We’ve had a lot of rain lately and last night hubby had to do some repair work on the sump pump in our basement.
Hooray for hubby stepping up and taking initiative!! I’m proud of him.. I really, truly am — I may have mentioned that when I met hubby he didn’t own any tools, had never repaired anything and, all-in-all, had a lot of growing to do in the department of manual labor.
I am however happy to report, that he’s come an incredibly long way from one of the first big projects we did. If I may, let me take you on a small tangent.
When we first moved into our current house, our home office was covered with brown wood paneling. Hubby declared that this project would take us “no time at all” and that he’d be done in a weekend. As we started pulling down paneling we found that the sheet rock was not salvageable and that we had a horrible ant infestation underneath one of the windows and, his self-declared easy weekend job, left us with a project timeline (and an incredibly dusty home) for well over a month. We learned some new skills from this project and it has provided us with a guideline for all future projects.
Something like this..
Hubby: “We should be able to tile our shower in about a week”
Me: “Oh yeah? Just like the office?”
Hubby: “We’ll have those 20+ yards of mulch spread in less than 4 hours”
Me: “Oh, yeah? Just like the office?”
Hubby: “Fixing those cabinets should be easy..”
Me: “Sure….just like the office?”
Needless to say, hubby’s ability to tackle a job has grown tremendously but, his ability to gauge the timeline of a job has, unfortunately, not grown at the same pace.
Anyhow… this post is actually not about home renovations at all so let’s get back on track… Hubby has repaired our sump pump… HOORAY!
He comes back up from the basement.. mumbling about what a dirty job it was. How there was mud, and dirt and he plops down a variety of items on our kitchen counter and heads to the sink to wash his hands.
I am not in the kitchen so I can’t see everything that’s going on….
Me: “Please tell me, you didn’t just put dirty tools & stuff on the counter”
Hubby: “Do you think I’m stupid?”
Me: “No, I do not think you are stupid”
Hubby: silence
Me: “You are just going on and on about how dirty everything was and all I hear is you putting stuff onto the counter”
Hubby: “I did not put dirty stuff on the counter.. and, I’m honestly upset that you think I’d be so dumb”
Me: “Honey, I don’t think you’re dumb.. but, if you’ll humor me for a moment… I’d like to remind you of a time….”
Hubby: “Don’t say it..”
Me: “But, I feel the need to explain to you why I’d even ask such a question”
Hubby: “I learned my lesson.”
Me: “But, you do recall the time you put your dirty shoes on the kitchen table?”
Hubby: “Yes, and I remember you freaking out about it.”
Me: “Well, you did put dirty shoes on the table we eat on”
Hubby: “Yes, but have I done anything like that since?”
Me: “No”
Hubby: “Then why do you act like I can’t change”
Me: “Honey, I know you can change and I wasn’t trying to say that you couldn’t, it’s just that I remember you not understanding why I was even upset about the shoes.”
Hubby: “Well, I learned from that and I wouldn’t do it again”
Me: “Ok, I’m sorry”
Hubby: “It’s not worth hearing you freak out on me..”
Me: “Huh?
Hubby: “I’d rather not have you yelling at me so I won’t ever do it again…”
Me: “So, you don’t actually agree that dirty shoes don’t belong on the table. The only reason for your decision to change is so I don’t bitch at you?”
Hubby: “Pretty much..”
Again, I have to say it…. I will possibly never understand the mind of a man. Instead of agreeing that DIRT doesn’t belong on kitchen tables and counters, his behavior modification is SOLELY to ensure that I do not bitch at him.
It really does boggle my mind! If you understand it….. please help me out!
Yep. Been there. Sometimes I think men are predisposed to think that all women do is bitch at them.
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Wait, you’re just NOW stumbling to that realization? We’re GUYS! We NEVER actually agree with you, but we WILL abide by your preferences so we don’t have to listen to you go on and on about it.
Hey, you’re getting your way, does it really matter WHY? I mean, if gas prices drop to a buck a gallon, I’m not going to care if the oil companies don’t really BELIEVE that it’s a fair price. As long as it’s cheap, who cares what they think?
Don’t take this out on hubby, I don’t even know the guy.
Love this blog, by the way, found you over at Humor Bloggers.
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Knucklehead ~ (funny, that’s what I call hubby sometimes 🙂 hehe).
Anyhow, thanks for your comment and for defending my hubby… just goes to show that all of you men must somehow share the same brain! I’ll just never understand it! And, you should probably know that for a woman the “why” is sometimes just as important as the action (and, I’m sure you boys will never understand this either!)
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“Wait, you’re just NOW stumbling to that realization? We’re GUYS! We NEVER actually agree with you, but we WILL abide by your preferences so we don’t have to listen to you go on and on about it.”
HEAR HEAR!!!!!! Could never have put it better myself!!!!!!!
Man I love this blog!
