Men and Towels

These are my kitchen towels. The Engineer is forbidden to touch the white one. I bought the black one for him so that I could pretend I don't know the truth. Every time he comes into the house, he walks straight to the kitchen sink and washes his hands. Such a cleanly fellow. Then he goes to the kitchen towel and dries them. Before I got the black towels, he turned all the white ones gray and brown and black.

I think what men do is only wash as far as the wrist bone. They get wet farther up their arms, though, and go ahead and dry the whole area, thereby placing all of the dirt above the soap line onto the towel.

Ick!

What I haven't figured out is how he does it to his bath mat. The only time he puts his bath mat on the floor is when he's taking a shower. As soon as he's dried off the towel goes on one rack and the bath mat on another.

So why does it have these big orange splotches on it? And, yes, I have tried bleaching it.

The more I wonder about it, the more I don't want to know.

There is a solution. I've already put it into effect: brown bath mats.

And don't think about it.

Tools and The Engineer

My Dad is quite a handyman and woodworker. His college degree was in electrical engineering and he makes beautiful furniture. He can do anything (except plumbing.) Not that I'm biased or anything. It's a true fact that the light shines out of my Daddy.

I learned about tools very early in life from hanging out in his shop. I knew they were not toys and should be handled properly. Using a phillips head screwdriver as an awl or an ice pick was simply not acceptable. As soon as I was out on my own, I began collecting tools; mostly Craftsman because if I did manage to mangle one, Sears would replace it. By the time I married the Engineer, I had quite a collection: screwdrivers, hammers, wrenches, pliers, electric drill, saber saw, socket set, alan wrenches, staple gun, shovels, rakes, pruners and loppers. I had two tool boxes for the small tools and a milk carton for the larger ones, plus, of course, well organized storage for nails, screws, etc.

When I married the Engineer and we moved in together, somehow my tools moved in with his. Gradually they migrated from their original toolboxes into his toolboxes and his stuff showed up in my storage containers. I now have a minimal set of tools hidden for my own use because I don't like to search through his stuff looking for mine.

The Engineer was mostly impressed with my tool collection, but he made fun of my shrub rake from the get go. He wanted to throw it out, but I wouldn't let him, insisting that shrub rakes were very useful. He said that if I thought I was going to get some work out of the cats by having tools sized for them I was hopelessly mistaken.

Here we are, not quite ten years into the marriage, and what's one of his favorite tools?

My shrub rake.

He even customized the handle so he can reach farther with it. Of course, he does use it as a swimming pool tool instead of in the garden, but, what the heck, he wouldn't be without it.

Does a Guy Wizz In the Woods?

Remember the old "well, duh" saying, "Does a bear shit in the woods?" To that I'm afraid I must add, "Does a guy wizz in the woods?"

What is it about males? Where does their pride in grossness come from? Is it inborn or is it carefully nurtured in each succeeding generation by their fathers, uncles and big brothers?

I am just home from five days in a cabin in the woods with the Engineer and the Twin. Each and every day after returning from fishing they described in excruciating detail how they caught each fish. No description was complete without a full inventory of what they'd done with their bandanas. I won't get too detailed here, but suffice it to say boogers, worm guts, fish guts and the wiping of sweating brows feature prominently. (No wonder they come home smelling like they do!) Then they threaten to use their bandanas as hot pads for moving cooking pans.

The bathing facility at the cabin is either an antique claw foot tub in the cabin, the creek or an outdoor shower. The shower is a blue plastic barrel on the hillside above a plywood shower stall. It is filled by a hose from the cabin first thing in the morning. The water warms in the barrel during the day, then flows downhill through a black plastic pipe for additional solar heating before coming out of two sprinkler heads affixed to a board tacked between two of the dead trees the shower walls are nailed to. Most years the shower floor has been trampled grass and mud. The guys love to describe the goo squishing up between their toes and scraping their feet off to reinsert them into their shoes. This year I brought along a plastic floor mat to keep their feet relatively mud free so that I wouldn't have to sleep with old crusty toes.

The cabin does have a quite decent bathroom, complete with water heater, tub, sink and toilet. The toilet actually flushes, though the tank needs to be filled with a bucket filled at the bath tub spout.

Do the males use the toilet?

Only if they can brag about how aromatic they've left it when they're through.

Otherwise, they "go for a walk." Doesn't matter what time it is, first thing in the morning, midday or if they wake up in the middle of the night, if they've got to pee, they head for their favorite tree. One claim which caused great hilarity was that one of the brothers, when waking in the night, didn't bother with the tree, he just peed off the back deck. Is it true? I'd rather not know.

Do boys of any age love to gross out the girls?

Does a guy wizz in the woods?

My Off and On Vacation

The Engineer is in a traveling for work phase right now. He's just returned from a two week European tour: Edinburgh, London, Moscow, Tyumen (Siberia!) and Amsterdam. He leaves Monday for Kuala Lumpur, is home for three days before heading to Saudi Arabia, then has to go to Venezuela shortly after returning from the middle East. Being a strict adherent to Wunx~'s Law*, I do not travel with him. And besides, he's in business meetings all day and has important business dinners afterwards, so it wouldn't be as if we were spending time together other than sleeping and sitting on airplanes.

As I was scrubbing the sink with stinky cleanser after cleaning up from breakfast this morning, I realized how much work it is having him around.

The two weeks he was gone, I ran the dishwasher once -- right after he left. I ate lots of salads sitting at the kitchen counter watching the news on the kitchen TV instead of fixing formal dinners and putting it all in serving dishes to place on the table. Didn't have to wash pots and pans, serving dishes and utensils, plates and glassware. The dinner time news was about all the TV I watched other than a couple of rented chick flicks. I could sit down and read a book without having to be told what the newscaster (he watches CNN all evening) had just said.

And what is it about men? We watch the local newscast together. The weather liar comes on and gives the five day forecast. Before the forecast starts, the Engineer hushes me (despite the fact I haven't been talking), telling me the weather's coming up and we have to listen. As soon as the forecast is over, he turns to me and tells me the forecast as if I hadn't just heard it.

???

Men!

It's a good thing they're cute.

*Wunx~'s Law: If the journey is longer than the stay, thou shalt not go.


Some of my friend, Jenny's, iris.

Male Psychology

Read an interesting article today.

In the Shivpuri district of the state of Madhya Pradesh, India, the government is giving gun permits to men who get vasectomies.

Seems shooting bullets with a gun more than compensates the macho men for shooting blanks biologically. I don't even want to begin thinking about the ramifications of this.

God, I'm glad I'm a woman.