Marriage Illustrated with Crappy Pictures (8 page)

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.