain of flu causes 7-year-old girls to develop verbal diarrhea and become infected with inane, unanswerable questions. Or they’re answerable, but complicated. Okay, fine. I just don’t have the patience to answer them. But seriously. 
“Does Miley Cyrus write her own songs?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why doesn’t she write her own songs?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Think what?”
“Why do you think she doesn’t write her own songs?”
“I just don’t.”
“But who writes her songs?”
“Honey, Mommy can’t talk right now. I have to focus.”
“What are you focusing on?”
“I don’t know.”
“But what do you mean, Mommy?”
“Okay, honey, you just have to stop talking for a minute.”
“Mom. That sounds a little like you’re telling me to shut up and it hurts my feelings.”
And so on. Then there’s this, as we’re pulling out of the Smoothie King parking lot: “Mommy, why does that sign say ‘Adam & Eve’ and ‘no one under 18 allowed’?”
“Well. Because it’s a place only for grown-ups.” Thinking -- is it reasonable for an Adam & Eve shop to be right next to a Smoothie King? Was there no dark side street available?
“So Taylor Swift could go there! Right, Mom? Because she’s 19!”
“Right. If she wanted to.”
So Taylor Swift, if you’re out there, please know that at least one little girl who counts herself as one of your biggest fans is happy that, though you’re still not old enough to (legally) have a drink with Kanye West, you are old enough to visit sex toy stores, and in fact she would like to know if you’ve ever been to one.
The flu, I can handle. The accompanying curiosity? It’s killing me.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Sick. Tired. But mostly sick.

It started with a few aches and pains. I thought I was feeling sore from carrying two children a half-mile back from the beach the previous day. (Impressive, yes?)
Day two, I felt a little lethargic. So I gave myself a blast of energy with a high-powered weightlifting session.
That was a mistake. By noon, I had fever. So did Husband. Plus he had a sinus infection and couldn’t breathe, and of course not breathing trumps fever-with-no-other-symptoms.
He rested. I went to the grocery, walked the dog, picked up the Pterodactyl from school, took him to karate, cooked dinner and bathed the kids.
Day three I felt decidedly worse. Day four, the fever broke and a convulsive cough appeared. Day five I went to the doctor. Bronchitis.
So I’ve spent five whole days wishing the hours away, desperate for the moment when the kids were all in bed so I can crawl into bed myself. It’s, for me, the most physically demanding aspect of motherhood -- going through the mommy motions when you know you should be only sleeping, drinking fluids and opening an occasional can of chicken soup.
When I had my hysterectomy a few years ago, I spent one night in the hospital. That next morning after surgery, the doctor came in to check on me. “You can go home as soon as you urinate,” he said.
“I can’t pee!” I nearly shouted. I suppose I said it with a little too much enthusiasm, but I really thought I could use another day of recovery. But then he started talking about sending me home with a catheter, so I focused all my attention on my peeing muscles and went home to “rest” with my 18-month-old son and 4-year-old daughter.
Then, like now, the most painful aspect isn’t really the physical discomfort, although I do think I’ve injured my shoulder coughing. It’s the knowledge that for an extended period of time, I don’t feel capable of being a good mom.
Now, I know you’re thinking -- wait. This is the woman who threatened to rip the legs off her son’s beloved Blue Puppy? She thinks she’s a good mom?
Well, let’s compromise with the fact that I’m the best mom I know how to be. And even on those endless days when the Diva won’t eat anything but bowtie noodles and the Tyrant sticks her stuffed dog’s head in my coffee and the Pterodactyl calls me a poopy weener butt-butt, even on those days we have moments of pure joy and hilarity, when little arms around my neck make all the stale Cheez-Its and laundry worthwhile.
But now, being sick, those moments seem lost and I miss them. I’m exhausted and my chest hurts; I’m short-tempered and in no mood to endure the normal antics of childhood.
The kids sense it, too. The Diva asks me if I’m better approximately every 15 minutes, even when she’s too engrossed in “iCarly” to hear me answer. The Tyrant was sent to the principal’s office. Yes, that’s right, my 2-year-old was sent to the principal’s office, the first of my children to achieve that disciplinary benchmark. She had thrown a block at a kid’s head (Have I mentioned her remarkable aim?), pushed another child, and generally acted like a miscreant all day. She bragged to me about it when she got home.
I don’t miss much about my days pre-mommyhood because though life is very different, I still get freedom in small doses.
Yet here’s something I long for: the luxury of just being sick when I’m sick. I don’t want to act happy to see anybody. I don’t want to talk to someone about a playdate. I don’t want to go over spelling words. I just want to watch television, sleep, and maybe take a bath.
For me, it has been a relatively brief period of low-level misery. Now that I’m on antibiotics, I expect I’ll be back to my pleasantly cynical self soon, interspersing my yelling with affectionate hugs and kisses and making sure my children take gummi bear multi-vitamins in between their Happy Meals.
But I find myself thinking of what it’s like for the mothers with no relief in sight - for the women who suffer chronic illnesses or battle disease while trying to be the familial guiding lights, and often succeeding. I find it astounding, frankly. I’m a healthy, strong woman, but when I think of the pity I gave myself over a little bout of bronchitis, I must tell you: I feel a little bit.....weak.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Okay, she was adopted. But she's not a fish.

