If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon (32 page)

I love my husband but I really want to cancel his World of Warcraft account and kick his freeloading sister out of our apartment.

—Kelly

 

My husband has given away many of my possessions over the course of our seventeen-plus-year marriage without asking me, including two bicycles, golf clubs, and a sewing machine. Now, his line of reasoning was that I did not use these items, but what irks me is that they did not belong to him, so he had no right to give them away! This past school year, my son needed a costume for his social studies class. I had to staple the fabric together because I did not have a sewing machine.

—Liz

 

He always has to move the dishes around in the dishwasher before running it. Granted, he can usually fit more in it than I manage, but this is EVERY single time!

—Stephanie

 

For the past twenty-seven years—as long as we have been married—my husband has brought the exact same thing to work for lunch every day (unless he goes out to lunch or has a lunch meeting): PB&J (has to be crunchy peanut butter), fruit, and a soda, although he did switch to Diet Vanilla Coke and swapped strawberry preserves for raspberry about ten years ago. I love varied lunches and it annoys me that he is so boring in his food preferences, but since I don’t have to eat it, I let it go.

—Rosemarie

 

My husband and I work together rehabilitating birds, and we often bring our two-and-a-half-year-old daughter along for the fun. Since she’s got a toddler’s short attention span, one of us completes a volunteer task while the other entertains her, and then we switch off. My entertainment ideas run to making bird feeders out of pine cones and helping to cut up tofu for the resident raven. But my husband thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to let our daughter walk around the center holding and petting dead rats intended for the owls’ dinner.

—Melissa

 

The man does not blow his nose. Instead he tears off a long strip of toilet paper and shoves one end up his nostril. He will walk around the house like this, and it doesn’t seem to bother him that he has a strip of toilet paper flapping in the wind in front of his face. It has to be toilet paper; even if we have tissues, he still uses toilet paper. He used to come to bed like that when he was sniffly until one morning I woke up with THE SNOTTY STRIP OF TOILET PAPER STUCK TO MY FACE! He is no longer allowed in the bed with toilet paper shoved up his nose.

—Sara

 

He scratches the couch with his finger the whole time we watch TV. If I smack his hand away, he’ll just move it back or scratch with the other hand.

—Teri

 

My husband, bless his heart, does not brush his teeth at night. It drives me crazy. I mean, besides the obvious hygiene issues, I’ve got to admit his breath is a little rank by the end of the day, especially if there were onions or garlic in our dinner.

—Brynna

 

He leaves his big, bulky shoes all over the house, and it drives me bonkers. He always places them in the most inopportune places, like in our two-year-old daughter’s room or in front of the couch, where I am sure to stub my toes on them.

—Lisa

 

My husband wears a CPAP machine at night to stop his horrible snoring. It is a sight to be seen when it is on, which is not that often because he falls asleep every night before putting it on. And when he does wear it, he will take it off in the middle of the night and hold it in his hand for dear life. Then he flips out when I try, with loving care of course, to put it back on.

—Robin

 

His idea of “cleaning” a table or counter is to either sweep the crumbs onto the floor (like I don’t have to clean that, too!) or pick them up off of a glass top by using a wet finger.

—BJ

 

Whenever we are out together, my husband runs me over when he walks. It’s like I have some gravitational pull, and before you know it, he’s stepped right into me. It doesn’t matter where we are. The last time we were in the airport and he did this to me, I told him to follow the row of square tiles—those were his, that was his space, and this row was mine. Stay in your own lane.

—Teri

 

My husband is a good man, but I am going to smack him with a frying pan one of these days because:

—Lisa

AFTERWORD

Famous Last Words

(by Joe)

 

 

Jenna is a wonderful wife and an amazing mother and obviously an extremely talented writer and I am lucky to be married to her. However, in addition to swearing a lot (sorry about that, Dad), she also has a tendency to occasionally embellish details for the sake of a good story. In fact, since marrying her, I call
any
extreme example of exaggeration a “Jennaism.” So I thought you should know that this book—which I have read from cover to cover and heartily endorse, by the way—
may
contain one or two slight Jennaisms. All of the parts where I come off looking generous, capable, or just really nice,
those
are all 100 percent true. With regards to the remainder of the intimate details about our life that you have just read, I urge you to use your good judgment in discerning where
the light leaver-onner my lovely wife may have liberally employed what she calls
poetic license.

 

—JOE