¡No Pantalones!

Hubby and I vacationed this week…… it was sort of like our last hoorah before the baby comes and our lives are forever changed.   If you were to ask hubby, he would insist that we will NOT give up vacationing like this.  I tend to err on the side of caution and recognize that we won’t have a clue how our lives will change until they actually change…. but I’m sure that our ever-changing lives (just like my ever-changing belly) will undoubtedly be the topic of future posts!

 

Today’s post however, is not about any of that – it’s about pants…. or perhaps more accurately, the absence of pants.

 

You see, an ever-occuring battle, argument, discussion prior to each vacation is whether or not hubby needs to pack pants.  We tend to like all-inclusive trips that offer of a number of restaurants on property.  Many of these restaurants have a dress code.  Which could loosely be described as “pants required for all men”.   In all honesty, not that hard to comply with…… right?!  Well, unless you are hubby and you need to debate the need to wear pants at a resort, in 85 degree weather.   Ok, maybe debate isn’t the right word…. other words that come to mind are… whine or complain.

 

I generally win the debate and pants, however despised, make their way into his luggage.

 

Then, after we make it to the resort, hubby grumbles the entire first night as we get dressed for dinner.  Once we make it to the restaurant, hubby scours the crowd for any men who are in non-compliance with the dress code… then he says to me…..”¡No Pantalones!” as he nods his head in the direction of someone.  “¡No Pantalones!” as he walks past a couple at a table.  (yes, in case you have guessed – we are in Mexico. Thus, hubby’s limited language skills come out as he tries to make his case  – now in Spanish – about why I didn’t need to force him to wear “pantalones”).  I guess I should be happy that he’s honing his Spanish vocabulary since, to date, he can probably say maybe 15 words in this language.  What I’m not enjoying is his need to over-use his new favorite statement.

 

We get ready for bed and as hubby removes his pants he merrily declares:  “¡No Pantalones!”

I put on my bathing suit in the morning and hubby smiles and says:  “¡No Pantalones!”

He swims up to the pool bar and from across the water, I can see him mouthing:  “¡No Pantalones!”

 

Yes folks, this has become the catch phrase of our vacation so hubby can remind me like 1564 times a day that he really didn’t need to pack pantalones… since no one seems to enforce the pantalones rule at dinners.   At this point, I’m starting to think about hiding all the pantalones when we get home just so I can continue to use this new phrase every time he gets ready for work……  He steps out of the shower, opens the empty dresser drawer with a quizzical look on his face, and behind him he hears me whispering…..   “¡No Pantalones!”   🙂

 

Become a fan of The Hubby Diaries on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/thehubbydiaries

or

Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thehubbydiaries

Read Full Post »

A Letter From the Mayoress

Dear Foursquare,

 

I’m writing today to share a serious grievance.   I sincerely hope you are willing to accept the role you’re playing in the demise of my otherwise perfectly happy marriage.

 

You were not welcome on my vacation this past week and yet you stowed yourself away in my husband’s pocket.

 

You were not welcome in the lobby of the resort and yet, there you were.

 

You were not invited to lunch by the pool and yet, you were there also.

 

I did not see your credit card as we checked in, nor did I see you provide any assistance as we applied sunscreen at the beach and yet, you lurked in the corners of hubby’s home screen.

 

Who are you, to declare my husband to be The Mayor of the resort in Cabo San Lucas?  Who are you, to allow hubby to ‘check-in’ to the hotel before our room was even ready?  And who are you, to give him the authority to declare the cactus by the pool to be “his”?   

 

I can only assume that your intentions were good as you allowed hubby to uncover hidden badges and seek out tips.  I can only hope that you were not trying to weasel your way into a frozen cocktail as you awarded hubby points for his global travel.  And, I sincerely hope you realize the impact you had on my week of relaxation as I had to be reminded by hubby, numerous times, that the pool & beach “belonged to him” since he was The Mayor and, as such, I had to request permission to enjoy any activities around the resort.

 

Should I ever find myself tossed aside, as many other wives of politicians all over the nation, I will have no one to blame but you.  For it was you, and only you, who declared my husband to be the mayor of places both near & far where he would have no shot in hell of ever being elected into office.

 

Sincerely,

 

The Mayoress (which apparently grants me no privileges whatsoever……………)

 

Read Full Post »

The Super Frosty Zone

So, I’m certain that most of you are aware that hubby is a little quirky.   It’s equally what makes me love him and roll my eyes at him at the very same time!

 

Sometimes the things that come out of his mouth are so comical that you sit there, anxiously awaiting his admission that he’s kidding.. but usually this never comes.   I mean honestly, who needs to eat their cheese flat or requires specific bowls for specific foods?  But, even after all these years, he continues to find new ways to surprise me with his oddities!

 

Another obviously nutty quirk weaseled it’s way to the surface while we were on vacation last week.

