My Husband is Never Going Away Again for the Weekend! What are the Odds it Would Snow??

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

My husband is out of town for the weekend. He is being a good uncle and went to see our nephew (his godson) play football in one of his last games as a senior in high school.  I actually was happy that he got a chance to go and Thursday when he left, I was even counting down the minutes until he departed for the airport.  It wasn’t that I wouldn’t miss him, but all morning on Thursday, he was in my way. I went in the kitchen to make my oatmeal and there he sat on MY seat sipping that darn coffee. Next, I tried to get in the bathroom twice to take my shower and both times he was still in there, which can mean a couple of things and neither of them is good. Either I am going to need the Industrial strength Glade Tough Odor Solutions Spray or the heat he is generating in the shower, by using all of the hot water, has caused him to lapse into a relaxed state where time has no meaning.

 

My husband rarely travels, but when he does, I consider it sort of a mini vacation. I don’t have to think about cooking dinner, although he will tell you “think” is mostly what I do when it comes to cooking. I think about how to get out of doing it, but even that gets old after a while.  I can read in bed until all hours of the night or at least until 11:00 pm when I usually start dozing off.   If I want to take up his half of the bed with my books, magazines, the phone, my purse, or the remote control, no one comes to bed and says, “would you mind clearing your desk off, so I can get under the covers?’ right when I am in the middle of something good.

 

What almost always happens during my “mini vacations” is something goes wrong in a BIG way.  I consider myself a very independent woman and would have no problem driving cross-country, by myself, in a reliable car, but ask me to open a bottle of medicine with a child safety lock and we have a problem.  I have recently resorted to buying my Advil with the new Arthritis caps because they just unscrew. When I hang a picture, I use the old eyeball technique. My method results in more holes in the wall, but I find it is faster than watching a man with a level, stud finder, pencil, and ruler trying to find the exact location to put the nail. Pound the nail already is what I say! I mow the grass, but if the mower runs out of gas, I cannot figure out to make the gas can work. In the old days, you just poured it right into the mower, but my husband has a new one that you have to push something and pull something and unlock something and by the time I figure it out I have gas running down my pant legs into my shoes. I would say a prayer and light a candle, but I am afraid that would be the end of me.

 

We moved into our house in 2004 and the thermostat is so complicated, you have to have a PhD in Air Conditioning and Heating systems to figure it out. Even the last technician we had come to the house asked to see the manual.  What this means is that my husband is the only one who knows how to operate our temperature settings.  He has tried to show me, but usually I hear the word “Programmable” and his voice gets fuzzy. He has come home from work to find me in my bra and underwear fanning myself vigorously with the latest edition of his Velo News and he knows instantly to turn the thermostat down, unless he wants me to walk around like that all night. All this can work in his favor too, because he can avoid some repairs by convincing me it is not that serious. For years, any time we had a leak anywhere, he would tell me it was condensation, until one time I had the condensation up to my ankles and told him that did not seem right.

 

Because my husband knows all this about me, naturally he is the first one I blame when he is gone and something goes wrong. This time two things happened. Our weather has gotten much colder. Earlier this month, when it was warmer, I had been walking the dogs up at the park. The last time we went I pulled twelve ticks off of Vern and we stopped going.  I have come a long way with ticks from the first time I discovered one under my daughter’s arm and screamed hysterically for quite awhile until someone had to slap me to bring me back to my senses. Not really, but I certainly did not send my daughter the message that everything would be fine and mommy had it all under control, when I was shrieking, “YOU HAVE A TICK. WHAT DO I DO?” over and over again.  I decided yesterday since the temperatures had dropped so dramatically that the ticks had all probably left to winter in Florida and it was safe to go back to the park. Unfortunately, my reasoning proved incorrect and my daughter, known around these parts as Doomsday Dana (what DD really stands for in my blogs), did all but ring a bell each and every time she spotted a tick on Vern or Fudge.  I kept telling her I preferred the “Don’t Look, Don’t Tell” policy regarding ticks and that way I could sleep easier in a total, peaceful state of denial, but she continued to call for me to help.

 

The next bad thing to happen and I kept asking myself, “what are the odds?” is we had a winter storm in October.  I didn’t even get the 5000 leaves blown off of the driveway, because I can’t operate the leaf blower, and now my incompetence at operating the snow blower rears its ugly head. Of course, the first thing my daughter said when she got up was that they were calling for power outages which, for me, is the equivalent of announcing the world is coming to an end that day and automatically pushes my blood pressure to stroke level.  Plus, everyone knows, once you say it out loud it is going to happen. Looking around to see what we needed to get us through an outage, I realized we were out of bottled water and we decided to run to the store before the roads got much worse. Mind you, I was out the night before at the Hallmark store, but it never crossed my mind to stock up on supplies for a Nor’easter when I could buy Christmas wrapping paper and a cute picture frame for one of Fudge and Vern’s pictures instead. What happened next was one of the most harrowing moments in my life and the weekend only continued to get worse!

 

To find out what happened, stay tuned for part two.

 

Nothing says Halloween like snow:

Fudge and Vern Seem Very Upset About the Snow:

Don't Worry Guys! I'm Right Here!!

Look at the limbs bending on our tree!!

 

[F, Calla & Luca]

Definitely a black cat, it was Halloween.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

F, I just went over the edge. The funny (NOT) thing was the dogs were pursuing something in the yard yesterday and digging near our stone wall and something black came out and ran the other way and I asked my DH if it could have been a rat. OMD  He promised me it could not, because he knows I am fine living in denial. I told myself it was a black squirrel or a cat. I do think it might have been a cat.

[F, Calla & Luca]

Oh yes, sorry it was rats in Pa. JK

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Lisa, Ok...ok

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

F, Do not even say the word M-I-C-E! They are only in NJ this winter. Please!  My sanity is at stake :) LOL

[Lisa, Daisy & Dexter]

Hey blogger lady, still waiting for part 2!!!!!!!!

[F, Calla & Luca]

No mice? You must not be loooking hard enough and DH obviously hasn't told you either. So far in the last week F 3, Mice--well who knows but those three it was zero.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Deanna, One of the things I worried about most was mice. LOL Luckily, none showed up YET!! I think your theory may be correct! Thanks for the chuckle!!

[Deanna & Desi & Cori]

First - sorry about the untimely snow storm.  Having lived my entire life in Arizona and California, I can't even imagine what you're going through.  Second - I hear you about things always seeming to go awry when the husband is out of town!  I believe that husbands have some power to communicate psychically with the universe, letting "it" know to send trauma our way as soon as they leave town.  It's their sneaky way of proving to us that, no matter how intelligent and independent we may be, we NEED them.  My husband used to travel often, and every time he left, something happened - broken appliances, snakes in the yard, mice in the cabinets, frogs in the house, etc.  I DO NOT do critters well.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Thanks, Doris. He is home now and yes, he does owe me big time...LOL!!