Annoying Shit About my Husband (That I have Come to Appreciate)

My hubby left this week to go on the yearly Rotten Man-Gathering: every fall the men in the Rotten family all travel up north to go duck hunting.  I can't imagine how anyone would call driving four hours so they can get up every day at WTF o'clock and freeze their asses off in a canoe/hiding in the woods a "vacation", but whatever.  They seem to love it.  I understand there is a lot of beer involved.

Anyway I'm kind of missing my man at the moment, so I thought now would be a good time to talk about how much he frickin' annoys me.

1) He's painfully, brutally honest.  I remember when we were first living together and I was trying to woo him with my amazing culinary skills.  I don't talk about it too much but I'm awesome in the kitchen.  I put a lot of thought and care into preparing a meal so you can imagine how pissed I got when, after tasting my wonderful creation, he quite bluntly declared "I don't like this."

Well, gee don't sugarcoat it or anything.  Tell me what you really think!

This was a real blow to my ego.  It is impossible for someone with taste buds to not like my cooking.  (Impossible, I say!)  But then I began to notice that he was plainly truthful about everything.  It's not like he was going around being overly critical or mean, but if I asked him what he thought about something he would go right ahead and tell me without holding back.

And then one day I realized this was not necessarily a bad thing.

Because here was a man who is so committed to being honest that he would never lie, not even to spare my feelings.  Throughout our 12 years together he has always been brutally honest with me and I have never once caught him lying.  In fact I've learned that he considers lying to be beneath his manly dignity.  And to me, that's pretty fucking cool.

I like flattery as much as the next girl but when it comes to my life partner I'll take an honest brute over a smooth liar any day of the week.

2) He's a hoarder.  This he gets this from his mother.  The shit she has held on to over the years never ceases to amaze me.  One time I found Frick playing with some home made paper money that she had made when she was a little girl.  That's right.  My mother in-law managed to hang on to paper coins and paper bills that her childish hands had awkwardly drawn and cut out sometime in the late 1950's.  Who does that?

Mother Rotten, that's who.

I'm the complete opposite.  I ruthlessly rid myself of any extraneous stuff.  If I haven't used it in the last year and it doesn't have any significant sentimental or monetary value then out it goes to the local thrift store.  As Great Gran MacCrappy used to say:

"Effen ye arrrrn't  yoooozing it, sum othurrrr perr soul c'd mak yoos uff't.  Nae sense in huvvin't gaitherrr dust!"

(Which, roughly translated means, "There are poor people who would love to have this.  Why hang on to it if you don't really need it?")

But my husband seems to be emotionally attached to every wire, thread and bit of plastic that enters this house.  On top of that he is constantly bringing home crap from his clients who were trying to throw their crap away.  Old cell phones, obsolete computers, broken monitors and one time, an old Atari set complete with a box of Atari game cartridges (which might be cool if we played with it, but instead it sits in a box taking up space).

I've tried many times to sit him down in our basement and help me sort the valuable crap (like the Atari stuff, I guess) from the actual crappy crap but it's impossible.  He sees value in all the crap.  I have to wait until he's not home to get rid of the crap.  In fact I'm in the process of taking advantage of this hunting trip right now, getting rid of all kinds of crap.

But the thing is sometimes the crap turns out to be useful.  There have been numerous occasions where my husband has been able to fish out some crucially necessary item, and I've had to grudgingly acknowledge that it was a good thing he kept it instead of getting rid of it like any sane person would do.

Also, thanks to Mother Rotten, I got to have the rather heartwarming experience of dressing my sons in the same baby clothes their father wore and letting them play with the same toys their father used to play with.  I've learned to hang on to more things than I used to before I met my husband, and maybe someday my grandchildren will be wearing some of my children's clothes and playing with some of my children's toys.

3)  He's a slob.  This one continues to be challenging.  Messiness and disorder trigger my anxiety making me highly irritable so I don't always handle this well.  It is true that he works very long hours.  It is true that he's too busy supporting his family to consider cleaning.  But it is also true that he is a straight up slob.

To be fair he does the best he can.  After years of seeing me throw tantrums He finally cleans up whenever he remembers to think about it and lately he has been in the habit of washing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen after dinner.  It's been lovely being able to make my morning coffee in a clean kitchen instead of having to wash a load of dishes for this to be even possible (something I've been missing since he's gone hunting).  So I'm trying to cut the guy some slack.

I try to see the messes he makes as evidence of his commitment to providing for his family.  He works very hard so I can stay home and be with our children and help them with speech therapy/ADHD counselling/school advocacy etc.

Also, There's something to be said for living with a well-meaning slob.  Would I want him to be the complete opposite?  He could be the kind of neat freak who doesn't want anything to be touched because it has to always be show-room perfect.  I think I'd rather have the kind of anxiety generated by living in some mess than the kind that is generated from the nit-picking disapproval of my husband.

I guess the thing I appreciate most about all of this annoying shit is that it's really the worst stuff about him.  He's a well-meaning slob who hoards junk and tells the truth too much and, when you put it in perspective, that's pretty fucking awesome.

Because we could be like this happy couple:

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/adrian-chen