What Would I Do Without Her?

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What Would I Do Without Her? My Wife.

I’m home alone. I have been for days. Lizzie and the kids are off visiting relatives. Don’t close window! I’m not going to put on after-shave, spank my face with both hands and squawk into a mirror.

Andy and Lizzie♫ Love is in the air! ♫

It’s cool. I’m good. No matter where I go in the house, I’ve got various piles to keep me company. Dishes. Laundry. Unopened mail. Recyclables. Who am I kidding? Despite their great listening skills, the companionship of inanimate objects is unsatisfying. It’s creepy and lame being in a house that’s empty of its normally liveliness. And it’s HARD! What happened to me? Can’t I take care of myself!?! No. Not if things like “physical proof” and “glaring evidence” are anything to go by.

Soooooo… I’ve taken to staying at the office really late to avoid going home. Last night I flicked off the office lights at midnight. I’d only eaten half a store-bought sandwich all day. Unless you count the tanker of coffee I drank as food.

Taco Truck Blocking Me InDoes anyone know how you say “food poisoning” and “Emergency Room” in Spanish?

My stomach was audibly grumbling as I shuffled into the parking lot. What’s this? Lo and behold! A food truck. Hmmmm. Like a genie’s granted wish, it seemed both miraculous and very likely to backfire on me.

This wasn’t one of the trendy ones that hipsters follow on Twitter so they can track its movements like some sort of tagged animal in the wilds of Los Angeles. There it sat, like a dare, at midnight, in a parking lot completely empty except for my car. And it was blocking me in. Hah! Now THAT is what I called effective advertising!

I stared longer than any menu with only 8 items deserves to be stared at, as the thought occurred to me that this might not be such a good idea. But then my hunger snuck up behind that cautious thought, pantsed it and hit it with a tire iron. I ordered my food with a side of “Can you por favor move so I can go home?” and I was off.

When I got home I soaked in the lack of any sign of life with a sigh and sat down to eat. The tinfoil was so cheap you could probably see through it if you held it up to light. As I picked it up it burst and I felt the weight and warmth of beans in my lap. ¡MIERDA!

I am rumbly in my tumbly

After I reassembled the mess, I took my first bite and immediately understood the raised eyebrows the woman gave me when I said “Yes” to “Hot?” Oh God.

I get to talk to my wife and boys everyday so it’s not like I’m experiencing familial solitary confinement, but I MISS MY WIFE!!! It’s not that I love her solely because she is an amazing cook and keeps me from basically living like a homeless person in our own house. It’s just that I love her twice as much because of it! They say “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” But I’d like to add that any man just has more love to give when he can cross a room without drowning in neglected laundry and doesn’t have horrible diarrhea from cheap Mexican food.

Lizzie Herald's Hell-Yeah-chosLook at her with that adorable look: “You gotta go through these nachos to get into these PJs, big boy.” We call them HELLYEAHchos.

Sometimes when she zips up my forgotten fly or removes a blob of food I’ve had on my face for an hour in public, she smiles and asks me what I would do without her. Next time she asks, I’ll try to come up with something more romantic than the honest answer: “mope about in abject loneliness, lay awake in bed, live in squalor, alternately starve and eat poorly, and occasionally masturbate.”

Uhhhhh… Sorry about that last one.

With all of the long work days, stress, bad sleep and crappy food, I have a pain in my stomach to go with the one in my heart. I MISS MY WIFE AND KIDS! I freely admit that I can’t function properly without them! ARG!
 

26 Comments

  • Anna Nonamus says:

    Men should always miss their wives. We send out tinfoil food trucks when we know we’re supposed to be missed. That way, we know you’ll appreciate us even more when we get home.

    We’re deviously sneaky that way.

    • andy says:

      Mission: Accomplished. I can support that kind of deviousness, though I would rather pass on the bean lap spill.

  • Emily says:

    Funny thing, is that we miss you husbands (and your messes) just as much when you’re gone 😉

  • Pam says:

    Is it weird that I am a (heterosexual)grrl who finds your wife hot next to her nachos and I also say hell yeah!!

