Smarty pants. Well, maybe I do win in some things – but there's one battle that's shaping up into my own personal Waterloo. I call it the Battle
of the New Kitchen Floor That Isn't. This particular skirmish started not too long after I discovered that, in order to enhance the sale of the house we live in, the previous owners waxed the no-wax kitchen floor. After a
while, the floor became dull and yucky looking and I decided that life is much too short to spend it stripping old wax and applying new. So I wanted another floor. Sounds simple, huh?
Well, you have to understand I'm
married to a man who goes to craft shows and walks around saying, "I can make one of those." And when I decided I wanted a new tile floor, he said, "I can do that."
We found tile at a nice price and bought it. We bought
grout. We bought tools. And we put them in the garage. A year went by. I stripped off the old wax and put on some new. Then I fussed.
"I just can't keep this floor clean," I said, trying to be subtle. You'd think that after
all these years of being married to this man I'd know that subtle doesn't get it – and it didn't.
Later, I got down on my hands and knees and tried to scrub the floor as he was microwaving popcorn, but – instead of feeling
guilty that I was having to spend my Friday night cleaning – he just asked me where the butter was and went back to the den to watch TV.
Another year went by. This time I didn't just fuss about the floor, I slipped
the guilt machine into high gear.
"I hate this floor worse than the Joker hates Batman. Worse than dogs hate fleas. Worse than Julia Child hates fast food. Worse than our children hate cleaning their rooms," I announced.
He was rummaging around in the refrigerator and paused for a moment – I thought I'd connected. Pulling his head out from the fridge, he looked at me with an expression that was both quizzical and searching. Could it be that
I'd finally gotten through?
"Is there any pie left?" he asked. So much for subtlety.
I spent the next year turning the air blue with my dissatisfaction and he spent the same year rambling around the kitchen seeking
overlooked pastry. Finally, sick and tired of caring for the floor from hell and weary of dropkicking hints the size of small meteors, I asked him point blank when he was going to put in my new tile floor.
"I need to buy a tile cutter," he said.
I immediately dispatched him to the hardware store to buy one. He came back and told me he couldn't decide between two models.
"Buy 'em both. I don't care. Just get one.
Now." I turned him around sent him back to the store. I wanted my floor and I wanted it right then.
That was last summer. The tile is still in boxes in the garage. They sit next to the tile cutter and grout. My floor needs
stripping again, so I just bought a gallon of stripper. It's sitting on the countertop in my kitchen, where my son saw it when he walked in. He asked me what it was and I told him. And he said.
"Gosh Mom, you slave over
that floor day in and day out, but does Dad appreciate it? No. If only you could get him to put down that remote and do your floor, you'd be a happy woman."
OK – so maybe I've nagged just a little bit too much – now the kid
can repeat my entire mantra from memory. But that's not such a bad thing, really. When I get tired of pitching guilt to my spouse, I'll send my son in.
Baseball's not the only sport that has pinch hitters, you know.
