Love and Marriage

Life With Smuffy (Episode 8):  “Smuffy Gets It Clean”

~ Midwest Storyteller

It’s time to take a peek into the Smuffy’s secret life.  By now, if you’ve kept up with every episode of “Life With Smuffy”, you probably think that he’s all daredevil and that this nature leaves little time for anything other than leaping across steep roofs, shooting the rapids and having heart-stopping encounters with motorized vehicles.

Oh, not so!  There is another side to Smuffy that makes life with him equally as interesting as all the more hair-raising things.  I can’t classify it as his dirty little secret, though. You see, Smuffy is clean.  He’s very clean.

The casual observer may assume that this characteristic wouldn’t cause much of a stir in everyday life. 

Don’t get me wrong – Smuffy is also dirty.  When he is dirty, he is very, very dirty and actually enjoys a good dose of grunge.  Once, on his birthday, we were unable to locate him to remind him that it was time to get ready to go out for the evening.  We finally found in the compost bin.  He hadn’t been able to think of a more enjoyable way of spending his birthday than cleaning it out and, having done so, to sit restfully inside in the ninety-degree heat with compost plastered to every inch of his sweaty body.  It seemed to him the ideal way to pass the time.

To go hunting and smear himself with disgusting stuff that only an amorous 30-point buck would love and then haul home carcasses and attack them with knives comes as natural to him as, well…bathing.  The bright side is that he does a great job of cleaning up the gore.  He should have started a business – “Smuff-Pro – Like it Never Even Happened”.

Then, bathe he does!  When Smuffy is finished being dirty, he is ready to be clean.  Proper soaps become an issue.  Subtle fragrance and texture variances can cause them to get banned from the home.  When they stopped making his favorite bar soap, our world came to a standstill and he still mutters its name with a tremor of nostalgia. 

After boot camp at living with this paradox, I realized I’d married a man who was a complete blending of Grizzly Adams and Felix Unger and each personality would have its high moments.

If Smuffy has a stint at taking over the kitchen, I can always tell.  I find counters sopping wet, towels dripping, the whole room is wet.  He has gotten all things clean – about 15 times.

I can hear you saying, “How fabulous to have a husband so helpful around the house!”  Well, not that I’m going to let you live with Smuffy because he’s mine – all mine – but you might do well to imagine what that really might be like on a moment-by-moment basis.

When we first married, it didn’t take long for me to start feeling much like Ingrid Bergman in “Gaslight”.  He’s not only clean – he’s tidy.  Should I lay a book aside to go to the kitchen for a cup of tea, when I returned I’d search madly for the book till I questioned my own sanity and Smuffy asked what was the matter.  “Oh,” he’d explain after hearing my frustration, “I thought you were finished with it so I put it back in the bookshelf.”  The same thing happened with too warm slippers I’d kicked off, a watch that chafed or a hair barrette that pinched.  Everything just vanished the minute I released it from my grasp.  I was compensated somewhat by the fact that he smelled terrific! 

I did my best to explain to Smuffy that laundry doesn’t get “done”.  Laundry is like dishes.  Dishes can be clean, counters shined and things put away and within seconds, someone arrives with a cup or spoon.  Laundry is always but one sock away from the new pile.  Yet, I felt guilty when Smuffy would start up the washing machine because he felt I’d fallen behind.

That is, until the day I discovered his secret.  I’d made a concerted effort one week to get all the laundry done so that when Smuffy was home and doing his basement projects over the weekend there wouldn’t be a single thing peeking out of a basket to torment his delicate sensibilities.  Of course, a sock or two, a towel and a couple of other things were tossed in by Saturday morning, but what was that in the course of life?

As Smuffy began his project day in the basement, I began to hear the usual sounds waft up the stairs.  He likes to enjoy several things at once, so it’s perfectly normal (normal?) to find him down there hacking up a deer, melting wax for homemade candles, mapping out his next woodworking project while listening to the oldies or watching cooking shows all at the same time. 

Suddenly, added to the symphony came the sound of the washing machine.  What on earth?  I went to the basement.

It’s important to stress that Smuffy had never been trained as a launderer.  His mama did all domestic duties for him.  He’d only entered forced servitude when Pookie came along and he needed to help out by doing things that kept me off the stairs.  Though I appreciated the help, the delicates often suffered and I preferred to wash certain things myself.

“What are you washing,” I asked.

“Oh, there was some laundry in one of those baskets over there.”

