Taking Out The Trash

I know a woman out there who must think I’m insane. Okay, maybe not insane, but surely indecisive. She’s the divorce lawyer. I’ve been to her office twice. I’ve emailed her numerous times. I’ve called. I’ve even considered sending a Christmas card. I’m probably her favorite non-client client.

Hell, on more than one occasion, I’ve even given her the old “check is in the mail.” Yet, I never seem to pull the plug.

It would only take $2,500 to end it all. No more. No less. It’s a small price to pay for eternal happiness. However, I can’t bring myself to do it. While I love J-Fed for better or worse, it always seems to be worse.

But secretly, I have my own agenda for staying married to him. Part of me refuses to let him off the hook so easily. For as miserable as he inadvertently makes me, the pain I inflict on him is tenfold. The pain I cause is intentional.

There’s nothing in me that believes J-Fed purposefully acts lazy and selfish. Like the many men before him and the many men that will come after him, it’s just how he’s wired. He doesn’t realize that the dishes don’t magically move from the sink to the dishwasher. He’s not aware that the clothes belong in the hamper not around it. He’s not privy to the fact that milk has to be purchased from the store – it’s no longer delivered to the doorstep once you polish off the gallon.

While I can accept most of these shortcomings, the one I cannot bear to accept is his ignorance when it comes to the baby’s diaper pail. Up to eight times a day, the baby’s diaper must be changed. J-Fed is well aware that these diapers go into the diaper champ. Just last week the baby turned 10 weeks. In all that time, J-Fed has not emptied the diaper champ once. Does he think those stinky diapers are consumed by some feces-swallowing black hole? The time had come for him to learn a thing or two about soiled diapers.

It was just 15 minutes after he’d left for work that I put my genius plan into motion. After emptying the diaper champ for the umpteenth time, I decided it was time for J-Fed to wake up smell the doo doo. Instead of dragging the bag of dirty diapers out to the garbage pail, I strategically placed it right on his office chair in the garage. I grinned from ear to ear as I looked at the pile of poop in his coveted “space.” However, it looked so lonely sitting there perched so prettily. That’s when I decided to add insult to injury and added the empty pizza box and soda carton that he’d “forgotten” to dispose of. The collection of debris molded together in an almost phallic shape. How symbolic I thought to myself.

I would have taken a picture with my digital camera if he hadn’t “forgotten” to buy the batteries I’d asked him to pick up on his way home.

As J-Fed constantly reminds me, it’s hard to forget the way he forgets. It’s a special kind of forgetfulness, he informs me. Perhaps he’ll be less likely to forget when he has the stench of baby poo to help jog his memory.

Unhappily Ever After, 

Kiki