Men-ingitis

Here's a riddle: What's worse than a sick man?
A: A sick man you are married to.

What's worse than a sick man you are married to?
A: ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NOTHING!!!

(By the way, my lubbly hubband who has da cowd said id wad OK for me to wride dis)

Why is it that men who are perfectly unfazed when they take a large divot of flesh out of their leg when using a garage-sale-find weedwacker that has been souped up for maximum efficiency with a rusty piece of coat hanger (true story in my house) are completely unable to function when they sneeze more than three times in a day? They will willingly play idiotic, harmful and certain-to-end-in-someone's-scrotum-being-the-focal-point-of-the-ER-visit sports like rugby (aka "drunk men trying to kill each other" -- in cleats!) , yet are reduced to whining, simpering, snot-leaking sacks of patheticness when they get a cold.

Dan harps on me for giving Molly children's Tylenol (he seriously thinks this could lead to an addiction problem. Of what??? Red liquids?? Like she'll rob a 7-11 someday because she has a primal need for an extra-watery Slushee because I gave her too many red suspended liquids as a child??!) anyway...dammit...hold on...(looking under my desk)...oh, OK, there's my point.

The kid is cutting fangs that are six thousand times worse than any puppy teeth I've even been gnawed by, which, Oh, I don't know, probably HURTS. We don't want to overmedicate. Unless daddy is sick.

He'll first walk around the house morosely opening and closing cabinet and refrigerator doors, sighing heavily, in that "pleeeeeeeease ask me what's wrong" tone, shoulders slumped.

When I don't pay attention (usually because I am watching "The West Wing" or "Lost" or something that seriously requires thought) he'll ask in a veryverysad little voice "wherrrrrre is the tylenol?"

"Why, do you have a headache?" I'll ask.

"My (fill in the blank, anything that is not actually his head) hurts/is clogged/is itchy."

"Well then you don't need Tylenol. You need allergy medicine."

"Ok. Wherrrrre is the allergy medicine?"

"Probably in the medicine cabinet. What an immensely silly name for such a holding device."

He'll go upstairs and I can hear him banging around in both bathrooms and usually the computer room as well. He'll come down five minutes later and collapse into a chair.

"Did you find it?"

"No. I found some cough medicine and some advil and some benadryl."

"So what did you take?"

"All of it."

Dan's idea of dosage for cough medicine is this: put bottle to lips, chug, count to some arbitrary number, like 17, and stop. He has no idea a) why we run out of cough medicine after a day and a half of illness and b) why he falls asleep for 20 hours at a time. Whatever the dosage is for anything, it clearly wasn't intended for such a unique physical specimen and I'm sure no doctors or technicians tested the doses on, like, full grown adults. So he doubles, or triples, the dose, and more often or not makes some kind of tossed salad type creation with whatever drugs he can find and washes them all down with a beer.

Right now he is suffering from allergies, although he of COURSE won't go to a doctor, or take medication that, you know, is intended to address ALLERGIES. He is also seemingly incapable of understanding what facial tissue was invented for, and instead opts to blow his nose IN THE SINK, WITH HIS HANDS. It is one of those sounds, like nails on a chalkboard or "Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States, George W. Bush" that make me want to rip whatever-colored hair I am sporting this week out of my head.

I am hoping to God that he feels better soon -- not because of a great concern for his welfare, but becaus I already have one child to take care of who at least can't fight me when I wipe her snotty nose with a Kleenex. Although...how does Dan know what I do to his snotty nose when he's passed out in a chair looped out of his mind on a Robitussin high??? Hmmm....

**Editor's note -- I am the ruling party/matriarch/CEO of Medicationland myself, so I realize I have no room to talk when it comes to pill popping, sleeping for ungodly amounts of time while the other spouse is left to tend to explosive diapers and a newfound affection for finger painting with one's food, whining, craving illness sympathy or a myriad of other things that I rip on my husband for. It's just funnier when it involves a man. Nyah.