Domestic Psychology

Wanna take a baaaaath?

// May 4th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Doug, home, life, marriage, me, parenting

Friday night, Evan snuck a paperback book into the bathtub. The result was the reverse of a paper mache experiment. Saturday morning I cleaned out the mountain of paper scraps so that Sarah could take a 2-hour bath to get ready for prom. I had time for a 10 minute bath before taking Sarah on prom errands. Saturday night, Doug went to a sweat. Doug came home after midnight and took a bath. Sunday morning, I hopped in the bath for a casual weekend soak and learned too late that the entire bottom of the tub was a layer of sand from the ground at Doug’s sweat. Blech. I rinsed off, scrubbed the tub and decided to try a bath Sunday night after the children were asleep. Sunday, Noah came home from a weekend camping trip. He went in to take a bath before he went to bed. Later Sunday night, I went in the bathroom to make a second attempt at a bath only to be greeted by an inchworm who didn’t survive Noah’s bath. Yuck. I skipped the bath. Sarah had prom on Saturday night and slept most of Sunday. Monday morning, she bathed before school. I went in to bathe after all of the children were at school for the day. The bathtub sparkled and twinkled. Not because it was clean, but because it had glitter all over it. Ew. If it wasn’t thundering and lightning outside, I would take soap outside and bathe in the rain. It’s cleaner outside.

memory dissonance

// March 19th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Doug, marriage, me

In many ways, Doug is a classical Romantic. He is not a flower and candy bearing man, but he loves the wild, unmanageable wilderness that is our yard. He is a complicated Lord Byron. More than anyone I have ever known, Doug idealizes the past. I love Doug the romantic. It amuses us both when his basic nature conflicts with mine.

From the many dusty piles and boxes of Doug’s important things, two small mannequin hands with magnetic backs have escaped to become a part of our daily life. Those hands help Doug feel connected to people long gone. Sometimes, Doug glances at the hands and recalls a piece of a memory. Usually, he just unconsciously feels comfort and connection that cannot be described. I know how important the tiny hands are to Doug. I just don’t feel the same about them. Every single time I look at those hands, I hear the words to “The Monkey’s Paw” in my head.

It doesn’t matter how many decades have passed since I read that very short story in my childhood classroom. Apparently, that story came into my life at the exact moment that my world was opening and the result was a misogynistic tale of consequences permanently etched into my brain. Those small hands look exactly like the monkey paws in my imagination. Every few days, they appear somewhere and I quickly avert my eyes from their evil lure. I use anything within reach to swat them toward Doug’s desk. Sometimes, I nudge them into his area and other times, I cover them with a stray jacket or towel. If I am lucky, I do not hear them knocking and scratching from their haphazard resting place.

Doug looks down and sees the small hands from his childhood memories askew on the floor. He gently picks them up and puts them on the front of the clothes dryer. He is deaf to the sound of my scream a few hours later as I am startled by the gruesome paws. It will be several days before he discovers the hands hiding in the corner, under his jacket. He will calmly place them at eye level, just inside a door, so that the hands reach out for the next person who unexpectedly opens that door. He won’t hear the resulting shriek of terror.

Doug says:

// March 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Doug, marriage, me

Me: “I can’t decide if this person is hitting on me or if they are just clueless.”
Doug: “Oh, I’m sure they’re just clueless.”

attempts at adult time

// March 6th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Doug, life, marriage, me, movies, parenting

In a small house with a lot of people, it takes work to find the time to be alone. When most of the people in the house are children, it takes work, careful planning and elaborate attention to detail to have any adult only time. Tonight, the youngest two children were sleeping in their own beds. The girl teen was out of the house on a date. The teen and tween boys were happily discussing computer games. A window of opportunity opened and I raced to take advantage of it. I arrived in our bedroom to find my spouse sitting cross legged on the bed. Wearing rubber gloves. Staring at a rectangular box. Waiting on me to do comic book archeology. Sigh.

It was not the way I had planned to spend our time alone, but how long could it possibly take to do a comic book inventory? Weeeeell, if you pull out one single copy at a time, read the title and volume number aloud and put it back in the box before repeating the process, it takes a very long time. “Spiderman #x … Spiderman #y … Spiderman #z … ” A comic box holds 150-200 comics and after pausing to stare at almost each and every one, Doug finally reached the back of the box. And screamed. He stood up and slooowly and increasingly loudly read the volume number. “…ten, eleven and twelve! I’ve got all of them! I have the whole Watchmen series!”

I suggested that Tommy would really enjoy reading the comics. “WHAT? These can’t be opened. They’re not for reading.” Umm, okay. I made a mental note to watch Toy Story 2 with Doug in the near future. We were now half an hour into the brief time between Evan falling asleep in his own bed and Evan wedging himself in between Doug and I in our bed. Doug returned the comics to their vault/closet and I thought he was done with the evening geezing. Dressed as Dr. Manhattan, Doug raced to his computer. He tweeted and texted and googled for half an hour.

Doug finally returned to our room and focused on something that wasn’t a comic book for a period of time that I will leave to the imagination. Except, as soon as there was a resting point in that non-comic book activity, he went back to his computer to read about his comic books again. So, I went to my computer and blogged. “What are you writing about?” “You.”

