The alley to my oop

Let me preface the following discourse by saying that I love Husband, unconditionally, in spite of his dirty socks.

Our hamper is an emblem of our marriage. Literally. When Husband and I got married, what did my parents get us? A hamper. Okay, not only a hamper…they also gave us a Ford truck, dinner in a fancy restaurant, and a very nice party, but clearly the sentimental gift of the occasion was the hamper. A brown wicker hinge-top hamper.

I can hear the questions already. A hamper? Just what about a hamper is sentimental? Isn’t this rather domestic? Where is the romance in such a gift?

Please! Stop with your inquisition and give me a chance to explain!

See, when Mom and Dad got married, my mom’s parents gave them a hamper. A white wicker hinge-top hamper. I feel relatively sure that the hamper was given simply to help out a young couple trying to scrape together a household on a limited income and not with any sort of hidden agenda on communicating the significance of the marital union. Nevertheless, since my parents are still using the same hamper 46 years later (KUDOS!), and since the grandparents who gifted the hamper have been married 70 years (KUDOS! KUDOS!), one must consider the power of the hamper as wedding blessing.

Think about it. What better symbol for the nuptial intersection of intimacy and devotion than the hamper? “And Husband shall hand over his London and France to Wife without fear of judgment and Wife shall wash Husband’s London and France without fear of boy germs.” It’s poetic. Almost Biblical in its sheer duality of good and evil.

And so, taking a not-so-subtle cue from my parents and from my parents’ parents before them, I have whole-heartedly embraced laundry detail. Except for one small issue that I even hesitate to mention.

Sometimes, just sometimes, Husband misses the hamper. And by “miss,” I mean, deliberately neglects the completely insignificant effort that is lifting the hinged lid of the blessed marital hamper and inserting the dirty laundry within. Because, come on, who are we kidding! Husband has the hand-eye coordination of an octopus juggling 32 objects and the self-professed reflexes of a one-eyed cat. So you tell me how the dirty knickers come to sit just inches from the base of the hamper, or how the jeans come to be strewn haphazardly across its cover?

Since it is such a small effort for me to pick up misplaced London and haphazardly-strewn France, I cannot even tell you why Husband’s flirtation with the outer boundaries of the hamper bugs me. Except precisely that. If the effort is so trifle, why doesn’t Husband do it himself? I don’t think I’m annoyed by the infraction, so much as infinitely intrigued at its sheer audacity.

So at this point in my post, I’m sure you’ve become concerned, why is Wife airing her dirty laundry here? Shouldn’t she be talking to Husband about this? Not to worry. We’ve talked through the issue. We’ve even made advances. More or less.

I feel embarrassed to admit that my confrontation of the issue began with a passive-aggressive strategy. And boy, did that backfire. I simply decided to let the laundry pile up in its repository outside and around the hamper. Once the piles of laundry had gotten so deep that Husband started asking questions—albeit the precise question showed itself to be completely oblivious to the war being waged, something to the effect of, “I threw my khakis over here, although I’m not quite sure how you’ve got these piles organized….”—I informed Husband that I would no longer be doing laundry unless if it made it into the hamper. So what did Husband do? Duh. Right then and there he picked up what was a week’s worth of laundry and stuffed it into the hamper. Well played.

Since my first lesson in hamper management didn’t come to bear on anyone but me, I decided that my second approach needed to be more direct. So at the next opportunity—and I use the word opportunity in its loosest sense—I called Husband out on his contempt of the conjugal hamper.

And let the record show that Husband made the following statement in his defense: “Sweetie, we’re a team. By putting my laundry just outside of the hamper, I’m setting you up for the slam dunk. Like an alley-oop.”

Husband is an accomplished poker player, but I have to say that this tour-de-force was one of his strongest hands ever played. Because suddenly picking up dirty laundry brings a smile to my lips. Touché, dear Sir.

Let me conclude this discourse by reiterating that I love Husband, unconditionally, because of his dirty socks.

Having fun at the park

Aedan and his new haircut

This is not a still life

I bought three beautiful miniature caricatures from Australian artist Joe Scoppa back in February. I selected these particular three paintings so that I could fill a particular set of three empty frames that I had bought a couple of years earlier. And when I finally married the three paintings to the three frames, I knew instantly where they should hang.


I have asked Husband to hang my little triptych on several occasions since February, because somewhere in my head, pounding nails into a wall is man’s work. Sorry Gloria. Sorry Hillary. I shamelessly subscribe to traditional gender roles on a daily basis. I happily take care of any tasks that have to do with dishes, laundry, and cooking (unless if an open flame is involved, in which case Husband’s Inner Caveman clubs me over the head and takes over the job), and Husband valiantly takes care of anything having to do with assembling, power tools, and repairs (unless if a needle and button are involved, in which case Wife’s Inner Betsy Ross takes pity on Inner Caveman’s humble grunts).

To Husband’s credit, he has come close to taking care of the job. I recall a day when he was even preparing to head upstairs with a hammer, but because I wasn’t ready to relinquish control over the paintings’ precise placement on the wall—did I mention that there are three of them whose spacing must achieve a perfect balance?—I told him to wait. My bad.

But then this past week, something happened to shatter that glass ceiling for even this diehard traditionalist. And it had naught to do with Hillary’s recent bid for the White House and even less (yes, less than naught) to do with a related endeavor by an alarmingly presumptuous governor from Alaska who for the sake of utmost discretion shall remain nameless. Nope. Naught. Instead it had everything to do with my sister expertly holding a nail between her lips and my mom brandishing a level with ease and, dare I say, finesse. Contrary to what you may have been raised to believe all your life, that age-old adage is no longer true: Hanging artwork is not the exclusive domain of cavemen.