On a recent rainy Sunday, Husband was working and the rest of us decided to have a Movie Morning. A Movie Morning is when Mommy can’t think of anything Mother-of-the-Yearish to do, so she decides to bond with the children via the Disney Channel, which requires more effort than you might think.
The movie playing that morning, as described in the on-screen blurb, was about a boy who starts turning into a fish on his 13th birthday. That seemed a bit quirky, but innocuous enough, and it does seem that children transform themselves as they enter the teen years.
Okay, but listen. It turns out the boy was adopted, and his birth mother is a mermaid who abandoned him on a shrimp boat when he was a baby. The shrimp boat captain and his wife found him and raised him. His only remarkable feature was his tremendous propensity for swimming.
Now that he’s 13, his true heritage is beginning to, um, swim to the surface. Every time he touches water, he grows scales and fins. Seriously. This causes him to lose some popularity points at school.
Then he begins to see his “real mom” whenever he happens by the harbor. She is swimming around waiting for him, gracefully flopping her silvery tail. You see, it’s time for him to join her and fully transform into a “merman.”
Eventually his adoptive parents understand that a merman’s got to do what a merman’s got to do, and they let him go. The plan is for him to spend a year with his “real mom” swimming around the ocean. Then, somehow, he’ll be prepared to come back ashore and be part-human again.
The Diva and I were riveted: me out of horror and the Diva, I think, out of sheer perplexity and perhaps some slight concern regarding her love of the water. But I couldn’t turn it off because I was afraid it would be like saying to my adopted daughter WE ARE ABSOLUTELY NOT GOING TO WATCH A MOVIE ABOUT SOME ADOPTED KID.
Now, I’m all for openness and candor when discussing with my children the fact that they were adopted. And thank you, Disney, for helping all of your viewers understand that children who were adopted are so weird and unnatural that they very likely will morph into different species as they age. My children, for example, were hatched underneath the fluorescent lights of an incubator. Our goal is to teach them to fly the coop before they’re 18 so we can avoid paying for college.
Of course my children have birth mothers, and I’m eternally grateful to those women for entrusting me with these gifts of life.
But am I not their real mother? Who feeds them Cheez-Its for breakfast? Who lets them skip brushing their teeth at night? Who taught them the words to “McDonald’s is your kind of place/hamburgers in your face”?
And who will be there when they turn 13? It will be me. I don’t think they’ll grow fins and scales, but if they do, they won’t be swimming out to sea without me. We’ll just move to the Caribbean, I guess, and live on a houseboat and I’ll learn how to SCUBA dive, and together we’ll brave whatever the tide brings in.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

What planet are men from?

