For Better, For Worse

 

It’s been a very bad week for celebrity marriages.  Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones have split up, after fifteen years together.  Clint Eastwood and his wife are finished too, after seventeen years, Brian Ferry’s marriage is over after just two years, and that lovely ridey man from Miranda has split up from the woman who used to be in EastEnders, after seven years of marriage.

And yet His Nibs and I march on, despite very bad behaviour on both sides in the recent past.

Not the kind of bad behaviour that results in strangers jumping out bedroom windows in their underwear, obviously, or that means the mortgage money is gone up someone’s nose in the form of white powder, but still, not good behaviour.

There was no row or anything, not until Thursday night.  While I was smiling at His Nibs and trying to be overly nice because I was afraid he’d find out how many unpaid for beauty products were in the upstairs bathroom, little did I know that he was smiling at me and hoping I’d never find out about the mini flood.

When I say unpaid for beauty products, I haven’t started shoplifting, although maybe I should, the way I’m carrying on, but things bought on credit cards and overdrafts that have not been paid off to the bank yet, and are therefore technically unpaid for.

I am absolutely aware that overdrafts are created for emergencies like food and petrol to get to work, when you’re waiting for payday.  They are not for spending all next month’s salary before you even get it, and therefore forcing yourself back into  the position of having to live on someone else’s money again next month.

I know that in my head, but my heart doesn’t seem to understand, and seem to labour under the misapprehension that since I turn up for work when I’m supposed to I’m entitled to every treat I see during the month.  You know the type of thing

“I don’t have the money for it.  I really shouldn’t buy it.  But feck it, I work hard, I deserve a treat.”

I always use this line, even when I’ve had a treat the day before.  Or even, on some unhappy days, in the same lunchtime.

Anyway, let’s not focus on my misdeeds.  Back to the mini flood.

Very early last Wednesday morning, His Nibs put our dogs’ water bowl on the kitchen counter, beside the sink.  Despite careful questioning, he cannot explain why he didn’t put the bowl in the sink.

His Nibs hates being late in the mornings.  I hate being early, and am not fond of being on time. 
His Nibs couldn’t find his boots, and this was tormenting him.  I had not made my appearance yet, and his boots were missing, and the clock had crept past leaving the house time without any progress being made.

So he put the bowl on the counter, turned on the tap, and obviously temporarily out of his mind, went to find his boots.

Our dogs are a terrier and a sheepdog.  They are not Irish Wolfhounds. Or elephants. They are normal sized, and have a water bowl to match.  Normal sized, not a five gallon drum.  By the time His Nibs had located his boots, shouted up the stairs at me to get a move on, and wandered back to the kitchen, the bowl had filled, and the water was flowing merrily over the counter top and onto the floor.

I hate this type of messing, and His Nibs knew perfectly well that I’d take the opportunity to mop it all up and sigh and moan and be a martyr and tell him to go on without me, I’d think of something.  Which of course he couldn't do.  If he caused a flood and then left me to clean it up and went to work without me, he'd never hear the end of it. 

No, he knew I wouldn't leave the water there, and he'd have to join in the clean up , and between the jigs and the reels we'd have been lucky to be in work by lunchtime.

Rather than suffer this delay, he reasoned that the kitchen has a tiled floor, the water wouldn’t do it any harm, and he closed the kitchen door and went to shout at me from the bottom of the stairs again.

Of course while all this was going on I was upstairs moaning and whining about the little gremlins that get into my wardrobe at night and sew up all my clothes so that they’re smaller than the last time I wore them.  This involves a lot of sighing, and flinging tops into the corner of the room, and on very bad mornings, some tears.

Eventually I came down the stairs, and headed for the kitchen, to get my handbag.

“Will you please get in the fecking car?” His Nibs yelped.  “I have your bag, here, now come on, we’re late”.

This conversation is very much routine in our house on a work day morning, and so I had no reason to be suspicious.  I got in the car.

That night I commented on how wet the floor was.  I was assured that there had been a small incident with a water bowl, I assumed this meant it had been knocked over, or kicked across the floor as usual, and His Nibs immediately fetched the mop.

What he chose not to tell me, was that the three drawers in our kitchen had also been flooded that morning. I don’t have much to do with the drawers in our kitchen, to be honest.  I didn’t find out that there was water sitting in all three of them until very late on Thursday night.

I did my best to do a preliminary clean up, and spent half my Saturday emptying out the drawers, getting rid of all the soggy takeaway menus and instruction booklets that had accumulated in there over the years, washing every bit of cutlery, the linen placemats that we’re highly unlikely ever to use, and draining the manky accumulated water from the pots in the bottom drawer.

And still we’re nice to each other.  A man who doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with just closing a drawer when it becomes flooded, is capable of being perfectly nice to a woman who is in overdraft just a couple of days after her monthly pay day because she is determined to buy one of every piece of makeup in Ireland.  And she is capable of being perfectly nice to him.

In fact, they're capable of being ridiculously fond of each other.

Maybe this is why my Granny always told me to only marry a man I was good friends with. You need friendship to get through these things, chemistry just doesn't cut it when the drawers are smelly or when one party insists that the ESB and phone bills aren't as important as maintaining youthful looks.

It really makes me wonder what the feck is causing all the celebrities to break up.