2008

My husband and I have the worst fights of our marriage over his fantasy life. Before my saintly mother-in-law clutches her heart and topples over, let me explain: Glenn’s fantasies revolves around a trip to Home Depot, where he clutches an empty cart and embarks upon an endless tour of the sultry aisles of home improvement.

“See that drywall?” Glenn will muse, his index finger thoughtfully rubbing his chin. “I could install that.”

No you could not, I want to shriek, but I can’t start a fight, not yet. Not when we’ve walked barely ten feet into Home Depot and there are still endless miles to traverse before we collapse, dehydrated and bedraggled, at the safety of the checkout counter.

“Sure you could,” I’ll say instead, and Glenn will reluctantly inch ahead to scrutinize light bulbs (now those, he can install). But we do not need light bulbs. We do not need drywall. We need nothing at Home Depot except for a box of nails and a tank of gas for the grill. Yet my husband’s eyes are glazed and I can almost hear him panting. In his mind, he is donning a tool belt and building something dangerous and manly, possibly involving electrical sparks and chain saws. There is no room for reason in the male Home Depot fantasy.

I thought this day would never come. My two sons slept through the night last night, then put their breakfast dishes in the sink with only a reminder or six from me (interestingly, the same number of times my husband has to remind me to put my own dishes in the sink). Then my boys trotted happily off to school, giving me a few hours to work and go to the gym to snatch up USWeekly and put the treadmill on its lowest setting (“sloth”).

Life, at long last, is exactly the way I dreamed it would be.

Back when our boys were babies, we were jarred awake three or four times a night, we tore through a box of diapers every week, and, for entertainment on Friday nights, fished objects out of the slot of our DVD player (coins, a plastic Elmo doll, and once, inexplicably, a shriveled breakfast sausage. Expression on Best Buy warranty guy’s face: Priceless).