Tidy Husband

Eligible for the seniors discount and the Happy Meal deal at the same time.

  1. The Hospital Experience

    Original artwork by the child: “House at Night”

    It still sucks too. Maybe not as bad as the dealership experience but close.

    There’s no good time at the hospital. Nobody has ever said “Let’s go to the hospital”.

    I’m sitting here in the emergency waiting room where BW is being seen yet again.

    As I write this I don’t know what will go down, but I do know I have just a few hours to kill here. (Maybe I should not use the word kill considering the topic)

    Anyway. I’m at the emergency room waiting.

    And it sucks. From a waiting perspective anyway.

    I get it. If I go in with a boo boo, the person sicker than me goes first. But it seems no matter what time of day you go there is always a wait.

    And, I have some thoughts about this:

    You will wait a long time. You will wait for triage. You will wait for “registration” ie: the money part. You will wait to get admitted into the ER.

    Once actually in the ER you will wait for a nurse. And then you will wait for test results.

    Then you will wait for the doctor to read the results.

    Then maybe, just maybe you will see a real live doctor. This doctor will have no idea of what you have at first glance, so more tests because the first tests didn’t show anything.

    And the circle will continue for a few hours more.

    Eventually you will be either admitted so they can investigate more, or you will be sent home with a note to come back if the symptoms persist.

    And if they do, you will have to go through the entire rigamarole all over again.

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  2. Beating the Clock

    It’s about time she figured out how this world works.

    For some children, they respond to discipline like maybe a “thinking corner” or whatever the correct parenting term these days is for go to your room. Others might be all about praise and positive reinforcement. Not here.

    Ours? It’s all about the clock.

    Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

    She’s always been that way. If you ask her to do something whether it’s get dressed for school or for the last time: get off the tablet!. Unless you add a time to it you get ignored or stalled or outright no.

    Add a timer? You’re golden.

    This morning I wanted her to go get dressed. She was farting around and not doing what she was asked to do, but then I offered to time her with my stopwatch app.

    She got dressed in 1 minute and 18 seconds.

    That’s actually pretty impressive. I’m still looking for socks the first minute so the fact that she could run upstairs, find some clothes she wanted to wear, put them on and then run downstairs for the reveal in less time than it takes to reheat my coffee is pretty impressive.

    The clock does not to be a stopwatch either, although currently that’s what’s popular. Take the tablet for example. If I just ask her to get off the tablet and go touch grass or something she will tell me no. If I warn her, and set a timer and the timer goes off then she co-operates just fine and listens to the ghost in the machine.

    I just wish this did not take me six years to figure it out because she’s old enough now that she’s figured out her dad’s tricks so I won’t be able to use this for much longer.

    And, as I keep telling her: if you’re well behaved, good things happen because as promised: the 36 little hoppy toys arrived today that I wrote about Monday:

    We do not need 36 little plastic toys. We do not need more than the one the dog ate to be honest, but here we are with 36 of the things:

    It’s so hard deciding what ones to let go of. I’m so proud of her.

    It took me about 20 minutes to convince her and there was more than a bit of bargaining involved but I finally convinced her to put 20 of them in a little baggie so she can give them out to each of her friends.

    She actually added one more to give away because you can’t forget the teacher. She’s part of the class too! So make that 21 little toys that are leaving the house.

    I guess you could call this a record breaking kind of day: We beat a record for both getting dressed and having the most little plastic toys in the neighborhood.

    I’m such a proud parent tonight. I’m also happier we’re down to 16 of these things. When you factor in the loss/shrink stats and the dog factor we’ll be back down to having just a few of these toys in the house in no time.

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  3. April Fools Has Come and Gone.

    I made a mistake. Let this be a lesson to you all.

    Photo by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash

    It was early. That’s my excuse and I was sticking to it. At 6:20am, she slapped my face and told me to “get up”. I tried to convince her to crawl into bed with me as we do not need to be awake 2 hours before the bus gets here.

    I managed to get her to crawl back in bed for fifteen minutes or so and then I heard the pitter patter of little feet 1

    So, she crawls in bed for a bit and then we finally get up and search for coffee 2 and something for breakfast 3 and as I am feeding the dog I casually mention that it’s April 1st.

    “It’s April Fools Day” I said.

    I really didn’t mean to say it. You remember that one time when you said the F word in front of your parents? That’s what this felt like. As soon as I said it I wished I could take it back.

    Her Eyes LIT UP LIKE SAUCERS as if I told her that it was Christmas Day and before I could say another word; she was off to get the prank book.

    Yes, THE PRANK BOOK.

    Maybe you’ve heard of it?

    She gets the book and wants to do something about making fake glue and then leaving it on a table. We have 30 minutes at this point to get on a bus so we’re not searching the cupboards for flour or whatever you need to make this transaction. We don’t have time and I don’t have the inclination.

    She then wondered what else she could do? Well, last weekend we went to our favorite store that sells random junk that are returns from Target and Amazon and one of the things she came home with were stickers that read: don’t eat my food.

    I suggested that she stick one on mommy’s jar of jam and then she would see it in the fridge at some point.

    That seemed okay by her and we got on the school bus on time. Crisis Averted.

