Monthly Archives: February 2010

The Case of the Disappearing Towel

I have a thing where I like to have a dish towel readily available and devoted solely to drying my hands after washing dishes, rinsing off food and other things involving water and the kitchen sink.  So, for as long as I can remember, there’s been a towel hanging from the oven handle right in easy reach of the sink.

That is, until my husband moved in with me.  All of a sudden, I’d reach for the towel with my wet hands only to find nothing there.  The first time, I didn’t think much about it.  The second time, I got a little irritated.  And then from the third time on, it began to seriously annoy the crap out of me.  Why did my towel keep disappearing?  Well, apparently, my husband likes to use the dish towels to wipe stuff up.  Spilt coffee, dog food, pasta sauce, you name it.  If it’s even semi-liquid, he’ll use the dish towel to wipe it up.  He also uses them on the rare occasions that he cleans: spray some of that Lysol and then wipe it up with the dish towel.  Of course, all this renders the towel completely worthless after only one use until we do laundry so he’d go through our whole supply of towels in just a few days.

“What about paper towels?  Can’t you just use those?” I’d ask my husband.

No, he didn’t feel that paper towels did the trick effectively enough.

“Aha!” I thought to myself.  “Problem solved!  I’ll buy a box of ShamWow towels!”

Except he hated the ShamWows and refused to use them. (Is this man mental or what? What’s to not like about ShamWow?  I think they rock.)

After trying everything I can think of, I may have to accept that this is a battle I’ve lost.  For the rest of my life, I’ll be drying my hands on my pants while my husband uses the good dish towels to sop up the beer that he always pours a little too vigorously so it ends up overflowing onto the counter.

(That’s ok, though…sometimes after I eat some particulary cheesy Cheetos, I wipe my hands on his shirt….)

Guest Post: Lent – My Girlfriend’s Favorite

[Today we have one of my favorite things: a guest post from a guy!  Clay's girlfriend seems to take Lent to some serious extremes.  Thanks, Clay, for sending this in!

I've been a little - ok, A LOT, behind on getting to Guest Post and Photo Friday submissions but I promise that I will get to them all.  (And we will make a return to a more regular Photo Friday shortly.)  So keep sending in those stories and pictures to myhusbandisannoying@live.com!]

My girlfriend is a Catholic. Lent starts this month. Lent happens to be a time where people give up certain things for a given amount of time or in my girlfriend’s case, a near death experience every year.

Like every good Catholic is supposed to do, she observes Lent faithfully every year and gives up something of meaning to her. One year she gave up texting and the year after that she tried to go with chocolate bars and so on.  This is a wonderful thing, right? Wrong. My girlfriend goes through an extreme stage during these forty (or however long it happens to be) days. The symptoms of this stage go from just cravings to really bad moods. One year during Lent I took her shopping and she got mad at a lady in front of us for not swiping her card fast enough if this is any example as to how cranky she is during this  time of year. My girlfriend does various things to keep her moods at bay. Her favorites including playing the same song over and over again and talking to me and everyone else involved in the human race. In fact, one year to keep her frustrations at bay she made a song that she has made a tradition of singing every year. It goes as:

On the first day of Lent that Catholicism took away from me  a candy bar to clog my arteries

On the second day of Lent that Catholicism took away from me two steak dinners and a candy bar to clog my arteries

On the third day of Lent that Catholicism took away from me three soft drinks, two steak dinners…(I’m putting an elipses there simply because I’m too lazy to fully type out the rest and you know how the 12 days of Christmas goes…I hope)

On the fourth day of Lent that Catholicism took away from me four curse words, three soft drinks…..

On the fifth day of Lent that Catholicism took away from five Starbucks fraps, four curse words…

On the sixth day of Lent that Catholicism took away from me six Big Macs, five starbucks fraps…

On the seventh day of Lent that Catholicism took away from me seven days without Facebook, six Big Macs…

On the eighth day of Lent that Catholicism took away from me eight rude remarks, seven days without Facebook…

On the ninth day of Lent that Catholicism took away from me nine real hot showers, eight rude remarks….

On the tenth day of Lent that Catholicism took away from me ten road rage free days, nine real hot showers….

On the eleventh day of Lent that Catholicism took away from me eleven Little Debbies, ten road rage free days…

On the twelfth day Lent that Catholicism took away from me twelve days of anger management, eleven Little Debbies….

Actually, my girlfriend goes on past twelve days until Lent ends. However, as a courtesy I’m not going to continue. I can’t decide which is more annoying my girlfriend’s actions during this time of year or the carol she made up that she sings every year.

–Clay


Valentine’s Day? What’s That?

My husband and I agreed we weren’t going to do a whole big thing for Valentine’s Day this year; mostly because we have a lot of other, more important things going on and also because it all seems kinda silly.  Still, we didn’t agree to forget about it completely.  At least, I don’t think we did.

I woke up in the morning and figured a card would be forthcoming.  I mean, c’mon, it is our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple and that’s the least I could expect, right?  Sure, flowers would’ve been nice but they can be expensive and they die pretty quickly and chocolates would’ve been really nice but apparently I’m on some kind of sugar restriction since my husband is afraid I’m passing on my voracious sweet tooth to our unborn child.  (Still, some of those chocolates are soooo good.  Or even those conversation hearts…I do love me some conversation heart candy and they’re a once-a-year treat!  But I digress…)  So, fine, a card would do. 

Well, I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  I had a card all ready to give to my husband but you can be damned sure I wasn’t giving him anything until I got my card!  I even (sort of) brought it up a couple of times:

In the beginning of the day: “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

Later: “So…it’s Valentine’s Day…”

Even later: “Wow, this Valentine’s Day sure is passing by quickly…”

And then: “Huh.  I would’ve thought that I might have gotten a Valentine’s Day card by now…”

Around 5pm or so, my husband went into the bedroom and got awfully quiet.  Naturally, being the concerned wife that I am (ok, fine – I’m nosy) I had to check on things.  There he was – crouched on the floor, frantically filling out a card he must’ve bought that day while he was out walking the dogs.  Now that’s romance, huh?.

Guest Post: The Picky Sandwich Eater

[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

The Betting Man

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.

“Where’s My Baby?”

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.

Needles No More!

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?