Tag: marriage humor

A Deck of a Mess

Jamal Miller

Home ownership is the most frustrating thing at times. Our only goal today was to pressure wash our deck and clear it of old paint the weather had already begun to peel up. The plan was simple: Get to Home Depot right when the tool rental counter opened, pressure wash the deck, and return the washer with plenty of time to spare within our 4-hour rental window.

I don’t like housework that involves anything on the outside of the house. When it comes to the inside of the house and decor, it’ll always be on and poppin’, clean and sparklin’. Both our moods shifted when we realized this was going to take longer than we’d planned.

The plan never goes like it should, though. S and I of all people should know this with all the adventure we’ve had with our condo already. The tip we needed, for the spray nozzle,  to make the most progress removing the paint was broken. Not wanting to waste too much time, we immediately packed the washer up and returned to the store.

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We didn’t know the tip was the issue before the customer service rep tested our machine and the replacement in the store. Deep down we were thankful, because on the car ride over, we both thought “If something is wrong with our water pressure and this house, we will rage.” We ended returning home with our original rental and a new tip.

Sadly, the new tip made no difference in the rate at which the paint was coming off the deck. We imagined the paint would just fly off as the water made contact, but this was far from the case. S and I spent a good amount of time switching roles on the project. Scraping and spraying, we longed for larger pieces of paint to come up, but found we were barely making any progress. Our good friend, Google, ended up informing us that the machine we’d rented from Home Depot was only half the power required to execute a project like ours.

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This made sense. Why in the hell were we spending ten or more minutes spraying one spot, only to see a speck of paint chip off at a time? This couldn’t be right. We confirmed gas pressure washers were stronger, but were also instructed not to go that route because there’d be a high risk of damaging our deck. S called his dad and we’ll be borrowing his pressure washer next weekend. It’s the right amount of power, and our deck isn’t huge, so we should be able to get the work done in a decent amount of time.

Sigh… maybe we can hire some eye-candy to do this for us. Probably not, but a dude can wish, can’t he?

Morning Paper

Jamal Miller1 Comment

This dude… I swear. Looking down at the bare cardboard tissue roll, I sigh silently with an eye roll towards the bedroom. Does he think no one else will need toilet paper after he’s completely emptied the roll? Is it so hard to just bring more tissue up to the restroom? Or is going all the way downstairs to use the fully stocked restroom counted as exercise? In a zombielike state – it’s 6 o’clock in the morning, mind you – I travel down the chilly, air conditioned stairway and fetch a fresh roll of Charmin. The next time he does this, I’m NOT replacing the roll. I will stay strong and see if he puts the fresh roll of tissue paper in it’s proper place. I’ve thought this to myself countless times since we’ve lived together, and the joke’s still on me. The closest he gets to refilling the tissue is sitting the new roll on the counter; leaving the emptied roll on the holder. Wowzers. All I can do is laugh, as I’m positive I have a number of at-home-habits that drive him insane.

Every Man for Himself

Jamal Miller7 Comments

I’m cheating on my husband with Matthew McConaughey. Can you believe it? I don’t really go for lighter-haired men, but in this case I can most certainly make an exception.  My husband and I started HBO’s True Detective several months back – last summer, I believe – and we just kind of fell out of the show after a few episodes. There was nothing bad about the show, but our problem was having too many shows to keep track of, so True Detective was dropped from our active queue.  S has a habit of starting a show, and not wanting to finish it – which is more than fair because, sometimes you just can’t get into a show – and Game of Thrones was a casualty after I’d got him to watch the first three seasons. “You can’t just stop the series after the red wedding!” What was this man thinking?

Last week I was listening to a new favorite podcast of mine – Last Name Basis, hosted by married couple Patrick and Franchesca – and they were discussing what shows they watched together, and which shows they watch without each other. Most of the time they watch the same shows, but because of work schedules, traveling for work, and other life factors, they can’t always watch them together. Depending on which show it was, they would either wait, or go ahead and watch without the other. There was a moment where Patrick faked having finished Netflix series, House of Cards, and Franchesca – taking the bait – almost went into a how-dare-you type of rage. I thought this was absolutely hilarious, and that moment popped back into my head today, at work, as I was restarting True Detective’s first season. “There’s no way he will ever find out…”

I realize that by sharing this topic with the blogosphere that I may, in fact, tell on myself if S decides to read my recent entries. I will laugh so hard if he brings up the fact that I restarted the show without him – because then I’d know he’s reading Gays in the Life. Whenever I ask if he’d like to watch something we haven’t paid attention to in a while, and he answers “no, not yet…” I have to follow up with the question “…am I going to have to watch this one without you, too?” He’ll usually answer “no, don’t!’ and then months go by with no attempts made to watch the program. I couldn’t help myself this time. The trailer for season two of True Detective is completely mesmeric, they’re making amazing additions to the cast – Vince Vaugh, Rachael McAdams, and Colin Farrell – and my interest is fully engaged, once again. Come June 21st, I will be present and ready for a new episode.