If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon (26 page)

Every single day, my husband leaves his sock drawer open about half an inch. And every single day I close it all the way. I mean, how much extra effort does it take to close it the rest of the way if you’re already closing it most of the way? I’m not exactly obsessive-compulsive; for example, I can tolerate quite a bit of dust, so it’s not “my problem” that’s to blame. It’s just that it looks so messy left open and looks so neat closed. I don’t want to even bring it up because it’s not worth starting an argument over, so I shut my mouth, shake my head, and push that dad-gum drawer closed every single day.

JEANNE

 

 

As Chief Executive Officer of Exterior Operations, Joe gets to decide things like which plants will go where and whether we’ll have a wild and eclectic English garden (my preference) or a neat, manicured yard (Joe’s inclination) and when he will water the aforementioned jungles. On the latter front, I am convinced he has subconsciously created a watering reminder that coincides perfectly with my grocery shopping schedule. Because the joy of selecting, bagging, and lugging around hundreds of dollars of foodstuffs is compounded only by having to dart through a water park to get them safely to the front door.

I call his cell phone from mine.

“Can you please turn off the sprinklers?” I ask.

“Why?” he wants to know. “Where are you?”

“I am sitting in my car in front of the house and I have a trunk full of groceries,” I explain.

“If you parked in the driveway like I always tell you that you should, you wouldn’t have to run through the water,” he says.

“Can we
not
have this particular discussion right now?” I demand. “Your truck is in the fucking driveway and I have ice cream melting out here.” Nine hours later he saunters slothlike out front and gingerly flips off the sprinklers.

“I hope you didn’t hurt yourself rushing out there like that,” I mutter under my breath, struggling up the soggy path under a load of hateful grocery bags.

My husband will grab items that he doesn’t think are being used enough to justify having real estate
inside
the house and throw them into a box and label it KITCHEN STUFF despite that fact it has four of my books, a flower vase, a few of the kids’ clothing items, a rubber spatula (the only kitchen item), and an old VHS tape. He then takes said box out to the garage and there it goes into a Garage Location Items/Witness Protection Program—never to be found again. Why, I ask?!

HEATHER

 

 

Sometimes Joe will try to goad me intentionally (or so it feels) by describing some elaborate yet hypothetical al fresco plan or another that he’s considering. It took me an embarrassingly long time to learn to bite my tongue when he does this, but I’ve gotten quite good at not engaging—because I know that whatever it is that he’s threatening to do is likely never going to happen.

Joe: “I was thinking about moving the hot tub up onto the back deck.”

Former unenlightened me: “What? That’s insane! It’s utterly ridiculous! We paid a fortune to lay that foundation under where the tub is now, and the deck isn’t even big enough so we’d have to add onto it, and do you remember how expensive that PVC decking was? And even if we did move it, do you really want to walk out the back door of our bedroom and step directly into—or have to step around—a behemoth hot tub? Oh, and once you built the new deck and moved the stupid tub then we’d have a lovely gaping cement hole out here by the patio, and what were you thinking of putting there? A nice tetherball pole, maybe?”

The discussion would continue to escalate exponentially, with Joe systematically deflecting my arguments with some version of “God, you are so negative,” and me getting angrier and more frustrated because I knew in my heart the discussion was pointless to begin with.
It’s never going to happen,
I tried to remind myself. It’s not that I ever had some great epiphany or anything that caused a shift; but after a decade or so of having one variation or another of the same futile argument, I just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm for it anymore. The result is that those exchanges now look a whole lot more like this:

Joe: “I was thinking about moving the hot tub up onto the back deck.”

New and improved me: “Great! Good luck with that.”

During yet another endless remodel (honestly, we never stop; it’s a sickness), we decided to close off a doorway that went from our kitchen to a tiny dining room and move it over a few feet. The existing doorway just wasn’t functional at all, and closing it off would add a few feet of usable wall space to the room, even though we hadn’t exactly earmarked a use for all of the newfound real estate. As Joe began to frame out the former doorway, I had a vision.

