a life just ordinary

Let me start this post by saying I love my husband. I really do. But there are days that I absolutely, positively want to kill him. A sampling of these lovely moments:

• The time when I nearly broke my neck after tripping on his size thirteen shoe in the doorway when I was loaded down with groceries.
• Two seconds later when I tripped over the other one.
• The time he offered to “help” clean the kitchen, by stacking all of the dirty dishes in the sink like a demented, porcelain Jenga game. I lost two plates and a bowl in that game.
• Or the time that he shattered the patio table trying to wedge the umbrella into it, ten seconds after he took it out of the box.
• And finally the second time he shattered the patio table trying to put the umbrella into it, also known as the day we bought a wrought iron table.

My husband is a bull in a china shop, a fact that I love and loathe simultaneously. After some commiseration with my girlfriends I have come to learn that I am not the only one who has a “destruction-aly inclined” significant other. I have one friend whose husband we have lovingly renamed The Destructor.

The Destructor, or D as we will call him, is a very nice guy. One of the nicest that I have ever met in fact. He is charming and sweet and loves my friend with all of his heart; a trait that has endeared him with all of us. My friend, well let’s just call her J in keeping with the initial theme… (get it, initial…okay, I’ll stop) My friend J had told me horror stories about the destructive abilities of her husband; abilities that put my husband’s to shame.

The first story she told me was the one about the stove. They had just bought their first house together and they were moving in, well sort of. The transition was a little stressful since J was moving across the state and she still hadn’t sold her condo in St. Louis.  She would be living between the two places until it sold. But looking at the bright side, she was super excited to make this home her own, to take her first bubble bath in their tub, to build their first fire in the fireplace and to cook their first meal in their kitchen… you get the drift. Their house was shiny and new and everything seemed perfect, until the Destructor made an appearance. The kitchen was mostly unpacked, they were down to the decorative touches when D came charging in with all the grace of a water buffalo. While standing on counter, placing a decorative vase on a ledge in the kitchen he lost his balance. He took a step forward to catch himself when he put his foot through the brand new, glass-top stove. Sparks flew as he launched his body off the counter and on to the floor to avoid electrocution, knocking over everything on the counter. J looked in horror as her shiny new kitchen was now covered in glass and shooting blue sparks. Whoops.

Unfortunately this was not the last appearance the Destructor would make.  Remember I mentioned that J had not sold her condo? In an effort to do so she had contractors come to replace and repair all sorts of things in the unit, from freshly cleaned carpets upstairs to a new ceiling in the basement. J was feeling pretty good about selling the condo and finally getting to live with D full time. She thought it was a good time to blow off some steam.

After a ballgame, dinner and drinks J and D were feeling pretty good. They were feeling so good in fact, it was a good thing that the condo was in walking distance from the bar. As the stumbled into the house J climbed into bed and quickly fell asleep. She awoke to yelling from the bathroom, which is never a good thing by the way. There is hard to describe what she saw there.

First, there was the water; shooting out of a gaping hole where the toilet tank used to be. Then there was the toilet tank, shattered on the floor. Finally there was the Destructor, soaking wet and flopping like a fish out of water trying to figure out what to do first. (In his defense, he is a very handy guy and usually knows how to turn off the water. All I can say is that his senses may have been slightly impaired that evening.) The only thing he could say was that he “slipped.”  I am convinced he slipped into that magical drunken place where the laws of physics no longer apply. That, and as the Destructor he must have super human strength. Meanwhile the water was beginning to puddle on the newly cleaned carpet.  J quickly turned off the water and grabbed some old towels to sop up the mess. She left the soggy mess in the bathtub and went back to bed.

The next morning, after sending the Destructor to the hardware store to buy a new toilet, she walked into the basement to wash her wet towels. She opened the vents in the basement to promote some circulation when she was unexpectedly soaked. The geyser of water had managed to drain down a vent and all the way to the basement.  They spent the rest of the weekend on a deranged game of hide and seek in their ventilation system with a shop-vac and towels. Lots and lots of towels.

You would think that with a husband like the Destructor that J would welcome a girl’s weekend, to commiserate on the craziness of husbands, family and life. I did, in fact, just spend the last weekend with J talking about all of these things. But it was not in the way you might imagine. Those moments that I mentioned, the ones in which I want to kill my husband, caused J to tear up. You see she would like nothing more than to trip over a pair of her husband’s sneakers.  She would love to catch him drinking directly out of the milk carton or tracking mud through the house. She even misses the way he watches television so loud it could wake the dead.

She has lived the last year without her husband while he has been deployed in Afghanistan. She has lived without all of those little ordinary moments, the moments that make up a marriage. The good and the bad, she has lived without the glances and glares, the little tiffs and the inside jokes. She has done it with patience and grace, attending weddings and parties by herself with a big smile (and a large cut-out of D’s head on a stick so he won’t feel left out in the pictures.)

D returns home in the next few weeks. Anytime J caught a glimpse of a calendar I swear you could see her heart skip a beat with excitement. She began counting down weeks ago and with each passing day you can see a bigger spring in her step and a lilt in her voice. What would a girl’s weekend be without a little shopping? While we were out I asked her what she wanted for Christmas, and she said “I am already getting everything I want for Christmas; I am getting my husband back.”

I am going to remember that response the next time I trip over my dear husbands shoes, or the next time he forgets where the trash can is located. I will hear her voice when I want to throttle him for running late or drying his muddy and wet hunting clothes in my clean dryer. For as often as I want to kill him, I know I could never live without him. It took a good friend to remind me. So tomorrow I will call her, just to hear her say we are one day closer to the return of the Destructor. I can’t wait. I know I am not the only one.