She said: I need a blanket

// February 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // Doug, marriage, me, sleep

Last night, Doug and I had two children AND two dogs in our bed. We were packed in the bed like Charlie Bucket’s grandparents IF they had added two small horses to their overcrowded bed. I was relegated to a tiny space on the edge of the bed and pinned down by 100+ pounds of German Shepherd. Eventually, I nodded off to sleep.

I usually forget my dreams shortly after waking. I only remember bits and pieces. The only thing I remember about my dream last night is the bees. A few ordinary bees were buzzing about the room, but there was also a jar of bees. The bees in the jar were getting larger by the second and I was so increasingly panicked by the impending escape of the mutant bees that I woke myself up, swinging my arms wildly to keep the bees away from me. Except, I wasn’t really awake at all. I was frantically trying to pull the covers over myself to hide from the bees when the children and dogs had claimed all the covers. I cursed like a sailor and begged for a blanket. At some point, I realized there were no bees, but I was still unable to focus on anything except the dog pinning me down and my need for a blanket. I was aware that Doug was out of bed, seeking a blanket, but in my mind, he was moving in slow motion and mumbling to himself that I should get my own *&%# blanket. Doug tossed the blanket on me and grumbled at the dogs to move over while I hid under the blanket and uncharacteristically fell back into a deep slumber.

I would claim that I wasn’t awake for any of my bad behavior, except I remember the entire incident vividly. I apologize for the bizarre stream of profanities, but someone needs to be faster with the blanket when I’m being attacked by bees dagnabit.

If spider, then act stupid

// February 16th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Doug, if - then, marriage, me

Every spring, nasty bugs and spiders invade the house. Primarily, they invade the basement. The washer, dryer and mountain of dirty laundry live in the basement and if any laundry is left on the floor, the creepy crawlies hide inside the towels and clothing. I know this. It happens every single spring and every single spring, the first time it happens, I act like it’s the first multi-legged creature to visit the laundry pile.

A few days ago, I was carelessly tossing a pile of towels and socks into the washer when I saw a spider. It was probably a brown recluse. It could have been a tarantula. It might have been a Venezuelan General/Avondale hybrid spider. There was a possibly flesh-eating spider sitting on a towel. A spider sitting on a towel in my arms. A spider sitting on a towel being thrown while an eardrum piercing shriek shattered the silence in the room. A spider somewhere under a towel. A spider somewhere under a towel and several other pieces of laundry. A spider somewhere under a pile of laundry that someone stupidly threw BEHIND the washing machine. A dark, inaccessible corner behind the washer that could only be accessed by reaching and blindly grabbing. I called for the knight in shining armor scruffy bathrobe clad spouse. “DOUG!” A calm voice answered from another room. “Where’s the spider this time?”

Why is it so cold in here?

// February 7th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Doug, marriage, me

Our car allows the driver and passenger to control the temperature of their own air vents. Invariably, Doug has his vents blowing a/c and I have my vents cranking out the heat. I’m surprised we don’t create storm fronts in our car. I am always cold and Doug is always complaining that the house, the car and his clothes are too hot. Doug is probably the only man in the world who is eager for his wife to start enjoying her own private summers.

*Are you old enough to know the origin of the title of this post?

she said/he said – Valentine’s Day edition

// January 30th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Doug, holidays, kid quotes, marriage, teenagers

Sarah: “Oh, no! I have Color Guard all day on Valentine’s Day. My hair will look terrible for my date that night.”

Doug: “I’m going camping February 14 – 17. Why are you making that face? Did you have plans that weekend?”

Amy says:

// January 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // kid quotes, marriage, parenting

“This. Is. SO. Em-bar-ras-sing.”

it started with a drip

// January 14th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Doug, home, marriage, me

The sink in the downstairs bath has dripped forever. A few weeks ago, Doug decided to fix the drip. His “fix” was to replace the faucet. This was not a Doug plan that required any input from me. This was barely blue-green on the Doug’s “plan” scale. When he decided that the pipes underneath the sink should be replaced “as long as he was working on it anyway,” I gave him the one raised eyebrow face. We were in Doug’s “plan” blue. After leaving the sink with no pipes connected for a week so that I had to empty a bucket of water twice during every wash load and a basement flood that soaked every towel we own, Doug disconnected the washing machine and turned off the water in both bathroom sinks. When the washing machine blocked the path to our bedroom and the children were brushing their teeth kneeling at the bathtub, we reached yellow on the Doug’s “plan” scale. Both eyebrows went down and I looked at Doug through those eyebrows when I talked to him. As the laundry piles grew bigger with each passing day and the bucket filled with wet towels developed an odor, Doug started cutting holes in the walls to work on the pipes IN THE WALLS since, he “might as well replace those too.” Code orange! Now, I had to give him “the look” AND mumble every time I walked past the holes in the walls, the washing machine in the hallway, the piles of laundry, the mildewing towels or the waterless sinks. Even the children started grumbling about the leaky sink repair. We all started avoiding the downstairs and whimpered a little at the strange noises and smells that wafted up the stairs. As I was deciding between sending the children to school in shorts or outgrown clothes from the pile awaiting a trip to the Goodwill dropoff, Doug wandered past me and casually mentioned that he was finished fixing the drip and the washing machine was reconnected. I had to interrogate Doug. I thought he was joking. Surprisingly, he was serious. The sinks once again have running water. The washing machine was empty and happy to accept the load of jeans that the children and I will wear tomorrow. I am so happy that I don’t think I’ll even ask when the half a dozen holes in the wall will be fixed. At least not until after I get caught up on the laundry.