I’ll admit that since having kids, I’ve become a little more short-fused. Okay, I’ve sort of become a raging shrew, who nags and barks and is never in the mood for sex. I swore that I wouldn’t be that cliche of the eye-rolling, pouting SAHM, who crosses her arms and gives her husband the death glare if he’s just ten minutes late getting home from work. But I kind of am. While I’m not proud of it, I also wonder if, sometimes, he does things just to annoy me. It could be that he’s legitimately just clueless…or lazy…or distracted by his phone. Maybe this is all just the way men are, made even more annoying when you have two kids and a house to run and a lot of crap that you need his help with. Most of my gripes are small, but they seem to all pile up on top of each other, until I finally blow over the dumbest things. So, I’m just gonna vent to you about some of the things that really annoy me, in the hopes that I won’t lose it on him. Here goes…
1. He forgets everything I need at the grocery store. Like, he comes back without bananas, without crushed garlic, and without the chicken thighs I was going to make for dinner. But he found the Tuscan kale, he says, all proud of himself. According to him, I didn’t ask for bananas (I did), they didn’t have chicken (of course they did), and they had garlic but it was, like, in a big bulb thingie (mmm-hmmm). So we end up ordering takeout, and I end up back at the market the next day.
2. He lets sh*t pile up on the floor. He still hasn’t put away that box of paperwork that’s been on our bedroom floor since…hmmm, let me think…oh, last tax season!
3. He pisses off our toddler (and then refuses to make it better). For example, after our son insisted on drinking his milk in the blue cup, my husband gave him the orange cup by mistake. So, duh, the kid freaks out, and instead of just pouring the milk into the blue cup he asked for, my husband says, “Too bad, that’s the cup you get.” He then explains to me that we can’t always give in to our toddler’s requests, then promptly leaves for work…leaving me to deal with the 20-minute meltdown which, now, can’t even be resolved with the coveted blue cup.
4. He stands in front of the refrigerator, unable to find what’s right there. He’ll ask, “Where’s the lemonade? I thought we had lemonade. I don’t see it. It’s not here. No, I’m telling you, it’s not here.” At which point, I walk over, stand next to him, and retrieve the bright yellow, hard-to-miss carton that is right in front of his damn face.
5. He doesn’t like green vegetables…or fish…or quinoa…or spicy. So after I’ve gone to great lengths to create a meal that’s both healthy and tasty, which included lots of painstaking chopping and sauteing and seasoning, I feel as though I’ve finally, miraculously, created a meal that hits all the points on the hubby’s culinary approval system. I watch him eat, waiting for a round of applause and confetti to drop from the ceiling. But when I ask how it is, he just responds, “It’s okay.”
6. He’s a con man in the kitchen. Our deal is that I’ll whip up the meals if he does the dishes. Fair enough. But somewhere along the way, he’s managed to guilt me into keeping him company in the kitchen while he does the dishes. “You’re not gonna stay with me?” he asks with a sad face. Okay, so I hang out with him, sipping my wine, but then, somewhere along the way, he also managed to convince me that I should do the drying. “It’ll go faster if you help me dry,” he says with a convincing face. So, now, I’ve managed to get conned into both making the meal, cleaning up as I go along, and then, afterwards, drying dishes. What happened to the part when Calgon takes me away?
7. He wants to get it on immediately after we’ve put the kids to bed. Here’s the thing: After I’ve taken care of the kids and done 8,000 other things over the course of the day–including make dinner and, apparently, dry dishes too–I feel relieved to finally put our kids to bed. But immediately, immediately, after they go down my husband feels frisky. Right now, when I have applesauce on my clothes and dirty hair and haven’t shaved? Right now, when I have about zero energy and negative double digits in the patience department? Right now, after you managed to forget half of the groceries and spent 20 minutes trying to find ketchup, but then couldn’t seem to find time to hang that picture that’s been on the floor in the hallway for six weeks? Right now, you think I want to have sex with you? Aaaaaaand, then he’s mad at me for turning him down for sex, which then makes me mad at him for having the worst timing and taking it too personally. Geez.
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