I had had it when my husband decided to pull the typical stunt that he always does in making me get ready in the last minute to receive their guests! I had to feign paying attention to his absurd demands in order to give him the most worthwhile lesson in cooperation, in short!
One of those rare quiet moments which so seldom came to me, began as, I never expected, Saturday morning. I was doing the laundry on the couch, drinking warm coffee in my favorite chipped mug and wondering whether, just once, I would take a nap. But then came my husband to spoil my tranquility and he threw his demands on me!
I, Amanda, 25, was somewhat having a nice weekend without any alarm, without any emails and no screaming Household chores telling me to do this and that, just enjoying the silence. I was looking forward to a beautiful day and finishing with my routines with plenty of rest later on.
Then in came Alex.
He came in the room as though he had dinner booking at Buckingham palace carrying his phone in one hand and a paper on the other. This dopily easy grin on his face was like that, the grin which puts you immediately on the alert when you are long married.
Then this was the bombshell he dropped!
Oh, wee, havena I seen you, honey? bleated he, scarcely looking at me as he cleared his throat. Today is the day that my family is coming over. Only a small detail. You have, uh, some four or five hours.”
I blinked. “Four hours?”
He nodded already turning toward the couch as if it was no big deal. “Yeah. The mother, the father, sister and children. Nothing big. Would you simply clean out a little, pop at the store a moment, and prepare a meal and dessert? You see–so as we will not get bad.”
and then he gave me a piece of paper he held in his hand.
“What’s this?” Not denying myself the effrontery of being irritated, I asked.
A check list, he replied. So you do not forget how to do it.”
Hilarious that it was all things that I was suppose to do! Nothing there stimulated his work!
I looked at it: clean up the kitchen, run to the store and buy groceries, prepare something homelike like a baked sweet, dust the baseboards, baseboards!
And by the time I turned around I saw, lo and behold, he was reclining already on the couch with his feet up, flicking the channel like he was the King of Last-Minute Entertaining!
I thought he was only going to sleep as I did it all!It was a ME situation; not a we situation! Again!
I had played this dance. The so-called surprise family dinners that really were not surprises at all but rather, unpleasantly communicated trap doors! This included the Sunday he forgot to tell me his parents were staying over till I returned after having gone grocery shopping.
Or when his cousins appeared with a toddler and a puppy and Alex had the audacity to say to them, Oh, don,t worry, Amanda has snacks!
I was the last minute host. Because I used to do so. I did it even when I did not feel like it.
Today, however, not. I was at the end of my tether!
I glanced about me. Where of the clothes outspread. Monday Morning mess. And the list on my desk, the task list that was not started yet. What a lazy dog Alex was sitting here next to the folding-up of the laundry, with no worldly care on his mind!
What went on that day, was something that made me realize that it was over with me being the unpaid event planner of his surprise parties!
I strode up to him, and with a sign, almost as affecting as that of a camel that had got the last straw, the one that broke its back, I thrust the note down on to his chest!Oh, sure, babe, I replied, awfully sweet. I will run to the store.
I took my purse, stepped into my sandals, unlocked the door, and jumped in my car. However, I did not go to the grocery store to purchase food in my car.
I went to Target by car.
I did not even get a cart. I picked up a latte in the store cafe and simply walked all around all the aisles. It was the best quiet by a long way that I had had in weeks! I slipped my hand into a denim jacket I didn t even need and purchased a candle that had the perfume of sea foam and redemption.
And I spent ten precious minutes arguing over throw pillows as though I was negotiating a world crisis in the U.N. before deciding to buy a new one I did not want! I changed into shoes and took up a luxurious two hours of… breathing.
Panic free shopping. Not a single groceries cart. No whipping home to put something in the oven whilst vacuuming with the other hand.
Just me.
However, during, sometime between the massage oil and the sale bath bombs, I sent him a text:
And yet he was still in the store. Traffic’s wild
Nothing more. I did not even care to inquire how he was doing and what was going to be eaten. I did not give advice or a tip or when I would be home. I did not miss being, in every sense, off the clock, first time in two years that I was married to him.
