Packing Problems

Posted on January 16, 2013 | 19 Comments

This past weekend, my husband was registered to run the Disney Half Marathon. It was his first race in a while and my daughter has never been to Disney World so we thought it would be fun to make a little vacation out of it. Since his race was very early on Saturday morning, we decided to go to the hotel on Friday afternoon -right after we picked up the kid from preschool-  and stay through Monday. I had a surprisingly busy and stressful day on Friday and was out of the house most of the day so my husband said he would get all the packing done for himself and our daughter. “No problem,” he said. That should’ve been my first warning sign.

So, I dash home on Friday afternoon about 10 minutes before we have to leave. which gave me just enough time to throw my things in a bag. My conversation with my husband went like this:

Me [clearly worried]: Are you sure you’ve packed everything?

Him [smug and overly proud]: Of course! Look, I even remembered to bring the kid’s hooded duck towel in case she takes a bath. I’m a hero!

{Note: I’m not making it up when he called himself a hero. In fact, he did this numerous times on the drive there.}

Can you see where this is going?

Friday night as we’re getting ready for bed, my husband starts laying out all of his race stuff. Shirt: check. Socks: check. Running shoes: check. Shorts: um…no. He started frantically digging through bags only to conclude that he forgot to pack them. He ended up going to the hotel gift shop and buying an overpriced pair of bathing trunks to run in. Yes, annoying but I figured it was his problem and let it go.

Well, the next morning my daughter and I wake up (way too early) to go meet him at the finish line. It was still kind of chilly so I figured I’d put her in a pair of jeans with a t-shirt and throw a sweatshirt over that. I open her suitcase to get the clothes and find the following:

5 sets of pajamas, 3 shorts, a leotard and tutu purchased for her ballet class and 3 fancy dresses. That’s it. Seriously.

You know what wasn’t in the suitcase? Shirts. Socks. Underwear. Sweatshirts.

That’s right, 5 sets of pajamas for a 3 night stay but not a single shirt. Yep, a ballet leotard and tutu but no socks or underwear.

Oh, and by the way, that hooded duck towel he was so proud of remembering to include? Not only does the hotel PROVIDE FREE TOWELS but she never even took a bath while we were there.

Lesson learned? My husband will never, ever be responsible for packing again. And? When he says he’s a hero he will most likely prove himself to be entirely unheroic.

But, hey, at least he got a kiss from Minnie Mouse.

IMG_0370

 

→ 19 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged

I Guess I Need to Buy a Deadbolt

Posted on January 9, 2013 | 21 Comments

I posted a while back about how lately my husband has been crossing the bathroom boundaries. I explained to him how not ok this was and figured we could just move on. Just to be on the safe side though, I began locking the bathroom door whenever I would go in. Since we don’t have a key, It did have the intended effect in that he could no longer just open the door whenever he felt like it but then he started doing something just as annoying: he now will knock on the door incessantly until I emerge from the bathroom. Do you know how hard it is peacefully use the toilet while somebody is repeatedly knocking on the door? And do you know that I also have a 2-year-old who won’t let me go to the bathroom by myself and stares at me while I’m trying to *ahem* “do my business”? So between the two of them, there is not a chance in hell I can ever just get a few moments to myself.

At some point, I suppose that my husband decided that knocking on the door wasn’t annoying enough; he had to up his game. Thinking that there was no way that he could possibly manage to be more annoying, I felt pretty sure that although I had to put up with the knocking, at least I was safe in the bathroom by myself. So naive. I was sitting on the toilet the other night and after a few minutes of knocking, it stopped. “Ah, he finally gave up,” I thought. And then I heard a noise at the door. It continued for a minute and then all of a sudden, the door flew open. Yup, my husband had picked the lock. The unbelievable thing was that he actually thought I would find it funny. He thought I would appreciate the fact that he had managed to figure out how to pick a lock. Clearly my husband has overestimated my sense of humor because I didn’t find it amusing at all.

The apartment we’re in now has 3 bathrooms. THREE. Yet, I still can’t seem to get a moment of peace. What do I have to do to get some privacy around here? Prop a chair underneath the doorknob?

