Confession: Stu and I don't do it together.

Stu and I avoid doing things together. I mean, we do THAT, but we avoid other ‘couple-y’ things. We learned this ‘togetherness does not make for happiness’ lesson on our honeymoon. Giddy with “Just Married” vibes (ie: tons and tons of sex), we decided to take a break from our beach-bed-booze Hawaiian Honeymoon routine and tried kayaking.

Never before, in the history of honeymoons, has there been a worse idea. This is not some corny Chevy Chase movie vacation where we get washed out to sea in our tiny kayak and taken over by pirates or something. It’s much more mundane. Simply put, a former coxswain and a former rower should not share a kayak when they’ve just gotten married.

Me: “Go PORT!”

Stu: “Then PULL port!”

Me: “I am, you big over-grown bully! You have no more finesse with a paddle than you do with other large ‘tools’ that you like to get wet!”


And so it continued. Up the river, through the waterfall, around the rocks. We bickered, we fought, we paddled in little circles until I decided that I was done listening to him gripe about my form, my power, my steering and pulled my paddle out of the water to sit sullenly in the bow while he paddled us home (this led to many dead-weight coxswain comments…note to husbands everywhere: calling your wife ‘dead weight’ does NOT get you laid!).

We nearly divorced and we learned not to do sports together. We will never play doubles tennis, ride one of those stupid two-seater bikes, or make up 2/3s of a triathalon team.

Nor do we teach each other things. One year after the kayak disaster, I tried to teach him to ski. I’ve been skiing since I was six and grew up in Lake Tahoe. Thus, it seemed silly to pay for skiing lessons for Stu. Instead, I decided to teach him by playing 'ski school'. I encouraged him to ‘make a pie wedge’ and then gleefully mimicked his butt-out, poles-up, knock-kneed method as he made his laborious way down the bunny slope. When he fell, I tossed myself on the snow, too. When he turned, I turned…singing songs all the way.

All he learned from this was that his new wife is a bitchy jack-ass.

Eventually, I grew bored with puttering down the bunny hills and took him to the very top of Heavenly where the only run choices were 2 black diamonds with names that involve ‘bowl’ (translation: cliff), and one double black diamond reading ‘DANGER! Expert skiers ONLY!’ He actually made it down…after 3 hours, 1 lost pole and countless bone-jarring, limbs-flailing falls. Shockingly, he didn’t kill me (or push me off the chair lift), but he did promptly sign up for lessons. And only gloated a bit when I blew my knee out on the double black the next weekend (in my defense, I didn’t tear my ACL until the BOTTOM of the run…and anyway, the ski patrol guy was totally hot and the toboggan ride was fun).

Later, while living in South America, we took Spanish lessons. Seemed like a good idea, seeing as we were living in a Spanish-speaking country and all either of us could manage was to order beer and mimic Cheech-n-Chong. Within a week (I’m not even exaggerating), Stuart was fluent. I seethed while he and our instructor, who bore a striking resemblance to Gisele and pronounced his name ‘Essstuart’ with a sexy little accented lisp, chatted away about the beautiful beaches, the weather, her gorgeous smile and impossibly tight ass.

Actually, I have no idea what they said. They could have been discussing the Iraq war or blow jobs for all I could tell. I just heard, ‘blah blah blah…ha ha ha!! Oh, Esstuart!!”


After a year of ‘full immersion’ in Spanish (supposedly the best way to learn. Sorta like being thrown into a freezing cold, fathoms-deep shark tank is the best way to learn how to swim), I could order whiskey, buy shoes, give directions to my apartment and knew that I was ‘estupido’…which I’m pretty sure means ‘stupid’ (this is the only thing our instructor said to me in between stroking Esstuart's arm and giggling). I wish I could say Stu and I fought over this, but as he refused to speak to me in English on lesson-day (for my ‘own good’ because ‘I had to learn’), the fighting involved him speaking rapidly in blah-blah-blah and me glowering at him.

We now allow each other to wallow in ignorance. I will remain ignorant on how to fire a gun, use a BBQ or pull a trailer. He will remain ignorant on how to braid little girl hair, prune roses or tweeze eyebrows. Of course, he doesn’t want to learn any of those things in the first place. Nor does he want me to know how to fire a gun, as I may aim it at his head on the rare occasions he tries to ‘refresh’ my Spanish skills.

We don't do home improvement projects together, either. Another dicey moment from our marital past is when we decided to lay new hardwood floors in our 100-year-old Craftsman bungalow in Tacoma. We had to level the floors, which involved pouring leveler all over the antique floors. Unfortunately, ‘antique’ is code for ‘old and broken’, so the concrete promptly seeped through the ancient floor boards and onto Stu’s prized rowing machine in the basement below. Not a good moment. Somehow, the floors were laid...but neither of us got laid for about a month and we swore off home projects.

