In Sickness and Insanity

"Do you, Kristin, promise to clip coupons and wear your jacket to bed to save money on heating?"
"I do."

                                        

              My husband is a whack job.  A wonderful, kind, loving, funny, supportive and complete whack job.  Let’s face it, we’re all crazy in our own way, but there is no one quite like my Doug.  He’s not nuts in the, “let’s live in a van and grow beards” kind of nuts, he’s normal, I guess, he just does things in his own, in-Doug-world-this-makes-sense way.  Now, I’ve lived with him for ten years so I’ve learned to interpret his behavior as “normal”, but others who encounter him are not always so lucky. 

       Whenever I tell friends about my husband’s latest “home improvement” or “how to save money and not do or buy anything at all” escapades they merely shake their heads in wonder and sigh exasperatingly, “Oh Doug, Doug, Doug.”

       Now back in college my husband actually was crazy, doing all those things your mother told you not to do.  Jumping off a cliff just because your friends did it and all that.  Thankfully he’s become a very level headed and mild mannered person, the most exciting thing he does these days is decide if we should up the amounts going into our IRAs.  But, to hear the stories, back in college the dude was a wild man.   

        He hitchhiked across country holding a sign made out of a Marlboro cigarette carton that read, “GOING WEST” like he’s Dean Moriarty or some shit.  At a party in Ventura where he went to college and lived with a few pals, he decided that riding through his house on a motorcycle would be a good idea.  Unfortunately there are no pictures in existence of said event but to this day, if you ask anyone on Olive Street in Ventura about the time that dude revved up his hog and did donuts on the living carpet (and successfully rode out the front door, somehow going airborne and completely clearing the front porch steps, Fonzie style) they’ll swear it’s true, their friend’s, brother’s neighbor’s 2^nd cousin was there.  Totally.

         But, my husband, after living the crazy life of a poor college student, working multiple jobs to put himself through, idolizing Jack Kerouac, and trying to write the great American novel finally settled down and became a mature and responsible adult.…but his nuttiness is still there, it’s just manifested into home improvements and alternative ways to save money like, "wear wool coats inside so as not to waste money on heating." and "forgo crib and put baby in drawer." kind of things.

                                                           We don't need no stinking crib.

        About six months after Doug and I moved in together we bought a house in Baltimore.  A charming 1929 Dutch Colonial, with a yard, porch swing, and ample street parking.  This house is wonderful, BUT, it’s a fixer-upper.  Now, fixer-uppers can be great houses, IF you aren’t a complete obsessive compulsive type-A like my husband.  

                                                               The Object of his obsession.

         Most houses, even those that aren’t fixer uppers always need SOMETHING done.  But, with an old house like that, there is always a huge list of items that needs to be attended to.  Not all of them need to be done today, like “paint molding”, “re-tile bathroom shower”, or “find out what that smell is.”  These things are not urgent, and most of them can be tackled over time.  But, if you are Doug, it all needs to be done right this very second, so why are sitting there on the couch, Kristin, these things aren’t going to fix themselves.  “Well, it’s 11pm and I have to work in the morning so I thought maybe I could go to sleep.”  Nope.  Get on your gloves, missy, you’re pulling up flooring. 

            The house was actually good for us, it made us learn to compromise and also made us look at “The Big Picture.”  The Big Picture being that my husband is insane and you can’t have a conversation with him and get him to concentrate on you because his mind is always preoccupied with items on the house to-do list.  But, at least now I know this.

              He couldn’t sleep thinking about all that needed to be done and he couldn’t communicate with you either.  Sure he’d look at you while you were talking, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he was listening to you.  To use a home metaphor, the lights were on but nobody’s home.  When my man’s got a project in mind, he can think of nothing else…which, when you’re trying to have an actual conversation with him is really fucking annoying. 

Here’s an example of a typical conversation with Home Improvement Doug:

Me:  “I talked to my mom this morning and she’s thinking about flying out here for Easter.”

Him:  “Oh, that’s nice.  Hey, have you talked to your mom in a while?”

If it didn’t pertain to the house, he wasn’t listening.

      

             During The Home Improvement Years when my husband’s brain waved bye bye, he was completely obsessed.  He could do nothing else, least of all sit down to rest.  He’d come home from work, put down his things and grab a hammer, he’d wake up at 4am and assemble the paint brushes.  He’d ask, “Is 6am too early to start the lawn mower, I really need to get a leg up on this yard.”  You know those guys who are at Home Depot at 7am right when it opens?  That’s Doug.  He is definitely an early bird gets the worm kind of guy, whereas I am a “the early bird should go back to bed and get something to eat later, when she gets around to it” kind of gal

 

               Well, because Doug is such a productive citizen he rarely sits down on the couch to just veg out.  And if he does he’s most likely sick or recovering from something.  Once and awhile I can persuade him to join me on the couch for an afternoon movie but only after he itemizes every single productive thing he’s done that day in order to justify this gluttonous behavior of SITTING.

