Husbands. Friday April 23, 2010

We have now been without furniture for three and a half months. It arrived in Brazil three weeks ago and has been stuck in customs ever since. I had an email today from the shippers advising me that it should be released on May 5th, a Wednesday, so my thinking is that it will be delivered the following day on May 6th. We are currently renting the bare essentials so before we can take delivery of our containers, the rental furniture has to be moved out of the house, and then because I will have nothing in the house, I will have to check into a hotel.

I checked in my diary to see what is going on around that time and, surprise, surprise, Steve is out of town basically all week, so I get to do the packing up of the rental stuff and then the unloading and unpacking by myself – again.

Throughout our married life, Steve had developed a knack of being missing in action every time there are domestic things to be done. I suppose you can actually go back as far as when we first got engaged (Christmas 1986). He was in the Royal Navy at the time and having announced that we were going to get married on July 4th ( to coincide with leave) he then went away to sea, arriving home in time , well just in time for the for the wedding. His contribution to the proceedings was to be measured for a new uniform and I am relieved to say to then turn up on the actual day.

This has been a recurring theme in our married life. He has always managed to wangle a business trip or in those earlier days a sea going patrol, so as to avoid packing and unpacking houses. In nearly 23 years of married life we have moved 13 times, (actually if you add in the number of times we have moved from house to temporary accommodation of hotels and long stay apartments the number 13 actually rises to 25).

I would think that on at least two thirds of those occasions, he has managed to avoid either the packing, the unpacking and in some instances both. Of course his reaction to this predicament is to flatter me by saying that I am perfectly capable of doing it and that he would only get in the way. Absolutely true, but totally beside the point.

There is another example of him being missing when needed and that was when the children were very young and I was flying 17 hours from Manila to London and back again with them. I can honestly say that he never once flew with us until one or both of them were able to work the remote control for the in-flight entertainment, thereby basically looking after themselves. I remember once sitting in an airplane on the taxi way at Heathrow saying to the children “wave to daddy”, as the plane in front of us took off and went westbound as we took off and went eastbound.

On another occasion we went skiing in Whistler and Steve had to leave a day earlier than myself and the children so that he could attend some business meeting or another. Guess who got to clean the rental apartment, return all the ski equipment and then get the three of us to Vancouver and back to the United States.

I could go on as there are numerous other examples of my husband being missing in action. But I think you get the picture.

So, I wonder how much he has bribed the customs officials in Santos to delay clearance of our two 40 foot containers this time. Whatever it is, he owes me big time. Something large and sparkly methinks.