Columns
When âGreenâ Becomes âGrossâ & Her Beau Is A Bit Too Mysterious
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
DEAR CAT: In an effort to be environmentally conscientious my husband and I made changes to our daily lifestyle. Itâs been easy except in one area â my husband now only flushes the toilet âevery other timeâ at most. I told him one week into it, âturning off a light when you leave the room is different than letting dirty water sit and smell up a bathroom.â He disagrees and says Iâm being too rigid, and he canât be convinced. I told him, âno way, no how are you letting number two sit around.â He nodded just to appease me but I donât trust him on the days when heâs home and Iâm at the office. Now I dread coming home from a long day, going in to my bathroom to freshen up and finding a âlogâ in the toilet! Short of setting up video monitoring without him knowing, Iâm out of ideas. Your call? â MAYBE IâM NOT GREEN ENOUGH?
DEAR GREEN: As I put together this weekâs column I almost forget to offer advice on this question because I was laughing too hard. So here it is: if your husband wants to leave excrement sitting around the house, he should do his business in a litter box in the basement. If you donât have a basement, get a litter box anyway, put it wherever youâd put a litter box if you had/have a cat, and let him use it and scoop up after himself. Then youâll have the bathroom all to yourself! Or you can just insist that feces floating in water is unhygienic, odorous, filthy and you wonât live in a place where that is the common practice. Catâs Call: I doubt your husband would trade you for a number two.
DEAR CAT: Here are the facts: Man and woman in long distance relationship for five months, after man pined for woman for almost five years. Finally, woman concedes. They have both declared love. Man buys woman nice gifts, gives loving handwritten cards, tells her loving things, etc. Woman thinks man is perfect. Woman has visited man four times, two of which were week-long, the others for three or four days. Itâs time for man to visit woman for the holidays and meet her family. Man has no family of his own, parents deceased. Man planned trip so that he would leave before Christmas (visit from the 17th – 23rd), then he cannot come at all because of work meetings during the week leading up to Christmas (last meeting on 22nd). Woman suggests he take flight after his meeting on 22nd and spend holiday with her but âfor some reasonâ he wants to spend holiday in his state. He does not give woman a reason, and she does not ask. Should woman be concerned? â SOUND FISHY TO YOU?
DEAR FISHY: Your question came in Dec. 20th, 2011 which means even if there were no questions ahead of yours, it was already too late to answer by Christmas/New Years. That said, now that youâre officially in a relationship – after years of pining – there shouldnât be anything fishy going on. If he has to cancel a visit, you should know the reason why. If he has to schedule a visit within a certain timeframe, you should know why. Long-distance is no excuse for being in a âsort ofâ relationship. If you lived in the same city you would most likely be together every day and his schedule wouldnât have mysterious holes in it. At this stage of the game there shouldnât be any mystery regarding your availability to each other. So thatâs the long version. The short version is…Catâs Call: Yes, it sounds fishy to me.
What’s YOUR call? Share it below! Submit questions to: questions@catscall.com or click here!.
@FISHY,
If it swims like a fish and smells like a fish. It is a fish.
I am thinking he got “cold feet” and didn’t want to meet and spend time with your family.
Whether that was it or not, he still should provide an answer as to why he wanted to spend his holiday without you, but alone in his home state.
— LeBron from Pittsburgh 01/31/2012 Reply
In Las Vegas water conservation is not an option, it is a way of life. While visiting friends there I was told “If it’s yellow, let it mellow – If it’s brown, flush it down” Perhaps that can be a compromise for an environmentally responsible house.
— Green Enough - Pittsburgh, PA 01/31/2012 Reply
Green Enough- my thought’s exactly. From the letter it’s hard to tell if her husband is actually failing to flush all the time or if the “dirty water” she complains about is just from #1 and she fears he’ll stop flushing the rest of time. If he is following the “yellow mellow” rule, I think she should cut him a break and be glad she has a husband who is responsible enough to think about his environmental impact.
— Maria 02/01/2012 Reply
@GREEN,
Sorry to say, but your husband behavior is weird and he may possibly have a really creepy and sick fetish. Has he ever asked you to partake in a golden shower?
Letting the “yellow” mellow, I’ve heard of and can understand when it comes to going “green” in order to keep one from feeling “blue,” but seriously, I never ever heard of a person wanting to leave his or her crap in a toilet, environmentally friendly or not.
Has he ever brought up the term cuckhold to you? ;)
— LeBron from Pittsburgh 01/31/2012 Reply
Dear Green:
Green is good. Brown is bad. As a child I would occasionally spend weekends with some country folks. There were seven kids who shared one bathroom. The rule was that only the parents could flush in order to conserve water. There were maybe one or two flushes per day total among seven kids. It was disgusting and I still get nauseous thinking about it all these years later.