    

             Me?  No problem with the old relaxation bit, no siree.  Hey I work hard, I deserve it.  And even if I haven’t worked hard that day, shoot, I’m sure I’ll do something soon to deserve it, might as well enjoy it now, yeah, I should really sit down.  I think all these productivity standards he’s got for himself must have something to do with his Catholic upbringing.  That’s the problem with other religions, not enough guilt.

              Doug refuses to be sick.  And when he is sick, he won’t allow himself to rest without reassuring himself that it’s alright to do so.   I’ve never seen anything like it.  What’s wrong with letting your body recover when you’re ill?  It’s like a bolt of lightning will strike him down if he should happen to take five minutes off.  I always end up yelling at him, “You’re sick!  What’s wrong with resting?  I don’t get it.  No one is going to punish you for not installing the new knobs on the bathroom cabinet in the next two hours, LAY DOWN AND FRIGGEN REST, YOU FREAK.” 

             Maybe this is Type A personality, which I’m now just learning about.  I myself am Type B, or at least I think I am, always been too lazy to look it up.

            A few years back he and I got this horrible, horrible strain of the flu that lasted about three weeks.  You know how with normal sicknesses every day after the worst of it you feel a bit better? Well, with this one, you just felt worse and worse, there was no “hump” to get over, it was just a constant state of hell.   I was the lucky one who got the ailment first so I had to spend my days horizontal on the couch staring out of cold, dead eyes.  Doug, however, was still unaffected so he kept on with his daily routine, but when he’d walk by the couch to check on his near dead wife he’d occasionally ask how I was.  But it wasn’t really so much of an “how are you, my darling, I couldn’t bear it if you were sick more day more, how can I make this easier on you” it was more of a “I’m really disappointed that you let yourself succumb to this.  What’s your projected “ETW”, which would be my “Estimated Time of Wellness.”  (I can’t remember how he phrased it exactly, but it was something equally annoying.)  When am I going to be better?  I don’t know, let me check with my virus cells and get back to you.   I haven’t pooped in my pants in a few hours, I must be on the upswing.  What can I say, he’s a pragmatic kind of fellow, likes to have time frames, you understand…..

                Now, as I said, this flu was a bad one and there was seemingly no end in sight, so my husband, a wonderful man but not always the most compassionate when it comes to sickness, started to doubt the authenticity of my illness.  After a few days of watching me moan, zone, and sleep on the couch he started walking by me with eyebrows raised, “Kristin, it’s been four days, shouldn’t you be feeling better now?  Don’t you think you could come help me paint the basement or something instead of just laying there, useless?”  Paint the basement?  I’m sick for crying out loud.   I can barely manage to listen to what you’re saying much less pick up some paint rollers.  But, this is the beauty of Doug.  Never have you met a more productive human.  Rest is for the weak, you can sleep when you’re dead.    

                  Now you’re never supposed to wish illness upon someone that you love, but thank GOD he got the flu I had.  Once it hit him, it hit him hard, and he was forced to share the opposite end of my death bed ie the living room couch.  He too moaned and stared out of his own pair of zombie eyes.  I didn’t count how many times he apologized for ever questioning the intensity of my sickness, but I can tell you it was a lot.    

                 He actually layed down to recover, for the maybe the first time in his life.  And miracles of miracles, he was not struck down by the Home Improvement Gods, although I’m sure they were angered by his laziness and gluttony.  He did try to get up on occasion to hammer something but once he found he couldn’t muster the strength hold the nails he’d lumber back to the couch and ruefully admit he was beaten, but it didn’t stop him from trying, which he did about ten times a day.   Never give up, never surrender.  That’s my man.  He could still summon the energy to write his beloved To-Do lists (it's the promise of productivity they represent I guess, he's writing them constantly), but that's about it.

           So now that we’re living in a rental and don’t have nearly the amount of home improvements, aside from “change light bulb” or “Fabreze couch”, that we used to there’s not nearly as much Home Depot talk around the house, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to put on the old To-Do list.  No sir, now it’s onto his next obsession:  Genealogy!  He can talk of nothing else, every day I get to listen to whom he's found next on Ancestry.com and did you know that Papa Dom was actually Domenico and he lived at 22 Lime street, but that was just when he was a pipe fitter, before that he .......and on and on.  Now of course, I really do think this is interesting stuff but not when it's all I get to hear about four hundred times a day.  I've started addressing myself as "Kristin, of the Rochester, New York Aguglias, is requesting your presence in the kitchen."  It's the only way I can get his attention.  

         Now I just have to figure out to finagle a vacation out of this.  "A trip!  To the Old Country!  After all, how can we be sure that Ancestry.com is telling us the truth....we really should see it for ourselves.   Lot's to plan if we're going to Italy, I'll start the To Do list for you....."  Nothing, after all, turns him on more than a To Do list.....