"I Love Being Married..."

...says Rita Rudner. "It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life."

How true is that?! A while back, a certain lady in Canada asked her readers to blog about what makes them just a little hard to love. I obliged, and now I want to turn the tables.

"My husband and I have never considered divorce. Murder, maybe...but never divorce." - Joyce Brothers

1. He couldn't hit a clothes basket or hamper with his dirty clothes if he were standing inside the basket. He'll get undressed in one spot - never moving his feet except to kick off pants and socks - and leave his clothes in perfect formation around where his feet were. Every night, I pick up a pile of pants and two balled-up socks (balled up, of course, because he toed them off).

2. He chews tobacco. Okay, I guess in Tobaccoese, he actually dips snuff but that sounds like he's doing some sort of illicit drug. He used to chew Copenhagen and now, due to the extreme price of tobacco in California, he chews Grizzly Wintergreen. You can't imagine the stink of that stuff. And the spitters!!!! You haven't lived until your husband has run out of spitters and begins using empty Diet Coke cans - which YOU get to empty before you recycle them. Want to get even more squeamish? Have a spitter spill on you.

3. He will not shut up about motorcycle clubs. The 801, the Mongols, the Hell's Angels...the Red & White is his club of choice. He's bent on being associated with them in some form, if not becoming a member. He reads up on them, especially about Sonny Barger, and jabbers like a monkey in a damn tree about them. Now don't get your panties in a twist and be all "Oooh, bikers are bad. Motorcycle gangs are bad. Your husband's a bad man." Huh-uh. We've established that should this ever materialize for him - and if I'm being honest, I doubt it ever will - that it will not have any impact on who he is at home or affect his relationship with me and the kids. He knows how much I'm willing to tolerate and where his loyalty needs to lie. If there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's to be nobody's doormat and to BE the squeaky wheel...and to accept nothing less than what I deserve.

4. He is forever HOT. While I do find my husband very attractive, I literally mean his internal thermostat must be broken. It's 60F outside, all of our windows are open, the ceiling fan is running at full tilt, he's wearing cotton shorts and a Hanes undershirt...and sweating. I'm wearing cotton shorts, a regular t-shirt, a wool blanket, and a hoodie and I'm cold. Obviously, he's in the wrong here. He can't possibly be hot. Right?

5. As a result of #4, he refuses to sleep upstairs in our loft bedroom until it's c-o-l-d outside. I think he's waiting for a frost or something. We've spent maybe a total of 30 nights in our bed. Otherwise, we're sleeping on our obscenely big and massively uncomfortable sectional. Oh, and our son is all cramped up in his pack 'n play which, at this age, is more of a jail cell while mommy cooks or runs to the bathroom than it is a suitable bed. I wish I could stuff a portable crib mattress in there so he could be a bit more comfortable but those damn warning labels are everywhere, all about the suffocation risks and whatnot, making me nine kinds of paranoid. He's 11 months old and it's mesh-sided. How much suffocation could happen? But as we know, I'm a stickler for the rules.

6. He has an almost obscene loyalty to the company he works for. He's been there for just over five years and honestly, they probably should have fired him by now. Not for anything really bad. He's never lied, stolen, sabotaged, nothing like that. But he's accidentally broken a few very expensive parts and botched a few very important jobs that, if his boss had a bug up his ass and took a notion, could have been cause for termination. Anyway, he keeps talking about finding a new job but when one's offered, he finds 100 different reasons he shouldn't take it.

7. He won't listen to anything but country and classic rock music. I'm trying to branch out into the world of rock again, at least the more adult stuff, as well as people like Michael Buble, Josh Groban, etc. But every time he gets in the car and I drove it last, he gets all butt-hurt because a station that isn't country is on.

8. He makes me call the nurse advice line for him. He has back pain, spots in his vision, a cough, and I'm the one calling them. He knows damn well they won't offer any advice to me, that they need to talk to him because of confidentiality and all that, but he still insists that I call. I also need to go to doctors' appointments with him because he starts stuttering when he has to describe symptoms.

9. His infuriating incredible ability to tune everything except the TV out. I'm telling him something life-altering and he's off somewhere in the twilight zone, watching "Sons of Anarchy" or one of his MSNBC specials on motorcycle clubs and infiltrations by the FBI that he's DVRd. He won't hear a word.

10. The above-mentioned television shows. He's hooked on SoA and has watched those two news specials at least a dozen times each. He's such a nerd about being a biker! It's cute, really, but more annoying. We have books written by bikers (including three by Sonny Barger), a subscription to Easyrider, movies, and a friend at work who's treasurer of a club in San Jose. The man needs a new hobby. I almost miss his obsession with golfing. Almost.

So tell me about your partner in crime. What do they do that gets under your skin? Hook up with Mr. Linky and let me know!