Manly Man

Have I mentioned I'm married to the manliest man alive?

No? How strange I would have forgotten that. Hmm. Well, he's really quite good at doing things men should be able to do- like changing tires and talking sports and leaving dirty cereal bowls sitting on the coffee table. A little more estrogen on that last item there wouldn't be unwelcome, but I guess if I must sacrifice some elbow grease to get the spackled-on dredges of Frosted Flakes off the inside of the bowl after it's been sitting out for hours for an unending supply of tool wielding and computer fixing, then hand me the scrubber and some Dawn, because I'm sold. Yes, yes I will get in the kitchen for that.

We ordered a German refrigerator for our fridge-less apartment a few weeks ago, and when it arrived we were delighted to see it was just as big and beautiful as an American model. Oh, and the freezer is on the bottom, which I love, and instead of being a standard wide open frosty cavity,  it is made up of 3 bins in which to store your frozen goods. The bins were aptly named BIG BOX via static sticker that I think was intended to be removed, but I rather like the name and think it adds that little bit of spunk that other freezers seem to be lacking.

The lovely delivery people from our local German MediMax brought our fridge by and despite not speaking a lick of English managed to convey at least 6 times in perfectly fluent mother-tongue not to plug it in for 12 hours. Ok. No problem. I can wait to refrigerate. In the mean time, husband and I decided that if we were going to have a positive kitchen experience we would need to switch the doors so that instead of opening on the left and swinging immediately into our silverware drawer, it would really need to open on the right and violently hit the wood paneled window each time instead. At least the window has no real kitchen-essential purpose other than being an unobstructed view into the living room, but we may want to simultaneously open both the fridge and the silverware drawer at some point.

So the decision was made! We whipped out the easy-to-read instruction manual and took a look. Turns out, the instruction manual was easy to read because...there were no words! Just a minuscule diagram of the appliance and a series intersecting numbered arrows and what must have been hyroglphics. Ah. Right. So husband, with testosterone practically bubbling out through his nose, marches confidently to the spare room to retrieve an extensive set of tools, a pair of pince-nez and a magnifying glass, and we set to work concurrently dismantling our newest electronic good and destroying our eyesight deciphering the tiny diagram.

Husband immediately got to screwing and unscrewing and pulling this and josteling that and consulting the diagram and scratching his head and kind of violently shaking the door in a way I don't think the instructions were prompting, and ultimately got the whole thing off the hinge. Huzzah! I knew he could do it. I, on the other hand, stood there salivating over not only the man I love, but the man I love wielding TOOLS with SKILL and STRENGTH and (perhaps sexiest of all) FIXING MY KITCHEN! You can imagine what a state I was in. But then I had to help, and all that salivating kind of just dried up as I was pinned between the cooling grates and our wall with the bottom of the fridge balanced on my foot so I could tilt the whole thing at such an impossible angle that Husband could remove the bottom hinge, which convienetly enough, was screwed in about 5 inches under the unit. Who designed that?

But after my expert fridge-tilting, husband finished up the door replacement with a flourish of sweat and screws and then we stood back with our hands on our hips, nodding our heads approvingly, wishing there was a nice cold Diet Coke in the newly reassembled fridge. But there wasn't. Because we still had 3 hours to go until we could plug it in.

To continue with the whole "Manly Husband" theme, we also had a slight hiccup with our vehicle inspection. Turns out, any amount of grease residue on the underside of the car is synonymous with a MAJOR OIL LEAK, resulting in an ENVIRONMENTAL MASSACRE, even when the technician unwaveringly admits it appears to actually be just the firmly crusted spillover from an oil change. Ugh. Husband was moderately hesitant (read: absolutely unwilling) to pay anyone to clean the underside of the car with a pressure washer, and thus decided we could clean the oil up on our own. So, on the coldest day of the year we find a high curb outside our apartment and park with two tires up so husband can lay smack-dab down on the road and shimmy underneath the car to get to the engine. Who needs a jack, right?  I bring out a leaking bucket of near-boiling soapy water and a sponge, and after the blisters on both our hands cool, Husband starts going to town scrubbing away the offending oil while I stood there salivating not only over the man I love, but the man I love on the GROUND under a CAR where he knows how to find all the PARTS, and, best of all, he's not making me do it. Ahem, not that he would. So you can imagine what kind of state I was in. But that was quickly dissipated when he emerged from under the car with a shiny patina of oil coating the entirety of his upper body, and dirty soapy water running down his face and clothes. He looked like a grease monster. Add to that, the skin on my fingers was still sloughing off due to the uncommonly hot tap water used to make the soapy mixture. So, that was that.

But the car passed inspection (!), and Husband reaffirmed his status as Manly Man. Not, of course, that it was ever in question.