 

Let me set the scene for you.

 

We’re lounging in the sun by the pool at our resort.  We’re lathered with sunscreen.  We’re listening to the ocean and watching the boats go by.  The pool princess is ordering towels from the cocktail waiters (for more on this click here) and hubby feels the need to quench his thirst with a diet coke.

 

The waiter returns shortly thereafter with an ice cold diet coke for hubby.    This is when the fun begins…….

“Oooooooohhhhh….. ooooooohhhhhh….  Hon, look!  They have the good ice!”  Hubby says with unusual enthusiasm.

 “Uhmmm ok, the good ice?”

“Yeah…. they have the ice cubes with the holes in the middle!!!”  He’s giddy like a school boy…….

“Ahhh, I see.  The good ice.”  I have no idea what’s he’s talking about… but, I bite.

“Ok, honey… what does that mean, the good ice?”

“Well, each piece has a hole so you can put your straw right through the ice cube.  And, this let’s you create a ‘Super Frosty Zone’ “.  He’s totally serious…..

“A Super Frosty Zone?”  Not sure why I’m following him down this path…..

“YES!  A Super Frosty Zone.  It allows you to get an extra shot of cold on each sip as it passes through the zone!!”

Oh boy….. I can’t help but smile at his craziness….
 

“And, you know what else?”  He says with increasing excitement….

“You mean to tell me there’s more?”

“Oh yeah!  If you can line up a whole bunch of ice cubes and put the straw through them all, you can create a ‘Super Frosty Highway’ ”

“A Super Frosty Highway?”

“Heck yeah!….. This resort is AWESOME!”

 

And, there ya have it.  We’re at an all inclusive resort with 24 hour room service, 4 restaurants, a pool, snorkeling and a spa and hubby’s trip is made by the ice cubes they put into his drink!

 

Become a fan of The Hubby Diaries on Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/thehubbydiaries

 

Read Full Post »

Organized Chaos?

Well….. where should I start to update you on our craziness??

 

It’s been an overwhelming month, or maybe we’ve just settled into a new “norm” in our lives.  A norm that could quite possibly be called organized chaos.  Except of course, to use this terminology, we’d actually need to be organized.

 

And, in all honesty we are anything but organized lately.  My house looks like a bomb went off.  As I mentioned a week or so ago, this bomb initially came by way of illness.  Hubby was sick for almost 10 days (after 2 cycles of antibiotics he’s finally kicked it).  The illness then migrated it’s way over to me. And then, while we were still enjoying the co-mingling of our germs, we had the added bonus of celebrating hubby’s birthday.

 

Now, you may be thinking “what’s the big deal… everyone gets sick and sometimes it’s during your b-day….” 

 

But let me walk you thru the actual day of hubby’s b-day. 

 

I’ve organized a gathering of our friends at a local comedy club.  There are over 20 people meeting us at 7:00 and we’ve already pre-paid.  Hubby is feeling feverish and is mustering up all the energy he can to smile through his celebration.

 

It’s about 6:20 and I run into the basement to grab something out of the laundry room.  We need to leave at 6:30

 

“Oh crap!!!!!” I yell to hubby.   “There’s something WAY wrong down here”.

As usual hubby isn’t really paying any attention.  Add to that he’s cranky and sick, and upstairs and oh, did I mention cranky?

“Hon…. I think we have a big problem” I say as I glance towards the ceiling……  I’m actually slowly processing what I’m seeing and it’s not making any sense.  At the foot of the stairs I can see that the carpet is wet along the wall.  So, I’m looking up to see if something is leaking from upstairs.  Hmmmmmm… the ceiling is dry.  Did hubby spill something (I begin looking for his stash of empty soda cans?)

Then I step off the bottom stair and ….. squish…. squish….. OH NO!  The carpet is soaking wet.

 

I won’t belabor you with the details of how I squished my way through the Man Cave … thwap…. thwap…  Or the lake I swam through in the laundry room…. swish…. swish….  But suffice to say, hubby finally had to acknowledge my distressed, shaky, calls upstairs.  I see his head peak down the stairs……

 

And there we stood…. wet socks, sniffly noses and stressed faces, as we tried to figure out why we had 3 inches of water throughout our Man Cave…. YIKES!   And, we had 10 minutes to leave for the festive b-day celebration!

 

Needless to say, we had no choice but to walk away from this new found challenge to head out to the comedy club.

 

We spent the next couple of days cleaning out closets, moving furniture, sucking up water and calling the insurance company.  Oh yeah …. it was more fun than you can imagine!

 

And then, as if all this fun wasn’t enough, on the tale end of sickness, flooding and an absolutely trashed house… hubby & I needed to head off for a vacation that had been planned for months.

 

Timing couldn’t have been better …… AND…. timing couldn’t have been worse.

