Yes, He's Alive.
2005-06-10, 9:47 a.m.

Hubby�s alive and kicking today. Kicking the pickup with the AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEM FROM HELL that blew up last weekend, and is designed so that nobody other than God can get in and replace it. I get to be Chauffer Wifey for the day while the Sonooma is DOA in the driveway.

So, why did I let him live? I mean, besides loving him and all:

5. He�s handy. He can fix just about anything, and with enough obscenities and waving of tools and other manly gestures he�ll get even the cursed truck AC to work. And I don�t have to ask him to take out the garbage.
4. Most of the time, he�s nice. If you can get around the recommended daily average of Danger: Man Thinking, then he�s generally semi-sensible and thoughtful and sweet.
3. Comic relief. His face after his fateful comment was priceless. He began blathering on about how lovely I was, to which I told him to keep going, I wanted to see how deep it would get. His predicament delighted Daughter so much that she hasn�t been in a tweenager snit since.
2. He�s a good father. In our Gillig@n�s Island life, he�s the Professor. He�s patient when showing the kids stuff; is a fabulous science and math tutor; can repair video games in a single bound; knows what stuff makes fireworks explode in various colors, and what chemicals make the best practical jokes. If he tried, he could probably whip them up a radio with a couple of coconut shells and some bailing wire. He�s not the Sporty Jock Dad; he�s the Cool Science Dad.
Aaaand,
1. He�s right. We need to instill better habits in our children than we had at their age. Eating an entire box of HoHo�s in one sitting is not the healthiest thing to do, especially since the adults in our family tend to balloon out like Violet Beauregard and her Wonka gum. Our years of snarfing and snacking without fear of gaining an ounce caught up to us with a vengeance, and we are now just a couple of candy wrappers shy of Oompa Loompas. If our kids are going to embark on a daily sugar rush, they need to use that energy to go outside and run around. A novel idea, no?

As far as marital purgatory, there are things during and after spats that we never, ever do. We almost never go to bed angry, mainly because if I�m mad I can NOT sleep and kick him repeatedly until he has no choice but to talk things over. Men are far more malleable when they are in a sleep-deprived stupor. The master bedroom Arctic zone? I equate that to �I�m mad at you, therefore I shall stab myself repeatedly and rub myself with poison ivy and THEN you�ll be sorry!� Nah, not gonna go there. Tossing his stuff on the lawn? If things got that bad, I�d be chasing his hide with a butcher knife. Not in the foreseeable future. However, I am filing the �closet of ravenous voles� and ceiling fan whacka-whacka tips away for future reference. If you�re going to wreak vengeance, at least do it in style.

Last, there is the basic tenet of the marital universe: Behind nearly every successful husband is a wife rolling her eyes and initiating the damage control sequence. Backhoes and etiquette suffice for most instances, but there are times that I would gnaw my arm off for one of those memory erasers from Men In Black. �You will not remember what idiotic thing he just did.� *FLASH* (Please note that mothers-in-law have a genetic immunity to such devices.)

Maybe Hubby can take a can of Aqua Net, a flashlight, and some toothpicks, and invent it for me.

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