Marriage Illustrated with Crappy Pictures Read online

  And right toward Crappy Husband’s head. He drops to one knee and tries to shield himself as he prepares to die.

  But it just misses him and lands on the floor.

  It scurries toward my bare feet. I scream, throw the broom to Crappy Husband and try to jump up onto the toilet. The lid of the toilet isn’t down, so my feet perch on the slimy rim.

  I almost slip and I scream at him to get it. He realizes he has survived the attack so he picks up the broom and smacks it down on the cockroach. He gets it.

  However, he slams it down so forcefully that the broom snaps in half.

  He’s still afraid of cockroaches.

  COOKING

  Crappy Husband cooks. I cook sometimes too. This is how he cooks:

  He measures things and will not deviate from the recipe. If a recipe calls for seven celery sticks and we only have six, he will panic and go to the market. I’m not exaggerating.

  If a recipe calls for 10 ounces of tomato paste and we have a can that is 12 ounces, he will measure it out and not use the measly extra two ounces. Must. Follow. Recipe.

  He also uses every single pan and dish in the entire kitchen. I have no idea how a recipe with only three ingredients requires nine bowls, but it usually does. I’m very, very grateful for his cooking, but I loathe the food explosion in the kitchen after he is done.

  This is how I cook:

  Recipe amounts and ingredients are just suggestions. I approach cooking like an abstract painting. It’s art.

  I clean as I go. I’m often washing the dishes and not noticing that things are burning or that my soup is boiling over. But at least the kitchen gets cleaned up.

  Guess who’s the better cook? Hint: It isn’t me.

  CARS IN THE COUCH

  Once kids enter the picture, more stuff enters the picture. And less time to clean up all the stuff. As much as we could blame them, it really is our own doing.

  Crappy Husband is looking for the remote so he lifts up one of the couch cushions.

  He is shocked by what he sees, so I explain:

  The kids pulled up the cushion and played with cars there once.

  Yes, I did. About three months ago.

  And with that he simply replaces the cushion on top of the cars, sits down and says, “Guess not.”

  THE CAT LITTER

  We have two Crappy Cats. For years and years I was the one who changed and cleaned the litter box. Then I got pregnant and Crappy Husband took over because that’s the way it works if you read a pregnancy book and get paranoid. Not that I complained about relinquishing my duties.

  Now, several years later:

  He really can’t argue with this.

  JUST BLOOD

  Crappy Husband walks into the bathroom and sees a huge brown streak splattered across the white fabric shower curtain.

  I reassure him that it isn’t poop. Just blood.

  He shrugs and walks away.

  This story sums up the state of cleanliness of our house. A pint of blood smeared in the bathroom? No big deal. At least it isn’t poop.

  (It was hair dye, by the way.)

  CHAPTER

  INTERESTS &

  ENTERTAINMENT

  This is the stuff we do now that we are old and boring.

  WAY TO A MAN’S HEART

  The way to a man’s heart is not just through food or his penis. There is another way.

  Obscure Star Wars references.

  CLASSIFIED AD

  Of course, sometimes our interests don’t match up. I could live in a fabric store while he starts to die upon entering one. He could talk about guitar amps for ten hours while I can only pretend to listen for ten minutes.

  This is my official classified ad. Email [email protected] if interested. I can pay in beer or wine.

  HOBBIES

  We both have tons of hobbies. This makes life fun. And cluttered.

  I can’t get rid of anything that might possibly be used or repurposed in the name of arts and crafts.

  And I can’t help but collect things that might possibly be used or repurposed in the name of arts and crafts.

  Crappy Husband tries to talk me out of it, saying it isn’t a chair, it’s just junk. But I know better. Someday I’ll refinish it and reupholster it and it will be a lovely chair. Someday. For now, just stick it in the garage with the others.

  It pains me to leave things with potential behind. They need me! Or what if two months from now one of our chairs breaks and we need a replacement? I should take this one as backup!

  But he is just as bad. Worse, really. He won’t get rid of anything.

  So of course we have to keep it.

  EXCHANGING GIFTS

  When we were dating, we’d surprise each other with gifts for birthdays and holidays. A lot of time and energy went into selecting the perfect item.

  We’re married with kids now. We don’t have time or energy.

  So now we both just tell each other what we want. Sometimes we’ll just go ahead and buy it for ourselves and then say, “Hey, thanks for the birthday shoes you bought me today! I love them, they’re perfect!”

  The types of gifts have changed too. There is always an extreme lack of handcuffs, sex dice and edible underwear under our Christmas tree.

  We exchanged a tea kettle and a cozy blanket. Because that is what we wanted. We just want to be comfortable and cozy. Like elderly people. And you know what? It’s great. Edible underwear tastes horrible anyway.

  HAPPY ANNIVERSARY & TUBBIN’

  We’re sitting on the back patio and the kids are asleep. It’s our anniversary. We start talking about how nice it would be to have a hot tub.