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Just so you know, the inside of your kitchen sponge is probably considerably less sanitary than your toilet bowl, but that doesn’t stop you from cleaning your dishes with it. Also, you really don’t want to think too hard about what carrots are grown in (hint: mud) or potatoes (hint: also mud) or spinach (more mud), nor what is added to all that mud to make it rich and fertile (hint: cow poop, chicken poop, pig poop, and yes, human poop straight from the sewage treatment plant, all part of that mud in your kitchen sink that you just washed off that spinach), nor what sort of genuinely dangerous crawlies are all over the raw chicken you are in the middle of preparing. Unless the dirt from his shoes was still on the table at serving time, or unless he stained your lovely hand-crocheted tablecloth, that dirt is the least of your problems.
So, yes, sometimes we men do indeed just do what you request just to shut you up. Because that’s a more loving response than telling you that you are not only being bitchy, but seriously irrational.
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IJL ~ Are you saying I should wash my dishes in the toilet bowl? Damn, I’m gonna have to do some rearranging of my cleaning agenda. And, I love your ploy of deflecting the original argument to other topics of discussion… your reponse was spoken like a true man. Well done, hubby would be proud!
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“Are you saying I should wash my dishes in the toilet bowl?”
No, what I was implying is that you and your horror of dirt could seriously benefit from a reality check. If you are that bothered by the dirt on his shoes, finding out how much dirt is in your food itself ought to be enough to induce heart failure, and nobody wants that.
“I love your ploy of deflecting the original argument to other topics of discussion…”
No, I was explaining _why_ the reason he did it your way was to avoid another harangue, rather than because he thought you were right and he was wrong. He found your reasoning concerning Dirt Versus the Kitchen Table unpersuasive, but he was willing to go along to get along — a concept which outrages you . Obviously you find it very important to be right (in addition to being obeyed), but if so, it would help if the facts supported your case.
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It occurs to me that I didn’t explain that very well. Let’s try again.
Much of your food comes to your kitchen so dirty as to be inedible or downright hazardous. What do you do to remedy that? You _wash_ it.
Surely you can wash your kitchen counters at least as well as you can wash your food. Last I checked, you can scrub Formica a lot harder than you can scrub a leaf of spinach. Not to mention little cleansing enhancements like, oh, dish soap? Heck, you aren’t even supposed to use _water_ to get the, ahem, “compost” off your mushrooms.
What’s more, you clean the counters to that level of hygiene as a matter of routine. Even the act of preparing chicken leaves the counter dangerously contaminated with salmonella. You (and hopefully he) clean up after _that_ without so much as turning an eyelash. But you freak out over his shoes.
Therefore it follows that your axiom of the inviolablity of eating/cooking/prep surfaces is (irrational) personal preference, rather than principle.
And yet he is willing to do it your way, to avoid a fight. And you seem to think that’s a bad thing.
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Maybe I also didn’t explain myself very well. It’s certainly not a bad thing that he’s willing to do it my way just to avoid a fight… that is not a bad thing If that’s what it take to get stuff clean so be it! Although I may not always understand his process, it’s the output that matters most.
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I wish I could help you out, but my husband is yet to put up the new blinds that he said he would… 2 months ago!!!
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[…] this scary, overwhelming moment, came courtesy of my parents as they gave him a wonderful set of tools as a Christmas […]
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I laughed so hard when I read this; my hubby still doesn’t understand the problem with rinsing a mop out in the sink when the dogs are unable to wait until we get home, rather than using a bucket that is dumped in the toilet. I have surrendered to the simple joy that he actually does mop the floors, and realized that Clorox is my new best friend.
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I was at the gym today, and a dirty disgusting girl put her gym shoes on the counter by the sink as she was putting them on (instead of sitting down on a bench). I said something about it in a light manner, but she got defensive and told her dirty friend that I told her not to put her shoes on the counter (I did not tell her what to do, I only asked if she thought it was a good idea). So the friend jumped in to argue. The first disgusting girl said everything has germs on it anyway… and that was her big rationale. I said that the gym is a shared space, the cleaning person doesn’t come through behind everyone right away, and that we’re all in this together. I said there are viruses, fungi like athletes foot, etc. on the floor that are not in the counters (unless people put them there with shoes). She maintained her argument that it’s all just germs. I asked if she slept in a dog bed, then, since “it all just germs”. She and her filthy friend just kept arguing back.
They said they were not talking to me. I said if you keep talking about me in earshot, I’ll respond. That’s how life works. She told me if I didn’t like the shoes on the counter (“Where people wash their dirty hands” Me: People wash in the sink, not on the counter) then I should go tell the management. I’m like “Am I 12? I’m an adult. I see something, I say something. I don’t go telling on people like I”m a child.
Young women these days are filthy.
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My husband puts his shoes on the granite countertops in the kitchen and I ask him nicely not to do it, but he doesn’t get it, I tell we eat there , he ignores it. So I alcohol it. Moral of the story is, men have no conception about it. They need someone from the health department to tell them.
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