I had missed calls and texted voice notes left by him but I did not reply to any of them. I thought he must be freaking out by then and I did not want to give him an out and end up compromising to his wants.
it was half an hour after his family had got into the house that I at last drew up in the drive, prepared to receive what I prayed to be the truth.
And so it did not turn out to be a disappointing one!
I looked through the living room window, and I saw pandemonium, better still than I had imagined! Consider not polite, Thanksgiving mayhem. More chaos in the lines of “where is the fire extinguisher?”. I went in and almost giggled!
What had been done in the house was half-cleaned! The vacuum was not plugged it, lead trailed out like a crime scene! The coffee table was cluttered up with one of our throw blankets! and his sister had three kids, all under ten, in which the kids were scurrying about like they had chugged a bag of Pixy Stix! One of those had a purple stain on his shirt. I was not going to enquire about that!
His mother, the never-satisfied, it- is-just- constructive- criticism one, worked over a burned frozen. The father of Alex was already on the porch, who was most likely hiding.
And there I beheld Alex!
My husband was standing at the kitchen island red faced and sweating, attempting to make whipped cream in a can into neat neat spirals on a plastic tray full of grocery store cheesecake that he was attempting to plate!
Amanda, he gasped. Where are you been? with staring jaw, when he saw me enter, he asked, Strolling around?
I walked, deliberately, calmly, and threw my purse on the side chair, and smiled as though I was a newborn woman. You said to me,’To the store I go, I told you.’ “I went.”
He gazed at me. His mother cocked an eyebrow, and was obviously estimating how much part of this mess to attribute to me. I helped myself to a glass of wine rushed to fill it and did not bother to notice that there was chaos all around me. The next minute I went over to the couch on that his mother had pulled herself up with her mournful slice of pizza.
I lifted the glass. “Cheers!”It was an interesting social experiment to have dinner that night!
His sister attempted to salvage the situation joking around with the spontaneity of things. In the middle, her husband took off to fast food. The children quarreled on the distribution of the last corner of the cheesecake.
His father turned up that football game and turned the volumes up a bit too high.
It seemed to me like being an observer at another person dinner party. No apron. No guilt. No running back and forwards and checking what every one needed.
Just me. Present. Unbothered!
Later in the evening, when his family was long gone and the gummy bears of the kids got picked away off the coffee table, Alex attempted to initiate a fight.
You humiliated me, he said. Cross armed he spoke short.
I faced him squarely holding a glass of water in hand.
You can not use me like a servant and then think you are being thanked, I replied calmly. Make your own dinner your own way,–or it will take me four hours or more besides to make it right.He scoffed. I thought you would like to help me!
“Help? Not so! You never asked! You had thrown it on me. As you always do!”
He was going to dispute it again, but his words struck somewhere behind his lips. I failed to argue. I simply passed him and went to take a nap.
I will not tell lies, I thought about that this could serve as the basis of separation or even divorcing, but Sunday arrived.
My male friend astonished me because the morning after, he manned up and got up at the crack of dawn to clean the kitchen!
By himself!
He also began to get more around the house!He raised this prospect of his family visiting again after a couple of weeks.
Said he, cautiously, “Next month.” I was wondering, whether we could arrange something. Together.”
I took my coffee. You certain of that?
He nodded. “Yeah. We can make catering or I can grill. I just… I hope it has to be pleasant this time. Both of us.”And right then and there I found, the effort! The awareness!
It was not flawless. It was commencement, however.
I leaned across and took his hand and smiled. Good idea,” said I, “I like that.”
I also felt like someone was paying attention to me, which was a very important moment after two years of being the one helping in our family, and I felt like we had begun a brand new journey in our marriage.
What benefited me the most with the action I made that fatal day, he has never made the said stunt since!
Did that tale leave you at the edge of your seat? Then you will like the following one! In the next story, the husband of a woman believes that she simply sits and wait in their house all the time when he leaves
in the morning to work and leaves her alone with their two children, both below five years of age. His wife thought of a trick that he could not imagine to give him a lesson about her life as a stay-at-home parent.
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