  We’ve wanted a hot tub for a long time. A hot tub is like a bath you can take with your friends. A hot tub has just the right amount of sharks. It’s healthy and lowers stress, just like joining a gym, but it is cheaper in the long run. Plus, we’re more likely to stick with it!

  But we don’t have one. And it isn’t going to magically appear for us.

  Sigh. I look out over the yard. I notice the blue plastic kiddie pool. It’s just sitting there looking lonely.

  I jump up and drag it over onto the cement of the patio.

  I have a plan and I will not stop until I have a hot tub. First, we fill every pot in our house with water and start heating them on the stove. Then we fill bucket after bucket after bucket of hot water from the kitchen and garage and lug them out and pour them into the pool.

  It is exhausting.

  Finally, we are done! We grab a bottle of wine, take off some clothes and get in our DIY tub.

  It is pure bliss. Just. Perfect. Sure, I can only get half of my body underwater at any one time, but half relaxed is better than not relaxed at all.

  All that work carrying buckets was so totally worth it! We should do this every night!

  Crappy Husband isn’t so sure.

  But I can’t do this alone the next time. He has to be on board!

  So I offer the only thing I can think of. (No, not a blow job. Come on, it isn’t like there’s ice cream on the line here. Just a hot tub.)

  A massage. I even offer to get the coconut oil! I love coconut oil, and it will be good for our skin!

  I finish my glass of wine, hop out of the tub and go inside to grab the coconut oil. When I settle back in the tub I scoop out a large dollop with my fingers. It smells heavenly. Just what we need to take this tub up a notch on the relaxation scale. It is like we are on a tropical vacation. I drink some more wine.

  After the massage, I drink some more wine. Then I get more coconut oil and spread some on my arms like a lotion. There are now swirls of oil on the surface of the water. We’re stewing in a drunken hot coconut bath.

  It is getting really drunk in
here. I think we should get out.

  I start to stand up and my foot slips on the slick, coconut oil–lubricated bottom of the pool. I fall back and splash down into the pool.

  It isn’t so funny when he falls too. To make matters worse, the cement around the tub is wet and slick with oil from my splash. It is too slippery to get out of the tub! We could fall on the cement and crack our heads open like coconuts.

  What will we do?

  Obviously, the safest thing to do is to wait out here all night long. The kids will wake up in the morning and come looking for us and they’ll call 911 or the fire department or the Frog brothers or whomever one calls when your parents are stuck in a hot tub.

  But sometimes the safest choice isn’t the right choice. We’re gonna have to risk it.

  Crappy Husband realizes he can reach one of the lounge chair cushions, so he pulls it off and lays it down on the cement toward the back door. A cushion bridge.

  We just have to slither out of the pool like snakes onto the cushion. We can’t stand up, we can only glide.

  But it works! And we get inside safely. Best anniversary ever. Who needs a hot tub?

  EXTREME DIYNESS

  We suffer from a condition called DIYness. If you are unfamiliar with the term, it stands for do-it-yourself-ness. We love DIY. But we love it beyond our abilities.

  It usually starts the same way. We want something. It costs money.

  We’ll DIY!

  We look up tutorials and plans. We research wood. We research stains. Types of lids, hinges and locks. We figure out dimensions. We become obsessed with our project. We’ll save so much money! We’re so frugal!

  Finally, we head to the lumberyard and buy wood. And wood glue. And various grits of sandpaper. And wood pegs. And new blades for our saw. And stain.

  At this point, we pay no attention to how much all of this costs but it is roughly much more than a hundred bucks. It doesn’t matter. Once the DIY symptoms begin, we are no longer rational. It’s a disease.

  We measure and we build and we sand and we stain and we sand again and we stay up way too late and we get sweaty and we work our asses off and then finally:

  No, we didn’t save money. No, we didn’t make a nicer toy box. But it is still better. It is personal and made with love. (DIYness will always prevail. Hey, I’m not interested in a cure.)

  SPORTS

  While we share a lot of interests, we also share a lack of interest in one thing. Sports. I don’t follow sports and neither does Crappy Husband. I’m so thankful.

  My entire extended family, on the other hand, does follow sports. Intensely. They live in Wisconsin so they are Packers fans. That is a football team. Some of my family members wear certain clothes during games because they believe it brings the team luck. They eat or drink certain things when a touchdown is scored and game nights require grilling marathons and celebrations and drinking and friends. Actually, minus the sports part, it is all really fun.

  When we visit, we try to fit in as best we can and everyone is very accommodating of our complete and utter lack of sports knowledge. (Although I did once get blamed for the Packers losing Super Bowl XXXII because I didn’t cheer with enough enthusiasm. So sorry about that, Wisconsin.) We are clueless. We don’t even know the names of the characters. I mean players. See?