“Wait!” I practically bellowed into his ear.

“I’m right here, Jenna,” he replied exasperatedly. Joe seems to think I have a volume problem when I speak, and he is therefore constantly reminding me of his proximity. It drives me nuts because can I help it if I’m half Italian?

“Sorry,” I said, trying to be nice because I was about to ask him to do something for me. “I was just thinking that we should leave the old frame intact and you could drywall the back and then build some little, shallow shelves.”

“Shelves for what?” he demanded.

“To put stuff on,” I told him. Wasn’t this obvious?

“What kind of stuff ?” he asked slowly, suspiciously.

“I don’t really know yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of something,” I assured him.

“I’m not going to build you an entire wall of shelves just so that you can put a bunch of shit on them,” he informed me.

“Well, why else would you build shelves, then?” I asked, trying to tone down the sarcasm that I know he can’t stand.

“I just mean if they’re going to be
functional
in any way, I’ll be happy to build you some shelves,” he insisted.

“Honey, they’re
shelves
,” I said patiently. “Shelves are designed for the singular purpose of
putting shit on
.”

“Do you mean decorative shit or functional shit?” he asked. He wasn’t even kidding.

“Does it matter?” I demanded.

“Absolutely,” he replied.

“So if I promise I’ll only store a bunch of unsightly,
functional
crap on there—maybe the blender parts and an assortment of sippy cup lids and that ugly-ass serving platter one of your friends gave us for our wedding—then you’ll build me the shelves?” I asked.

“Yup,” he said.

“Deal,” I lied. Once I had those shelves in place, I knew there really would be no further discussion. You know, because they were
inside
, in my domain.

My husband has piles of stuff everywhere, and they all have to be at right angles to each other. There are books, CDs, and papers on every available surface in our house, and nothing is in any kind of order, but everything is very neatly piled and exactly perpendicular. If I need to find something, it’s hopeless to please him because there’s no way I can pile things up as neatly as he wants them. Also, he rotates the following items in the cabinets or drawers, as the case may be, so they “wear evenly”: socks, underwear, silverware, and plates. It’s almost funny if you don’t let it get to you.

JANE

 

 

Joe is better than me at many, many things: snowboarding, working the TiVo, grilling meat, mowing the lawn, carrying cases of soda and tubs of cat litter, playing tennis, parallel parking, and fixing computer glitches instantly leap to mind. But the thing I kick his ass in when it comes to our respective domestic spheres is finesse. See, when Joe decides it’s time to alter something outside, he tends to announce it in a very direct, definitive way. “The ivy’s coming out this weekend,” he’ll say, hands on his hips, the singular raised brow and puffed-up posture together screaming
I double-dog-dare you to try to talk me out of it
. This of course makes me immediately defensive and argumentative, which is rarely a good starting point. In other areas of his life, Joe has learned the art of subtle diplomacy. Just last night, in fact, he asked, “What would I have to do for you in return if you let me go to the Lakers-Celtics playoff game with Brian this weekend?” Not, “Guess what? I’m going on an expensive boys’ getaway in two days and leaving you alone to deal with the kids,” or even, “Can I go on an expensive boys’ getaway in two days and leave you alone to deal with the kids?” This is because the man I married is smart enough at least in this situation to know that careful wording that includes a promise of future payoff is going to earn him a much more favorable response. But when it comes to his beloved exterior, the same guy can be a bit of a dictator.

Now consider my approach. I’ve gotten away with some pretty extravagant interior splurges over the years by mastering the delicate, dying art of combining patience with subtlety. I start by planting a few seeds, which usually entails extolling a thing’s
functional
value, over and over, until Joe wholeheartedly believes that we need it as badly as I want it. The wine bar in our kitchen is a perfect example. If you asked him whose idea it was to buy the gigantic, overpriced, six-piece wall-length Pottery Barn unit, he’d probably say “Ours.” And that’s just what I want him to think.

