What's your love language?
Mine is, er, unique
Valentine’s Day begs the question: how do I increase my Substack readership?
I mean, what can I do to prove to my husband that I adore him?
There are the usual suspects:
Cook a romantic meal. The problem is, he’s a far better cook than I am. The best I could hope for is an A for effort. And him looking over my shoulder saying, “What are you making? Or, should it look like that?
Whisper sweet nothings in his ear. Except he’s ticklish and equates anything ticklish with the same degree of annoyance as a mosquito buzzing.
Wear sexy lingerie. Who’s fooling who? No lacy outfit can compete against my love affair with my soft, cozy bathrobe. It’s like wearing a hug.
Watch a romantic movie at the theatre. But I’m already in a committed relationship … with my couch.
I assume you’ve heard about “love languages” - the way we say we care that isn’t always in words. Because actions speak louder.
I’ve decided that my love language is housework.
Yardwork.
Just about anything with “work” next to it other than going to work. Because I have limits.
Example No. 1.
I cleaned the dog poop in the backyard this week.
That sounds straight forward. But our backyard has been a frozen tundra for the past two months. When the temperature barely gets above 10F, you don’t spend a lot of time outside.
But when not even the dog wants to risk navigating the frozen poop bombs anymore, something must be done.
And this requires a pick and shovel to chop through the icy snow.
I’ve done this TWICE this week. Because as the temperatures begin to rise, the top layer of snow melts revealing a whole new array of poop.
Given how much snow we’ve gotten, and how many layers of poop could remain, you could say I’m giving the gift that keeps on giving.
Nothing is too good for my husband.
Example No. 2
I scrubbed the sump pump pit.
For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a pump that sits in a pit. And is often found in the basement, rather than say, the living room.
When the groundwater around your home’s foundation starts to seep underneath the house, due to heavy rain or biblical floods, it starts to fill the pit, activating the pump, which, at our house, shoots it out on the driveway.
For reasons that only the previous homeowner, who dug out the basement himself, and God know, the sewage pipe runs parallel to our sump pump pit.
Somehow, a tiny crack opened in the cement which began to allow liquid from the adjacent sewage pipe in.
Well that wasn’t good.
The sump pump started pumping this less than nice water onto our driveway. On the hour, every hour. For at least a week before we realized what was going on.
And that water froze on the driveway. Making a stinky ice rink that risked our lives each time we stepped across it to get into our cars.
After consulting two plumbing companies (which only wanted the equivalent of a down payment on a house to “fix” the problem that they themselves said, “Never seen that before”, and ChatGPT, we fixed the hole in the sump pump pit with hydraulic cement.
Which is a type of cement that almost instantly hardens, even in running water. You could throw a bag of it in the Niagara Falls and the water wouldn’t fall anymore. It would just be Niagara.”
The next day, I dragged a hose into the house, washed down the pit and the pump, and poured in a cleaner that is meant to get rid of the vile smell that had invaded our house and my nightmares.
A few days later, after pouring ice melter all over our driveway, I chopped away at the two-inch thick frozen sheet to get rid of the last evidence of our disgusting basement problem.
Problem solved!
Not quite.
We had only dealt with the symptom.
A week later, I heard the sump pump go off again. Not supposed to happen in the winter, when the ground is frozen and there should be no groundwater to pump out of your basement well.
The pit had another hole in it!
Finally, we had a plumber who suggested we get the sewage pipe snaked. And we did that day.
The next morning, I put a new coating of hydraulic cement where cracks had started.
It took three attempts with the incredibly expensive cleaner to sanitize the well.
Then, I laid another 50lb bag of ice melter on the driveway to get rid of the second ice rink that had developed.
So, apparently, cleaning poop-related things is my love language.
Important Note: My husband does not expect me to do these things. Sometimes, he actively campaigns against me doing them. He offers to do them. We both know I’m going to do them anyway. I’m thinking of getting a sign that says, “My husband did not make me do this.” Like comedian Nate Bargatze’s wife.
I envision a Valentine’s Day filled with comfy robes, reruns of Law and Order (the theme song should have been the first dance at our wedding), and possibly a good disaster movie thrown in for good measure. Some popcorn.
I’ll gaze deeply into my husband’s beautiful blue eyes and whisper in the sexiest voice I can, “Will you go buy me some ice cream?”
And he will.
Which is his love language for me.
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You you are quite the handy lady
Good to know never throw hydraulic cement on Niagara Falls lol