Sabrina Dent: Freelance web designer, developer and internet marketer living in Cork, Ireland with one dog and a husband in no particular order.
If I Only Had a Brain
Marriage has utterly ruined me. I mean, using the yardstick of the “ruined woman” I was pretty thoroughly ruined prior to marriage, but nevertheless, getting married has had a number of unfortunate consequences I couldn’t have predicted.
I spent ten years living on my own, and while it was very enjoyable and rewarding in many ways, it was also exhausting. Living on your own means you have to do absolutely everything for yourself, from figuring out how to network the house to remembering when to take the rubbish out each week. Or every other week – I never actually got the hang of that.
In any case, while it’s great to be entirely your own pilot, it is also exhausting. So when I joined my life to another human’s for the rest of my natural days, I immediately and happily offloaded half the stuff in my head onto my husband.
After all, I’m fond of telling people, there are two of us. Surely each of us only needs to know how to do half the things in the world.
While this is a great plan in theory, in practice there are some pitfalls. Namely, your spouse going out of town and effectively leaving you with half a brain to once again run a complete life.
That works just about as well as it sounds. Two years ago, when John was in Edinburgh for a month and the housekeeper was on holiday in Poland, I had to Google up an owner’s manual for my hoover because I literally could not work out which bit was the on switch. Last week, standing in the middle of Tesco for the first time in months, I had to ring John to ask which aisle the tinned tomatos were in. Then I had to ring back 20 minutes later to ask what brand of butter we buy and where they hide that.
Tonight, after having worked a 16 hour day that started at 4 AM, I was absolutely desperate to snuggle up on the couch with the dog and a blanket and watch The Fellowsip of the Ring, which I’ve never seen and have had from Moviestar.ie for three weeks, but John (probably justifiably) refuses to watch.
Except I’m watching recycled television instead. Because like the punchline to a bad joke about women and technology, I cannot figure out how to make the DVD player work.
07 Nov 2008
| In: Domesticities |
It’s funny how roles form like that, isn’t it? I won’t do lightbulbs, garbage or windows and he won’t cook or do laundry. Everything else is fair game although we do fight over diaper duty, which thankfully seems to be over! :)
As for the movie, you’re not missing much! :P
07.11.2008, 9:59 pmSeeing as the future Mrs Irishstu has now taken over my job as my dad’s go-to-guy when anything goes wrong with his laptop or printer, and can kick my ass when it comes to getting our wifi working, feel free to ask me how to make the hoover work or how to get the dvd working. I could do with the ego-boost!
07.11.2008, 10:37 pmAw, honey! That sucks. I bet you have to have it on a certain channel, then it’ll play itself if you just stick the dvd in.
It’s not for everyone but I loved it deeply – it looked just like what was in my head.
07.11.2008, 11:27 pmWOAH! Wait, you mean to tell me men grocery shop?
I thought getting married would change my household duties. Nope. I just have double the laundry, dishes, and cleaning to do. Oh and I also take out the garbage, mow the lawn, weed the entire garden, wash the cars inside and out, cook all meals, feed the cat, buy anything we need, and even find the time to blog and watch my soaps. And I used to do all this and work a part time job.
This said, I wouldn’t change it for the world. I have a husband that works his ass off to provide for me so I really can’t complain. Besides, I love taking care of the mucky bugger.
07.11.2008, 11:39 pmBlog entries like these are my favourites. It’s fun to know what everyone else is doing – or not able to do until someone returns – and so good to know that we not meant to be perfect, in fact we’re easier to love that way.
09.11.2008, 4:48 amNext time you need to to find out where the items are hiding in the supermarket, ask one of the staff (unless you’re in Tesco where they gawp at you).
09.11.2008, 8:38 pmhahaha, I empathise 1,000,000%. I now never know when and what we’re doing, as he is the keeper of the social diary and buyer of all tickets. I used to be gadget-girl, now we have a bewildering array of XboxC3PO-type devices, all networked to each other, none of which I have a breeze about, meaning in his absence, I can’t watch any form of film. I’m also never allowed the remote, consequently I can’t work it out when solo, and before we lived together, I never owned an iron, or any TV bigger than 21 inches.
10.11.2008, 12:49 amwow..so it’s not just me!:)
10.11.2008, 3:14 pmafter being on equal nerd-footing with my other half I now have no clear idea how to play a dvd though our tv/av system.
most things I’ve kept up to date on and i’m still geekier-than-the-average-bear but it’s funny what you hand over control of gadget-wise in a relationship..
hubbie just sees a swirling mass of dials and displays on front of the new washing machine and walks a little quicker past it..some things never change..