Monday, March 01, 2010

the day off

The Sober Husband took off a week and a half from work, so he could be with me while I was in the hospital and then for my first week at home afterward. We should have planned for him to take off longer, because the combination of working, doing the driving for the children, and doing whatever the hell it is I do around this place is overloading him with stress... even though my friend from high school (sometimes referred to on this blog as "Kim I") flew down for a few days to help out. At first the Sober Husband prided himself on keeping the house looking fabulous, but eventually he gave up on that.

On Saturday morning the Sober Husband announced his intention to take Sunday off. I gave him a look (I'd had another setback in my recovery on Thurs., and on Friday I had a lot of pain and no energy), and he amended it to "of course I'll do whatever I need to take care of you. I just don't want to do anything for them", gesturing towards the children's lifeless bodies, sprawled on our bed watching cartoons.

On Sunday he announced this again, with significant looks at each child. But as the morning went on, Iris had computer troubles requiring opening a ticket for technical support [the children shout "Tech support!" when they need help with any computer-related issue, and I've taught Lola, when her father doesn't respond quickly, to go to him and say firmly, "I'm opening a ticket"), Lola needed to be driven to and from a playdate, Iris wanted help with her math homework, and they both needed meals, etc.. After ransacking the upstairs for a misplaced stuffed animal, the Sober Husband came to me and said, "I give up. I don't get a day off."

13 comments:

Silliyak said...

Did the Insight Bulb go on above his head like in cartoons?

hughman said...

guess he doesn't get to lounge around all day like you normally do huh?

also, what is a "ticket"?

joyous melancholy said...

Ah, and the truth is revealed! No matter how "enlightened" our men seem to be, they never really get it until they reach THIS point! The only way to truly get time off is to leave. In my case, usually the aftermath of leaving (a clingy baby, a grumpy husband, and a disaster of a house) makes it not worth the bother half the time.

Silliyak said...

You might get him an old frumpy bathrobe, order some bon bons and offer to buy him a new vacuum cleaner. THAT should improve his morale!

the Drunken Housewife said...

At ISPs and other technical places, when you have a problem that can't be quickly resolved, you "open a ticket", meaning your problem has escalated to the level where it must be recorded, monitored, addressed, and solved systematically. It's for when it's not something solved for doing something simple, like rebooting or checking to make sure that you're plugged in.

hughman said...

thanks for the ticket info. i love how your household appears to have become a miniature doggy-o.

NonymousGoatsePants said...

I would like to open the following ticket:

Nature of Problem: Misspelling in comment section of Previous Post Entitled, "Greetings From Earth"

Description: I made comment number 7 with the text,
"It's a cook bbok!!!"
and should be changed to:
"It's a cook book!!!"

Please note that the quotation marks are part of my comment and should remain, since this comment is quoted from a well-known television show.

Due Date: ASAP

Silliyak said...

NGP, this is not a dimension of sight or sound, but of mind..you have entered...The IRIS ZONE!

2amsomewhere said...

After ransacking the upstairs for a misplaced stuffed animal, the Sober Husband came to me and said, "I give up. I don't get a day off."

Just tell Sober that parenthood requires five nines of availability. As someone who works for a web company, he'll know exactly what that means. :-)

--
2amsomewhere
(probably needs a Pingdom alert set up for monitoring his own uptime)

Missy said...

One can only hope that your surgery has led the Sober Husband on the path of enlightenment regarding just how much it takes to handle the children, house, etc.

He's soldiering on bravely, however, as are all of you. I hope this will soon be more of a memory than a reality.

More importantly--how are you feeling?

Joyce said...

Ha ha ha, Silliyak nailed it.

the Drunken Housewife said...

Dear AlanAnonymousGoatsePants, I don't have the ability to edit comments here (I can only delete them or leave them be, a stark binary choice). Even if I did, I wouldn't, because I am profoundly lazy. Also, I am not paid to keep this blog, so you can't expect a high level of service. The occasional post, either amusing or aggravating, is about all you'll get out of me, and lately I've been relying upon unpaid child labor to keep that up. Even the child laborer is uneven in her quality, having omitted to include snake images in the last few posts.

the Drunken Housewife said...

Dear Missy, you are so kind to ask, and I got your package, thank you! Yesterday was the first really good day, a day with very little pain, and today I drove for the first time. I think I overdid it today, as I was out and about for a long time, but it was good to start back on resuming my normal activities.