She’s Back!!

She’s Back!!

Not the real Mrs. C...stunt Mrs. C

Mrs. C came back from a week of working at her dance studio’s Ball Room Dance competition.  She is back, but life is not yet normal.

Apparently when you work seven days in a row, and many days are from 6am to 2am, you come home tired.  When you come home tired you also are a bit cranky…even crankier than your cranky husband.

Exacerbating the problem was my cleaning up while Mrs. C was away. 

You see, my wife tends to not throw things away.  Specifically, she saves paper napkins she scarfs up at diners and restaurants.  We have drawers stuffed with paper napkins; her car has compartments with paper napkins spilling out. 

“You never know when you’ll need a paper napkin!”

She also saves all the plastic bags you get at every store in Jersey.  I don’t know about other places, but in Jersey if you buy a pack of gum, they toss it in a plastic bag and hand it to you before you can tell them you don’t need a bag to carry a pack of gum.  I sometimes open up a drawer or closet, and paper bags come at me like Jack in that all-around-the-Mulberry-bush song box.

Mrs. C also saves receipts.  This is not a bad idea, it is handy to have the receipt if you need to return a purchase, but after two months, I’m pretty sure we are not going to return anything we bought at Stop-and-Shop.

I went on a rampage while on my own and tossed any receipt that was over six weeks old, and plastic bags and paper napkins that were in obvious excess.  I know better than to toss anything else.  You never know what my wife might have a reason for saving what seems like crap.

Most of the time I think she just does not want to toss something without thinking about it.   She saves it somewhere that she won’t see it for weeks.  Then when she does stumble over it she thinks,

“I must have saved this for a reason, I’ll figure it out later,”

Anyway, I don’t toss stuff willy-nilly.

When my cranky sleep-deprived wife came home her first words when she saw the kitchen was in less disarray than when she left were,

“WHAT DID YOU DO?”

“I just tidied up a bit and tossed excess paper napkins, plastic bags and old receipts.”

Now for the last few days, every time she can’t find something, I get blamed.

“Did you throw away my good pencil?”

“I told you what I threw away, I did not touch anything else.”

“Where is my bobby-pin?  I had one right on the table under the catalog for outdoor wear that I never buy, but you never know?”

“I told you what I threw away, I did not touch anything else.”

“Where is my lucky lottery scratch-off coin?  The next time I have to go away, you are going to my sister or your son’s house, I can’t leave you alone!”

“I told you…”

You get the picture.

It is getting better.  Another day or two of normal sleep and I may get the real Mrs. C back.

In the meantime, I am laying low and throwing nothing away.

She may be right, maybe I am a jerk.