Feeling empowered, I took on the job last night. When I first started noisily rummaging around the junk drawer for nails and such, I was slightly concerned that Husband would hear my clatter and say, “You know, I would have done that for you.” At which point, you can bet your favorite miracle bra, I would have stopped straight away, willing to wait another seven months just to avoid the sheer torture that is leveling three paintings across two walls. But then, silly me, I realized that Monday night football was on, and I could have been doing the dance of the seven veils on top of the TV armoire without danger of breaking Husband’s trance.

The closer that I came to gathering the necessary tools of the job, I actually started to think that Husband might be proud of Wife’s newfound initiative. And I was definitely off to a good start. Hammer? Check. Sawtooth hangers? Check. Nails? Check. Pencil? Check. Tape measure? Hmmmm…. Tape measure? Husband’s manly Stanley had apparently decided to evade this latest sexual revolution by hiding under a pile of snips and snails somewhere. Yet we are undeterred in our progress. Girlie-girl sewing tape? Check.

At this point in the journey, there stood just one last hurdle between me and my winning over of Husband’s boundless pride and admiration: Mustering up the hutzbah to make that trek upstairs to the job site….preferably in one trip. What would Inner Caveman do? Of course this is why the tool belt was invented, probably by a woman come to think of it, because everyone with any sense knows that if you come down from the ladder mid-job to fetch that forgotten tool, the job will invariably be waylaid by the current season’s sporting event calling from the TV in the next room like an irresistible siren...but I digress. The point is Husband’s Inner Cavemen has not yet evolved to the Toolbelt Age. So what do I do instead? I go and irrevocably girl the whole thing up by placing Husband’s hardware on a floral gilt tray.

Despite my unforgivable transgression against these great symbols of Husband's manhood, I am nevertheless happy to report that the job went off with only sixteen hitches and seven nail holes. And when Inner Caveman passed through the room later that night, he issued a resounding grunt of approval. Gloria would be so proud.

The boys love the tilt-a-whirl

All aboard the ferris wheel

Finn rides the whale

Finn walks Gaga and Bompa

Finn at the petting zoo

At the Lenoir County Fair

Afternoon snack

Finn swings on the rings

Bouncing baby Finn

Bouncing baby David

Ike blows through Ohio

Cute kid alert

Finn and his Gaga

Baby in a box

Big appetite

Finn attacks his fourth (yes, fourth) big pancake with the same gusto as he did the first!

Bompa helps Finn load up on big pancakes

Bompa and his boys

What we were doing a year ago...(give or take a few weeks)

Aedan "oohs" over his present

Phew! Mommy and Daddy are off the hook

The $4.99 gift was a big hit. (We bought him the car, not the hair brush.)

Aedan impersonates Papa Smurf impersonating Marlon Brando

I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.

They grow up so fast...only 1 year old, yet ready for his first shave

Birthday Cake 101

Hmmmm....very pretty. But what do they expect me to do with this thing?

Should I touch it?

Should I squish it?

Should I taste it?

Aha! I should taste it!

Look who's one!

The Gift

There are certain nights when I go upstairs to climb into bed, and I just know that I must have been an especially good Wife to my Husband, or that Husband is still, underneath that ultra-cool exterior, a hopeless romantic, because there on my bedside table gleams a tightly-wrapped gift.

I will be the first to confess that the material value of the gift remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Is this balled-up package meant to be opened? My gut instinct and a killer nose tell me no. I have contemplated the idea of placing the gift underneath my pillow, just to see if the tooth fairy’s less fortunate cousin also deals in some sort of financial exchange, but again, something holds me back.

Even though I haven’t been able to penetrate the market worth of the gift, I’ve received enough of them by now to make me wonder about the symbolic value behind this delightful gesture.

I know that Husband is as tired as I am by the time bedtime duties roll around, even if my fatigue is far more legitimate and justifiable than his, because, who are we kidding, on an average day, he gets to drive to and from work (fun), go out to lunch in a restaurant (totally fun), and make a barrage of cold sales calls (earth-shatteringly fun), whereas I have to fix the breakfast (Cinderelly), wash the dishes (Cinderelly), do the moppin’ (night and day, Cinderelly)….but I digress…. I have worked enough jobs to know the psychological impact of punching the clock. Yet when Husband walks through our door, he’s more than ready to jump into the fray, pulling his fair share in the nightly ritual...from wrestling to reading, bathing to brushing, and from dressing to diapering.

I know enough about life not to take this trait for granted….when my mom tells the story about my dad’s former diapering skills, there is a tenderness in her voice that reveals she’s not just impressed at my dad’s superhuman ability to pin a diaper so tightly that even Houdini couldn’t have wriggled his way out of it—she’s admiring the fact that he changed a diaper at all, when there was absolutely no cultural expectation that he should have to. Certainly Husband works hard enough from 9 to 5 that he shouldn’t have to deal in dirty diapers, but he does do the doodoo, and that is a most precious gift.

So, is the gleaming package on the bedside table as quintessentially romantic as a mint truffle on my pillow, or a jewelry box that contains, um, let’s just say as an entirely random example here, a Christopher Designs pavé-set round diamond band, Style #G12AB? Probably not. Will Danielle Steel be adopting this literary topos for her next bestselling novel? All signs point to no. But the gift is a reminder of the verve and enthusiasm with which Husband has embraced fatherhood. It is emblem of his dedication, devotion, and diligence to his family…and, only to a far lesser degree, of his inexplicable inability to locate the trash can a few feet away.

I feel pretty sure that I’ve never even once thanked Husband for these periodic bedtime gifts. In fact, not only have I never opened the packages he leaves, I habitually toss them into the trash with an utter disregard for their contents. So maybe I’m not the sentimental fool I once was after all…

Growing up before our very eyes!