→ 21 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Too Many Tissues

Posted on July 16, 2012 | 36 Comments

My husband has a habit of shoving a million things in his pockets and leaving them there. Tissues, receipts, pens, change and more tissues. The amount of tissues my husband goes through on a daily basis is enough to keep Kleenex in business for a long, long time. He likes to wad up the tissues and store them in his pockets so they can be easily accessible whenever he needs them. Listen, I’m not going to complain about my husband having all kinds of sinus issues and needing to blow his nose all the time. (But the snoring the sinus issues cause? Well, that is something I will complain about…and often do.) The problem is that he never empties his pockets before he throws his pants or shorts into the hamper. Ever. And because I always do, I’m just not in the habit of checking pockets before I put the clothes in the washer. I usually end up regretting that oversight because when the load is done and I go to take the clothes out, what I usually end up seeing is a washing machine full of shreds of tissue. Seriously, everywhere and on every piece of clothing in there. I then attempt to shake off all the clothes before I put them in the dryer but usually end up missing some shreds and also forget to recheck all the pockets for tissue remnants so when the clothes are done, they have even more tissue fragments adhered to them. This is how our hamper of clean, just-out-of-the-dryer clothes looks:

If I had some kind of a fancy photo editing program, I’d highlight all the tissues for you but this is a pretty low-tech blog. Also, sorry for making you look at my husband’s underwear.

I have often unknowingly gone to work with tissue shreds on the back of my shirt. There were also times when I’d see tissues on my husband’s clothes before he left for work and I debated whether I should tell him or not. I’m not ashamed to tell you that there were plenty of times I decided not to.

Besides tissues on our clothes, there are also always scraps of tissues on the floor like this:


My daughter is growing up thinking that it’s normal to have tissue shreds all over everything.

I suppose I should really start getting in the habit of checking his pockets before I do laundry. Either that or invest in some handkerchiefs.

→ 36 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

The Key to a Healthy Marriage…

Posted on April 17, 2012 | 12 Comments

I’ve heard that the key to a healthy marriage is separate bathrooms. I don’t know how true it is but you can bet that I was pretty happy when we moved into our current apartment and it had two bathrooms. For the most part, I’ve found that it works really well for us. I don’t need to know what goes on in his bathroom and he doesn’t need to know what goes on in mine. Y’know, it’s always good to keep a little mystery in the relationship.

Lately though I’ve noticed my husband disappearing into my bathroom only to emerge just a moment later. That’s odd, I think. Not enough time to use the toilet but what else could he be doing in there? So the other day when I saw him duck into my bathroom, I decided to investigate. What I saw was horrifying. He was using my deodorant!

Ok, so maybe you don’t understand my horror. Maybe you think I’m overreacting. But here’s the thing about men and their underarms (and yes, I realize this will be a generalization but it’s probably also true): they are very hairy and very sweaty. Just the thought of using the same deodorant that’s been all up in my husband’s hairy, sweaty armpits makes me gag a little. It’s not that I don’t love my husband and all of his accompanying body parts, it’s just that certain things shouldn’t be shared.

His explanation was that he ran out of deodorant and because I seem to do most of the household replenishing (why is this? I have no idea…I only know that if I don’t do it, we’ll end up using paper towels as toilet paper and brushing our teeth with a bar of soap) and wasn’t aware that he needed more deodorant, he’d just help himself to mine.

On a related note, my husband has decided it’s perfectly fine to just open the door to my bathroom when I’m in it. He’s done this twice in the past month and I have no idea why that boundary is currently being crossed. I have a strict no-witnessing the other on the toilet policy (see above about maintaining mystery) and he seems determined to break that policy.

So here’s what I’ve determined: the key to a healthy marriage may be separate bathrooms but the key to a truly healthy marriage is separate bathrooms with impenetrable locks.

→ 12 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged ,

Reader Submission: Kourtni

Posted on January 20, 2012 | 12 Comments

My fiance is absolutely amazing, except in public. The most annoying thing he does is at the grocery store. We don’t live together yet but I always take him grocery shopping with me because he can get himself snacks for my apartment and he helps me carry in all the bags when we get back home. Anyway, I’ll admit I take quite awhile grocery shopping. I peruse the aisles and look to get the best prices (I’m on a budget after all!). While I’m deep in concentration trying to figure out between brand-name or store-brand, my fiance will sneak items in the cart while I’m not looking. The things he sneaks aren’t things he wants, though — pickled pig’s feet, bouillon cubes, and economy size ranch dressing to name a few.

