Or How I Got a Clean Backyard Without Killing a Family Member
First, can I just tell you all how much I loved getting all of your advice? Comments have been dwindling on the site in recent months, causing me to feel a bit lonely and washed up. Perhaps more important, your comments made me realize an error in my marital ways.
But first let me back up a bit.
When I left off, I was telling you about how I’d just stepped in dog poop and was under the control of a hot mind of anger. I took my shoes off at the door and walked into the house barefoot. I turned and looked at my poor shoes. They were out there in the rain. That’s when I realized just how attached I was to those new sneakers. I hardly ever have new things, you know? And here, after wearing these shoes for not one full day, what happens? I step in poop.
I am one of those people who likes to learn from suffering. So I stood for a second and pondered what I had to learn from this situation. I thought about how I’d been working on releasing my attachment to comfort. “Well, you’re just going to have to overcome your aversion to cleaning poop off sneakers,” I told myself. “If you stop bracing against the idea of cleaning off your shoes, it won’t be such a big deal.”
“I’ll overcome that aversion later,” another part of myself said back. “Got that? Later? Much later.”
My husband was not home. I’m sure that’s a good thing–for both of us. My daughter was in bed, almost asleep.
I thumped my way into her room.
“Do you want to know what just happened to me out in the yard?” I asked loudly.
“What Mommy?” she asked.
“I just stepped in dog poop—in my brand new sneakers!” I said dramatically.
Do you want to know how she responded?
She laughed. It started as a sweet little giggle that soon erupted into a great big belly laugh.
This got me laughing, too. After all, it was all very funny in a “this should be a skit on Modern Family” sort of way.
Here I was behaving much like the Claire character. I’d been stubborn, refusing to scoop poop for the “principle of the matter.” Let me tell you something I’ve learned from past experience: doing things for the “principle of the matter” is never a good strategy. It always backfires. It backfires on TV and it backfires in real life. Always. Trust me on this.
Case in point: I was the one with poop on my shoe. Was my husband the person with poop on his shoe? No. Was my kid the one with a poopy shoe?
No, it was me.
After getting a good laugh, I took a piece of paper and a Sharpie and created a giant sign that read: “THE YARD IS TOO POOPY!”
I taped it to the door.
Then I started watching television. I don’t remember what it was that I watched. It was either Criminal Minds or Modern Family or both.
By the time the husband came home, I’d forgotten about the sign.
“What’s up with that?” he asked.
So with quite a bit of dramatic flair, I explained the situation at hand.
“Did you clean off your shoes?” he asked.
“Of course I didn’t. You know I hate doing things like that. It takes me weeks to work up the courage to clean poop off of sneakers. They’re outside, probably where they will be until April.”
“They’re outside?” he asked, incredulous.
“Yes,” I said.
He opened the door. He picked up my sneakers. Then he announced, “This is what I am going to do for you today. I am going to wash the poop off your sneakers.”
And he went into the basement and he did just that.
I was touched. After all, I’d never expected him to do that, nor had I asked.
Since I’m a big believer in positive reinforcement—especially when it comes to the training of puppies and of husbands–I posted to Facebook, “Love is when your spouse cleans dog poop off your sneakers without being asked.” A few people responded something to the effect of “ain’t that the truth.”
Over the weekend, he and the kid cleaned up the entire yard, too.
And that was going to be the end of this story until I wrote Part 1 yesterday and then read your comments. That’s when I realized that I had never had an important discussion with my husband or my daughter about who was going to do what with the puppy. Sure we’d had vague talks about how this was their puppy and not mine. But a talk about who was doing what chore? No.
So of course I ended up doing all that needed to be done and the husband and the daughter were quite comfortable having me do all that needed to be done.
No wonder things weren’t working out.
“We need to talk about that puppy,” I told my husband last night. Now, usually I’m not a fan of the “we need to talk” line. In this case, I used a tone of voice that was warm and fun. It communicated, “I’m not about to kill you. I just want to solve this silly little issue and I need your help.”
“Should we put the puppy in the other room?” he asked. “Because if we’re going to be plotting her demise, it’s probably not a good idea for her to hear us.”
This comment really lightened the mood, you know?
I told him that we would not be plotting her demise.
“I don’t have enough time to scoop the yard,” I said. “And I don’t like being out there in the middle of the night wondering if my next step is going to be a mushy one.”
“I’ll scoop the poop,” he offered.
“It can be you or it can be the kid’s job. I don’t care whose job it is. But if it’s her job, I want you to supervise it and make sure it gets done. I already have homework duty. I don’t want to supervise her on poop duty, too. Or you can hire someone. I don’t really care as long as it happens every single week.”
From there we talked about the middle of the night wakings.
“I can’t keep being the person who gets up at 3 am. This is going to affect my writing.”
“I can get up,” he said.
“We should have a system. I do it one night. You do the next.”
“I’ll take tonight,” he said.
“So when I hear her whining and you are still sleeping, I’ll just punch you. When you feel me punch you, you’ll know that you need to get up,” I said.
“Something like that,” he said.
And at 3 am last night, something like that is exactly what I did. He got out of bed. I rolled over and went back to sleep.
Problem solved.
For now.
Learn more about Alisa’s book, the story of how she went from wishing her husband dead to falling back in love.
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