Regular Life

The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That’s pride f*cking with you. F*ck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.
Marsellus Wallace, Pulp Fiction

I’ve been told I’m an above-average husband, but sometimes even those of us who pride ourselves on our sensitivity and compassion can screw up royally.

My wife commented tonight that I’ve spent way too much time on the computer lately. There were things she wanted me to help her with tonight, and she would prefer if I didn’t “get on the computer” after we finished watching a couple of TV shows.

After .04 seconds of thought, I agreed and apologized. Then, in a move that historically always is a bad idea, I explained why I’ve spent so much time on the computer lately.

I finally got to use the video editing software I got for Christmas, after upgrading my motherboard and CPU to meet the requirements (SSE2 instruction set, if you’re a nerd). I haven’t had full lunch breaks at work lately, which cut into my blogging time, so I had to make that up at night.

In what only could be described as a husbandic blunder of immense proportions, I went on, “Besides, if you’d told me earlier that you wanted me to help you with things tonight, I would not have just sat here watching TV until now.”

I knew before she reacted that I should have taken .05 instead of .04 seconds to judge the wisdom of letting that go from my brain all the way out of my face.

With a mixture of hurt, anger, and calm that only a partner of 13 years or more can muster, she said, “So you wouldn’t have spent time with me if you had known it would cut into your computer time?”

Ouch.

I clumsily tried to back-pedal. “No, I mean I could have been doing other things while I watched TV.” This was true, if a bit self-serving. I could have been folding my underwear and socks (which she graciously laundered) while sitting next to my beautiful, talented, intelligent wife (she does read this, after all).

I hope this is painful to read, because writing it certainly makes me cringe.

After she left the room to work on some mom’s group stuff, I launched into a frenzied covert effort to right my sinking ship. I moved the boxed-up Christmas tree and other decorations to the garage, put away all my clean laundry, and just generally spruced up a few things.

I moved and rolled up the small Christmastime rug from the kitchen floor. Then, I noticed that beside our usual kitchen rug lay a large non-skid mat. That’s great. I’ll just set our kitchen rug on there and draw an outline of it, then cut the mat to fit. She obviously had bought the mat for that purpose, and I like surprising my wife with small gestures like that.

Later, as I started typing this, she walked into the room and thanked me for all I had done. Unable to resist, I replied, “Oh, I also went ahead and cut that non-skid to fit the rug when I changed it out with the Christmas one.”

“You did? That was the mat that goes under the big rug in the entryway.” She laughed.

“Oh, sorry. I thought I was doing a good thing.”

Still laughing, she said, “That was sweet, but crap, now I’ll have to go buy another one.”

Now, as I finish this, she just walked in and gave me a kiss goodnight.

What a gal.

* Thanks to my buddy Simian Farmer for his inspirational “Bad Dad” series. I just hope my “Bad Husband” posts are over.

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