This is a classic post. It really sums up the absurdity in my house.
Oftentimes I talk about the insane disconnect between the male & female brains. I jokingly share stories about my dear hubby that make many people shake their heads. I, myself need to shake my head, as I wonder how his brain works. How it prioritizes. How it processes information. How it decides which things are actionable and which are not.
Many times I listen to words that are coming out of hubby’s mouth, with my eyes open wide in amazement, and my mouth agape with confusion.
This story is one of those times.
I’ll start by reminding you that my hubby is not a stupid man. I would not necessarily classify him as lazy (although, I do sometimes question his execution timelines…). I probably wouldn’t call him clueless, or oblivious (ok, sometimes he IS oblivious), or simpleminded or unthinking.
Now, having said all that…. why oh why, do his actions sometimes directly contradict the intelligent, hard-working man that I married?
Follow along and you too, will likely need to shake your and wonder .. “what the heck was he thinking?”
We had some friends over to bbq & swim (this happens almost every weekend at our house during the summer). If you read my last post about The Art of Entertaining, then you know the dynamic of these bbqs. Hubby spends time outside entertaining our guests, while I run back & forth into the kitchen to make sure people have what they need.
Well, this day was no exception and as I was cleaning up after lunch, I made a few trips inside with leftover food & dirty dishes. Each time I walked through the kitchen, my feet seemed to get wet. I figured that I had spilled something on the floor so I walked over towards the sink to grab some paper towels and I realized that there seemed to be a pool of water in front of the sink.
Side note: While I’m cleaning up, hubby is at the kitchen counter, on our computer, looking for pictures from our most recent vacation to show some friends outside.
So I say, mostly to myself… “What the heck is all over the floor here?”
Hubby: pretty much ignores me and is focused on the computer
Me: “What the…..??? “ as I open the cabinet under the sink “ OH CRAP!”
Hubby: still ignoring me…
Me: “I think the sink is leaking….. there’s water all over the floor and everything in the cabinet is wet”
Hubby: in his own little world “Do you know where we put the pictures of those sharks?”
Me: “ Oh god… everything’s soaking wet, where is all this water coming from?” Now, I’m pulling items out one-by-one.. trash bags, dish detergent,, dripping empty grocery bags, sponges, air freshener.. “Hon, I think something’s leaking here…”
Pay close attention here or you might miss it……..
Hubby: “Oh yeah… I think the spray nozzle is leaking on the sink”
Me: “Huh?” as I’m still removing each item and drying it off with paper towels…
Hubby: who still hasn’t moved from the computer… “Yeah, I noticed about 3 days ago that the spray unit was leaking”
Me: “You noticed days ago that it was leaking??????????”
Hubby: “yeah, but only if you run the water for a while.”
Me: “And, you decided what…. that it would fix itself?”
Hubby: “uhm, …… oooooooooh.. I found them! Here’s the pictures!!”
Me: “You have to be kidding me..”
Hubby “Nope.. I’m going outside show them these pictures!”
And then he was gone. Out the door to continue his entertaining while I sopped up water from the cabinet that apparently had been pooling for 3 days.
It was at this point that I turned to his mother.. who did indeed witness this entire exchange. (she was actually taking items from me as I removed them from the cabinet..) And I said, “You’re lucky that I love him, cause if I didn’t, I’d have to kill him.”
Sad to say…. even his loving, protective mother just shook her head. He must make her so proud! 🙂
And, just for the record, the solution to addressing this leak? Well, of course, it’s to leave the spray nozzle fully pulled out and permanently lying in the sink. At least this way it leaks directly into the drain! Anyone want to take bets on how long we might live like this?????????
(please tell me that I’m not the only one who lives with this type of absurdity!!)
His version of reality: it dripped a little bit, but only if you ran it for a long time. Not that it was constant, nor a little indoor waterfall. I notice that you didn’t notice that there was a problem at all during the three intervening days. He was probably thinking he would get to it after the party, or maybe Sunday, when nothing else was going on.
Sometime between when he noticed it and when you experienced your miniature reenactment of Noah’s Flood, something came apart. Apparently, right in the middle of your party, since you didn’t have wet feet at breakfast time. The timing of this should surprise nobody. You do realize that appliances are sentient and malevolent?
Regarding when it gets fixed, before I answer that I would have to see your calendar. Most likely scenario is a trip to Home Depot on the weekend, unless something else on the calendar supersedes. If you want it to happen on a particular day, don’t schedule something else important on that day. (Or evening this week. Now that it’s gushing, cancel Monday night.)
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I J L ~ You are certainly onto something about timing and the ever-so-curious ability of appliances to know the exact, inopportune time to start acting up. How do you suppose they know??????????????
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I don’t know how they know — how does a Thermos know whether to keep its contents hot or cold? 😉 — but they sure do.
I have an oven with an electronic controller that has a diabolical habit of rebooting during Thankgiving dinner prep. The rest of the year it’s (mostly) fine. But on days where it really counts, boom. One year I had to cut the main breaker at the kitchen subpanel to get it to come off of ‘self-clean.”
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Appliances are sentient and malevolent. Of this I have no doubt.
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Are you absolutely positive you’re not married to MY husband?
Sigh.
I can, unfortunately, assure you that you are not alone. This is the point in our household where we have the “house fairies” talk, as in, “You do realize that there are no house fairies who fix things like this, right? It’s me. There are also no kitchen fairies who do the dishes, it’s me.” and so on. I’m at least to the point where I can just say “fairies” most of the time, and not have the whole conversation.
Sigh.
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Jessica ~ Oh dear, I feel your pain. We have many, many fairies in our home too. Ours do laundry, clean hair trimmings out of the bathroom sink, open the mail, swiffer the tumbleweeds of dog hair off the hard wood floor. I’m not exactly sure how we got so lucky as to find a home with so many of them! 🙂
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The story you shared happens in more homes than people want to admit. I know that within my family, there are many stories of similar incidents. It is important to have a sense of humor in responding to such situations, otherwise we would be fighting and upset all the time.
I have also seen some similar stories take place between parents and sons as well.
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Lol I had to ask hubby why our water bill was 0ver $100 one month before he told me the outside waster faucet was leaking. ( he does the yard work I take care of dishes laundry kids homework etc etc.) I feel your pain.
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Virginia ~ I always hear… “well, it’s on my radar” or “I’ll get to it”, when he comes across something that needs to be done. I guess this big challenge is that we have vastly different timelines for addressing things!!
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