“But there couldn’t have been more than three or four things.  I got all caught up just so you wouldn’t have to bother with it.”

“Oh, I just thought since I was down here, I may just as well take care of it.”

I stood defeated for a moment, feeling as though all my efforts had backfired somehow and then came the revelation.  I turned my gaze from the empty baskets to the man at the workbench.

“You love it, don’t you?”

Smuffy looked perplexed and gave me a “Huh?”

“You love it!  You didn’t need to do any laundry and you knew it.  You missed it!  While you were working, you were craving the swish-swish of the washing machine and the soapy smell of clean clothes.  You’re doing laundry to enhance your experience!”

Then, I saw it.  The blushed cheek and the darting of the eyes told me that I had discovered the truth – Smuffy had an addiction.

Now, it may seem obvious that a person can be addicted to a lot worse things than laundry, but over time I discovered that Smuffy’s inability to keep his hands off soiled textiles led him down the road toward destruction.

Oh, the mangled bras!  Oh, the scorched elastics!  Oh, the irreversible bleach disasters!  I tried to make a deal with Smuffy.  If he must do laundry, could he please limit himself to his own work clothes so that Pookie and I could manage to have something that survived his efforts?  He’d agree to terms and then, as though they were some sort of irresistible delicacy, sneak those items in with his own and render them rags.  Each time, those puppy-dog brown eyes of his would look into mine and he’d profess to having been certain the item was his.  It was enough to make me wonder if he had more of a secret life that I thought!

Once he managed to get hold of a pair of Pookie’s jeans she’d bought as an older teen – one of those special pair that she’d saved up her own money to buy because they were “the thing”.  Convinced they were his own, he took things a step further this time.  After an especially tough morning at work one day, he came in for lunch grubby and tired.  As he entered the kitchen, I could tell he was disgruntled.

“Dirty job”, he muttered.  “I’m pooped.  And it didn’t help any that these jeans have shrunk or something.  They’re so tight I could barely move, let alone work.”

I glanced at his behind.  There he was, having washed and dried them, stuffed into Pookie’s “cool jeans”, convinced that anything in blue denim must be his.  They were ruined and, considering the structural design of gals’ jeans, I’m surprised parts of him weren’t.  No amount of TLC was going to restore those jeans to something worthy of the brand label he’d been sporting on his tushy all morning as he put them to the working man’s durability test – which they failed.

I told him he’d better buy her another pair and preached him my “Leave Our Clothing Alone” Sermon Number 843.

Pookie took the loss graciously.  He’d been trying to instill in her the need to clean up and tidy up since she was a mere tot.

Smuffy & Pookie are Clean www.midweststoryteller.com

Once when Pookie was three years old, we returned home after being gone for most of the day.  Smuffy scooped Pookie up under one arm and headed for the bathroom. Being exhausted, I headed straight for the sofa, stretched out and closed my eyes.  As I lay there, I could hear the water running and Smuffy’s monologue as he took advantage of this important teaching moment to give his little one a ten-minute sermonette on how they were washing their faces and hands and why they were washing their faces and hands.  Germs, he explained, were like bugs.  They were nasty, icky little bugs that make you sick.  You could have lots of them all over your hands and they were so tiny that you couldn’t see them, but they were still there.  However, they would take all the warm water and the soap and wash all the invisible bad bugs right down the sink.

Soon after, I heard the approach of little feet and became aware that a little person had arrived and waited next to my head to see if my eyes might pop open.  I tried to keep them closed in hopes that her dolls and toys might lure her into letting me rest a bit longer, but she lingered so patiently that I finally peeped one eye open to find her big blue eyes eager and concerned.

“Did you hear what Daddy said?” she asked, as if there’d been headline news.

Interested to hear her three-year-old version of it, I played along.  “No, what did he say?”

Stamping her little foot, she narrowed her eyes and pinched her lips together.

“Oh!  I wish you did!” came the disappointed whine.  “I didn’t understand a word he said!”

All my weariness of the day washed away with my laughter over the fact that Smuffy’s germ lesson, though well-meaning and thorough, had gone right over her head and quite possibly, down the drain.

One of Smuffy’s finer moments occurred when I was out of town and I still feel a bit cheated that I missed seeing it in person.  This being the first time I’d left Smuffy and Pookie to themselves for more than just overnight, I called every evening to check in.  To my surprise, Pookie answered.  At age six, she was not allowed to take calls yet.  The fact that she answered told me immediately that something might not be quite right.  Where on earth was Smuffy?

