The Mister and I are nearing our twenty-fourth year of wedded bliss. (He likes to announce this to people and then add, “The first ten years were great!” How droll. How very droll.) And while the word “bliss” might be a tad too, shall we say, rosy?, our connubial cohabitation has managed to file down many of our collective rough edges.
Many. But not all. There is still one edge I could sharpen my nails on.
Whenever I decide to take a shower, you can be sure, if the Mister is anywhere in the vicinity, he WILL turn on the water in the kitchen sink, basement sink, or outside hose. Some showers make a particular noise when another faucet has been turned on, alerting the showerer to the situation and allowing a few seconds to move out of the direct line of fire. Our shower does not have this feature unfortunately, and the resulting drop in water temperature causes me to emit a note so high, so piercing, our windows are in danger of shattering.
I ALWAYS inform the Mister before I perform my abultions, so he can’t use that as an excuse. But it doesn’t seem to matter. I can count the number of showers I’ve completed safely on the fingers of one hand. I started leaving a scrunchie around the kitchen faucet to indicate the shower is in use, and that worked for a while. Then he got so used to seeing it, he stopped seeing it and…
Yesterday he did this to me TWICE and when he popped his head in to apologize, as he always does God bless him, I told him he owed me fifty cents.
“How’s that?”
“Every time you freeze me out from now on, you owe me a quarter. It’s like when someone’s trying to stop using bad language, every time they slip, they have to put a quarter in the Swearing Jar. Same idea, only I’m going to call my version the Can Can. Brilliant idea, don’t you think?”
To my astonishment, he went straight away and got two quarters! Plink! Plink!
He looked at my face and asked, “What’s the smile for?”
I replied, “I’m going to be so rich!”
