A cautionary tale for my fellow brethren:

My wife and I have long believed that one of the secrets to a happy
marriage is to provide a cave for the knuckle-dragging male to retreat
to when life, spring cleaning, televisions, or simple conversation (as
opposed to grunts ) becomes too much for his rudimentary neural
wiring.

I have such a cave, my "office," in a converted garage, which contains
three computers, four desks, a small TV, a boombox, a small workshop,
and enough tobacco paraphernalia to supply the Iraqi Army.

Yesterday, happily esconced in my cave, listening to a baseball game,
reading ASP, and smoking a Fuente Double Chateau, I suddenly realized
something was seriously amiss. I mean really really wrong. BAD juju in
the cave. After slapping my reclining brow for a bit and rocking back
and forth shrieking, I realized the cause of the trouble. My lovely
LSW was in the cave! She had been there for like, whole minutes. And
she wasn't talking! She was--cleaning! Cleaning! CLEANING!!!!!!

She announced cheerily: Honey, this old place is getting a bit ripe,
and I thought I'd clean it up for you. I retreated to a corner,
clutching my stogie, and watched in horror as she started going
through my precious boxes of stuff, filling garbage bags, DUSTING,
EMPTYING THE TRASHCANS, TAKING OUT THE PIZZA BOXES. It was more than a
poor male like myself could handle.

Once she went for the fishing tackle, I knew I had to somehow induce
her to leave. I began to smoke furiously, and turned the TV to a
rodeo. No luck. I switched to Latakia and a hunting show. No luck. I
pulled out my ace in the hole, Balkan Sobranie, and started up White
Zombie on the boombox. She just kept cheerily CLEANING. Entire trash
bags full of perfectly good stuff kept disappearing from my room. She
CLEANED MY KEYBOARD. She STACKED MY AMMO. She even dusted my 1957
Marilyn Monroe pinup calendar.

This blitzkrieg went on for two hours. Eventually, I just huddled at
the keyboard, typed and smoked madly, and moaned. She never noticed.
She was happy. Very, very happy. Insidiously happy.

An hour after she left, I had recovered sufficiently to creep back
into the house proper (terra feminis). There was my beautiful LSW,
freshly bathed and changed, radiant, happy. She says to me, You know,
not just any woman would go in there and tackle that room. You owe me
big time. I think you should BUY ME DINNER.

And so went to dinner.

The End

P.S. Where is my stash of Red Man, and why does this room smell so
goddam WEIRD? And what happened to my special "mud sneakers"?

j.