Do you think men are really from Mars? Because sometimes it seems like they’re from that other planet. You know. Uranus.
What I mean is that.....well, they're a mixed bag.
Take Hot Firefighter Husband, for example. Once, just after we had started.....um....dating.......yeah, that’s it, we were dating......he let himself into my apartment when he knew I was working late and baked me an apple pie. That same year, he went on a trip to San Francisco and brought me home a 2-inch plastic Buddha statue.
It’s been like this ever since, though I write this with some trepidation, knowing that Husband is quite possibly the best thing that ever happened to me other than finally having my uterus removed.
When I left the house this morning, for example, Husband had just gotten off his shift. He was wearing his favorite beat-up shorts, a t-shirt and a backwards baseball cap, and he needed a shave.
And he was preparing to vacuum.
Uh-huh. It was like suburban mom porn, I tell you. I might have been interested in delaying my exit had I not been afraid it would make him lose cleaning momentum.
Husband does not buy me flowers “just because.” His gift-giving abilities -- well, they suck a little bit, as you might have guessed from the Buddha, which I still have. He once gave me a wooden flying pig with removable wings for Christmas.
But my man cleans, and I find that incredibly gratifying, and pretty sexy, too. He can do some pretty amazing things with those Scrubbing Bubbles.
Yet for every totally rockin’ task he completes, there seems to be some sort of payback.
This morning, as I left the house whistling in anticipation of a clean house, he called for me to take the Jeep. So I walked to the Goddamn Yellow Jeep and opened the door, and stuck my shoe into the 3-inch puddle accumulated atop the floorboard. Somebody forgot to put the top up last night.
The Goddamn Yellow Jeep has long been a source of contention. I was very proud that he sold his little Mazda on Craigslist, and looked forward to lowering our car payment. But he came home with the GYJ, which is the color of an irradiated banana and can certainly be seen from space. Though it’s supposedly “almost new,” it has a huge dent in the side and the gear shift is on upside down. Initially, it only had two seat belts in the back. “We have three kids,” I screeched. Really, I can be an irascible shrew at times. In his defense, he did order an extra seat belt online and has since installed it. It’s purple.
The point is, he didn’t think anything of sending me off in a burgeoning thunderstorm driving a flooded Jeep with half a top and the back windows resting unhelpfully in the garage.
The whole porn image dissipated quickly, I can assure you.
He laughed at me for not wanting to take the Jeep, which made me mad, which made him laugh even harder, which....well, you know where this is going. It ended with me taking the Motorized Landfill instead, screaming at him unconvincingly to have a good day and then calling from the road to apologize 10 minutes later. But still, he shouldn’t have left the top down last night.
None of this would be an issue if I hadn’t last week accepted an actual job that requires me to be someplace on time. It’s just one class that I’m teaching at the University of North Florida, but I do have to show up a couple of times a week. I tried to not take this job by explaining that I would have to come straight from my boxing class on Mondays and so would be late as well as sweaty for those classes, but the department head seemed amenable to that.
On the first day of my back-to-back classes, I taught boxing, changed into my street clothes, flew out of the gym parking lot and promptly got stopped for speeding.
I normally consider it a little embarrassing that the Motorized Landfill is plastered with firefighter union paraphernalia. At least there’s no snarky bumper sticker involving firefighters and poles or anything like that.
On this day, however, the deputy appreciated Husband’s service to humanity and gave me a written warning. Husband later asked me to please stop doing things that required him to write thank-you notes to police officers, and I said I would try.
Are men and women different? I never wanted to think so. But now that I’ve been living with a man for going on 20 years, I feel certain our brains are wired differently. What woman would put a dish towel and a bra in the same load of wash? Or forget her mother’s birthday? Or suggest tying her son’s hand behind his back to practice being a lefty pitcher?
The bright side is that I’ve learned to forgive Husband for these deficiencies, and I’ll learn to forgive him for buying the Goddamn Yellow Jeep which he swears will be with us forever.
But I tell you, that house better be pretty fucking clean.

Update: Okay, the house was pretty fucking clean. But listen: guess how many times I had to hear about it?