Domesticating the manly beast

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

I have been domesticated. I hate to admit it but it is a fact that I can no longer deny.

It didn't happen over night. My wife calculated, planned and then patiently waited as she watched me go from a man to a husband.

When my wife met me 10 years ago, I was man's man. I had my own apartment with nothing on the walls but sports posters and nothing to eat but peanut butter, Ramen noodles with a couple cans of soda to drink.

Now, I have a refrigerator with a ton of food in it and a house with a bunch of stuff hanging on the walls that apparently goes well with our "theme." Our sunflower theme that is. Yes, there are wooden sunflowers on the wall, sunflower rugs and other sunflower items hanging up all over the house. Not exactly manly, huh?

And you have to be careful of what you use in the house. You have to know what is a decorative towel and what towel you can actually use to dry your hands on.

This has come up in my household more than once. Being the cleanly person I am, I wash my hands and so as not to have wet hands for 10 minutes I look for a towel to dry them. Right there, three feet from the sink is a towel hanging on the oven door.

Like most undomesticated men, I reach for the towel to dry my dripping hands when my wife yells "don't use that towel! It is just for decoration."

A word to all single men. Towels with sunflowers on them do not dry wet hands. They are strictly forbidden to be touched by a man period. And never, never use them to soak up spilled red Kool-aid because that ruins the towels and then your wife has to go and buy another set.

But that isn't all. There are also other things hanging up in the house that say things like "a spoiled dog lives here" and "I love my cat." A far cry from my bikini calendars that I used to enjoy seeing every day.

And speaking of animals, we now have four animals and three of them are cats. Now, I don't have anything against cats, I'm just not a big fan of them anymore. Not with three. The first two were OK, but then came the third. It came about a year ago when my wife called and asked me if we could get another cat. I said no and by the time I got home we had another addition to the family. It is tough keeping your manhood when you are heard yelling "here kitty, kitty, kitty" on a daily basis.

And then there are candles. My wife loves candles and we have them throughout our house. Some smell good and others smell like a skunk got loose in our house. I could care less for candles. I do get enjoyment out of blowing out the candles my wife lights minutes after she lights them though. But on the rare occasion, I will light a candle. Much like the towels though, some candles in my house are for decoration only. And usually those candles are the ones that actually will smell good, but instead of lighting them, we let them sit as decoration until my wife puts them in the closet with the hundreds of other candles we will never use.

But I realized my domestication just today when I poured a nice big glass of soda before sitting down at the kitchen table to write a column for this week. As I sat down at the table I realized I couldn't put my glass down because there was no coaster. You see, if you have a wood table and you put a drink on it, the table will get rings and look like someone actually uses it. So instead of using a table cloth, I have to go and find a coaster. Well I found one. I hope my wife doesn't mind her sunflower towel keeping a ring off of the kitchen table.

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