Bustin' chops

After telling this story to a friend of mine, she reminded me that Hubby has done this twice lately. I remembered that it had happened, but it took about an hour of musing to remember the details of that situation. And these are the good stories! Why is it that our brains are capable of remembering the details of when our husbands are morons, but completely forget the times that they completely redeemed themselves?!

So I write it here so maybe I'll remember for later. I'll even tag it "wonderful husband".

Yesterday, I balanced our checkbook. Yikes. We both knew we had spent quite a lot of money for various flood victims last week, but yikes. Each week, Hubby and I each get a certain amount of allowance money to spend however we want. There's also a recreation fund which is usually spent together, and a grocery fund which might include a fast food dollar menu dinner out. Restaurant food that is not consumed together falls into the category of our allowance.

In the previous 10 days, Hubby had spent nearly 8 times his standard allowance, mostly on food out. EIGHT TIMES! There had been a lot of late nights at work, and various club events hosted at local restaurants. One of the things I love about my husband is how frugal he is. Typically, if he ate out this often, there would be a series of $2.19 charges per meal. These were like $15-20 each!

So I call him up and bust his chops about it. He got all defensive and said we should take it out of a certain reserve fund that I didn't approve of. Twice during the conversation, he said something like, "oh yeah? Do YOU go by that rule?" Absolutely. I did the amazing thing and didn't really get angry. I even shocked myself in that. I knew I had logic and our standard money policy on my side. Duty called at our jobs and we had to get off the phone without a resolution. I probably called him some mean name after I hung up.

A couple hours later, after I'd vented to a friend or two, he calls me back. He says, "Did I REALLY spend that much?! List off the charges. Let's go through them." His voice is all calm, slightly guilty, and curious. We go through them to find that for one, he bought his co-worker's lunch and she paid him in cash, which he later donated somewhere. For another restaurant, he should have had two but not three charges. Dispute that one. (It has since vanished from the pending category.) So those two things help, but it's still a lot of money.

Then he says, "I'm out of groceries here at work and a bunch of those can be avoided if I restock my work fridge. Can I go to the grocery store today and do that?"

(Big grins) OF COURSE!

The only snag is that the one Kroger downtown may have gotten flooded. (Why do they keep building condos downtown, pushing a car-less society, while there is still just ONE downtown grocery store? There are people downtown who have to keep a car just so they can get groceries!)

Later, he had to run home for something anyway, and collected groceries from the house. He called me up to say what he'd taken, and we talked about what we should buy more of this weekend.

So this makes twice recently that I've busted his chops about something, managed to remain calm but insistent, and he's called me back later having come around to my view of things!

I'VE WON TWO ARGUMENTS PEOPLE! TWO!!!

And this one had to do with money that's always stickier. He not only saw my side of it, but has taken steps to correct it in the future.

Isn't my husband wonderful!

Today he even called me from the grocery store to say he was getting the weekly groceries and what else did we need! Fantastic!