    • Lol! Nachos are yummy. Lizzie is very beautiful. So, the combination makes her beauty even more yummy or nachos beautiful in her presence.

      Either way…

      I think this is so sweet, romantic and with the right amount of humor. Honestly, one of my favorites yet. 🙂 And I am not a mushy person at all. Nothing says I love you like, “Baby, when you leave I get massive diarrhea.”

      Seriously. This was a great read.

      Also, we need a HELLYEAcho recipe!

      • andy says:

        Ugh! Thank you! I (as usual) was scrambling to write last night and raked over it until 3 am. I wasn’t sure if it would come off the right way and what you commented tells me it did exactly what I wanted it to.

        Plus, it moved Lizzie to tears. So that’s always nice.

        P.S. We’ll have to send out a non-disclosure agreement in order to release the secret recipe. I will tell you that the main secret ingredient is to place the words “Add a s##tload of…” in front of every ingredient. 😉

    • andy says:

      No. Not at all. The 6 pounds of jalapeños under a blanket of cheese doesn’t hurt anything either. Ha ha!

  • Lizzie says:

    Oh my Luv that brought tears to my eyes!! I miss you too soooooooooo much! Soon it will be back to steak, veggies, my yummy pasta and a glass of wine, I promise!

    I want to print this post and read it whenever I’m feelin blue.

    Love you universe loads!

    • andy says:

      Mia bella luna! Ti amo. Ho bisogno di due universi per tutti del mio amore.

  • SUPAHMAMA says:

    Freaking hilarious. I now know what Husband’s do when their families are away, MYSTERY SOLVED.

  • Amit says:

    Lol I liked the true-answer, and all it’s parts. But I’m sure she would love to read this post, there is nothing better than hearing your man crying out to the web missing you publicly 🙂

    • andy says:

      Yeah, she loved it. Except for that part. It was 😀 and 😥 all the way, but that part got a 😕

  • Scott says:

    This was awesome. I’m tee’d up for some solo time myself in two weeks and I’m already not looking forward to that quiet house and eating over the sink (don’t hate, you all would do it too). I’m also conflicted with the idea of doing a major project to surprise her, but run the risk of her not liking it. Any advice?

    • andy says:

      Ha ha! So true about the kitchen sink as an eating habit. Dishes don’t do themselves!

      Idea: Whatever you do, avoid any plan that involves gas canisters or live animals. Or dead animals for that matter.

      An easy way to do something special is to take your iPod/iPhone (wow, like how I just assumed everyone has one?) and load it with one of her favorite love songs or one of “your guys” songs and have it ready to play when you first see her. When you walk up to her stick your hand in your pocket to start it and then hug her while the background music plays faintly around the two of you. It’s a small thing, but simple to execute and is sure to result in a good effect.

  • MotherDuck says:

    I’m pretty sure my husband would be loving his alone time. First, he would make loads of the crazy tea from Zimbabwe that I forbid him to drink because it makes him act like a drug addict. (I thought I flushed it all down the toilet but it keeps reappearing.) Then he would watch strange movies with the sound down so he could make up his own story. Finally he would “go on adventures” like deciding to go down to South Central to be with his peeps and where he makes friends with a bunch of guys hanging out on their porch…straight out of Friday. In the meantime, his car gets stolen only to have it returned 15 minutes later because he tracked down the only three known car thieves in the area and talked them into helping him find his car…This all happened and its why I will never leave my husband alone for more than a day or two.

  • Mike D says:

    Hilarious, but I agree with comment above we need a recipe.

    • andy says:

      Ha ha! I’ll ask Lizzie to put it together. I’ll post it here or something.

  • Shawn says:

    What’s with women and flannel? I had never known that flannel could hermetically seal a woman inside. The security at Fort Knox, the Royal Canadian Mint, and nuclear missile sites should be as ‘impenetrable’ as a woman in flannel.

    • andy says:

      Great point. I’m sure the world will be shocked when the first stable and significant force field ever developed turns out to be an offshoot of flannel technology. 😉

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