Paul has plenty of things, big and small, that allow me to comfortably participate in any Husbands Are The Worst discussion that might break out in my vicinity. Here is an example of something that is small, and yet it feels to me that it represents something bigger: when he discovered that I had accidentally put a pair of someone else’s clean underwear in his underwear drawer (I don’t fold Paul’s underwear, so I didn’t notice it was the wrong size), he just threw it back into our dirty laundry basket. So then it happened a second time, because I do laundry mostly by room (mine and Paul’s together, Edward and Henry’s together) for easier sorting, so the only sorting/evaluating I’m doing of underwear in my room is “Is this mine or is this Paul’s?,” and that’s mostly an issue of dividing by color and texture. A pair of boys’ underwear is the same color and texture as Paul’s, so into Paul’s drawer it goes. Why would Paul not take the clean pair of underwear and put it into the boys’ drawer? Or even leave it out for me to put into the boys’ drawer? Why PUT IT BACK INTO THE SYSTEM THAT LED TO THE MALFUNCTION?? Why put CLEAN laundry into the DIRTY laundry?
Anyway, marriage is stupid. BUT. I will say this: we have been in this new house for one month now, and I have been basically the worst (moody, moony, dramatic, cranky, sad, slumped, despairing, snapping, and not reaching anywhere near my capacity for unpacking), and he has been consistently and persistently the best. He has gone to work and then come home and worked on fixing things that make me sad: the non-working lock on the bathroom door, the wimpy shower head, the chair that is in the wrong room. On weekends he works on solving larger problems: this weekend he researched salt, sand, salt/sand mixes, salt/sand spreaders, whether my minivan is front-wheel drive, what kind of vehicle we might buy next that would do better with a steep driveway, and what kind of tires might help in the meantime; he also went to the old house, disassembled most of the storage shelves, transported them to the new house, and reassembled them. He has done all of this while remaining cheery, and patting me sympathetically as I mope, and suggesting things such as maybe I would like to go sit in my sunporch for awhile.
When I measured under the wide sill on my sunporch and discovered we had only one set of bookshelves that would tuck beautifully under there, and the set of shelves in question were ones he had just finished filling with books, he took all the books off and moved the shelf—and then it did NOT fit under the sill, because our floors are charmingly uneven, so the sill was 36 inches off the ground where I measured, but 35 inches off the ground at the other end, so then Paul moved the shelf back out and put all the books back on, and he did one (1) sigh about that whole thing and it did not feel like it was aimed in my direction. It was a “welp” sigh.
All of this is to say that Paul has his upsides and strong points, hard as they may be to see when he is, say, reacting to each and every idea I have by saying “Yeah, I thought of that,” or when he is loudly vocalizing his sneezes.
Another thing in his favor is that he fetches my library books every week (I mostly use the online-request system) and also brings me other books that catch his eye that he thinks I might like. This week he brought me Unladylike by Cristen Conger and Caroline Ervin, which, with its strong smash-the-patriarchy theme, feels very supportive and validating coming from a man spouse:
(image from Amazon.com)
I sat on my sunporch and read 97 pages of it yesterday, and I think it’s just great, and it is PACKED with great illustrations, and I think I am going to have to buy my own copy and also pressure others to read/buy it.
OMG I just love your blog so much. “Anyway, marriage is stupid.” Please never leave the blogosphere! Please!
I went to an anniversary party and sat at a table with couples I knew. At one point I was sitting there with just two of the husbands who were chatting since they had discovered they had a lot of history in common from being locals of about the same age. One of them happened to mention deciding not to wear a shirt, and that he then just tossed it into the hamper rather than hang it back up. The other man said that was the only thing he would ever do in that situation, too. I just felt this rush of hot hatred towards them for being so…lazy? Entitled? Cruel? IDK. I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve decided in 27 years of marriage that some spouses will just go to great lengths not to do a job that they don’t consider to be theirs. What a sweet luxury that must be.
