After seventeen years of marriage, I can honestly say that I still really love my husband. As I often joke with my friends, I like him more days than I don’t and some days, I even adore him. But other days?
Sigh…
On most Wednesday nights, I meet a friend of mine for a quick cocktail. She lives in Woodland Hills and her son takes music lessons here in Agoura, so we’ll meet for 90 minutes to catch up on each other’s lives and blow off steam.
I’m a good mommy and a good wife, so I always make my family before I abandon them. It’s usually something quick and easy, but at least I don’t make them fend for themselves. (Mostly because I fear that left to their own devices, they’ll likely eat something like peanut butter bars with a side of Jello for dinner.)
This week, I made a ham steak, macaroni and cheese, and green beans. This was certainly not the type of “easy kid dinner” one would find in Rachel Ray’s magazine (I think she and I have different definitions of easy and even though she makes “kid-friendly menus,” she doesn’t actually have any kids) but it had all the major food groups and quite a large serving of something green.
My husband is a radio talk show host, and thanks to the wonders of technology, is able to do his show out of our house, but this makes him unavailable until 7 p.m. I had to leave the house at 5:45 to meet my friend.
I gave the kids their dinner and left my husband’s on the counter and covered it with foil. I showed my son where his dad’s dinner was.
I met my girlfriend at , and we had a fabulous time in the lounge as we drank a martini, ate sautéed calamari and flirted with the owner, .
I came home happy and sat down next to my husband to chat about our day.
“How was your dinner?” I asked.
“It was good, kind of cold, though.”
It was kind of cold?
“Uh, didn’t you put it in the microwave?”
He seemed to think for a minute. “No, I didn’t know how long to do it for.”
This is the part where I sigh.
“Do you think I took Microwave 101 in college?” I ask him. “Because I didn’t. You know how to use a microwave. Do what I do and look at it and guess. You can figure it out.”
What is it about husbands? My husband is truly one of the smartest people I know, yet the simplest household tasks sometimes seem to mystify him. All of my friends have similar husband stories to tell. They do it on purpose, don’t they–so we’ll take care of them, so we’ll do things for them.
Ask any mother what her most important job as a mom is and she’ll tell you that it’s to teach her children independence and how to survive in the world successfully without her.
What nobody tells you is that your job as a wife seems to be exactly the opposite.