Tell the dude to flush before you have the same long-lasting nauseous memories that I have.
Good luck.
— Craig in Pittsburgh 01/31/2012 Reply
Leave it to LeBron to find a cuckhold and fetish in there! LOL! I guess it’s ok to leave #1, honestly I don’t think I could do that though. Sometimes a drop splashes up but I man wouldn’t notice that like a woman would. #2 should never sit around. My goodness that’s gross!
Question 2: It sounds fishy but Beau probably wasn’t ready to meet your family and didn’t know how to tell you about it. Work is the oldest excuse in the book. You should lay down the law now so it doesn’t happen again. Cat is right that there should be no holes in his routine that you don’t know about unless he disappears for an afternoon to buy you an engagement ring!
— Sammy, Pgh 01/31/2012 Reply
Fishy,
Maybe he didn’t want to travel over the holiday due to the increase in hassle at the airport.
I would suggest if he didn’t come visit over the holiday, ask him to plan another visit to your area soon so he could meet your family. I don’t think I would go to him for the fifth time unless he came to me first. It takes both people to make sacrfices in travel to make long distance relationships work and you are making it too convenient for him.
I am wondering since this has already happened if you would share with us the results of the holiday: did he visit or not?
— SW-Pittsburgh 01/31/2012 Reply
I think I need to clarify the fact that I am NOT the woman in this long-distance relationship. It is a very close friend of mine.
Her man did not come to visit her for the holiday. He told her he stayed with a guy friend of his and the guy’s family. Huh?
After the 1st of the year, she told me he was planning on coming sometime in February. Ahh, I thought, he’ll come for Valentine’s Day. Yes, indeed, he’s scheduled to visit . . . he arrives late evening on February 15! Again, missing the special occasion day. What gives?
— SOUND FISHY, Pittsburgh 01/31/2012 Reply
Green/brown=blue: he is being unreasonable, perhaps you can put a sign up with the yellow/mellow brown/down in front of the toilet, or several candles/air fresheners. I agree, he has to stop with it, but how childish are you willing to be to make your point heard and agreed to? Make him sleep on the couch ( and other restrictions ) until he agrees to a compromise?
Fishy: my first thought is he has kids, and had to visit them over the holidays. You don’t mention anything here, but if he was pining for you for years and finally has you, it would take something major to change already made plans like that. it is definitely fishy, you need much more information before doing anything else with this relationship.
— Wertzro in Pittsburgh 01/31/2012 Reply
Fishy: sounds like the dude is married.
Green: I was also friends with people from my childhood that didn’t flush all the time, and going back to the same house as an adult to visit – even though they now flush regularly, it still smells bad. i think the smell soaked into the walls. Maybe instead of saving flushes, you could upgrade to a higher efficiency toilet. just a thought.
— Diane, Pittsburgh 01/31/2012 Reply
Green,
That’s freaking disgusting! It makes me want to vomit just thinking about it. Honestly, if I were with a woman who insisted on the same thing it would be a deal breaker. I am not too fond of the idea of #1 sitting in there either.
— Brandon 01/31/2012 Reply
Green Enough: Yes you’re more than green enough! Flushing toilets isn’t the problem with the environment. I mean how often does a person go anyway? That is a very necessary use of water in a modern area unlike watering big lawns or using the washing machine (or dishwasher) when it is half full. Take the reins at your house!
Sound Fishy To You: Oh yeah that is fishy all right. My call is he has something on the side. And why was he pining for her for five years? I wish that was included in the story. She has to tell him that Cat is right on this one completely—-if they are serious she must know exactly what their plans are and be able to count on them every time. Holidays are big. It is somewhat embarrassing to her to have to explain why her boyfriend isn’t there for any of them.
— LoveGirl in NC 02/01/2012 Reply
He pined for her for five years because she wouldn’t go out with him. He weighed 300 lbs. at the time, and she worked with him. Then he moved, they kept in touch via texts, and he lost 60 lbs.
— SOUND FISHY, Pittsburgh 02/01/2012 Reply
Green: You want a waste of water? Watch the city water road medians (actually, the concrete as the sprinklers aren’t aimed right) while it’s 105 outside, in the middle of a 500 year drought and the lakes and reservoirs are down to the original river channels. Follow the yellow/mellow rule. If he insists on leaving the brown, I suggest you have an outhouse built in the farthest corner of the backyard. It’s nothing more than a hole on the ground. No flushing necessary. Don’t install electricity or heat to it. Let him walk across a snow and ice covered yard and sit on frigid plywood a few times.
— ExBurgher Out West 02/02/2012 Reply