Friday I ranted on STFU Fridays about hipsters, which is very close to home for me because I’m married to someone that wishes with every breath in his body that he were a hipster. From his belief that he has a superior taste in music, to the douchey Fedora and neon green-rimmed sunglasses he hasn’t worn since he came back from Coachella a few years ago, my husband is infatuated with the idea that he is ironically cool.
I’m not sure if there is a correlation, but in our home we have a lot of ironies too. It likely has nothing to do with the fact that my husband loves expensive vintage-looking things and dumpster diving to save the world of being wasteful (while using twenty napkins at every meal); still the same they are there too.
Hypochondriacs that ignore being sick
Whenever someone in this house starts to feel sick, there is a barrage of questions that come along with it. Whenever I have a stomachache, I overanalyze it until I’ve diagnosed myself with some horrible, life-threatening condition. Within 30 seconds of saying something is awry (cramps, headache, stuffy nose, choking), my husband asks the very same question “are you going to take something for that?”
But then when we are actually sick, we ignore it. We’ve all had head colds since sometime last week. It hasn’t been bad at all – in fact, I wish every cold was like this. Runny nose, scratchy throat, and that’s about it. Yesterday, as my husband’s nose was literally dripping onto the couch, I suggested he call in sick and just rest all day to get rid of it so it doesn’t develop into something worse. “I’m not sick,” he responded.
You don’t say?
Well if you aren’t sick, then I’m clearly not sick either, despite the fact that my voice sounds like my throat got gang-banged by a gaggle of horny frogs. I guess doing my wine-salsa-spicy-soup blow out yesterday, followed by a gallon of OJ today, will all be for naught too since I’m “not sick.”
Californians that do nothing but work
When we got up this morning, Pookie said to me perhaps the most depressing thing I have ever heard come out of her sweet, little mouth. She asked if my husband’s bosses forced him to hate us and love working more than spending time with his family. I had to walk into the bathroom and cry over that one.
It’s true though: we never stop working. My husband is never off the clock. Every evening, every weekend, is interrupted with emails after text messages after thirty minute phone calls sitting outside with work. I started technology-free hour every night a few weeks ago and over three-quarters of them have been missed. He doesn’t even remember how many personal days he is supposed to get every year since he never takes them.
But it isn’t just my husband working like a crazy person all the time. Our house is pretty high-energy. We are always moving; I am always cleaning something or cooking something or picking up after people, because I have a terribly unhealthy fear of the cleaning situation getting out of control (as well as how depressed I will get if I sit down and look at what’s happened to my life). My husband can never sit still when he’s home either, which means that we are the Californians that are supposed to be all relaxed and laid back and chilled out, smoking weed and shit on our way to surfing and lying on the beach; and yet “relax” is not really in our vocabulary. At all. The closest thing I’ve come to relaxing was weeks ago when I put my feet up on the back of the seat at the movie theatre.
Way to let loose, Heather.
A cook that hates cooking
Have I mentioned before that I hate cooking? Fucking hate it. I don’t know what it is. The high cost of cooking? The patience required that I just don’t have? The sweating over a steaming stove? The look and feel of things that I realize gross me out while cooking them – like raw chicken or ground turkey, mashed in my hands? Kind of makes a girl lose her appetite to wash blood and guts off tonight’s dinner.
And yet I cook all the fucking time. I cook breakfast every morning. I make lunch sometimes (maybe 1/2 of the week). I cook dinner almost every night. I bake constantly, so we’ve always got cookies or cake coming out our ears and assholes.
I’ve recently gotten into making things and sending them out for people to try too. I was on that canning kick for awhile and have now moved onto this homemade, low-fat pumpkin bread that I just threw together the recipe for. After my cold is gone I’m baking 10 more loaves of it and sending them out to friends.
But I will hate it the entire time I’m doing it. And afterwards I will collapse on the couch and whine about how my feet hurt; shoveling pumpkin bread in my own mouth to deal with how depressing this kitchen slave life is. Then I’ll get up a little later to cook another meal, willingly.
So these are just a few of the ironies in our home. There are a lot others. So many that the statement “those people are so ironic” makes you almost think it should really say “those people are such hypocrites.” I suppose it depends on how you look at it. On STFU Fridays last week I ranted about hypocrites too, since hipsters are like the gods and goddesses of the hypocrites. Perhaps I’m the authority because that too is so close to home.