    That should have been the end of April Fool’s 2025

    When she got home, she was still all over it so when I she came home I gave her an after-school snack and we talked, etc. She got bored and I was doing chores so she snuck up to her room. She then came out and asked me to take the cap off a glue stick. Crafts are big here, so I didn’t really think much about this other than she wanted to glue things.

    BW is still sick in bed, so she brought a book to her mother to read. BW went to open the book to read it to her and all the pages were glued together.

    That child. She really can’t be trusted. She’s only six too. This is going to get worse before it gets better, I am afraid.

    I should have known better than spill the beans about April Fools, because before I did this morning, she thought the holiday was August Fools.

    Today’s Lesson: Use the Disneyland Rule: Unless you know for sure it’s going to happen,(or you want it to) - keep your mouth shut. I should know better.

    And don’t ever swear in front of your parents. It’s not a good look.

    1. I’m going to miss the pitter patter eventually as she gets older but at 6:30 am this was not the case. ↩

    2. for me. ↩

    3. for her. ↩

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  4. I Visited a Hospital Today

    Also, if anybody needs a little springy toy: HMU. I have a few extra.

    Photo by Martha Dominguez de Gouveia on Unsplash

    3am:

    BW wakes me up to say her gastronomical pain is not just from Friday’s choice of dinner at Five Guys.

    “I’m taking your car”, she tells me.

    I mumble something about being okay with that and roll over.

    7:00 am

    I’m awake and the child comes in.

    ”Where’s Mommy? she asks. At the hospital, I tell her. “She had a tummy ache”.

    I reach for some clothes and get to finding my glasses when the child starts screaming at full volume. Turns out, the dog ate the springy hoppy thing that she was given by the school after her concert.

    There were full on tears. The dog has been known to eat some things before so this is not new:

    And usually she just shrugs it off as being part of life. She’s down more than a few stuffed animals due to this dog.

    But today with these little things it was different. She was inconsolable.

    Luckily, there’s a fix: It’s called Amazon:

    36 of these little buggers are coming to the house Wed. The dog is going to be thrilled.

    11:00 am.

    I took an uber to the Hospital only to find that she’s getting sent home, so we wait for a bit to get discharged and I drive her home.

    I get her home and something to eat that her stomach can handle.

    I then go pick up prescriptions at the Rite Aid only to find that they’re on lunch at 2pm. An odd time for lunch, but I just sat there and waited.

    3:30 pm

    The child comes home. By the time I got BW home from the hospital and all her meds and food sorted I had 10 minutes to make myself a coffee before the second shift.

    She was great and we played and cuddled on the chair and then a half an hour later her friend Ethel came over and trashed the family room I just cleaned:

    Dinner was grilled cheese sandwiches as that was the best I could do tonight.

    7:00 PM

    Kid is in bed and listening to her Tonies. She will be out soon.

    Wife is resting relatively comfortably, all things considered.

    I go downstairs to push the button on the dishwasher only to find it has no power. None. Dead as a doorknob. I half-heartedly try a few troubleshooting things and then realize my day has been long enough. The dishwasher can wait.

    There’s probably an entire post coming on the dishwasher but for now know that it stopped working on us after 18 months. Thanks a lot Samsung.

    9:00 PM

    I’m toast - just like the dishwasher, I have no more power.

    I hit “publish” with this post - such as it is - and go to bed.

    I hope tomorrow that both my wife and the dishwasher feel better.

    In that order, of course.

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  5. OMG You Guys. The Laundry!

    Back when mommy blogs were more of a thing I would read them and one thing they always complained about was the laundry. As a single tidy fellow at the time I could never understand why they would constantly complain about the laundry. How much laundry could they possibly have?

    Now I get it.

    Most guys when given the weekend off from family duties would go hang out at the stereo store or Harley dealership or some other activity more manly than sorting socks with different colors and different unicorns.

    But here I am. I have scrubbed, I have cleaned. I have vacuumed. I have thrown out broken crayons and old pillows and half-eaten stuffed animals (I’m looking at you, dog). I have not stopped. If it’s washable, it has seen the inside of our washing machine today.

    I am pretty sure I have cleaned some things that might have not ever been cleaned.

    Like, ever. I am a cleaning machine. I am the Tidy Husband.

    The problem with laundry is the time it takes. I’m not beating it against a rock either. I am sticking it in a machine and pressing start. But it still takes hours a load from wash to dry and when you have umpteen loads of laundry like I do then you have a backlog. I’m still a half dozen loads behind. I have been cleaning pretty much non stop all day and I still don’t have any clean jeans to wear.

    I really didn’t think it would take me more than about 2 hours to clean the house but the child’s bedroom and family room were a complete disaster. This should not come as a surprise as they are the 2 most used rooms by the child. She can trash her bedroom and the family room. She still needs to work on the cleaning up but I have another 12 years to work on this.

    The living room is the one place that actually stays kind of clean and that’s because if you leave a toy out, the dog will find it and eat it. (see above about half-eaten stuffed animals and crayons). Because of this the living room stays moderately clean so there’s that

    So, here’s to the dog.

    Now if only should could learn to fold laundry. That would be a help.

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