The worst part is getting up to the cash register with these items. I won’t catch them in the cart until I’m putting things up on the counter. Obviously, I’m not going to buy these things so I quickly give my fiance a dirty look and place them where the impulse-buy items are (gum, candy, mints, etc.) which inevitably leads to the cashier and people behind me to give me dirty looks, while my fiance is snickering behind the cart. The first time he did it, I didn’t catch it, and I ended up buying canned beets and mock caviar. These things are still sitting on my pantry shelf, forever reminding me of how annoying my precious husband-to-be is.

→ 12 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged

Reader Submission: Kayla

Posted on January 13, 2012 | 30 Comments

My husband is so annoying. He works in IT and spends an inordinate amount of time on the internet. That’s not so bad, but he spends 90% of that time on Reddit. Still not a problem, except he feels the need to inform ME of everything he reads. It doesn’t matter if I’m watching TV, or cooking dinner, or working on my website, reading, or talking on the phone. Its, “Hey, did you know that there is a fungus that infects ant’s brains and makes them drown themselves?” or “Oh wow, apparently if gravity was stronger, it would overwhelm the force holding out molecules together and we’d be torn apart through the floor.” and other such nonsense. Bear in mind also, that he’s terrible at relaying facts, and even if I WAS interested in what he said and asked a follow-up question, he’s already moved on and will say, “I dunno, I didn’t read it.”

 And those aren’t even the worst. The worst are the things I just HAVE to see. The things he will pester me about until I stop whatever I am doing, get up and look over his shoulder and what amazing thing he HAS to share with me. It’s always something like a motorcycle in a tree, a weird breed of animal, or a screenshot from a video game. Most of the time its stupid. A lot of the time its grotesque, and 100% of the time I could have done without it.

→ 30 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged

“How Many Calories Does This Have?”

Posted on January 6, 2012 | 24 Comments

I’ve been trying to lose weight ever since I had a baby. A couple of months ago, I started using Weight Watchers (not very successfully, unfortunately) which basically converts everything I eat into points. I’m allotted a certain number of points a day, which I’m not supposed to go over.

Conversely, my husband has been trying to gain weight basically his whole life. I can’t even tell you how annoying this is. I could pretty much make this post one sentence: “my husband has a hard time gaining weight” and it would qualify him for annoying husband status, don’t you think? I know that it’s not his fault or anything but it still annoys the bejeesus out of me. Case in point: he got a colonoscopy last month in which he had to fast for a day beforehand. Do you know what happened? He lost six pounds. SIX freakin’ pounds. Do you know what would happen if I fasted for a day? I would probably gain at least a pound or two and that’s not an exaggeration.

So now my husband has started using an app to track his calories so he can make sure he’s eating enough. According to the app, he should be eating 3,500 calories a day in order to gain any weight. You wouldn’t think this would be difficult (it certainly wouldn’t be for me) but he seems to have a really hard time with it. Because of this, he’s always trying to eat really high calorie foods which makes eating together nearly impossible because I can assure you, my weight-loss plan doesn’t exactly allow me 3,500 calories. Anyway, I guess since I’ve been using Weight Watchers, all of a sudden my husband seems to think that I know the calorie content of every single food known to mankind even though I’ve explained to him that Weight Watchers doesn’t really use calories to calculate points. He sends me emails: “How many calories in a sushi roll? I had a shrimp tempura and a spicy crab roll.” I get texts: “Which has more calories: turkey or ham?” At Christmas dinner: “How many calories is in that pumpkin pie?” There has got to be a way to make it stop.

Disclaimer: I do realize that most of this post is based in jealousy, I’ll admit to that. I’m completely and totally envious of the fact that he never has to worry about gaining weight. Still, if he asks me for the calorie content of one more food, I may just have to get violent.

 

→ 24 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , ,