"Yeah. I'm right here," my wife says. She's on the couch reading a book. It's Harry Potter, I think the third one judging by the cover. I know that other husbands may walk into the house and expect to see the wife reading Cosmo or perhaps Good Housekeeping. That's not my wife. That's not her at all.
"So what's going on?" I ask her.
"Just reading," she says.
"Where are the kids?" I ask her. I know that this is a setup question. I know exactly where the kids are. All three of them. I just want to see if she does.
"Little Hoss and Bacon are playing out on the front porch. Wyatt is right behind you," she says while pointing at my 10-year-old son. She rolls her eyes, like how could I ask such a stupid question?
"Are you sure?" I say. I'm building up to something here and I want it to be good.
"What do you mean 'are you sure'," She says. "He's right there, right behind you. You took him to soccer practice an hour ago. You coach soccer. Your brain is going to mush, honey."
"Hmm. Maybe you are right. I'm getting forgetful in my old age. Like I probably forgot that Bacon Hoss always takes a piss out on the front porch."
That catches her attention. Now she puts the book down.
"What?" she says.
"Yup. Taking a wiz right off the front porch. Just now. Pants all the way down to his ankles, junk and butt out so that all the neighbors can see."
"Where's Little Hoss?" They were out there playing!" Now she gets up off the couch and heads to the front door.
The front door is open. The glass screen door remains shut. It gives a perfect view of the front porch. On that porch, there are roughly three million stuffed animals, a bottle of bubbles, and a toddler who is pulling up his pants. My daughter is nowhere to be found. My wife heads outside.
"What are you doing!" she asks the toddler.
"Peeing," he says.
"Why?"
"Had to go pee."
There you go. A perfectly reasonable answer. Little dude had to pee.
"Where's your sister?" Hossmom asks.
"Getting toys," the boy says.
And as if on cue, my daughter shows up.
"Why did you leave your brother outside, you were playing!" my wife says. She's getting pretty hot now and I'm just sitting back enjoying the show. I'm not saying that I'm better at the home stuff than my wife is, wait, that is exactly what I'm saying.
My wife sucks at anything "domestic." She doesn't like it when I say this, but sadly, it is true. And why shouldn't it be? I've stayed home with the kids for nine years. If I don't cook dinner, there is a pretty good chance everyone is getting Chinese takeout. But she does an excellent job of making money.
"What..." my wife says but can't finish the sentence before my daughter starts to defend herself.
"I was getting more toys for Bacon! I was gone for, like, 3 seconds."
"He peed off the porch!" my wife says.
"In his pants?" my daughter asks.
"No, he peed OFF the porch. He pulled his pants down. "
This goes on for a while. It gets pretty heated for a second. In the end, everyone agrees that the toddler should not be allowed to pee off the front porch. I want to point out though that I was only gone for an hour. Just an hour.
We head back inside.
"Did you make dinner?" I ask my wife as we head to the kitchen.
"Yes! I'm not incompetent when you are not here, you know that don't you?" she asks with a touch of sarcasm in her voice.
"Sure," I say.
"Hoss..."
"Did you put a pizza in the oven for me?" I ask her.
"Of course, I did. I put it in as soon as you texted you were on your way home 20 minutes ago."
I open the oven, the very cold oven. I grab the frozen pizza with my hand. Not surprisingly, I don't get burned.
"You didn't turn the oven on."
No comments:
Post a Comment