Such a gentleman, he won me over with his shy charm and his neat appearance (this should have been my first clue).  Then the presents started pouring in.   One day a rose, the next a bag of M&M’s, the next a sour pickle.  As you might have guessed, no expense was spared.

But I don’t mean to pick.  It’s not like he was the male equivalent to Martha Stewart.  His apartment was definitely low maintenance.  He had a hand-me-down striped green loveseat from his parents (ridiculous when you consider he’s six and a half feet tall), his stemware consisted of plastic Mardi Gras cups and he didn’t own one knife that cut.  He’s low maintenance and was perfectly happy that way, which makes me wonder even more why he married me.  I could convene a congressional committee over the fact that he won’t close drawers all the way, doesn’t pull the shower curtain closed, or leaves a huge bottle of peroxide sitting on the counter in our small half bath.  If you haven’t noticed, I’m a little high maintenance. 

I could write an entire set of encyclopedias on this, but suffice it to say nothing can be done to correct the congenital birth defect in the 95% of men which renders them unable to notice the distinct aromas they leave behind in a bathroom.  Male behavior in a bathroom didn’t begin to bother me until I married.  Maybe I didn’t notice it when I was living in my parent’s home because my mother did the bulk of the housekeeping.  But I certainly noticed it in my first apartment with my husband.  He didn’t notice anything, which made it easy not to clean anything.  I remember the day I made him get down on his hands and knees in front of the toilet to prove to him that porcelain was not self-cleaning.  The shock didn’t last long.  He returned to his slovenly habits, which included never cleaning out the bathtub or closing the shower curtain to even hide the ring he’d left behind. 

In his defense, I will say that my husband does help out around the house. He tries to clean the kitchen (which basically stops at loading the dishwasher), and he’s learned to do laundry without shrinking, burning, or bleaching the wrong things.  He can vacuum and sometimes makes an effort to sweep.  During the course of our 18 year marriage, he’s become a pretty good cook, and he remembers to say
thank you if I’ve made dinner.  He’s a very involved and devoted father, and most of the time he’s a considerate husband.  Because of these things, I’m willing to give him a pass on the bathroom (most of the time).  Of course this doesn’t keep me from dreaming of the day when I’ll win the lottery and build the dream house which will put his bathroom in a different wing of our mansion on the river.