As many of you have read, I am sharing a house with my ex
husband. It is not as bizarre as one could imagine. We help each other with
many tasks. He does the yard and the trash. I do the house, most of the cooking
and the cleaning. He will do anything I ask, which includes running errands.
However, I am almost at my last thread on the rope of
patience with him being under my feet on the days I am not working. He is bored
out of his mind with nothing to do. Consequently, he is trying to drive me
completely out of my mind in the process. Here is the typical day:
1 Him: I’m going to get a couple of gallons of water. Do you need anything else?
1 Him: I’m going to get a couple of gallons of water. Do you need anything else?
Me: No
He returns to the house and watches a game show.
Thirty minutes later:
2 Him: I’m going to get the mail and buy dog food. Do you
need anything?
Me: No
He returns to the house and watches a game show.
Thirty minutes later:
3 Him: I am going to check my lottery tickets. Do you need
anything?
Me: No
He returns to the house and watches the news.
Thirty minutes later:
4 Him: I’m going to buy beer. Do you need anything?
Me: No
He returns to the house and watches a game show.
Thirty minutes later:
5 Him: After this game show I’m going to clean the yard. Do
you need any help in the house?
Me: No
He comes back into the house.
Thirty minutes later:
6 Him: I’m going to clean the barbeque pit so we can grill.
Do you want me to get something else to grill?
Me: No
He comes back into the house.
Thirty minutes later:
7 Him: I’m going to wash a load of laundry. Do you have
anything to wash?
Me: No
8 Him: I have the grill ready. What time do you want to
grill? Tell me when to start the fire. I’m not rushing you, just letting you
know.
He watches evening news and chimes from the living room,
“Tell me when to start the fire. No Hurry. Just whenever.”
Okay, so now we get to read the real answers I would like to
give:
1 Him: I’m going to get a couple of gallons of water. Do you
need anything else?
Me: Can you buy enough water to create a lake I can drown
in?
2 Him: I’m going to get the mail and buy dog food. Do you
need anything?
Me: Rat Poison. It’s the main spice I’m going to put on
my dinner tonight.
3 Him: I am going to check my lottery tickets. Do you need
anything?
Me: Win enough for me to split with you and move as far away
as possible.
4 Him: I’m going to buy beer. Do you need anything?
Me: You forgot the rat poison on your last trip. If you
can’t find rat poison, score me some drugs and alcohol to put me out of my
misery.
5 Him: After this game show I’m going to clean the yard. Do
you need any help?
Me: God, please give me a bigger yard to keep him out of the
house longer.
6 Him: I’m going to clean the barbeque pit so we can grill.
Do you want me to get something else to grill?
Me: I told you we have too much food already. If you need an
excuse to go to the store buy me some ammonia and bleach. I hear that, when mixed
together, they make a wonderful fogger for your bedroom.
7 Him: I’m going to wash a load of laundry. Do you have
anything to wash?
Me: I wouldn’t trust you with my good clothes.
8 Him: I have the grill ready. What time do you want to
grill? Tell me when to start the fire. I’m not rushing you, just letting you
know.
He watches evening news and chimes from the living room,
“Tell me when to start the fire. No Hurry. Just whenever.”
Me: Would you just shut up? God give me a full time job.
Maybe I’ll win the lottery tomorrow and run for the hills.
I would rather have a starving man bothering me than a bored
one. And I am baffled with how his mind works. I know he lived a poor life as a
child. He quit school at 14 to work in the fields with his father. However, he
overcame poverty and advanced in the construction world to make great money.
So why does he hang on to a box of cowboy boots decades old
that I told him to throw away months ago. His logic? (And the question mark is intentional.) They could still be good.
Put new soles on them and clean them up. You know, like he is going to do that
one day this week, or the next, or in his next life.
He has a pair of dress shoes at least eleven years old that
have the sole splitting away from the upper part of the shoe. He put them on to
wear to church one Sunday. I pointed him back to his room.
Our garage is full of buckets of rusted bolts, nuts and
metal parts I don’t recognize. We have enough stuff to dress a crane to erect a
skyscraper. His plan? He’s going to sort it all out and take it to the metal
recycle place for beer money. Again, like that is going to happen in this life
or the next.
Then there is the little horse barn in the back yard that
came with the house. It had boxes full of junk until I gave him an ultimatum to
clean it out. Stuff surfaced for days. I helped him load an engine in the back
of the truck. This was a car engine that had to be hoisted up via a strap over a tree
limb. It took us all morning, but that was the first truck load actually taken to
the dump. I danced with glee as he drove away with it. I was literally shaking my booty.
In the moving process I decided to take the gate from my
grandmother’s garden out of the storage building so I could clean it, paint it
and hang it on the back wall of the house for décor for a planned patio area.
It is a lovely gate that was damaged in Hurricane Katrina. My
niece welded new metal bars to replace the damaged areas, so it looks almost new. Years
ago I wrote a poem about a gate leading to a garden. It was inspired by a
lovely place in the Boston
area I visited. The poem is posted on the blog and is titled “The Gateway to My
Garden.” I actually had some of the words from the poem swirling around in my
head as I cleaned the gate.
I turned my back five minutes to make a trip inside while the gate dried. I returned to discover that THE MAN in my house had decorated it.
Can anyone out there figure this one out?
