Tag Archives: marriage

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Payback.

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I spent 5 hours following my husband from store to store looking for a new weed whacker last week.

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Don’t believe the people who tell you men hate to shop. When he’s looking for a new toy for himself? My guy will shop until I drop. We hit at least 7 different lawn and garden sections and then went back to the very first place we stopped so he could buy the very first one he saw.

And then?

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The man who owns a giant zero turn tractor and four push mowers… yes, four. Two of them self propelled. … started looking at new push mowers.

For me.

The person who doesn’t want one.

It was at that point I said enough… and made him take me for a nice late lunch.

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A fresh blueberry mojito was a good way to start.

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Every time I see this old tool art installation I want my husband to do something like it in the man cave.

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And every time, he says no.

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To start… it was butternut squash soup for the husband and some fabulous dry rub barbecue shrimp for moi.

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A basil limeade later?

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An amazing Bolognese with fresh pasta and a lamb, beef and pork ragu. It was so good I didn’t even notice what the husband ate.

Well worth 5 hours of tool shopping.

😉

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A tearful goodbye.

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After 13 years of faithful service… it’s time to say goodbye to our beloved washer and dryer.

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My husband (who DOES NOT shop for anything other than antiques) stood in line outside, in the cold, at 2:00am on Black Friday in 2010 to purchase this ( ultra fancy for it’s day) set as a Christmas present for yours truly.

I didn’t need or even want a new set at the time, but it was almost half price and he was thrilled with the deal.

Fast forward 13 years and the dryer (otherwise known as Lord Dudley’s bird watching perch) is kaput. It’s been acting up for the past few months… running one day but not the next… and after having two repairman unable to find the problem, it’s time to bid them a fond farewell.

So we shopped.

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(The husband’s good friend just got Covid so his mask paranoia is temporarily back.)

After checking the big box stores and the small mom and pop stores, we played Goldilocks and chose a set from a medium sized Maine store.

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We could have taken them home today, but of course I didn’t want blue.

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So we special ordered the graphite gray.

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Billed as “ The smartest washer in it’s class” I wondered what that entailed. A diploma? A degree? A doctorate?

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Turns out smart means Alexa…

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Sorry. I don’t care how smart it is…. I’m not talking to my washing machine.

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The early morning kernel hunt.

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My husband is a late night snacker. No matter how large and satisfying a dinner I serve him, he always has room for popcorn.

And since we’ve established he hasn’t worked out the proper bowl to kernel ratio of his new air popper…

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It won’t surprise you to learn that every morning when I walk into the kitchen I begin to search for strays.

Stray unpopped kernels on the floor that I find with my bare feet…

Stray unpopped kernels that land in my cutlery caddy…

Stray popped kernels that fly into the sink and behind the microwave…

But this morning?

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It seems the bird caught one.

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🤣

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Back at it.

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After an almost two week hiatus from working in the crap cave cellar… for reasons that will be discussed later….the husband was back on track.

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The far right corner was complete so the ceiling work started moving outward.

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I was called in to help numerous times because the price of plywood went up again and my spouse switched from the higher grade to the rougher stuff which was much harder to work with. Imagine if you will…. me, with my bad knee climbing on the step stool and trying to hold a sheet of wood in place over my head.

It was not a pretty sight. Nor a quiet one. I never realized there were so many colorful ways to say hurry up before I was roped in to helping.

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In between curses, I checked out his treasure. An old Bell and Howell movie projector, those horrible figural whisky bottles people used to collect in the ‘70s, a rather nice Italian pepper grinder and another rooster.

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Skeeter Skoot? I can only imagine the horrible chemicals they wanted us to spray ourselves with then back then.

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And finally… it looks like my husband will be giving classes on junk collecting. Reserve your seat now, it’s sure to be a popular seminar.

🥴

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The motherload continued…

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A few more oddities from our antique store stroll.

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Because you never know when you’ll need a personal, portable steam engine on wheels. It can be yours for a mere $4,000.

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I have no explanation for that.

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Proof positive everything can be made into a lamp… whether it should be is another issue entirely.

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We almost can home with this corn cutter.

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The fact that it was on sale required closer examination.

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I was all for putting this little dude in the man cave/Barn Mahal but the husband disagreed.

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Truth in advertising is a rare thing.

🤣

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Antique motherload.

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Still in search of that last vintage beer/alcohol crate for my vinyl, the husband and I headed to a massive antique mall in Oxford.

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And I have to say we were blown away. Parts of it had the normal antique mall booths with multiple vendors and then there was this room.

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Which was really more of a museum. Those vintage hand painted sleds were da bomb.

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There were some truly fabulous items.

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With fabulous prices to accompany them. We spent hours just in that one room. And then we moved on..

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My husband probably has a dozen of these old glass water bottles and frames, but that never stops him from looking for number 13.

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I nixed the idea of hanging that on the Barn Mahal door.

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Husband wanted to buy all these Trump dollars and use them to start our next fire, but I couldn’t stand the thought of that man riding all the way home with us even if I knew he’d end up in the ash pile.

To be continued..

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This will not be tolerated for long.

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Ever since my husband started his insulation and ceiling project down in the cellar, things have started to float upstairs…

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The den couch is now covered in crap.

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As is the den chair. These old uniforms (and ratty, full of holes, military issue socks because we can’t throw anything out, ever! ) were so stinky and full of mildew I made him take them to the laundromat in the next town. What does he plan on doing with them? Absolutely nothing.

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My auxiliary side desk in the home office is now covered in coins.

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And musty old boxes are being unpacked in the living room.

This particular box unearthed a treasure he was thrilled to see again.

See if you can figure out why…

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Men.

They’re easily amused.

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They never take long to fill.

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My still bored by retirement husband was back in the underground den of detritus yesterday stacking crap on his newly constructed shelves.

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It shouldn’t surprise you to learn they didn’t take long to fill.

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We now have slightly more organized floor to ceiling crap. Among the treasure?

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Mildew covered high tech.

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An ancient rusted fire extinguisher.

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And a box of money… which if I had known was down there, I would have cashed in years ago..

🤣

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My toaster is a snob.

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As you know my husband gave me the toaster to end all toasters for Christmas. Leverless, digital and to be honest, pretty full of itself.

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I say this because my husband came home from running an errand the other day with this:

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A fancy stainless steel expandable dish drainer…

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With a removable cutlery holder, knife slot, cutting board rack and multi position drain spout.

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Did we need an expandable stainless steel dish drainer with a removable cutlery holder, knife slot, cutting board rack and multi position drain spout?

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We did not.

But I’m guessing that fancy new toaster was embarrassed by the old Rubbermaid drainer and told the husband to kick it to the curb.

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I don’t know how he stands it.

34 Comments

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Work continues in the underground crap filled cave basement, one small section at a time because my husband is still miserably bored by retirement.

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He clears and cleans a few square feet..

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Having moved all the cobwebbed clutter that resided there…

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Behind him to the section he previously cleared, insulated and ceiling’d. (That’s the past tense of ‘put up a ceiling’ in case you were wondering.)

He’s shuffled more useless junk around in the past month than Fred Sanford did in his 6 year television series run.

To be honest it drives the OCD part of me a little nuts. Now would be the perfect time to sort, clean, and organize… but he won’t. No matter how many times I suggest it or offer to help. It will be so much more work to do it later, but the man cannot multi task to save his life. The last time I brought up the subject? He snapped at me and said “One thing at a time!”

So he’s down there now, alone. Having turned the corner on the front wall…

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With all that still in front of him.

I don’t know how he stands it. I really don’t.

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