“Hello?”

“Hello!  And how are you today?”

“Just fine.”

I strained to hear any background noise.  Things seemed overly quiet somehow.

“Did you have a nice day today?”

“Yes.”

“Did you miss me?”

“Yes.”

“I missed you, too.  Is Daddy there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, can I talk to him.”

“I’ll ask him.  He’s sweeping all the bubbles out the back door.”

“Bubbles?  You have bubbles?”

“We have lots of bubbles.  Daddy’s got the broom.”

Smuffy made it to the phone.  I asked him how he happened to be sweeping bubbles out the back door.

Always having lived by the motto that “more is better” when it comes to soap, he had decided that what our dishwasher needed was a thorough cleaning.  So while it was empty, he’d given it a good dose of liquid dish soap and turned it on.  The entire kitchen had filled with bubbles. He’d been doing his best to get them all out onto the deck where they could ooze through the rails and down the stairs.

The bright side is that this is probably the cleanest our kitchen’s ever been.

Oh, how I wish I’d been there!  I’d have felt just like Doris Day in “The Thrill of it All” (1963).  Her hubby (James Garner) got things clean, too.

Things are not so spit ‘n polished around here these days due to endless remodeling and toddler-keeping, but that, they tell me, won’t last forever.  When the first is complete it will be a huge relief, but the latter will, I’m sure, make me a little sad.

It’ll be interesting to watch little Snookie take cleaning lessons from his Paw-Paw.  This time, I’m recording.

My Life With Smuffy is always exciting.  Read about our Smokin’ Hot Honeymoon.  You’ll find, in Smuffy Takes the Cure that I did try intervention.  Try his river adventures here and here for the white-knuckle type of adventure.  Even on dry land, he tends to get himself into situations, so check that out here.

Are you living with a “cleany”?  Oh, please do share in the comments!

Exciting News! I’m Hot Off the Press!

~ Midwest Storyteller ~ 2 Comments

Just a quick note today to announce that once again, one of my stories has been accepted for publication in the Columbia Chapter of the Missouri Writers’ Guild’s annual collection of poetry and prose! “Well Versed 2020” makes it’s debut this Saturday, June 13th! My story, “The Eyes of Love” is among the entries chosen for this year’s book.

I was honored to be chosen for publication in this anthology last year (Well Versed 2019) with a story called, “The Brown Wedding Dress” a true-life depiction giving but a snippet of the great love story of my Aunt Martha and Uncle George who were married over eighty years and shared a life and love that I was privileged to witness and record.

I share more of their story this year with “The Eyes of Love” which tells of a horrifying incident that occurred shortly after they married and which, though it brought them shock, pain and responsibilities that any of us would shrink from, drew them into a greater knowledge of love’s sacrifices and brought healing to Martha’s soul.

My apologies for being so late with this announcement. It seems there’s something about keeping a five-month-old while in the midst of this kitchen remodel that keeps me from getting things done quite the way I’d like.

Further apologies for having to announce that if you’d like a copy, you will have to email me at barb@midweststoryteller.com no later than Friday, June 12. (I told you I was behind on things!) They are $11 and if you need me to ship it to you, they will be $14 if you’d like to get one directly from me. You may also respond to my Facebook announcement in the comments. They will be available on Amazon at a later date.

Mine is one of the many contributions to this anthology and I offer my congratulations to all the other contributors!

If you’d like to have get to know Martha and her family members, glimpses into their lives are found along with other family stories can be found right here on my “Laugh” page.

“Life with Smuffy (Episode 6): “Project Pinky” (or, “The Concrete is in Your Head!”)

~ Midwest Storyteller ~ 4 Comments

As the years go by, I find that events are often recalled in association with something Smuffy has done.  In mid-conversation, one of us is bound to insert, “Wasn’t that around the time that he…?”  As we near the close of August, my mind returns to the events of August 29, 2015 and, I imagine, they always will.

It was a leisurely Sunday afternoon – for some of us.  Pookie had asked if she could come by and have my assistance with an artsy little project that took four hands – well, maybe six, but we had four.  I was happy to oblige.  She wanted to put a fun, fabric cover on a new planner and, like her mother, she aims to be chic at all times.  Why sit at your desk and look at leatherette when a bright and modern print is just a can of spray adhesive and a pair of pinking shears away?  Being the end of August, it reminded me of the good ole’ days when we would prepare for a new year of homeschooling by caressing our shiny new books and covering our binders and folders – a pleasant way to stave off the inevitable fact that anything, even if it’s interesting, takes on a certain dullness when the day-to-day routine really gains a foothold.