I am glad that you have a cheerful mover of a husband. It sounds like he’s a good nester.
Me, in situations like that, “But won’t you just have to hang it up after you wash it?”
The Unladylike podcast is also excellent. I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys podcasts.
Regarding the underwear, my husband and my son have different colored underwear from each other for JUST THIS REASON. Also, they have different brands of socks, clearly labeled with the brands.
That said, I’m really glad Paul is stepping up to fix the parts of the house that are making you sad.
Also, everyone in my house is responsible for putting their own laundry away in their own drawers.
Here’s our laundry system (perfect for lazy people): we have three hampers (for dark, medium, and white clothes), and three laundry baskets. I sort the clean clothes into the baskets and shove the baskets into the appropriate person’s room. If the next load comes out and the basket is still full of clean clothes in the person’s room, I just dump more clothes on top.
If someone finds someone else’s underwear in their basket, they open the other person’s bedroom door and toss the undies into the other person’s basket.
This works most of the time, except that when my son does the sorting, he tends to end up with MY Gloria Vanderbilt jeans in HIS basket, and only notices when they show way too much ankle and slide off his butt (he’s 9 inches taller than me and 30 pounds lighter).
This is pretty much how we do it too, except I wash everyone’s clothes separately. I have 3 teens, so they each generate 1-2 loads per week depending on season and activity level. They each have a hamper in their rooms; the kind you can carry to /from the laundry area. I wash/dry and hang up their school uniforms and nicer clothes, but all the undies/socks/t-shirts/shorts/sweats/jammies get tossed in a basket and put in their rooms. The following week, if I’m leaving a new basket of freshly washed clothes in their rooms, I take last week’s freshly washed basket and dump it on top, and take the basket back. I used to leave 2 baskets in each room, but then I didn’t have anymore baskets to switch clothes from the washer to the dryer, etc. Disclaimer – of course, any bright red or really delicate clothing items, and sports uniforms are washed per the label instructions, separately if needed. I’ve been using the “keep-it-all-separate” method for years, but there are times when cross-contamination (lol) happens. Sometimes my son will come home from a sports practice and toss his sweats right in the laundry room and they’ll go in with another person’s load of laundry. I usually toss them in with towels though. I work from home 2 days a week, so it takes about a month before I need to run a load of my own work/dressier clothes; I keep a small hamper in the laundry room for those clothes to wait in until it’s their turn. Also, I’d say my husband does his own laundry about 60% of the time. I’d almost prefer he not though… as it’s often forgotten and left in the washer to get stinky overnight, or left in the dryer to wrinkle. He produces two loads in a week usually, and if I do his laundry, I would separate all the random cotton stuff into one load, and then his work shirts/pants would be another load. He doesn’t separate it; whatever lands in the washer first (until it’s full) gets washed. I don’t get that. But whatever.
This is my favourite Paul post of yours, ever! It’s just so truthful that people are the best and the worst at the same time, but we tend to pick somebody who is the best in ways that are important and necessary to us, and it definitely does me good to sit down and remember those aspects more often. As always, this is written so cleverly, thank you!
This post made me pick up my phone and text my husband, with whom I had a particularly rough weekend, that he has a lot of good qualities that I like and appreciate (since I pointed out so many of the bad ones this weekend). He responded by asking me to list them lol.
Thank you for posting this. It boosted me up and probably helped my marriage as well. Your writing is wonderful as always!
“asking me to list them” literally made me lol.
Your ability to write honestly about marriage is one of my favorite things.
When Michelle Obama was doing her book tour and talking about marriage counseling she said something like ‘marriage is hard. If you have 10 bad years that’s pretty good.’
What is it with men and their sneezes? Husband’s are explosive to the extent that they make me shriek. My tombstone is going to read “She was killed by a cold that wasn’t hers.”
Hahaha! I’m stealing that for MY tombstone for when I finally actually have a heart attack from the sneezes emanating from my husband.