 

So, we’re now back home.  My basement is emptied all over my house, there are dehumidifiers running, fans blowing and now we start dealing with the next steps to put the house back together.    The good news is that I’m thankful to have quite a few hubby stories from the past few weeks (floods, travel, cocktails & vacation are the perfect fodder for tales of hubby’s silliness)  Now, I just need to find time to actually write some of them down!
 

I’ll start you out with these tidbits….

• We actually had a back-up sump pump (still in the box) sitting on the sopping wet carpet.
• The sofa that hubby hates came out completely unscathed
• Hubby actually got one of his big wishes….. an indoor swimming pool (I’m surprised he didn’t have Corona bottles floating around the Man Cave!)

 

Become a fan of The Hubby Diaries on Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/thehubbydiaries

Read Full Post »

The Magic Of Blogging

I’ve mentioned before that sometimes this blog serves as great therapy for me.  This is to say that when I watch hubby step over stuff laying on the floor, leave whiskers all over the bathroom sink, or I throw away the umpteenth empty soda can from the kitchen counter…. rather than have silent conversations with myself about how to smother hubby in his sleep, I jot down a note to blog about it.

 

It’s become a tool for me to vent my frustrations about hubby’s clueless male behavior without picking a fight over Every-Single-Stupid-Thing he does around our house.  This is not to say that I’ve mastered the art of not nit-picking.  My will power to ignore every overlooked thing, or crumb, or untouched project, can only go so far.  But for me it’s helped to solicit comments from other poor people all over the world, who lovingly deal with schmos of their own.  So, if you’re a lurker here and never comment, this is the time you should share a story of your own!! (It’ll make you feel good!)

 

Anyhow, many of you know that hubby is a regular blog reader.   This can bring about a very unique set of circumstances after I post an entry. You see, I almost never tell hubby what I’m going to write about.  The topic (and my feelings about the topic) comes a surprise to him each time I post and sometimes it leads to conversations after the fact.  And, some of these conversations are pretty dang funny.

 

When I first started this blog, I discussed it with hubby.  I offered to share everything I wrote with him prior to posting.  He insisted this wasn’t necessary.   As much as I pick on him (and as moronic as he can be) we really do have a happy marriage.  The last thing I wanted to do was share something with the blogosphere that truly upset him.  The agreement we came to was that I wouldn’t make anything up, I’d only post things that were completely true.  Hubby told me “nothing is off limits”.  And so, off I went to share his absurdity with all of you.

 

Now, as you can imagine, sometimes he reads a replay of our conversations and he laughs out loud at how ridiculous he sounds.  Sometimes our friends comment to him about how nutty his idiosyncrasies really are.  Sometimes wives of our friends comment about how similar their husbands are. And sometimes, hubby gets so caught up in the story about something he did wrong, it makes him see it through different eyes.  Yes folks, these are my happiest moments.  It’s the days when I’ve blogged about him ignoring something that’s been blatantly awaiting his attention that, miraculously, the item is put away that night.  Don’t get me wrong. this isn’t normal.. but it does happen.

 

Then, there are the days where he’s read an entry and he wants to point out things that I forgot to share, or he wants to provide follow-up information.  These conversations usually start something like this….. ” in that bowl post, you forgot that I need to use certain spoons for certain things..” or “you didn’t mention that remote I left on the stairs for months…”  It actually cracks me up that hubby wants to rat himself out and provide me with additional blog fodder.

 

So, this week when he laughed about the fact that I quoted him as saying he “hates California“.. he followed that up with, “you know, I hate Pennsylvania too”.  So, of course, like I normally do when hubby says something that makes no sense…. I respond with “what the heck are you talking about.. what’s there to hate about PA?”.  And, with the straightest face he says… “Well, when you drive all the way out west, the PA turnpike sucks.. And, of course, there’s all those Eagles fans (hubby is a die hard Giants fan with season tickets).   So, I pretty much hate PA too”.

 

So even though hubby seems to be alienating all of my blog readers, one state at a time, I can tell you that his next comment about my last post was… “so I guess we’re going to Northern Cal this year, huh?”   And, I guess it goes without saying, that it was hard to mask the tiny little smirk that began to form on my face… as I celebrated another small, but successful, output from my blog — It looks like I just may be sipping wine in Napa sometime in the near future!!! HOOOORAAAAAAY!

 

(Do you think if my next 10 posts are about wanting a renovated bathroom, that maybe it could possibly happen this year too??????????)  🙂

 

Read Full Post »

Life in Extremes…

I live in a word of extremes.

Hubby is a man filled with passion. Now wait…before you get all excited for me, let me delve into this a little bit deeper….

 

When hubby likes something he LOVES it, when he dislikes it.. it’s the worst thing EVER.

When he’s happy, he’s like a giddy little boy and when he’s unhappy, he’s quite simply miserable.

