Nitpick

When my wife is at fault, or even if I perceive that she is, I am quick to let her know.

Why didn’t she pick her underwear off the chandelier (oh wait, that was me)? Why are all these dishes still in the sink after 13 days (duh, you again)? Who sprinkled all these ponytail holders about the house? (That last one is all hers.)

I tend to put blame on her even when I shouldn’t.

In our old house, we shared a bathroom. If it started getting messy, it was her fault.
For a while, we shared a bathroom in our new house. The same rules applied.

When I got tired of walking through hair spray clouds, I moved myself to the upstairs bathroom.

This, I thought, would be the key to keeping a clean restroom. No more wife to dirty up the place.

A few months have passed since.

Hers is straight, neat, and nothing in sight that would make a garbage man cringe.
Mine, however, looks like the inside of a diaper.

Clothes are piled up and overflowing out of the hamper. Toothpaste film coats the sink bowl like flour. The tile floor resembles the inside of a dirt floor shanty.

One day, while on a field trip to the wife’s bathroom, I realized who was actually the neater spouse. (Note: it was not me.)

While I’m a nitpicker, Coury keeps her mouth shut and I’m none the wiser.

I’m pretty sure I could mop our carpet with straight bleach for months and she wouldn’t say a word. She would just smile, shake her pretty head, and walk over the bleached out, sopping wet, mildewy carpet.

Sometimes, though, she slips. Take today for instance.

Since early in my wife’s pregnancy, I’ve asked her if she’s OK about 3.5 million times a day. Every moan, grunt or waddle is noticed and inquired about. Every ailment is followed up minutes later with another, ‘Is everything OK?’

With the possibility of labor looming, I’ve gone into super alert mode. Inquiries have gone up 300 percent in the last two weeks.

To my wife’s credit, she’s never acknowledged that it bugged her.

Today, I joked that once she had the baby, I would no longer ask her 500 times a minute if she were OK. The constant alert would be dropped and transferred to the new house guest.

She laughed a little too hard, in a way that let me know it had been grating on her. She elaborated a little, expressing a few thoughts that probably aren’t appropriate here.

So I promised to stop.

Water broke? Nary a word or acknowledgement. Feels like the baby is punching your cervix? Sorry, I’ve used up all my ‘are you OK’s?’ The baby sat on your bladder and caused you to pee your pants as we sat in church? I’m pretending not to notice.

Wait, I gotta go. I think I heard my wife mumble under her breath.