MY HUSBAND IS ANNOYING™

It’s about that time that my husband and I are starting to come up with a birth plan.  Call us (or me, really) stupid but we’re hoping to do it the ‘all natural’ way – without any pain medication or intervention.  Yeah, I know what most of you (especially you mothers out there) are thinking and you’re probably right.  Even with the best of intentions, I’ll likely be offering up my first-born child for an epidural.

Anyway, among other reasons, we made this decision after doing a bit of research and discovering that the drugs they give you to speed up labor often make it much more intense and painful which then makes most women pretty much beg for relief of any kind.

[I'll pause now so women who have already been through this can laugh at my naiveté and tell me that the drugs were the only thing that kept them from killing their doctor, nurses, husband and anybody else who dared enter their sight.  Done?  Ok, let's continue...]

The other day I mentioned to my husband that it might be difficult for him to watch me in pain even though the end result is (hopefully) totally worth it.  You know what he said?

“But if you do it naturally, there shouldn’t be any pain.”

That’s not the best part, though.  The other day we saw a promo for the news anchor that would be getting a live colonoscopy on the air.  And you know what my husband said then?

“That means he has to be awake!  When I get a colonoscopy, I want to be completely knocked out.”

[Today's guest post comes to us from Gaby in Chula Vista, CA who seems to have a very particular husband!  Thanks, Gaby!  Send your stories and pictures to myhusbandisannoying@live.com.]

Why can’t things be simple sometimes???

Trying to be a good wife, I emailed my husband this morning asking him if he wanted me to stop by Subway on the way home to pick up dinner. We both work long hours and sometimes this is the best we have. Usually he picks about the same thing every time. Today, however, he decided to be a little more demanding. And of course, I’ve gotten like 20 text messages asking me if I got the brilliance that is his email. I have to admit that it is funny, but if I let him know that I think that, I’ll never hear the end of it!!!

From: Zachary
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 6:54 AM
To: Gabrielle
Subject: subway

Did you get my text? This is what I want.

-Foot long roasted chicken breast

• Provolone cheese (if they don’t have any throw a fit then go buy some)
• Toasted with the onions on the cheese (this is very important)
• Light lettuce (I will throw it back at you if there is too much!)
• Tomatoes (not too much but not too little)
• Pickles (evenly distributed throughout the sandwich or I will put them in your ears!)
• Light mayo (not a lot and if it’s too much you will be wearing the extra!!)
• Spicy mustard (but not too spicy)

-Baked Lays (regular, no wait if they have backed sour cream I want those BUT ONLY BAKED!! Otherwise just regular BUT if you give me bbq I will crush them up and put them in your hair!)

-A bottle of Coke Zero (anything else results in you sleeping on the couch tonight) but if they don’t have that then diet coke will do and you can sleep on the air mattress.

-Tha thing

Last night, like millions of other people,  my husband and I were getting set to watch the Superbowl.  I’m not a football fan and I had no stake in the game at all; I pretty much just watch the commericals and do crossword puzzles in between ads.  My husband, though certainly not a fanatic, does enjoy the game and had a team he was rooting for.  Since I didn’t particularly care which team won, I just picked the team he didn’t like.  (Oh, c’mon…you know you do this too.)

So since we had picked opposite teams, my husband suggested we place a bet on the game.  In my younger years, I may have innocently followed up that suggestion with the question, “what are the stakes?”  but now I’m no dummy.  See, my husband is a man.  And, in many ways, a very typical man.  And because of that I know that whenever he suggests a bet, the stakes are always the same: sex or some form of sexual activity. 

For the sake of all involved, I won’t go into details.  But for all the women out there, you know what I’m talking about, right?  It’s never a wager for money or for who’s going to do the dishes or for who’s going to walk the dog(s) in the rainy cold.  And no matter how healthy a couple’s sex life may be, the man will still make the stakes of a bet about sex.  For example:

Man: Wanna make a bet on the football game?

Woman: Sure, why not?  What do you want to bet for?

Man [with that look in his eyes that pretty much just says it all]: Oh, I don’t know…got anything in mind?

[And then this is when the man tries to get all coy in the  hopes that the woman will pick up on the suggestive tone and say it herself for some reason.]

Yup, I know I’m generalizing here.  And maybe it’s just my husband that does this on a regular basis though womehow, I don’t think so.  But believe me, the next time the subject of betting comes up, you can put money on the fact that if he loses, I’ll be making him do the dishes…no sexual favors necessary.

As I’ve mentioned before, my husband has a habit of asking where I am even when it’s clear I’m right in the next room.  I’ve gotten used to this and there are times I even find it kind of endearing.  He’d often say, “Where’s my baby?” and I guess I was expected to reply, “I’m in the kitchen” or some such thing.   (I’m aware this line of questioning would make much more sense if we lived in a large, multi-story house but seems fairly ridiculous in a 500 square foot 1 bedroom apartment.  Still, I do occasionally like to humor my husband.)

But lately the conversation goes more like this:

Husband: Where’s my baby?

Me: I’m in the kitchen, getting a snack. [This is most often where I am and what I'm doing.  I probably spend the majority of my time at home in the kitchen getting snacks.]

Husband: No, my baby.

You see, I guess I’m no longer his baby.  I’m now just the person carrying his baby.  And I seem to have lost my name, too.  Somehow I’ve gone from having an actual name that I’ve grown pretty familiar with over the course of my years of life to “My baby’s mom”.  As in: “What does my baby’s mom want to watch on tv tonight?”

Yes, I’m glad that my husband is excited about the prospect of having a baby.  Really, I am.  But I hope I’m not turning into just an incubator for my husband’s baby.  Maybe when he starts indulging my 2am cravings for spaghetti carbonara or his massages start to exceed 45 seconds then I won’t really care what he calls me.

I finally convinced my husband to get rid of his needly beard; I just couldn’t take the pain every time his face got anywhere near me.  (Though it wasn’t this fact that did the convincing – I appealed to his major vanity and simply told him that the beard made him look older.  In that instant, he decided he didn’t like it anymore.  Ah men and their fragile little egos…)  So while we were on vacation, he took razor to face much to my delight.

Here’s the ‘Before’ picture:

But, of course, my husband being the annoying guy that he is couldn’t just do it all in one fell swoop.  No, he had to shave his beard in stages and torture me at each one.

The goatee.  Ick:

What is this?  Mutton chops?  It’s horrible yet my husband seemed to love this look and even gleefully added the beer as a prop (which he drank immediately after, naturally):

Worst. Mustache. Ever.:

You can see how much I HATE the mustache which seemed to make my husband like it even more:

And, after way too much time finally the ‘After’ shot:

I’m really glad he got rid of the needles but did he have to drag it out so much?