People are asking me all the time about what it's like to be married to Um, Halen? By "people," I mean my imaginary friend Patrick. And by "all the time," I mean once in passing while we were playing Checkers.
Um, Halen? is correct that she's not a conventional girl. She gets giddy when the drain can swallow no more water, because that means she gets to take it apart and lick it like a lollypop. Just kidding. She doesn't do that; I just liked the alliteration of "lick it like a lollypop." She comes up with excuses as to why she can't come to the movies with me and the kids, because, think of all the work you're missing out on when you just sit there for two hours staring at a wall with light shining on it! And think of all the legumes you can't consume when your tummy is full of popcorn and Coke!
I could complain, but that would be pretty stupid. Sometimes, I admit, I do feel a little bad when the neighbors drive by and see my pregnant wife out mowing the lawn. Or painting the house. Or pruning the bushes. Or putting up lattices. Or excavating mummies. They probably don't realize that she is actually loving every minute of it and that, with each drop of sweat that falls from her brow, she's anxiously creating a mental list of additional projects she can't wait to undertake once this mummy is tagged and cataloged. They probably don't realize that Abu Halen begged and pleaded for Um, Halen? to wait two more days until Abu Halen had a window of time to mow the lawn, but that Um, Halen? just couldn't bear to see a perfectly ripe job sit sadly undone for a full one-seventh of a fortnight (that's how we keep track of time in our house: "When will you be home, honey?" "Oh, in about five ten-thousandths of a fortnight").
At the end of the day though, as I opined earlier, complaining about my ridiculous luck would be foolish. Let me spell this out in plain English: I never have a Honey-Do list because my wife hoards all home improvement tasks for herself. There's a second benefit to this arrangement: I never have to go to hardware stores.
I can't rationally explain my visceral enmity for hardware stores. Boys are supposed to look for excuses to go to hardware stores, and they're supposed to know the names of all the things with handles, and they're supposed to like the way their hands smell after they've been fingering the contents of the bins of nails and screws. I look for excuses to avoid hardware stores. I don't know the names of anything inside them, and when I learn them, I forget almost immediately because it's hard to remember things you never think about. And I strongly dislike how my hands smell after holding metal things. And, to take it a step further, I don't really like it at all when my hands are dirty. There. I said it. And, as long as I'm being scandalous, I don't really like John Lennon's solo stuff.
So I guess I feel like me and Um, Halen? have a pretty good arrangement. I help with stuff that doesn't require me to associate with guys that smell like sawdust. And she fixes stuff. The truth of the matter is, if I had a more mainstream wife that looked to me to complete home improvements, we'd just be a lot poorer, because I'd just hire people. In my opinion that's what phones are for: to call people who like fixing things, who are good at fixing things, and who make money fixing things. I think it's called comparative advantage: if you suck at something, stop doing it, pay someone who is good at it, and get paid for what you do well. But that model breaks down when Um, Halen? steps onto the scene, because Um, Halen? is good at virtually everything and can do anything cheaply and efficiently. So, basically, what I'm saying is my wife disproves conventional capitalistic thinking. Can your wife do that?
Um, Halen? is correct that she's not a conventional girl. She gets giddy when the drain can swallow no more water, because that means she gets to take it apart and lick it like a lollypop. Just kidding. She doesn't do that; I just liked the alliteration of "lick it like a lollypop." She comes up with excuses as to why she can't come to the movies with me and the kids, because, think of all the work you're missing out on when you just sit there for two hours staring at a wall with light shining on it! And think of all the legumes you can't consume when your tummy is full of popcorn and Coke!
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| Um, Halen? spots a task that needs completing over there. |
At the end of the day though, as I opined earlier, complaining about my ridiculous luck would be foolish. Let me spell this out in plain English: I never have a Honey-Do list because my wife hoards all home improvement tasks for herself. There's a second benefit to this arrangement: I never have to go to hardware stores.
I can't rationally explain my visceral enmity for hardware stores. Boys are supposed to look for excuses to go to hardware stores, and they're supposed to know the names of all the things with handles, and they're supposed to like the way their hands smell after they've been fingering the contents of the bins of nails and screws. I look for excuses to avoid hardware stores. I don't know the names of anything inside them, and when I learn them, I forget almost immediately because it's hard to remember things you never think about. And I strongly dislike how my hands smell after holding metal things. And, to take it a step further, I don't really like it at all when my hands are dirty. There. I said it. And, as long as I'm being scandalous, I don't really like John Lennon's solo stuff.
So I guess I feel like me and Um, Halen? have a pretty good arrangement. I help with stuff that doesn't require me to associate with guys that smell like sawdust. And she fixes stuff. The truth of the matter is, if I had a more mainstream wife that looked to me to complete home improvements, we'd just be a lot poorer, because I'd just hire people. In my opinion that's what phones are for: to call people who like fixing things, who are good at fixing things, and who make money fixing things. I think it's called comparative advantage: if you suck at something, stop doing it, pay someone who is good at it, and get paid for what you do well. But that model breaks down when Um, Halen? steps onto the scene, because Um, Halen? is good at virtually everything and can do anything cheaply and efficiently. So, basically, what I'm saying is my wife disproves conventional capitalistic thinking. Can your wife do that?