The Guy

PART I – WE HAVE A GUY

Due to a set of very bizarre circumstances that are so odd, you probably wouldn't believe are true anyway, and are essentially irrelevant to my rant, we have a guy. What I mean is, there is another man living with my husband and me, in our very little apartment. He has been with us now for two months now, or 86,400 irritating seconds. HE is why I am angry.

PART II – WHY I AM ANGRY WITH THE GUY

To be honest, he is not the only person I am angry with. I also feel immensely disgusted with myself for allowing this situation to occur in the first place, and, at this moment, I have no control over him being here. He is, however, the principal direction at which my anger is directed. I could go on for pages listing all the irritating things he does to make me insane, but, for your time and my blood pressure, I will limit it to a list of my top six. Actually, before I begin, I need to fill you in with a short set of pertinent biographical details:

A. We have only been married for five months. Right now, I can hear him in the living room clipping his toenails.

B. We live in a foreign country. Well, foreign to me, not my husband.

C. My husband works...EVERLOVING! Every, "Clip!" of those damn clippers is like fingernails screeching down a chalkboard. My husband works 100 hours a week.

D. I am not employed outside the home. It's not that I planned or even wanted to be Betty Crocker, I just don't speak the language of this country (yet) and therefore am not even qualified to flip burgers.

And now, for the list (ordered from least anger invoking to most):

1. He sleeps until noon. Albeit a plus in that it's time I don't have to spend with him, it gets under my skin to be cooking and cleaning all morning only to have him come poking sleepy eyed out of his room just in time to sit down for lunch.

2. The guy does not do housework. He does sometimes sit and watch me mop and iron though.

3. The guy does not leave the apartment. He is also a foreigner and has no job. He could, however, go out and take a walk, explore the city or feed pigeons in a park. But he doesn't. I even gave him a map and suggested sights to go see. He prefers to watch cartoons. Every day. All day.

4. He smells. Thank the Lord we have two bedrooms and two bathrooms. There is a rancid reeking stench that grabs you every time you pass his bedroom or bathroom. It is the kind of smell that is so strong and bad, that it actually leaves a taste in your mouth. Like when you open a garbage can in July that has had chicken and dirty diapers in it...for two weeks. I will NOT clean these rooms.

5. Number five is more of a occurrence than a trait: The other day, I returned from a particularly discouraging and expensive twenty minute taxi ride home from a grocery store that takes ten minutes to walk to, (the cab drivers here love to take advantage of the foreign lady), to find the guy, of course, reclined on the couch. He looked up, ever so leisurely, from a book to watch me struggling through the door with my thirty bags of groceries. As he was stretching and yawning, (I kid you not) he asked, "Sooo, what are we having for lunch today?"

6. He watches cartoons all day. Although seemingly related to number three, this one ranks much higher on the list. Instead of setting a soothing ambiance in my newly nested apartment with some background music of Enya or Mehdi, I spend the day hearing conversations like the following, blaring from the television.

“Hey, what IS that thing?!”

“Oh my gosh! It's headed straight for Earth.”

“Quick! We need to get back to the mother pod to activate the laser shield before it's too late!”

You get the idea.

*If you are at this moment asking yourself, “Why doesn't she confront him about some of this?”, the answer is, I have. In fact, I very calmly asked him if he would mind doing the dishes one day. He agreed. I was relieved. Small victory, I thought. One hour later, I entered the kitchen to find it MORE messy than when I left! A few dishes were, I don't know, waved in the air or something, and put on the dish rack. ALL of which needed to be rewashed. The floor was covered in dirty water and footprints. And for a reason only God and the guy know, the refrigerator was wide open! I really wonder if he did it on purpose to train me not to expect work from him.

PART III – THE CHERRY ON TOP

My husband came home the other night and asked if it's okay if we get a Playstation 2. To all the men who may be reading this, and right now are possibly puzzled as to why this could make a wife angry, I honestly believe that normally, it wouldn't. Really. I am generally not that type. However, I spend fifteen hours a day alone with the guy, and for forty-five minutes at the end of the day I DESPERATELY look forward to having a meal and talking to my husband. Sometimes it's only thirty minutes. Healthy or not, right now, this is the one thing that is keeping my head from exploding. If evenings turned into him and the guy, on the couch together, pounding game controllers and yelling, "Die, die, die, DIE! Ooooh, did you see how his head popped off?" I may literally implode. Literally.

Thank you for reading my rant. I have to go now and sweep toenails off my living room floor.