The Pyrex dish mystery.

I don’t know about yours, but my husband is not perfect. He has a few incredibly irritating habits.

A friend told me about a British Persian (I think?) comedian who had a joke about her husband annoying her. You see, she said, it is his breathing. It is constant. In and out. In and out. We laughed at that joke because, after 11 years of marriage, some annoying habits do tend to...well, annoy.

One of the most annoying habits my husband has is his total inability to look for things. I can sort of understand his frustration, as I, myself, get really annoyed when something I am looking for hides from me- on purpose, simply to drive me insane. So yes, I get frustrated, but I don’t tend to blame other people for it.

Today, husband was preparing macaroni cheese for our older child in the kitchen, whistling to the radio. Suddenly, the whistling stopped and in a few seconds, I jumped from the noise of kitchen dishes being shoved about in a deliberately noisy fashion.

Husband was searching for a specific Pyrex dish. Of course, as soon as he realized it was missing from where it normally lives, he blamed Someone for misplacing it.  Someone must have broken it, husband suggested. Someone is usually my mother, and if she is not around- me, of course. Since I have not cooked a thing in the past few months, I was obviously not guilty. ‘I did not touch it!’ my mother claimed. 

Husband did not feel we appreciated the importance of the dish enough.  Without it, my poor starving child was not getting her macaroni cheese. The dish was the only one of the right size. It was his parents’ wedding present. They kindly ( and very generously) passed it on to us. It lasted an awfully long time, and now, it was gone. Gone! And the child was going to be very hungry and very sad. And we clearly did something to it, and now were covering up the crime.

I think, he told me, I remember you taking something to your friend Z the other day in it. I did not, of course, take any food to any friends. Husband was making it up. 

As we stood there, opening the cupboards one after another and looking in every possible corner of the kitchen, my mother quietly walked into the garden. It is here!!! We suddenly heard her call out. 

The Pyrex dish, still dirty from the BBQ we had a few weeks ago, was hiding inside Husband’s baby- the smoke-n-pit BBQ set. Since it was his BBQ, which Someone never cooks in, it became instantly apparent to all the involved parties who had, in fact, misplaced the f*****ing Pyrex dish. 

'I told you', I said, smiling lovingly, 'that it was you who used it last, and therefore you who had misplaced it.'

'No', husband said happily, 'you guys must have hidden it there! Very clever!'

Have you heard, I asked him, that the domestic violence from women towards men has increased dramatically in the UK in the past year?

I wonder why.