As soon as I saw it on the cover of the catalog, I knew that wine bar would wind up in our kitchen. We’d just moved yet another wall and, serendipitously, the bar was exactly the right size to fill it; so much so in fact that it would practically look like a custom built-in. I was foaming at the mouth for it but I didn’t go out and buy it or even ask Joe what he thought. I simply ripped the page from the catalog and taped it to the wall.

“What’s this?” Joe asked immediately upon noticing the temporary artwork.

“Oh, it’s something I saw that I thought might work on that wall, but it’s pretty expensive and I’m not sure it would even work anyway,” I replied.

“Why not?” he asked.

“It’s not the cabinet space, because it’s got plenty and that would certainly be nice added storage, like you’re always saying we need,” I said carefully. “And it holds a ton of wine, so we could move the boxes out of the garage that are constantly getting in your way. But I just don’t know if it will fit . . .”

“Well, did you measure the space?” he asked, leaping into handyman mode.

Who did he think he was dealing with, some kind of rookie? Of course I measured the space and it couldn’t be a more perfect fit. It wasn’t
really
going to be this easy, was it?

“I was going to,” I told him. “I just wanted to get an idea of how it might look there.” I know, lying to your husband is terrible, but that wasn’t technically a lie because I
was
going to measure it—and then I did. Besides, if I looked too eager, I knew I’d never get the thing. That was where the patience came in.

Within seconds Joe had the measuring tape out and was appraising the space.

“Wow, Jenna, this would fit
perfectly
here,” he announced.

“Really?” I replied with mock shock. “Because if you think so, it
is
on sale but only for a couple of days. Were you thinking of ordering it right away?” Did you see how I did that? How I turned it on a dime and now the whole thing was Joe’s idea in the first place so he couldn’t even argue it? I know, I’m brilliant.

Despite a few similarly manipulative little stunts, for the most part I think I am both respectful and gracious in the way I handle the “inside operations.” I might replace a few faded throw pillows or buy a new vase at Target without running the transaction by my husband in advance, but more often than not I seek Joe’s input before making a major change or purchase. I consider his towering height when hanging mirrors so that I don’t accidentally position them so low that he can’t see his own forehead in them. I narrow curtain and paint and bedding options down to a handful I can live with and then ask whether he has a favorite. (Sometimes he even does.) I try to remember to fawn appreciatively when he plants this or prunes that or otherwise busts his ass trying to spruce up the outside. For the privilege of having the house look exactly how I want it
and
never having to mow my own lawn, I figure it’s the least I can do.

Vacation:
All I Ever Wanted

Most travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering; the reality has more to do with losing your luggage.

• REGINA NADELSON •

 

 

In a former life—well, it was technically this one, but it feels like a different one altogether because I was young and wrinklefree and rarely carried snack-size bags dusted with pretzel crumbs plus a dozen or more crayons in my purse—I did a lot of travel writing. One of the great perks of travel writing is that you get to see the world and also you get a ton of free shit. When you are gainfully employed in this capacity, generous companies eagerly furnish you with first-class plane tickets, sprawling presidential suites, petrifying paragliding lessons, and as many gourmet meals as you can shovel into your cake hole in the hopes that you might recommend their resort/ airline/cruise ship/death-defying activity to three or four million of your closest friends. For the very reasonable price of a smile and an assignment on official magazine letterhead, I have scaled walls of rock in Utah and mountains of ice in Colorado, plumbed the depths of the Kauai coast with a scuba tank on my back, and practiced yoga poses on a blindingly white beach somewhere in the West Indies. Getting paid to pretend you’re a rich tourist is a sweet gig all around, save for occasionally having to sacrifice an hour or two of your critical “research” time to dine with an annoying PR person.

Call me spoiled (I admit! I was!), but after you’ve experienced the VIP vacation treatment, it’s hard to go back to the budget-traveler lifestyle. Especially when your new husband thinks that
camping
actually falls into the vacation category.