On Married Men Left Home Alone

We are about to do a little refurbishing around here, part of which includes new floor covering in some of the rooms.  Unlike many of the projects we've undertaken, this one is being done by a professional.  He said that he would move the furniture out of the rooms, but that we should clean out closets and put away breakable things.  I tackled the closets a few weeks ago, and since the start date is approaching, I thought I'd better get busy on the breakables.

I started in the kitchen, where a hutch sits full of breakable things, things like my mother-in-law's tea cups, which she got as a wedding present 50-some-odd years ago.  As I was emptying the hutch, I found this:

 



 

That, my friend, is part of a wooden duck.  Or goose, maybe.  He used to hang on my kitchen wall, near the stove.  He used to have two wooden feet on two wooden dowels, pegged into those two empty holes that you see in the picture.  They stuck straight out at right angles to him and to the wall.  The space between that duck's body and his feet was the perfect size for holding my big hickory rolling pin that was too big to keep anywhere else.  That duck hung there for years, safely cradling my rolling pin.

When I found the above-mentioned duck fragment, I took his picture and texted it to The Husband.  Didn't say nothin', just sent him the picture.  Here's why:

One day last year, as I was cleaning up the kitchen, I tried to slide the cutting board into it's usual slot in the jelly cabinet, and the cutting board hung on something and wouldn't go in.  I bent over to see what the problem was, and encountered this beneath the shelf (it had my rolling pin in it at the time):



Yes, those would be the feet that belong to the duck.

I was positively aghast.  In disbelief, I glanced over at the wall where the duck once hung, and sure enough it was gone.  I said, "What the - ?"

The Husband was sitting in his chair in the living room.  He was smirking.  He'd been off work a few days earlier, while I had gone to work.  Home alone, piddling around.  Washed his truck.  Mowed the lawn.  And at some point during the day, he thought it would be a good idea to drill a couple of holes in the side of the jelly cabinet (note that his first attempt was too high), saw my duck's feet off, and re-mount them in the cabinet.

This is what happens when you leave a man home alone without a to-do list.

He said it had been like that for days.

I did not know whether to laugh or choke him. 

I have begged him many times not to move stuff in the kitchen unless he intends to take over the cooking.  This one took the cake.  Not only did he move something that had been *right there* for 30 years, he destroyed my heirloom duck, as well!

Okay, okay...it wasn't an heirloom.  It's a cheap piece of crap wooden duck, an 80s left-over, and it's beyond tacky.  And it sometimes fell of the wall when we opened the nearest cabinet door. 

And it was kind of funny.

But I pretended to be miffed and sad at the loss of my old duck.  So don't tell him.

I asked him where the REST of the duck was.  He would not tell me.  To this day, he has never told me.  I have not looked for it, beyond a glance around the kitchen the day of the duck murder. 

When I found it today, I took a picture of it with my cell phone and texted it to The Husband.  Didn't say a word.  Just sent the picture. 

A few minutes later, I get: 





 After I cleaned out the jelly cabinet and saw those goofy duck feet sticking out, all by their lonesome, I took a picture of the feet and sent that to The Husband as well.  Didn't say nothin'.  Just sent the picture.  He said:

I'm not exactly sure what that smurky face means.  He could be commiserating with my mourning of the heirloom duck.  Or he could be smirking at remembering the dismembering. 

Either way, I'm laughing.  ;)