Monday, April 5, 2010

Sometimes you just gotta laugh

One of the reasons I love D (which is how I will be referring to Dan from this point on, and Lucas will be L) is because he thinks I'm hilarious. It's very important to me that people think I'm funny. Maybe it's a bit of an ego thing, who knows. I knew I would never marry a guy who didn't get my humor, which really narrowed the playing-field when I was husband-hunting. I guess I view my humor as the type where you have to know me to love me (which is one of the main reasons I don't thing I'll ever be a blog celebrity because the reality is that there are only so many people I know, and a fraction of those think I'm genuinely funny. The other people have a firm handle on the pity laugh.). But D, he's gotten me from the beginning. Even when I'm sassy, he thinks it's hilarious. One of the foundations of our marriage is the fact that we crack each other up.

Some people probably wouldn't believe it, but D is pretty funny. He's not always funny in the ha-ha sense of the word. Sometimes he's funny in the wow-that's-really-strange-and-quirky-and-I-don't-understand-you kind of way.

Exhibit A: D loves his truck. We're talking hard-core love. So much love that if I ever got into an accident while driving it (God help me), he would have a hard time deciding whether to ask "Are you ok?" or "How's my truck?" first. Sad to say, I think he'd probably think, Well if she's calling me to tell me she got into an accident, she's probably ok so..."How's my truck?"

One of the things that's unbelievably irritating about this is that he flat-out refuses to park around other vehicles if at all possible. Even if this means parking in the far, far back of the parking lot. Even if there's fifty bazillion spots up front. If those fifty bazillion spots are near other cars, they are not options. This goes for parking near cart corrals, too. Those are off-limits. He did this even when I was 9 months pregnant and could barely walk from our driveway to the house. Even when we went to Babies R Us and the "Expectant Mother" space that was right up in front, an easy distance from the entrance was free.

Exhibit B: Laundry is generally my responsibility in this house. And by "my responsibility" I mean that I wash the clothes and either fold them and leave them on the couch/chaise or leave them in a clean and unfolded pile on the couch/chaise. Or the clothes that we don't wear often stay in a dirty heap on the basement floor. (Don't judge! The core of the problem is that we both have too many clothes and not enough storage space. We are working to rectify this situation.) But my point is that if I don't do the laundry, it doesn't get done.


The thing that drives me nuts is when D runs out of work clothes. In this situation, he will start a load of work clothes in the laundry sometime in the afternoon on days he works. As easy as it would be to pull some of the other dirty items of the basement floor (towels, my clothes, L's clothes, anything not belonging to D), D is somehow incapable of doing this. If he doesn't have enough work clothes to make a load (essentially all the time), he will literally pick through the pile on the basement floor to find only his clothes. Occasionally he will find a towel or two. But never any of L's or my clothes. He first told me that he did this because he didn't want the chemicals he comes into contact with at work to ruin any good clothes or towels. I believed this until I noticed that he didn't have any problems throwing his good jeans, shirts, sweaters, etc. in with his work clothes. I have asked him repeatedly to please not purposely throw only his items in the laundry and have had little to no success as of this time.

Exhibit C: One of D's chores is to take out the trash. I simply refuse to do this. I don't know why, but I despise to take out the garbage. It's not even that I'm grossed out by it, because in addition to laundry, one of my chores is to clean the bathrooms, which I think everyone will agree can be a nasty job. There are just some chores you hate to do and can't explain (another for me is sweeping and washing the kitchen floor. Actually, mainly sweeping. I HATE to sweep.). So Dan does the trash. But I think he is physically unable to put a new bag in the trash can once the old bag full of garbage is removed. He will leave the trash can bagless, with the the lid to the can in the middle of the floor. I don't get it. He will take the garbage out, come in the house, step OVER the lid to the can, and sit on the couch. Then I almost break my neck tripping over the lid to the can. I've tried everything: yelling, asking nicely, refusing to do it myself, do it myself and slowly explain what I'm doing as I do it (like I would explain it to L if he was older and capable of doing chores, which I am really excited for) in hopes that he is embarrassed by his behavior. Nothing works.

So maybe the whole intro to this post was a shameless smokescreen that I used to complain about things about D that kind-of peeve me. But it is true, sometimes D and I can laugh about these things.

I had the day off today, so D, L and I had lunch and ran some errands (including paying off my car, what what!!). At the restaurant, D parked in the furthest-away parking spot possible. I heaved the sigh that meant I was irritated, and he just laughed, knowing what I was sighing about.

"You know what? I'm going to blog about this," I threatened.

He laughed and said, "Go for it, I'm glad that I give you so much to blog about!"

After lunch, we went to Babies R Us (which is amusingly now one of my favorite stores) to get some things for L. When D was parking, he knowingly ignored all the spots up in front of the parking lot and once again parked in BFE.

I did the big, heaving sigh again and D just looked at me and said, "Blog about it!"

1 comment:

Unknown said...

art always does this!!! and it's usually when it's winter, rainy, and cold! i think he is afraid of someone denting his dream car of a prius!