Marital Bliss

I am a happily married woman and I love love LOVE my husband to bits and pieces, but even so, CP does things that instantly makes my blood pressure rise, occasionally embarrasses me, and at times makes me wonder if my mother was right. Scratch the last part, my mother is never right (except for when she is, but this must never ever be admitted in public).

So what are some of these things my husband does to torture me? Oh, where to begin? Where to begin?

1. He uses me as a human spell checker. I get interrupted from doing something of questionable importance on a daily basis with a, "Baba... how do you spell [insert word you mastered by the fourth grade]?". Never mind that his face is glued to a screen using a program that most likely has spell check. Of course saying it once is never sufficient, it must be repeated at least twice only to hear him say, "Oh! I thought so! It just looked funny when I wrote it". Really??!

2. He's a crappy tipper, yet he loves to repeatedly visit the same restaurants. I've explained that servers have elephant memories and we remember good and bad tippers (I know this from personal experience), but he refuses to understand that. One of these days he's going to get a hocker on his cheeseburger.

3. He interrupts me and tells me "NO" before I finish my thought. Ooooohhh.... that really makes my blood boil.

4. He farts in the elevator despite our agreement that there will be no farting in the elevator. He'll rip one and then warn me to walk quickly if I'm down wind. He'll tear one up and then blame it on the cats or claim there's an imaginary duck or a monkey that just ran through the room. But he gets furious if I burp. I don't get it either.

5. He grabs my boob while making honking sounds.

6. There is a 3 U-turn minimum anytime he's driving, even when he's using the GPS.

7. He holds long term grudges. He's still mad at my mom for something she did four years ago.

8. He'd rather take off his shoe and pick up something he dropped with his toes instead of bending over and grabbing it.

9. He's typically lost in thought, but the moment I'm focused reading or writing something, suddenly he becomes Mr. Chatterbox.

10. His toe nails look like claws and he tortures me by chasing me with his foot.

11. He rarely calls anyone by their real name because he can't remember them. Instead, he makes up a really embarrassing nickname based on some unfortunate physical feature the person may have, their race, ethnic background, religion, or something they're wearing. The worst part is that he won't know who you're talking about unless you, too, refer to those people by that nickname he has assigned them. As a result, I have a regular customer called "mustache" (she's a woman), a Hindu colleague he calls "huumanahuumana", a friend of mine he calls "black boots", and a Muslim friend he calls "alibaba", the president of our condo board "the crook", a friend who used to be a waitress at his favorite Pizza Hut is the "crazy waitress", his father's girlfriend Sorangel is called "salami" (he can't pronounce her name, so he changed it), and a cousin of mine who always has a better story than yours is called "the topper", just to name a few.

12. He inhales his food, refuses to speak or hold a conversation when there's food on the table, and insists that no one at the table can order the same thing off the menu that he's ordering or he'll change his order.

13. He makes up his own words, uses them regularly in conversations, and when corrected, he responds, "Well, you knew what I meant, right?". His favorite made up word is "embarcate". Let's use it in a sentence: We were supposed to meet at Flannigan's, but you embarcated me.

14. He'll wear the same shirt and pants for days if I don't intervene. If he drops something on his shirt, he'll say, "Aw damn. This shirt still had 2 more days!".

15. He'll let the answering machine BEEP with a new message until it annoys me enough to listen to it.

16. He won't let me throw the socks with holes away. I have to make said socks mysteriously disappear.

17. He practically has a seizure anytime you touch him anywhere in his mid-section.

18. He'll ask me to go to the bedroom to watch TV with him. When I oblige, he promptly falls asleep, begins snoring incredibly loud forcing me to raise the volume. Then he wakes up to tell me the TV volume is loud. When I finally turn off the TV so we can all sleep peacefully (amidst deafening snoring and bed hogging cats), he wakes up, wanders to the couch and falls asleep in the living room. Go figure.

19. He throws all his trash onto the back seat of the car.

20. He leaves his dirty dishes piled up around the house.

21. He wanders unless closely supervised and doesn't answer his cell phone when you're desperately looking for him.

22. He takes his laptop, cell phone, and gadgets of choice with him each time he goes to the rest room to take care of business. He'll be in there over an hour chatting on the phone, texting, and doing computer repairs. When he's finally done, he leaves all his toys plugged into the bathroom outlet cluttering the bathroom sink.

Aaaahhhh CP, CP, how I love thee. I could write a book about my quirky husband, so I won't add anything else to this list... for now. Surely he has a list as long, if not longer than mine, but let's make sure we're clear - he's wrong and none of it's true. After reading this list of my husband's loveliest qualities, you may ask if there's such a thing as marital bliss. But OF COURSE! I love this hairy, waddling, gassy, googly eyed, unibrowed, disoriented, food inhaling, holey sock wearing reluctant Cuban more than anyone on the planet and I wouldn't trade him for the world. :D

P.S. - Love you baba.