I Do All The Maintenance Around My House, So Stop Asking For My Husband

Neither I nor my husband are particularly handy around the house; as far as gender roles go we both clean and then if something needs to be fixed we would always rather just call someone because both of us are tiny and neither of us owns a ladder. We are simply not equipped to do stuff like clean out gutters and stuff.

But when there is something that would just be too ridiculous to call someone out for, whether it’s switching out faucets or hanging crap up or taking crap down or unfreezing the pipes with a hairdryer in one hand and a piece of cold pizza in the other because I couldn’t cook anything due to frozen pipes, that’s me.

I look up little maintenance stuff on YouTube and bang on stuff with hammers until they work and in return my husband vacuums just the way I like, folds towels the correct way (halves and THEN thirds, don’t even try and argue) and generally all is well in Chez Edwards.

But when I do call someone, which happens from time to time, I have a universal experience that I don’t understand. Mr. Handyman/Electrician/Judgy Dead Rat Removal Guy comes to the door and the first words out of his mouth are always, “Hey, is your husband home?”

For the record, no. No, my husband is not home. He works out of the house, I work from the house, and I called you because I’m just sitting here with all of these piles of cash and unlimited free time to argue with you about why you should have to talk to Tits Edwards instead of Dick Edwards. Just fish the damn rat out from under the water heater and begone.

Just recently, we’ve been having internet issues. It’s not like there’s anything shocking about that, but lately it’s sucked extra hard because without internet I can’t find funny gifs to put on my taco posts. So I’ve been going back and forth with the cable company to get our router replaced, which is difficult because it always starts working again as soon as the cable technician rings the doorbell. I was talking to them on Twitter to schedule a time when the CSR guy stopped me mid tweet to tell me that he had found my husband on Twitter and was now speaking to HIM, so really there was no need to get into a tizzy or worry my pretty little head about it at all.

My husband was pissed too because he was then expected to answer questions that he had no idea about (Is the router blinking? I don’t know, let me just drive home and check really quick. My wife has lady-eyes and everything just looks like spiders or tampons to her) all because apparently the only way to reset your router is with your penis. That’s science.

I had to know if other “little ladies” were experiencing this
. Surely I wasn’t the only one sitting nervously in my apron and heels, wringing my hands and calling my husband fretfully to report that there was a man here, speaking manwords, could he come home and help me?

Apparently not. This happens to a lot of my friends, and it’s annoying for everyone, especially the ones that don’t stay or work at home but go back home to meet the repairman only to be asked if the penis of the house is home. I’ve also been told this is another one of those “genteel” southern things like saying “have a blessed day” or calling Asian people “orientals”.

Fortunately, I’ve never had anyone flat out refuse to deal with me except once because I have the kind of disgusted barracuda stare that only comes with years of persistent, practiced grimacing.

(Image: Everett Collection/Shutterstock)