Currently, we have 1000 square feet of wood laminate in our garage awaiting installation. Actually, it’s awaiting the week I take the kids to San Diego so Stuart can have a bunch of his buddies come over to drink beer, play with power tools and lay floors without my "interference".

I’m starting to think a lot of the problem with us doing things together is me.

Okay, okay…yes, dear, I can see you smirk, roll your eyes and drawl, ‘you think?’ Fine. The problem is me.

Actually, it’s his own fault (ha!). My husband married a modern feminist. Now, before you get the wrong impression, I don’t LOOK like a modern feminist; I look like a pin-up girl. I shave my legs, wear short skirts with high heels and spend a baffling amount of time and money at the hair salon every month. Nor do I ACT like a modern feminist; I like it when men hold doors for me and am giddily pleased when one compliments me on my dress, shoes, ass…

The problem is that I THINK like a modern feminist…meaning I can be just as bossy, demanding, egotistical and stubborn as any man. I absolutely refuse to take a backseat and submit. To anything. Anytime. And, as we met and married while attending a small liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest, I expect my man to think like a modern feminist, too.

This is something that baffles both of our mothers, several of our friends and the vast majority of the conservative right. However, I rationalize it into a fairly simple formula: Stu and I both work and earn roughly the same pay (although our accountant recently informed me that I out-earned him last quarter). As such, I see no reason why, the work and money being equal, the bulk of the decisions should fall to him and the domestic duties should fall to me simply because he has a penis and I have ovaries and a (very nice) rack.

Early in our marriage, after the kayaking adventure taught us NOT to do things together, we divvied up the chores. And, while the labor is equal, it still falls along fairly traditional lines. I do the landscaping and gardening, Stuart mows the lawn and lifts the heavy stuff. I take care of the decorating and color scheme choices, Stu’s in charge of changing the oil in the cars. We share laundry and ironing. Early on we discovered, much to our equal surprise, that his skills far outstrip mine in the kitchen. As in I can sorta boil water and he prepares gourmet five course meals.

This is the reason my mother views Stu as a god and takes his side in all matters, a situation that amuses and irritates me in turns.

Once children entered the picture, the equal-share philosophy continued, although the stakes increased exponentially. I am the social organizer, he shares in chauffeur duties. I am the goddess of outfits, hairstyles, shoes and matching tights, he methodically folds tiny skirts with matching sweater sets while watching the Seahawks every Sunday.

All in all, I don’t think being married to a modern feminist is such a bad gig. We may not do things TOGETHER, but in regards to our different chores, I lay out my expectations very clearly, he follows them, and I am happy.

It was upon the issue of house cleaning that we hit a major roadblock. As all of the above evidence shows, we were not about to clean the house together.

For a while, we simply out-sourced this unappealing chore. Every Thursday we returned home to discover that, for a marginally astronomical fee, magic elves had scrubbed our toilets and dusted the shelves. However, upon the birth of our second child and the coinciding crash of the US economy, the magic elves went away and we were faced with a 2,000 sq house, three bathrooms and two small children genetically gifted at trashing the house in record time.

Sitting at our kitchen table and staring at the numbers which refused to add up differently in our monthly budget, I gave Stu The Look and he knew the ‘equal share lecture’, also known as Lecture 22, was about to commence.

So Stu tried various methods. He cleaned the kitchen, I did the rest. Unhappy wife (and dirty drip pans).

He played with the girls on the family room floor, I cleaned everything. Very unhappy wife.

Once, while I was at a birthday party for some other small child, Stuart cleaned the house. Happy wife. Or so it seemed (I may be stubborn but I know better than to criticize a man when he’s attempting to help)…until he arrived home early from work one day to discover me on hands and knees, scrubbing the bathtub. Seems my husband’s definition of ‘cleaning’ the bathroom differs greatly from mine. Mine involves bleach, sponges and lots of scrubbing. His involves taking a shower, “that gets it clean; it got wet, right?”

This Sunday, he finally hit upon the magic formula.

First, Stuart allowed me to wallow in bed for an extra half hour while he got up with the girls. When I emerged, he handed me freshly brewed coffee (more white than black, as I just drink coffee for the flavored creamer) and served all the females in the house pancakes. After cleaning up the dishes, he took the girls off to Costco for the week’s shopping and left me home to do the chores.

He later admitted he was full of trepidation: after all, he was essentially abandoning the field to wander around Man Land (any large warehouse dedicated to providing 4 lb bags of Doritos, gigantic tubs of frozen Little Weanies and 50 inch flat screens showing the Sunday football games was created with the American Man in mind).

He returned to a sparkling house and a gorgeous, smiling wife clad in tight jeans and a tighter tee shirt, stirring a pot of my famous chili and giving him That Look. That Look is the opposite of The Look and guarantees glorious, wonderful things—if we are able to convince our daughters to take naps, or at least stay in their rooms, for a 45-minute stretch.

Because when Stu earns Good Husband Points, he redeems them in the only activity we do very, very well together.