Dan In Charge

Dan has a lot of good qualities. He's funny. He's clever. He's good with the kids. And he always has good intentions.

After my surgery, Dan decided that he was going to take 10 days off work to take care of me. He would do all the things he would normally do, and he would take over the things that I do. No problem, according to Dan, because I don't do very much anyway (rolling my eyes).

I knew that it was going to be difficult the morning I got home from my operation. Dan announced that Bethie was mad at me because the house was cold that morning when she woke up. I was a bit surprised because I hadn't been home the night before because I was being gutted. How could I be responsible? Dan said that when I had left for work on Tuesday morning, I had opened the windows ... and I never came home to close them. The temperature had dropped over night. Therefore, the house was cold. And it was my fault. It is rather unfortunate that the four other people that live in this house lack the ability to close a window when they get a little bit chilled.

Dan said that I could sit back and relax because he would do all of the cleaning. I popped into the laundry room and noticed that he had done two loads of his own laundry, and none for me or the children. At 7:30am, I said "Can you please wash some PJs for the children as they don't have anything clean to wear tonight?". I reminded him once or twice throughout the day. At bedtime, I said "Did you wash the children's PJs". Dan was most offended and said "Yes, I did!". I asked him where they were. He had just thrown them into the dryer. Again, this was my fault. I had only nagged him to wash the clothes, and I had completely neglected to nag him about drying the clothes. Sigh.

As it turns out, it is absolute agony watching Dan "clean" and "take care of the children". He's really not as competent as I had once thought. Also, he finds it to be exhausting. At one point, he had to go and have a nap leaving me to referee the children's constant fighting. Upon hearing that, my Mum came and kidnapped me. Thank God.

But Dan is awfully good to step it up and "take care" of things. Did you notice when I described some of Dan's good characteristics that I didn't say "empathetic"? Yeah, that was intentional.

Dan lacks empathy.

72 hours after my surgery, my husband looked at me with such concern in his eyes and said, "How do you feel?". I replied, "I hurt". And he said, "STILL?!". Yes, Dan, STILL!

The point is, too much "quality time" together is becoming too hard on our marriage. I got angry and shouted at Dan that I was going to get in my little red car and drive to my mother's. He said, "You can't". I thought he was saying that he wouldn't let me drive because I am still in quite some pain. I thought he was concerned about me, and all of the other drivers on the road. I thought he wanted me to stay because he now saw exactly how he has failed me, and wanted to make it right. Because he loves me. So I said, "Why not?" hoping to elicit all sorts of lovely compliments because it was clearly time for him to start laying it on thick.

My love, my protector, my care taker said to me, "Because I never bothered to renew your driver's license. You had surgery on your birthday so I didn't think there was any rush".

Three more days to go....