My Nutty Husband

I have a wonderful husband. He is nearly perfect. But every once in a while, he does something ridiculous. Since the advent of blogging, I will chide him (after an episode of nuttiness) that this time, I really am putting this one out on the internets where everyone can see how nutty he is and know what I have to put up with. So as of today I have a blog and a place to showcase his nuttiness.

How about this:

Last fall I had to get something out of my glove box, which I rarely open. It was locked. How strange I thought, that I, the principal driver of this vehicle, would have unknowingly locked the glove box. Which I have always called the glove compartment but that requires way too much typing.

So, I unlocked the glove box to find a big fat wad of one dollar bills contained by a rubber band. How strange again! I, the principal driver of this vehicle, certainly did not put this big wad of bills in this locked glove comp ... box. I estimated that there were about 50 one dollar bills in this wad. Let's see, that would be about 50 dollars. To me that is a lot of money. My first thought was "who else has been using this car?" My youngest child used it to drive his lady to the homecoming dance not long before this. Good grief, he's selling drugs! From my car!

In America in the year 2008, when we find a wad of bills involving a teenager, we always suspect drugs first thing. We have been conditioned to do so by our decades-long, billion dollar preoccupation with the war on drugs.

I digress.

When I next saw my nearly perfect nutty husband, I told him about the bills. He was clueless as to their provenance and did the same thing I did: which son had used the car recently? We remembered that the middle son used it to move out of our home and into his own. What a happy day that was! I digress again. I was somewhat relieved at the prospect that the 25 year old was selling drugs and not the 18 year old. That would be better, wouldn't it? At least less terrible? I don't know, you decide.

So we ponder this wad of bills, which his nuttiness still had no recollection of placing there, then decided we would ask the 18 year old. Just go in his room and ask him, all cool-like, if he knew about this wad of bills. And check his pupils at the same time, and sniff the air in his room. All casual like.

He was lying on his bed in his cave. I sat next to him and asked how things were going. And did he know anything about big wad of bills in the glove box of my car? No, he didn't. Anything else? He is much cooler than we. He has lived in this family long enough not to be particularly concerned about a wad of unknown money turning up unexpectedly. He also does not care about money, about earning it, or amassing big wads of it. What he'd really like is for us to get the hell out of his room.

We went away and got distracted and didn't think about the wad of money for a while.

My husband told me a few days later (hours, weeks, they all run together) that he now remembers placing the wad of bills there as emergency money when we went to the beach in July. I asked if he had been planning to spend a lot of time at a video arcade on this vacation, something we may have actually done when our boys were much younger. No, he just thought we might need a lot of dollar bills and put them there and then forgot them.

ladies and gentlemen, meet my nutty husband!

My First Entry

Well, here we are, the cats and I, wondering if the baby had a good time at the prom last night and where he slept and if he is OK and all that mother type stuff. It is raining and cool and I am enjoying the quiet house while reading the newspapers and thinking about life. My old cat Pixie is yowling and patting the front edge of the sofa which means she needs attention.

My husband (or my nutty husband, as he will be represented in these posts) is away from home doing his job which involves professional football. It's the draft weekend.

I have two older sons who are on their own and we will be sending the baby off to college in the fall. Thus, the nest is nearly empty and I am enjoying all the "lasts" we are lucky to be experiencing. Last prom, last Dogwood Invitational track meet, last chance to figure out how to attach studs to the shirt buttons of a tuxedo. Thank you to that other dad who did know how so that my son didn't look underdressed at the prom. We parents must stick together.

It does indeed take a village to launch these children into the world.