I had worked really hard the day before at deep-cleaning the carpets and had claimed this day as my own for rest and rejuvenation.  A craft project, followed by a mug (or two) of my fabulous Not Apologizin’ Hot Chocolate, sounded pretty much ideal.  (The recipe, by the way, can be found here.)

Smuffy, that love of my life, didn’t have it so easy.  One of his summer goals had been to pour a concrete pad under our porch steps, an area that had been nothing more than dirt ever since we’ve lived in this house.  That would’ve made this project overdue by…hmm…let me see…do I need a calculator? …oh yes, that’s right, thirty-six years.  Not that he’s a procrastinator – I’m always swift to admit that Smuffy fixes everything almost before it’s broken – but that in itself, my Dear Readers, is a story for another day.  Feel free to request in the comments, as a reminder to me, to tell the tale of how my furniture was nearly bolted to the walls.

Smuffy prepared the area and built forms in the evenings after work and on Saturday he poured the first part of the L-shaped pad.  Everything went smooth as silk, but the bigger portion remained undone.  He’s learned over the years that Sunday as a day of rest is a glorious and life-restoring gift.  Sometimes, however, a job requires more attention that he can give it in the hours he has after work, so there he was, on this fine afternoon, outside mixing concrete.

Our peaceful measuring and cutting was soon interrupted by the sound of feet rushing up the basement steps, through the hall and into the bathroom.  Nothing unusual – after all, sometimes you’ve really gotta go!  It was the YELP! that followed that pricked my ears.  Smuffy doesn’t yelp.  He always professes, no matter what the injury, that nothing hurts.  A mild stomach flu and he’s practically lost his will to live, but injuries never seem to faze him much.  He’s actually commented in the past that he could probably handle being an amputee with greater grace than if he were afflicted with ongoing nausea.  Hold that thought.

I stepped into the hallway to have a look.  There he was with his hands in the sink.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Get me some paper towels.”

“But what happened?”

“I need paper towels!”

I ran for the towels.

“What happened?” asked Pookie as I flew past.

“He wants paper towels.”

“What did he do?”

“I don’t know.”

Then came the stand-off.  I had to know and he had to, for whatever reason guys do so, act like it was no big deal.  After a good deal of snappy dialogue we arrived at –

“Is it bad?”

“Pretty bad.”

“Do we need to go to the ER?”

Round two of snappy dialogue occurred as I followed him down the basement steps.  Where is this man going?  He’s messing with concrete and blood is going everywhere.  I tell him to drop everything and let’s go to urgent care or the ER.

“The very least you need is probably stitches.  How bad do you think it is?”

“Do you want to see it?”

Florence Nightingale I am not, but at least I have a nurturing gene that enables me to take care of my own.  As soon as he began moving the wrapping away, my arms and legs physically ached and did their best to curl up and drop me to the floor.  I took my obligatory look.  My gaze didn’t linger long.  Logic tells me that if it is something beyond my range of skill, the person’s life is not in immediate danger, and skilled personnel are nearby, there is no point in looking!  The idea here is to tell what happened, not to give you nightmares, but if Stephen King ever runs out of ideas, I suppose he could write a book about a crazed lunatic who attacks people with a potato peeler.  You know that pointy thing on the end that really enables you to get those eyes out of that potato?  Well, inserting the potato into the gears of a concrete mixer would have a similar result, I suppose.  The end of the pinky finger was – never mind!  I promised not to give you nightmares!

“You have to go to the ER!”

“I have to finish this concrete.”

“You CAN’T finish this concrete!”

“Do you want this big, wet pile of concrete to dry like this and have to stare at it the rest of your life?”

“Ughhhhh!”

“Help me wrap it up and we’ll go as soon as I finish.”

“When will that be?”

“I don’t know.  When I’m finished!  We’re wasting time!”

