Today got off to a less-than-stellar start. The Hubs wakes up before me, and one of my least favorite things (besides waking up to blaring ACDC while he’s in the shower because he hit snooze instead of turning off the alarm) is when he wakes me up with a morning rant. You see; he has had time to get his day going. He thinks in the shower (…for like 30 minutes. The man doesn’t even have hair. What do you do in the shower for 30 minutes?) Then he’s off and running. Sometimes he’s ranting about work. Other times it’s politics. Sometimes it’s the kids and the mess and the chaos. And so he walks into the bedroom, flicks on the light (kindly shouting “Lights!” first, so I don’t accidentally burn my retinas), and begins to rant…
We’ve been having this conversation for years. I have begged him to please just say “Good morning” and maybe give me a little peck on the cheek, so my day starts with some small pleasantry instead of an angry rant. This may have backfired, because now, when he kisses me and says “Good morning,” I know he’s given a lot of thought to this particular issue; enough to realize he needs to butter me up because shit is about to get real.
This morning, he was justified in his rant. The whole thing involves a poorly planned pet experiment and guinea pig pee on the rug. The man has a definite point. I just need a cup of coffee before I’m capable of formulating a coherent response. Because he wants to feed the guinea pigs to the coyotes in our backyard. I try to support him in all parenting decisions, but this one ain’t gonna fly. Deep down, I know he won’t follow through with this threat, so I’m left with a choice. Do I let him make his empty threats and scare the bejesus out of our kids? Or do I try to talk him down before they wake up? Again, I need coffee for this shit.
When you’ve been married for a little bit, you start to predict your spouse’s behavior. Maybe this is good. Maybe it isn’t. But it’s true. You make an educated guess based on your past experience, and once you’ve been together long enough, your odds of predicting correctly increase exponentially. This morning, I calculated the odds.
The odds of him actually feeding the guinea pigs to coyotes: approximately 0.3%
The odds of him disposing of the guinea pigs in some other inhumane fashion: 0.8%
The odds of him insisting on finding a new home for guinea pigs: 40%
The odds of him following up and actually locating said home: 7%
The odds of him continuing to yell and bitch about the guinea pigs until they die of natural causes: somewhere between 80 and 99%.
So I whisper-yelled at our oldest and told him that he needed to take care of the problem. I may have made him cry a little. I am unashamed of this. I might even be a little proud. Don’t tell anyone. I get him to vacuum and cry at the same time, and it seems like the morning might be looking up. Hubs leaves for work and all the pets (and kids) are still breathing.
On my way to work, he calls me. “I’m sorry about this morning,” he says. I play dumb, “What are you sorry about?” He explains that he’s sorry for waking me up like that (again), and I (of course) reiterate that I HATE waking up like that and then (of course) forgive him. And then we talk about “THE PLAN.” This is where we become parenting rock stars. “So what’s THE PLAN?”
We’re going to make him vacuum every day. Hubs is going to help him redesign the guinea pig play space. It’ll be father-son bonding over Gorilla Glue and 2 x 4s. We’re going to work together to help our son feel successful and valued and learn some responsibility. We’re probably going to make some empty threats about selling the guinea pigs. But I promise, there will be no coyotes involved.