 

There are really no in betweens.

 

There are a lot of great things that come from being in a relationship with someone like this but there are also a lot of times where I find myself rolling my eyes or shaking my head (in that sort of. .what the hell is wrong with you .. kind of way.. with of course,  as much love as one can muster!)

 

Why am I telling you this now?  Well, it’s directly related to a single statement from my dear hubby on our vacation to Belize last week (I told you there are always funny stories that come out of vacation!).

Let me preface this story by telling you that this vacation was one of those “bucket list” type trips for hubby.   It’s notably one of the best dive destinations in the world, and since hubby is an avid scuba diver and knows more about life under the sea than I’ll ever care to absorb, this trip was a huge deal for him.

So big a deal in fact, that I got numerous email messages from him in the weeks prior to our trip with info about our upcoming vacation.

 

He emailed me pictures of the dive site weeks before the trip.

He emailed me stories about diving & activities in Belize

He emailed me links to pictures of Ambergris Caye

 

The title of one of these such emails was actually….. “Holy Balls! I am excited”.  Yeah, I know, don’t ask…. I don’t completely understand the “holy balls” statement.  It’s probably a line from some obscure movie that’s stuck in his head at the moment…  Anyhow, the point I’m trying to make is he was absolutely THRILLED to be going.

So, you can imagine my response when in the middle of the week he says to me…. “I really just want to go home”.  HUH??????????

 

In order to fully understand this I need to walk you through our travels a bit.

 

Getting to Ambergris Caye from where we live is no small task.

• We wake up at 3:30am to go to the airport
• We take a 5:30am flight to Houston
• We connect to a flight from Houston to Belize City (it’s raining & windy….)
• We wait in the Belize City airport for our dinky little plane… .(oh wait, did I say dinky??  What I meant to say was the exciting, adventurous, stomach turning, 18 passenger, propeller flight) to San Pedro (and oh, by the way… it’s still raining & windy)
• We gather our luggage and hop into a taxi
• We get out of the taxi and into a boat to take us to our hotel (yes, water, is the only way to get to our hotel…….).
• We finally arrive at our hotel to check in…. pretty much completely exhausted.

 

It’s raining on & off.. but not horrible….

It storms overnight and when we wake up the following day it rains all morning but, it does clear up in the afternoon,  and we enjoy our first day sunning ourselves by our pool.  Cocktails in hand, we talk about how we’ll spend the next few days……

Hubby’s first dive is scheduled for the following day… it storms again overnight and when he wakes up it’s still raining. But the beauty of diving is that you can still enjoy underwater activities in the rain!  He does report that every single person on the dive boat vomits on their way to the dive site because the wind has caused huge swells in the ocean.  (sounds like fun huh?? And, he wonders why I don’t dive with him??).  He also says that the dive is disappointing because the visibility is not good.

 

More rain and more winds……

His “big” dive to The Blue Hole is scheduled for the next day.  He must be at the dock at 5:30am to be picked up.

Alarm goes off at 5:00am… and surprise….. it’s raining.   But, he heads down to the dock.

 

He waits….

And waits….

And waits….

 

And finally someone from the tour desk arrives only to tell him that the dive has been cancelled due to weather (they couldn’t call us to tell us the night before because the casita where we are staying doesn’t have a phone…. Did I mention we’re sort of in a remote area??).

 

Hubby is deflated and depressed and he’s watching his dream dives be washed away by the rain & wind.

More dives are cancelled over the following days.   And, the weather is so bad that we basically hole up in our hotel room to read & watch tv.

So, there we are sitting on the couch watching, who knows what on tv.. and hubby declares that “vacation is ruined, and we should just go home”.

(Did I mention that this is mid-week??? And that for all intensive purposes we still have ½ our vacation left??)

 

But, remember what I said about my dear hubby… he lives in extremes and if things aren’t great then they are HORRIBLE and we should obviously just abandon our vacation!   So, trying to be the supportive, loving wife, and understanding how much this means to my hubby I say…. “What the hell is wrong with you, you are a nut job, a freak, a whiney, complaining, pain in my…..”   Ok, I didn’t really say that at all.. what I said was.. .”honey, this could clear up tomorrow and everything will be fine…. we are not going home….”.  Sometimes hubby just needs a harsh dose of optimism… to wrap around his “the earth is crumbling around me” pessimism.

And, you know what… the sun did come out, he went on his dream dive and all was ok with the world!  He even went so far as to say it was the best trip & best dive he’s ever been on and he’s in love with Belize.

As you know, sometimes my hubby just needs a Swift Kick in the Butt…. it’s sure not the first time I’ve had to lightly kick hubby in the derriere and I’m sure it won’t be the last!

 

Hubby also journaled his experiences from this amazing dive.. you can read all about it here:  Diving The Blue Hole

Read Full Post »