With apologies to “War of the Roses”

MODERN DAD | By Jon Show

Aug. 11. The Mother of Dragons hates our wood floors. I don’t use the word hate in dramatic fashion to describe her opinion of them. She hates them.

She hates them like grumpy people hate kids on their lawn. She hates them like you hate the car in front of you turning left on Catawba.

What she hates most about them are the footprints that are always visible on them. She hates those footprints like you’d hate a person who ran over your dog and didn’t stop.

She hates our floors so much that most people are generally aware that she hates them. It’s like a core personality trait at this point.

The Great Flood

This year we had a leak in our kitchen faucet that was so small it went unnoticed for some amount of time, until one night when the faucet completely failed and flooded our kitchen island and floors.

The Mother of Dragons, who I should note picked out the floors when we built our house, was ecstatic. She was finally able to replace the flooring.

Within 48 hours she had called the insurance company, hired a general contractor and brought home floor samples and paint samples and pictures of coffee tables and countertop samples.

This was my first water damage experience so I was unaware that when your kitchen island and floors need to be replaced then you also need to repaint the entire downstairs, replace the cabinet hardware, curtains, living room furniture, kitchen sink, faucet and repaint the cabinets.

Fortunately for the sake of our marriage I don’t really have any opinions on the matter. It looked fine the way it was and I’m sure it’ll look great when it’s done. I’ve been told we can afford what we’re doing and outside of that I just don’t care

No Hair Don’t Care

Opinions are a funny thing. If you’ve ever gone through the process of building a house with your spouse then you know it can be challenging if you have opinions.

Twenty years ago we built a South End condo prior to marriage and I was heavily involved in the process. I offered opinions on countertops and lights and all kinds of things. When we furnished it I had an opinion on everything we bought.

Yes, there were disagreements. I’m sure I won at least a few of them but we ended up with a white couch so I know I lost that one.

Many years later we designed the home we currently live in. We spent two days going to a design center where we were given a choices on everything from the color of the house to the finish of the drawer pulls.

I don’t remember voicing many opinions except one about the toilet. One of them was super tall and when I sat down on it my feet dangled like a toddler so I requested the regular size toilet.

At some point the person helping us through the process noted my ambivalence and asked us how long we’d been married.

We answered nine years, to which she replied, “That makes sense. Newly married people have opinions. Somewhere around ten years the husband usually decides it’s not worth having an opinion on the house.”

Fast forward another nine years to this summer and my wife recently asked me about what shade of white I preferred for our new cabinets, and here was our exchange:

“I don’t know because I don’t like white cabinets.”

“What? Why?”

“They get dirty and you have to clean them.”

“But we’ve had white cabinets this entire time?”

“I know, and I gave the same response when you asked me what shade of white I wanted the last time. Also, I’m color blind.”

Floor It

On the current project I think I’ve only pushed my opinion on two matters.

My talented wife, whose talents do not include those in the kitchen, designed a new kitchen island that put the sheet pan cabinet in a hidden storage compartment on the other side of the island that would be obstructed by bar stools.

The location of the sheet pan cabinet was, by any measure of logic, insane, so she obliged and put it back where it was supposed to be, next to the oven.

There have been many other things that’s she run by me – perhaps out of caution that she’ll accidentally pull another move similar to the sheet pan cabinet, like move the oven outdoors or put the soap dispenser in a drawer.

Alas, there have been no such occurrences so I remain ambivalent.

I don’t care what the counter tops look like. I don’t care if the dangly lights are made of brushed metal. I don’t care about the color of the walls. I don’t care about the finish of the drawer pulls.

But the floors? Oh, I did have an opinion on the floors.

At the beginning of the project my wife, our contractor and the flooring crew all laid out samples in our kitchen and stood around and discussed things like color and texture and grain.

After a time they asked me what sample I liked best and I shrugged because they all looked the same (again, color blind).

So I took off my shoes and I took off my socks to a room full of confused faces and then slowly walked around the kitchen, standing for a time on each sample of wood flooring to assess the reflection of footprints.

Wanna guess which one we’re getting?

Jon Show lives in Robbins Park with his wife, who he calls “The Mother of Dragons.” Their 13-year-old son is “Future Man” and their 10-year-old daughter is “The Blonde Bomber.” Their dog actually is named Lightning.