When "Stupid" finds my husband

I have been married for 7 years to my beloved husband. First you should know, he is a very hard working and well respected commercial banker in our area. He is the "go to" man in the bank when there is a question. We have been on several 5 star vacations sponsored by his bank due to his outstanding loan volume. When there is a new hire my husband is the person they shadow helping to show them the ropes and emerge successful. Alas, once he walks through the front door of our house this persona is shed and he becomes the man I know and love (quirks and all).

My whole life I have always been good at doing things around the house, installing blinds, hanging drapes, connecting TV wires to the gaming systems and DVD components, ETC. I always figured these would be the things my husband would do if I ever got married. Well, as it happens, I did get married and guess what... I'm still doing all these things. My poor husband has never been one to do household fixing. Actually, I should correct myself. He does household fixing but not to the level of satisfaction of anyone who is not visually impaired.

My first experience with his handy work was when we moved into our house. The washer and dryer were new. They needed to be plugged in (that's all). You would think,'No big deal." Well, you would be oh so wrong. The dryer cord needs to be connected to the dryer first before plugging it into the wall. My husband decided he should make sure the plug fit into the wall socket prior to attaching it to the dryer (even though it was an obvious fit) . Anyone who is relatively intelligent knows you don't plug in a cord that has naked unattached wires hanging from the other end. Upon plugging it into the wall socket the naked cords touched each other and exploded, knocking out the breaker and leaving a scorched black mark on the wall where it burnt the paint. NIIIICCCEEEE!!!! My hubby had a nice new hair do from the electricity and was darn lucky he didn't electrocute himself to death.

Men usually have tools in a tool box that they use for household chores. Not my husband. He has a mish-mash of things all thrown together in the garage and gets upset every time he cannot find a screw driver, wire cutters, wrench, etc. Now you may ask... If this man cannot do household repairs why is he looking for these items??? That is a great question and one that needs to be explored. My husband has been known to use the screw drivers to mix paint even though the store gives you wooden paint mixers, weed the lawn of crab grass, and dig in the dirt to plant flowers. Wire cutters are used to cut the spool of wire he keeps in the garage to do his makeshift repairs on random things. He thinks wire can hold anything together in a visually acceptable way. I'm here to tell you that is not the case. When he cannot find the proper tool in his tool heap he raids my kitchen drawers. I cannot tell you how many times he has used one of my good knives to tighten a screw, to weed the flower beds, or preform tricks. Yes... tricks!! He took my large chef knife and threw it in the air and tried to catch it (thinking this would somehow impress me). As it twirled in the air I knew he would miss it and sure enough... it landed on its tip and broke. To this day I have a chef knife with a square tip. This makes me crazy. Some homes have gun safes...I'm gonna get a knife safe to keep him away!!!

There are times when he channels McGuyver. Remember McGuyver?? He was the guy who could fix anything with a stuck of gum and a piece of tin. Well, meet his disabled incarnation. We have a small crape tree in the back yard that was leaning badly against the fence. I had suggested we go to Lowe's and buy the kit to hold the tree in place until it was big enough to stand on its own. My dear husband had a better idea. He took his trusty ball of wire, wire cutters, a wooden stick and one of my good kitchen towels and went to work on that poor defenseless tree. By the time I got home from work that day he had the tree wrapped in my good kitchen towel then on top of that he had wound the wire and attached it to the stick. The stick was perpendicular to the tree and attached to the fence to keep the tree upright. The appearance was terrible. My husband had also forgot about the wind factor (it was March). When the wind kicked up the tree would sway and since he attached it to the fence, the fence would also sway. Not only had he fixed our tree (in his eyes) he had ensured himself another project in the near future because the wobbly fence would also need to be repaired (more like replaced). You don't even want me to go into how he repairs fences.