With lots of gauze and tape and a latex glove stretched over the whole thing, he went out to pour the rest of the concrete while Pookie and I stared at one another, wondering how to stop the madness.  She was filled with frustration at knowing that her husband would run to our aid if she called him, but he was too far away to get there in time to do any good.  She busied herself by running in and out and holding one end of Smuffy’s leveling board when necessary.  I busied myself with glancing out the window and muttering under my breath, “Jesus, You know my wonderful man and You know when he’s being a dope!  You’re going to have to take care of this one.”  I made calls to the local hospital and two urgent cares to check on how our new insurance worked with this type of thing.  You don’t really get good answers to those questions on weekends.

Time marched on and we thought the man would never come in the house.  Each time we questioned him we got the same answer, “When I’m done!”  After a while, there was really nothing else to do but go about our business and wait it out.

Finally, I looked at Pookie, exclaiming, “I feel ridiculous!  I’m going to be telling people, ‘Smuffy mangled his hand in the concrete mixer!’ and then they’re going to say, ‘Oh my!  Then what happened?’ and I’m going to say, ‘Oh, we finished up a craft project and made hot chocolate!’  This is CRAZY!”

At one point we actually lost him.  Pookie couldn’t find him out by the concrete job and I couldn’t find him in the basement.  We found him, at last, in the back yard sitting in the swing – just chillin’.  That was when I should have gone back in the house and started calling mental hospitals.

Two hours after the accident, we pulled out of the driveway, but not before Smuffy had a concrete pad that looked perfect, had taken a bath and changed clothes, eaten some supper and rewrapped the gruesome digit, all the while saying he felt fine and that it didn’t hurt a bit.

This is when we had our third round of snappy dialogue, which concluded with me saying, “No, you will NOT drive, you BONEHEAD!  I’m driving!  GET IN THE CAR!”

Pinky Emergency www.midweststoryteller.com

We pulled into urgent care first, which was a waste of time, as that doctor took one look, informed us that the finger was 7/8 amputated and we needed a hand surgeon.  We sped on over to the hospital and were very pleased with the experienced surgeon who brought his operating kit to the ER and, perching his glasses with their attached microscopes atop his nose, did a two-hour delicate surgery, reattaching Smuffy’s finger and each of the tiny nerves and sinews inside.  His experience and expertise led him to estimate that the precise location of the injury would miraculously enable the regrowth of the nail, which I would have said was impossible.  I had to admit that when I saw it after the surgery was complete, I thought it looked very good in comparison to the mangled mess I’d seen six hours earlier. 

Smuffy, of course, assisted with surgery any way he could and chatted away with the doctor the whole time about hobbies, vocations and grotesque injuries that belonged in the category of “Truth is Stranger than Fiction.”  I stayed in the room, sitting by my man with my chair strategically positioned to avoid the slightest glimpse of the action.

Despite his brave front, when it was all over I thought he looked as though he’d lost a bit of his polish.

Smuffy Survives www.midweststoryteller.com

Smuffy went back to work the next day, and it’s not a desk job.  “Yes, Lord, he’s being a dope again, and You’re going to have to take care of my sweetie.”  He took no pain killers, either prescription or over-the-counter, aside from what the doctor administered in order to perform surgery, because he said it didn’t hurt.

I followed up the whole incident by doing a Google search on “people who have their pain receptors turned off”.  Sometimes there’s no escaping it – you just have to shake your head at Smuffy and admit that something is wonky here.

Smuffy is endowed with swift and thorough healing and if you’ve been keeping up with my “Life With Smuffy” here on the blog, you know how much he needs it! 

Just last week, he carried a couple of water heaters down full flights of stairs by himself because, you know, somebody had to do it and just to refresh himself, came home with a new motor scooter. Ever since, I’ve heard him muttering about how all it needs is a little more power – as if all I needed were bigger hills to stand upon in order to phone an ambulance!

I think of Smuffy sometimes when Pookie and I sit down for our favorite movie, “The Sound of Music” and watch Maria and Captain von Trapp gaze into each other’s eyes and muse that somewhere in their youths or childhoods, they must have done something good – for, somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have asked for a dynamic prayer life and by doing so, had it enhanced when I received the Gift of Smuffy.

Real adventure lovers will love joining Smuffy for life on the river here and here.  You go all the way back to the beginning of my Life With Smuffy with our Smokin’ Hot Honeymoon.  Just for laughs, find out how Smuffy Takes the Cure.  He also restores classic cars and will teach you how A Studebaker in the Hand is NOT Worth Two in the Bush.

Comments?  I’d love to hear from you.  Just scroll back up and click on “Leave a Comment” under the title of this post.  On a mobile device, this may appear all the way to the bottom of the post.