Crazy in Love

"A strong marriage requires loving your spouse even in those moments when they're not being lovable" - Dave Willis

I don't want to make any sweeping generalisations, but the husbands of Ireland may have gone collectively bonkers over the past couple of weeks.
Not being the steadiest of souls myself, I usually try not to judge the madness of others.  I'm okay with bonkers people, as long as they leave me alone.  I’m just saying, there’s a lot of it around.

I'm taking my evidence directly from the wives.  The witnesses, in other words.  I have no doubt that the husbands of Ireland are in the same boat as their spouses, that they think their wives are bonkers, but they're not telling me about it.  So I cannot comment on the wives behaviour.  Except my own, which I think has been impeccable.  His Nibs might have a different story, but if he does just take it as further proof of the ongoing husband madness.

It all started a few weeks ago.  I was to meet a friend for a lovely lunch.  My friend, however, announced sadly that she couldn't go, she had no time for food.  She had to do some urgent shoe shopping, for her son.  My friend is a good and attentive mother and prepared for emergencies such as the possibility of shoes becoming too tight overnight or trousers that fit yesterday suddenly flapping around above the ankle bone. 
What she wasn't prepared for was her husband melting their child's new shoe.
The boy’s mother had gone to work and left the child in the loving care of his father.  Once the mother was out of earshot the child admitted to quite a vigorous puddle jumping session the previous day, and announced that the inside of his trainers were soaked.  The husband decided that he would dry the shoes using his wife's hairdryer.
You know the way if you're using your hairdryer to dry your hair / jeans / child's shoe, the most effective way to do so is to shake the hairdryer from left to right in front of the wet item?
This man didn't know that.  He thought that the most effective way to dry his son's shoes would be to set the hairdryer to its highest setting, jam the nozzle into the trainer, and then wander off to do something else, getting completely distracted and leaving the shoe for far too long.
The smell of burning trainer finally filled the house and the husband rushed back to the scene.  It took him a while to peel the trainer off the hairdryer. The child was not pleased. But his father just left the trainer to cool down, then he sent the child on his way, wearing a freshly melted shoe, and phoned his wife.
My friend was not delighted to hear that her child was gone out for the day looking like a hobo.  Nor was she pleased with the mini lecture her husband gave her about how dangerous the hairdryer is, and how maybe they should get rid of it.

Another friend’s husband was horrified, recently, to discover that his very small daughter had accidentally wet her bed. His wife usually deals with these little accidents, but she was at work, and sadly the child's father panicked.  Instead of stripping the bed and scrubbing the mattress like a rational person, he ran hysterically to the detergent cupboard, grabbed the first thing he saw, and sprayed it all over the damp mattress.  It was oven cleaner.  A substance so noxious that you're not supposed to stay in the house while it’s in use.

I can't hazard a guess at what the next husband I was told about was thinking of.  Why on earth would a man with a jot of common sense suddenly, and without invitation, remark that his wife was putting on weight?  They weren't fighting.  His wife wasn't annoying him, and he didn't appear to be purposely annoying her, if you can believe it.  He just mentioned her alleged weight gain aloud, in a friendly and conversational tone.  What can he have been thinking? We'll probably never know.  For although this wife is nicer than me and the husband lived to tell the tale, I doubt we’re allowed ever talk about it again.

His Nibs, never one to be left out, did his part to prove my point this week too.

Last Sunday, he was away all day, at a hurling match.  Nothing new there.  He was gone before I woke up, despite my strict instructions not to leave me snoozing.  Left to my own devices it’s not beyond me to sleep for so long in the morning that I can’t go to sleep at bedtime that night, and I get all messed up for the whole week.

I’m currently doing a project involving my sewing machine.  I’m not great at this type of caper.  I start with great intentions, then mess up expensive fabrics and swear and curse and spend half my time ripping stitches out, after I’ve spent hours putting them in. 

On Sunday I was so busy sewing that His Nibs couldn’t even get me to answer his phone calls until quite late in the afternoon.  When he eventually got through, he told me that he was going to spend the night in his brother’s house.  I welcomed the information, His Nibs is not usually so sociable.

Twenty minutes later he rang again to tell me he was staying in his brother’s house, he didn’t think I’d taken him seriously during the first call.  This is a complete mystery to me.

I got a third call about half an hour after that, saying that he’d changed his mind, and was on his way home.   

When he arrived home, it was already dark, and I was bent over the sewing machine in the kitchen, with my back to the door.  His Nibs came in for a chat, made coffee, and went to the living room to watch the match all over again, on television.

I’ve previously written about our badly behaved dog, Poppy.  Her behaviour is recently improved, but she still likes to try to bash the fence down when she gets the chance, in the hope of an escape. 

On Sunday night she was in the garden, and I heard the unmistakable sound of a terrier bouncing off a fence panel.  I jumped from my chair and ran to the back door to start ineffectively roaring at her to get into the house and behave herself.

You can only imagine my alarm and horror when I saw the beam of a small torch dancing around behind our garden shed.  I couldn’t believe it.  Who in their right mind would break into our back garden?

My thoughts immediately went to stories I’ve heard of dogs being stolen from gardens.  I stood on the back doorstep, my heart in my throat, and started calling to Poppy urgently. I was afraid the poor little clown would be hurt or stolen by the mystery person behind the shed.  As far as I know Poppy has no financial value, but maybe we had a very stupid thief on our hands?

The torchlight had gone out, and there was silence.

Eventually I regained my presence of mind and roared at His Nibs to drag himself from the television and join me in the garden, possibly to engage in hand to hand combat.  I hoped that when I said his name the burglar might assume that the man I was calling was much bigger than His Nibs actually is, and so might run away.

“There’s no need to shout, I’m right in front of you” His Nibs’ voice rang out from the darkness.

It was him.  He was the fecking prowler.  He’d decided to try to train Poppy to stop staging breakouts.  He had crept, ninja like, out of the house, when I was at the sewing machine.  He did not stop to tell me what he was doing, in case doing so ruined the element of surprise he was going for.

His plan was to sneak to the bottom of the garden and lie in wait.  Then when Poppy started barking and jumping at the fence he would suddenly switch on the light and start roaring at her.  He thought that this might frighten the dog into obedience.  I assume that the dog, being a dog, both heard him and smelled him before she even started barking and was not surprised at all. 

He frightened the life out of me.  I know it might seem a bit dramatic to assume we had a prowler, we’re hardly living in a crime hotspot here.  But if you saw a torchlight sweeping around your garden, would you be more likely to assume that there’s a burglar in the garden, or that a man is hiding behind his own shed, in the dark, trying to sneak up on a hyperactive dog?