Did you know that wire can also help prop up plants??? I had no idea until I saw what he did next. We have 3 large planters on the patio. We plant flowers during the spring and they as the season progresses they grow taller. Instead of watering the flowers from the side my husband takes the hose and waters directly on top of the delicate flowers. Due to the heavy water flow (full blast) it collapsed the flowers to one side. So half the pot had standing flowers and the other half was collapsed over the side of the pot. You guessed it... out came the wire and the wire cutters. He cut enough wire to wind around the droopy flowers and lash them to the standing ones. I had never seen Martha Stuart use this method. I watched and let him do his thing. The next day I took those trusty wire cutters and cut the wire off. Wire... who would have thought??? oh yes... That would be my husband.

The yard is a whole other story. My husband refused so have the landscaper put in extra drainage in our backyard because it was going to cost more. I, myself, am very thrifty so I understood where he was coming from but I had also seen backyards flood when rain came. I voiced my opinion. He refused to listen so, Dirty Ernie, (our landscaper, real name, he was cheap) laid our landscape and planted our grass (without drainage). The first rain came and guess what... yup, we flooded (told you so). Our back yard floods every time we have rain or anytime my hubby leaves the sprinklers on too long. Because of the flooding he dug, what I thought would be a small trench off to the side of our porch around the grass to help the water drain from our patio. Pretty soon the trench spanned a quarter circumference around our yard. Then grew to span half our yard. If that wasn't enough he decided to add rocks to trench he dug, thinking this would help the run off. This only backed up the water again. I bet we are the only house in our neighborhood with a moat in the back yard. Sometimes I'm scared I'll find our little dog ,Lulu, drowning in our moat.

The other day I walked into the laundry room and saw the door taped open to the wall. My first thought was my son had been playing with the tape and my husband would be mad due to him touching the wall. I should have known my smart kid would never do this sort of thing. That left my husband as the culprit. He said the door kept closing half way and he wanted it to stay open all the way. Instead of checking the hinges he proceeds to find the masking tape (placed conveniently next to his trusty spool of wire) and tear off a foot long piece then tape the door to the wall because that is the BEST way he figured on fixing it. I tore the tape off in front of him and lo and behold...the door stayed open. He waited for it to close half way and when it didn't he declared his masking tape idea a success. Ugghhh!!!

Can we talk about the fan???? First you should know that back in the day I had a boyfriend who use to hate the fact that I would sleep with a fan in front of my face. He would build a wall between himself and me every night with pillows to avoid the air hitting him. He became known as "Barricade Boy." Well, who ever would have thought I would run into two such people in my lifetime. I broke up with "Barricade Boy" and ended up with "Cataract Man!" My husband cannot stand the ceiling fan. He says it dries out his nasel passages and dries his eyes impairing his television watching. The summers are miserable. I need to have air circulating. I have since stopped sleeping with a fan in my face out of love for my husband but I cannot be without the ceiling fan at the very least. He doesn't build a barricade the way "Barricade Boy" use to but he he definitely has his own unique design. He builds a pillow cave for his head so he can see out the underside of the pillow so as not to have air hitting his sensitive eyes. I tried to have him wear my swim goggles but his head was too big and the goggles too tight. Last night he put on his golf sunglasses. These glasses keep out ALL the sun... they look like cataract glasses. You know the kind the older people wear when they have cataract surgery. I walked into the bedroom with him lying on the bed wearing ONLY his cataract glasses to shield his eyes so he could watch TV. Now that was attractive!!! Hence, "Cataract Man."

There are so many more stories to share but then this would be a novel. I will have continue with more husband stories tomorrow like the time we went to Las Vegas and he thought he was a high roller and only wanted to play Texas Hold'em so I was left as the third wheel with my "Girlfriend" and his wife. Or how about the time he hired and cashier from Jack in the Box because she was cute. Or the time when he bought a mutt for 200 dollars that was suppose to be a Chihuahua. Or the time our dog jumped out of the bed of his truck and almost died after I had warned him not to put her in back. There are so many more stories but alas, I must go start dinner for the family. Writing this has brought back so many memories.

To be continued...