  One year at Thanksgiving we all went around saying what we were thankful for and what we hoped for in the coming year.

  Crappy Husband stood up and said a bunch of lovely things he was thankful for and things he hoped for. To loop in my family, he decided to make a sports wish for them:

  He will never hear the end of this.

  WE CANNOT ATTEND

  Sometimes we get invited to something and we aren’t going to go. And we have a very good reason for not going. We don’t want to go.

  Unfortunately, being polite trumps honesty in our culture, so we have to come up with a “real” reason for not going. Crappy Husband can’t lie, so turning down invitations is always my domain. I don’t like to lie either, but, fortunately, I’ve come up with a workaround.

  I tell Crappy Husband what I said.

  He is appalled that I lied. But, you see, I didn’t lie!

  It’s all in how you say it. “Unfortunately, we can’t attend. We’re going to a birthday party for a friend.” Both of those statements are true, they just aren’t related. It’s true, we really are going to a birthday party. And it’s true, we really can’t attend.

  It isn’t my fault if the person connects the two statements together.

  CHAPTER

  MONEY

  The problem with money is that it is super-fun to get rid of it.

  WHERE THE MONEY GOES

  Where does it go? I could blame the kids and how they eat a single bite of a banana and then say they are done. I could blame our assorted DIY projects and hobbies. I could blame the fact that we live in an expensive area of the country. I could blame a lot of things, but this is the real truth. This is where the money goes:

  SPENDERS VERSUS SAVERS

  Apparently, some people are spenders and some people are savers. Classic couple trouble happens when you have one of each in a marriage. One person consumes expensive designer clothes or electric tools, while the other person saves twist ties from bread bags and reuses coffee filters.

  When we first got married, we didn’t have this problem. We had a different problem. We were both spenders.

  Hey, did anyone pay the electric bill this month? We’ve never forgotten long enough for our lights to be shut off. But we’ve certainly enjoyed our share of late fees for this sort of thing.

  Two kids and a mortgage later, we’ve had to become a little bit smarter about this so the lights don’t actually go out, but we’re still not as responsible about money as we should be. We’re still not savers. We’re at an in-between level that I call save-to-spenders.

  We don’t save to save. Now we save to spend. We still have a lot to learn. But at least we pay the electric bill first.

  THE CABIN IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

  I grew up in a rural area of the Midwest. Things were cheaper there. When we start to worry about money, I stress about the expensive area that we live in. You can’t even buy romaine lettuce for less than a dollar here! We’re gonna starve!

  Which results in panic:

  “I’m serious!”

  “We can’t grow our own food in the garden we already have; we’re terrible gardeners!”

  “Yeah, but I don’t mind hard work and we’d be better at it if we were in the middle of the woods.”

  “Why?”

  “But it would be so much cheaper!”

  “There is a good reason it is cheaper!”

  “Why?”

  “Because nobody wants to live there.”

  “Hey, can you run to the market? We’re out of romaine lettuce.”

  “Sure, as long as we don’t have to move to a cabin in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Fine. It’s a deal. We won’t move. At least not this month.”

  SOMEBODY STOP US

  If I were pining over diamonds and he were pining over platinum golf clubs, we could argue each other out of buying these over-the-top things. Well, the good news is that I don’t wear much jewelry and he doesn’t play golf. The bad news is that the things I want to splurge on are the things he also wants to splurge on.

  This means there is nobody here to stop us.

  But at least we can drown our regret with good wine.

  THE CAREER SWITCH DEBATE

  When we start stressing about money, sometimes we decide that maybe we should drastically change our careers. Big results require big change, right? Plus, when you’re having money worries, the responsible thing to do is to take out a giant business loan for a vocation you h
ave zero experience in.

  We’ve recognized this pattern, so now our conversation is always the same:

  See, that’s the thing. We often think we want something, but we’re wrong. What we really want is much simpler.

  Take opening a restaurant. Sure, we want to open a restaurant. Doesn’t everyone? The food! The atmosphere! But wait. Do we really want to spend every night there and manage staff and deal with customers and basically live there? No. We just want to go out to eat at a restaurant.

  Or running a bed-and-breakfast! Everyone thinks they want to open a bed-and-breakfast. Me too! Such a romantic idea! Oh, how lovely and relaxing it would be! But it is all a facade. I don’t want to wash sheets and serve people and deal with reservations and angry travelers. All I really want is to go to a bed-and-breakfast and read novels on a bench in the bucolic countryside with lavender in the air.

  This conversation ends with us realizing that what we really want is to just go to a club, restaurant and a bed-and-breakfast. Simple right? Except all of those things cost money. Darn.

  WHO SHOULD MANAGE THE MONEY

  Marriage and financial experts say that the person who is best at managing money should be the one in control of balancing the finances. We can’t follow this advice. It would look like this: