Challenge #1, Day 2

My cover is blown, the jig is up.  Dan read my Challenge #1 post when he got up yesterday morning, and came downstairs with a big smile on his face.  He said, "I read your blog...all is explained!" meaning that he now knows the motivation behind my oddly happy behavior on Day 1.  Bummer!  I was really hoping he wouldn't check the blog and I could pull off this week of Good Wifery in a vacuum untainted by his knowledge (and also so that I could complain that a whole week went by without him reading my blog--seriously, if you can't get your husband on board, how can you expect the rest of the world to follow?)...but he apparently subscribed to receive emails when I post on my blog (after countless reminders from me last week--totally shot myself in the foot on that one), so that kind of ruined it!  Now I feel like there's an expectation...I'm just hoping he doesn't try to take advantage of my attempted good-nature.  I'm not a doormat--I'm just trying to be a better wife!

Needless to say, my morning didn't start exactly as I had hoped--I was a bit bossy and a bit feisty with a dash of sarcastic...pretty much my normal self.  The Challenge needs to be the first thing I think about before I get out of bed, or else the day gets off on the wrong foot. I did manage to send him a sweet text while I was sitting at Jake's gymnastics class yesterday morning, and the boys and I tried to wave to him through his office window from our van...but he wasn't in his office when we drove by, so that was a bust!  I didn't pressure him to come home to pick Abby up from the school bus, which I know is something he would prefer I took care of every day--some days the boys are still napping, so he helps me out by picking her up, which is really great.  Yesterday, I handled the bus stop pick up, and then I took the kids over to our neighbor's house to play for a bit before Dan got home.  I didn't even complain once when my neighbor's husband showed up about 15 minutes after I got there...and he and Dan work in the same office.  That's kind of a big thing for me--I usually pester Dan when I know the other folks in his office have come home for the day already, because I know he goes in early enough and works hard enough to also be able to come home when they do...  So even though he doesn't know to appreciate it, I did make a conscious effort not to harass him about coming home.

Dan's workaholic motto!

After he got home from work, I stood in the kitchen and asked, "What can I do to help you, honey?"  He was sitting on our couch, and he just gave me the weirdest look, like I had morphed into a Stepford Wife and it was so alien, he didn't know what to do with me.  He thought for a minute and responded, "No, babe--what can I do to help you?" with a funny little smile on his face.  Hmmm...  Turns out he had no idea that I was referencing dinner--he thought I was just generally being helpful in my attempt to be a Good Wife.  It made more sense when I explained that because he wanted to make his famous stir fry (well, famous in our house), I was offering to help him get ingredients ready and prep with him.  It did all feel a little Stepford for a minute, though...

When dinner was over, I washed all the dishes (lots of pots and pans with burned on gunk, per Dan's stir fry norm) while the kids were watching Weird Al videos on my computer with Dan before bedtime--they get such a kick out of Amish Paradise, but the point is, I don't usually do hand-washing duty.  I have eczema on my hands that gets really bad in hot water and in the winter time, so I try to avoid all hands-in-water situations.  But Dan did the cooking last night, and I want to make sure our beautiful new pots and pans stay that way (for reference, Dan is a terrible dish washer and I usually have to redo them anyway to prevent us all from getting food poisoning), so I put my big gloves on and got to washing.  I even washed Dan's 2 Starbucks travel cups, which I usually leave for him to do out of general protest against his Starbucks addiction...  I definitely deserve a few Good Wife points for that extra effort!

These things are horrendous to wash by hand!

After the kids went to bed, my neighbor (she of the homemade graham crackers) invited me out to grab ice cream--she's been working non-stop on a Christmas project and needed a break...and she can always count on me if there's ice cream involved.  When we got to the Dairy Queen, I ordered my standard Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard and was getting ready to pay when my neighbor said, "Aren't you going to get something for Dan?"  It hadn't even crossed my mind...so yeah, not a very Good Wife moment.  I waffled back and forth--should I get him something?  He couldn't find his cell phone when I left the house, so I knew he wouldn't answer if I called, and I didn't want to call the house phone and risk waking the kids...so I didn't order him anything.  His regular order is an Oreo milkshake, but he hadn't said he wanted anything when I told him where I was going...so I didn't get him anything.  My neighbor ordered for her husband and herself.  I felt like a punk.  Dan was a little bummed that I didn't bring him a milkshake, but he was fine about it--it just made me feel bad.  Here I am, trying to put in the extra effort to be a Good Wife to him, and I didn't even think of him when it came to getting ice cream!  If he had done that to me, I would have been heartbroken (that sounds like an exaggeration, but sadly, it's not).  Granted, I love ice cream a lot more than he does, but the fact that I didn't even think about ordering something for him makes me an abject failure on the Good Wifery front for the day.  Must do better on Day 3!

When in doubt, order the milkshake!