Things the Wife Forbids Me to Do

1. Get the Newspaper in the Morning: The wife doesn’t like it when I leave the front door open while I trudge down the driveway to pick up the morning paper. She says leaving the door open lets the flies in; or worse, it’ll let rats and mice come into the house.

Logic doesn’t faze her. I keep telling her rats and mice come out at night, but it makes no difference.

The reason I leave the front door ajar is because I’ve accidentally locked myself out in the past. I’d have to walk around the back, pound on the bedroom window and have her get out of bed and open the door. Again, this logic fails to impress her.

2. Clean Out the Refrigerator: We have enough little bowls with tiny bits of weeks-old leftovers stacked on top of mayonnaise and miso jars. There are bottles of dressing and sauce in the back of the top shelf that we haven’t seen in years. I’ve lost jars of jams in there. Don’t even get me started on my jar of peperonata.

You should see some of the expiration dates on these things. The wife doesn’t want me to clean it out because the stuff is still good and someone will eat it. My question is always: “Who and when?”

3. Straighten the House: My idea of straightening the house is to sweep all the stuff off of the flat surfaces above floor level into a box and throw the box into the trash bin. My philosophy is that if you haven’t used something for six months, it’ll just sit there for years because … well, because the wife doesn’t throw things away.

Sure, things get put in boxes when we expect company, then get shoved into the bedrooms until the guests leave. Out they come again. The wife has a bad case of pack rat syndrome. Everything has a use, everything is valuable – even her Korean drama video tapes (of which she has hundreds), and which she never watches and will never watch again.

The wife … she drives me nuts sometimes.