Oh the "Joys" of Having a Retired Spouse

Let me preface this post with the statement that I love my husband but there are times when all I can do is shake my head and mutter, "Bless his heart."  ;-)


After 36 years of  marriage(and 40 years together)you would think me and Hubs pretty much know everything about each other and are use to our foibles, right?

After all, we didn't go into marriage and have kids right away.  We spent 9 years married without any children so had ample time to get to know/get use to each other.

Well I've learned a few new things about my Hubs in the last almost 24 months since he is around the house pretty much 24/7 now.
Let me explain first that Hubs is what is known as a "left brained" person.  He is highly intelligent, has an advanced degree and is over"edumacated" as I like to call it.
He is lacking however is some common sense thinking.
The comedienne Jeanne Robertson explains it well in this stand-up piece she is known for.......


Here are a few things he does that make me scratch my head........

*  He refuses to eat sandwiches for lunch since retiring.  Exception being if we go out to eat for lunch.  But he just can't eat a sandwich at home for that meal.  He'll eat one at dinner time rarely if it's a leftover night and neither he or I don't feel like cooking/heating anything up.  Weird, huh?

*  You can't let him near landscaping in the yard with clippers or a saw.  He decided to go out in the yard last Summer and trim some trees and bushes.

This is what my rhododendron bush looked like two Summers ago in all it's blooming glory.....

And this is what it looks like after Hubs hacked it up........

Hubs butchered the poor thing, hacking off all the lower branches of the bush on 3 of it's 4 sides.  It now looks like a tree(which is never a good look for a bush).
I was so mad!!!(and I guess I still am).

* I will let him drive me places even though I could run the errands in question quicker and more efficiently by myself.  So why do I let him drive me?  If Hubs doesn't leave the house at least once a week he starts getting antsy.  But he never plans to go anywhere by himself to do anything social or fun.(Ok to be truthful, in the last 24 months he has taken himself alone somewhere fun ONE COUNT 'EM ONE TIME.  To a one day chess tournament outside of Philly.)

He has no friends he gets together with and no social activities.  He will get antsy and decide he needs to drive "down the mountain" into the city for 1 thing then two days later drive to the city again for something else.  I have tried to suggest he save up these trips and do them all together to save time and gas but no, " I can't control him and what he wants to do!"is what I get told.  I am just trying to suggest we save money on gas by combining trips but he doesn't want to hear it.
So I let him drive me around(besides "driving" me crazy).
But if we go out for more than 2 hours he expects lunch out too.  I tell ya living with a retired spouse is no picnic! lolz

*  He had never refilled a liquid hand soap container in his entire life before he retired.  How do I know this?  I asked him to refill the container in our bathroom as it was getting low.  Take a close look at this container........

If you noticed it's a "FOAMING" hand wash dispenser you have one up on Hubs.

He tells me he refilled it and when I was in that bathroom later I went to wash my hands and realized that he doesn't know that when you refill a foaming dispenser with reg. liquid hand soap you have to water it down a lot.  I stood there trying to pump the mechanism and couldn't for the life of me figure out why the blasted pump wouldn't depress or squirt out any soap! lolz
Yep, he killed the foaming dispenser.......

*  He doesn't understand the reason for reflectors on your mailbox.

After this happened while on vacation with Kim and her DH in New England.......

He got the new mailbox installed and he decided to put big reflectors on it.  Here is where he put them.............

On the post holding the mailbox.  We don't need reflectors on our mailbox as a navigational aid for pulling into or out of our driveway so reflectors on the post serve no purpose at all.
We need reflectors on the end of the mailbox that sticks out into the road it's next too so nobody hits the mailbox because they can't see it!
Putting reflectors on the post BEHIND the mailbox serves no purpose to us.
So I tried to reason with Hubs and this is what he did..........

Put teeny tiny reflectors on the front of the mailbox next to the door.  Chester is showing you what he thinks of this whole situation.  lolz


*  He has taken to wiping every single item that comes out of the dishwasher with a hand towel.
When he retired he basically took over kitchen clean up duty.......I cook/shop/prep food so he now washes up/cleans up the kitchen afterwards.  This means he loads, runs and empties the dishwasher.

Nobody can load is right as far as he is concerned so I no longer bother putting anything INTO the dishwasher because I know he is just going to take it out and rearrange everything in there.
That I can live with.

But what drives me bat shit crazy is that everything he takes out of the dishwasher now gets rubbed down with a hand towel.  Ok, I can see doing that to the bottom of the glasses/cups in the top rack as they tend to hold a bit of water after coming through the wash/dry cycle.  It's fairly OCD with him now.

But he has to take every danged plate, bowl, utensil.....all of which are perfectly dry after being run through the dishwasher with the drying cycle........and hand towel them to death before putting them away.  Doesn't matter if the item is dry already.
Drives.
Me.
Insane!

And the worst thing is that I have seen him take a dirty hand towel(the one I keep to wipe my hands while cooking lives in a crocheted ring on the oven door)and use that one inside of a clean towel to rub the CLEAN dishes.............arghhhh!

I had better stop now because my eye is starting to twitch here. 8-P

Sluggy