The other stupid thing I get annoyed by is when he’s sleeping and I come to bed and he wakes up really loudly. Like, all I did was slide into bed quietly, do you have to gasp like I clapped a plastic bag over your head?
“Anyway, marriage is stupid.” Best.
Good on Paul. I am glad he is being helpful and cheery and bolstering. And I love hearing about the little ways that other people’s spouses are good and horrible.
I grew up at the top of a 300 foot hill, in Massachusetts (hill height is not an exaggeration). There is a learned skill for getting up to the top of said hill, in the winter. Firstly, everyone needs to remove as much snow as possible from the hill, as soon as possible. Like scrape it down to the pavement clean (we hired a plow company who came out every storm, but kids were still sent out with shovels as soon as the plow came through to clean up the bottom layer). Dirt/sand worked better in our situation than salt- cat litter is also good. Which meant that every fall, we’d gather the buckets, fill them, and put them in the cellar for the winter. Storage was big 50 gallon buckets, with smaller sand castle buckets for actually throwing the sand/dirt. Then, the actual driving technique was to get as much speed as possible, and just gun it and hope for the best. If you made it up 2/3 of the way, you were probably going to make it up the whole way. If you did not, gently reverse to the end of the driveway and try again. Until this year, I have never owned a 4-wheel drive vehicle, but I successfully conquered the driveway 90% of the time.
Can confirm the gunning technique.
YES. The hardest part to trust/learn is that you have to go fast. You may only be able to approach the driveway from one direction in order to be going as straight as possible when you gun it. But you won’t make it up if you are timid.
I have a friend in Utah who has an insanely long driveway. They couldn’t get in and out of their house several times throughout the winter. And then…heated driveway. What. I’ve heard of several people who have done that since she did, but not a single one in the Midwest. Why is that? I have no idea what the cost would be, but that may be something to consider.
We have an all wheel drive suv that almost always gets me up our very steep long driveway. We use liberal amounts of pure road salt to cut the ice, though we have town water so it won’t affect our well. My parents had high sodium levels in their well as it was located about 60 feet and downhill from a state road.
Paul’s kindhearted and industrious response to your crankiness would make me love him even more. It would also make me wonder if I really wanted to transition to a happy mood until I had soaked up as much sympathy and understanding as I needed and all the things on the “honey do list” were completed.
What is it with husband’s and sneezes?! After almost 28 years of marriage it has reached the point where instead of saying “Bless you” I just glare at him.
Oh! And I’ll put a vote in for snow tires. I put them on every winter. The studies snow tires work well, but the ones with actual metal pins might work the best for a hill.
With my SUV and snow tires I feel utterly invincible. I mean, I still drive like a wimp, but I’m an invincible wimp.
I too really enjoyed this. It reminds me of how my husband can really irritate me (like when he comes home and I have baked and he asks: Are these for sale? – no idea why, but it bugs the shit out of me. Just eat one if you want, or ask if I baked for some event or for us – I have never ‘sold’ him anything. Not about to start now. Wink, wink) and then I remember how he was really understanding when I lost my drivers license for 7 weeks because I had so many speeding tickets. He helped me figure out the big mess (created partly because of a paper trail snafu) and didn’t once toss it in my face and say ‘I told you that you drive to fast.’ He even started grocery shopping with me, because how else was I going to get to the store. And it only partially irked me when we split the shopping list and he showed up at the checkout with like 5 apples. For a week? There are 8 of us. I usually buy like 20 or 30 apples at a time. Shampoo – why would I buy one shampoo? It was kind of eye opening. Super happy for you that he has stepped it up. You definitely needed that.
Well, this is bugging me. I just tried the link to my blog from my above comment and it would not work. I think I have it fixed here. I mean you never know when someone might want to read more about my ridiculous, drivers license free days!
I love how he suggests that you might want to sit in your sunroom for a while. This is like my husband, on evenings when I’m exhausted, suggesting that I might want to go to bed early. Which is exactly what I DO want!