Sherri Dearest

Most men say I love you with flowers or a mushy card. Yesterday Mr. Man tried to say I love you with a bottle of Lysol and a broom.

The only man on earth that can as easily make my heart go pitter-patter as he can make me want to gouge his eyes out with a grapefruit spoon, spent his day cleaning the house as a gift to me. In a normal relationship, that might not be such a hard thing to do. But, when you're married to me, that is a bigger job than you can even begin to imagine.

My house can't just be clean. It has to be OCD clean. Not only are we battling dirt that is seen, we are battling the unseen killer germs that live in weird little places that only people with OCD x-ray vision can find and effectively eradicate.

Properly cleaning the place I inhabit involves industrial strength and absolutely toxic chemical cleaners, no less than four rolls of high quality paper towels and toothpicks. Lots and lots of toothpicks.

Things must be dusted, scrubbed, de-germed and vacuumed and once that's all been done, if it doesn't "feel" clean to me, it must be done again… but only after I've screamed at you for five straight minutes, which may or may not include any number of bad words and possibly an insult about how your mother earns a living.

And then there is the matter of the laundry.

When someone else attempts to do the laundry in this house, I both appreciate it and want to kill them at the same time. I have a system that is very rigid and any attempt to stray from it in an effort to save time may cause me to fling sharp things in the direction of one's family jewels.

This was the case when I walked in on Mr. Man doing laundry and caught him in the act of hanging pants on a wire hanger!!! I went from Sher to Mommie Dearest in 0-15 seconds.

"NO WIRE HANGERS EVER!" I screamed after I shaved my eyebrows and drew in old lady "I'm so surprised" eyebrows with a black Sharpie. (This was your Joan Crawford reference for the day.)

"What's the big deal," he asked. "They're my pants anyway. Who cares?"

I proceeded to explain to him in loud detail why God hates people who use wire hangers, how wire hangers are the single biggest cause of the decline of civilization and the little known fact that wire hangers were actually invented by Hitler.

I thought I made myself extraordinarily clear.

Imagine my surprise when Mr. Man had the audacity to put his hands on his hips and tell me he guessed since they were his pants he could hang them on whatever the hell he wanted and if I didn't want him to walk right out the front door and leave me to finish cleaning the entire house alone, I'd better turn around quietly and exit the laundry room.

And that's exactly what I did.

By the way, if you'd like to send get-well-soon cards to Mr. Man, please address them to:

Man with Wire Hanger Through His Genitalia
C/O Midwest Hospital, Kansas