MODERN DAD | By Jon Show

July 12. A big part of being married is getting to the point where you begrudgingly learn to accept some of the things your spouse does around the house that make no sense.

After all, none of us are perfect. I leave things laying around everywhere. It takes me too long to complete relatively simple tasks I am assigned. I don’t make the bed.

Has my wife begrudgingly learned to accept those things? No. A big part of marriage is also double standards.

The Mother of Dragons has so many things in our home that make no sense to me. Zero sense. I used to ask questions like, “Why would you buy that or do that,” but she never found my line of questioning helpful.

What am I talking about? Let’s break some of them down.

Four on the floor

My wife collects floor cleaning devices like hoarders collect cats.

She has this very expensive vacuum named after some marine animal that just blows dirt around the floors. When I try to empty it, it explodes dust and debris all over the place.

She also has this little wand vacuum thing that I think is like a new-age Dustbuster? I have no idea what it’s supposed to do and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone use it.

There’s also a Bona floor cleaner mop thing that, again, just moves dirt around the house.

We used to have an actual vacuum but I have no idea where it went. It disappeared and whenever I inquire about its whereabouts – because I have to clean up the debris that the marine animal vacuum blew all over my office  – she feigns ignorance.

Finding comforter

When I was a kid we kept blankets around the house because we lived in a frigid environment in a drafty house that my parents kept at 65 degrees in the winter, so we always needed a blanket.

Our current house is kept at 72 degrees at all times and is sealed up tighter than Tupperware, yet I would estimate that at any given time we own 18 to 22 blankets that are all assigned to specific rooms.

I like to move them around to different places in the house and wait for her to walk into a room and yell, “Where did the blanket go?” Then she wanders around the house and minutes later announces to no one, “I found it, why is it in here?”

On the juice

We own one of those hinge press citrus juicers that squeezes every last drop of juice out of citrus. It’s amazing.

My wife refuses to use it, choosing instead to use this undersized porcelain juicer that I think she bought on some girls trip. She explained once but I wasn’t listening.

Her juicer requires 800 pounds of rotational pressure until your wrist cramps and yields approximately 50 percent of the juice. If you use it twice you have to scrape out all the seeds and pulp or the liquid won’t strain through the drain holes.

Green thumbs down

The Mother of Dragons is not exceedingly domestic. I don’t care, I’m just pointing it out to illustrate the following.

The last time she decided to redecorate the house, which occurs roughly every 35 months, she wanted to bring plant life into our home.

The problem is that she has no desire to tend to the plants, so she bought five pots and filled them with fake plants and then covered over with dirt to look like real plants.

She also bought one real plant.

It’s pretty ingenious, if I’m being honest, but I’m confused because she isn’t trying to fake people into thinking we have real plants.

I know this because she asks visitors if they can identify which of the plants is real and then she gets very excited when they all choose incorrectly.

Pillow talk

I need one bed pillow, maybe two if I’m living high on the hog.

Us? I just counted and we have 26 pillows in my house. 26. Do we live in a Turkish brothel? No, we do not.

We have so many pillows that the first thing I do when I sit down on any of our furniture is to move the pillows to make room for myself to sit down.

There’s a great scene in the movie Along Came Polly, when a newlywed couple arranges 48 pillows while making their new marital bed. The wife cheats on the husband during the honeymoon and he goes home alone.

The first thing he does when it gets home is take a knife to every pillow on the bed.

Three sheets to the wind

A few years ago The Mother of Dragons went on a work trip and informed me that our one set of sheets were in the dryer and asked me to make the bed.

I declined and told her I don’t make the bed and she called me a ridiculous person and left town and instructed me to make the bed.

Instead, I folded the comforter in half like a sleeping bag and slept inside of it for four days until she returned. She was not happy.

We now have like three or four sets of sheets at my house. I kind of understand why we have two because you can wash one and make the bed without having to worry about washing and drying them in one day.

But three or four?

Future Man was told to wash his sheets a couple months ago and expressed confusion because he didn’t have a second set to put on the bed while the other one was in the wash.

We’re failing at parenting.

How green is your garden

Every summer my wife plants an herb garden that will die roughly six weeks later.

There is no one, and I mean no one, who is more optimistic or excited that this summer will be the year she snips basil for tomato salads and mint for mojitos and watermelon salads until Labor Day.

Alas, the plants are always placed in the direct sun and (please see previous note about domesticity) remain under-watered, which means they die by midsummer.

In June she makes one mojito. On July Fourth she makes the watermelon mint salad. Not a single basil leaf is ever mixed with a morsel of food.

I’d offer her a suggestion but we’ve been married for 19 years so I’ve learned. It’s best to just begrudgingly accept some of the things she does that I don’t understand.

I’d love to break the rule on the herb garden, though. I have a great suggestion that I think solves the problem, but I vow I’ll never share it because I know it will met with derision.

She should buy fake basil and fake mint, put them in a pot and cover them over with dirt. I bet she could keep those plants as green as the Irish countryside until Labor Day.

Jon Show lives in Robbins Park with his wife, who he calls “The Mother of Dragons.” Their 15-year-old son is “Future Man” and their 11-year-old daughter is “The Blonde Bomber.” Their dog is actually named Lightning.