Mister likes to wear t-shirts around the house. He has a huge collection of these shirts, nearly 40 of them in his favorite color – black. He also has dozens in other colors that he rarely, if ever, wears, so we won’t talk about those here today. I want to talk about the black ones.

Since Mister is so fond of his t-shirts, they’re pretty much all he wears unless he’s leaving the house. As a result, some of them have started wearing a bit thin in places. I’d even go so far as to say that a few of his shirts are air-conditioned. Observe:

This kinda drives me nuts a little bit because he has so many shirts yet he can’t just toss the holey ones and work his way down the pile. He just keeps wearing the same holey shirts over and over and over again. Finally, I’d had enough. Inspired by the fine folks at this DIY blog, I decided that I was going to do what a good wife does and fix his shirt.

I took myself to the fabric store and found the perfect fabric to patch his shirt with. Since I wanted to surprise Mister, I took the shirt, new fabric, needle and thread to work and did this during lunch. Then I snuck the finished shirt back into the house, carefully folded it and put it back in the pile.

It wasn’t until Saturday morning that he got the shirt out of the pile. I was just waking up when Mister got a shirt out of the closet and went into the office. I waited in bed for a few minutes to see if he had any reaction to it, but since I didn’t hear anything I got up and went into the office with him. I saw that he did indeed have the new and improved shirt on and didn’t seem to notice that I had fixed it. So I said, “Nice shirt.”

“What the…?”

He saw the thread that I used to fix the small holes in the front and on the pocket corners. Then I told him that I patched the armpit holes too. He was laughing pretty hard by this point, but pulled the shirt off and saw the colorful patches I put on the armpits. Yes, colorful. On a black shirt. You see, Mister isn’t exactly a fan of hippies, so I – well, see for yourself:

Tie-dye smiley face fabric! And hot pink thread on the smaller holes! Let me tell you, I was giggling the whole time I was sewing this.

While all this is going on, Mister ordered himself a new copy of his national history honor society certificate. He also bought something else for himself – when he mentioned this, I figured it would be a pin or something. The conversation went something like this:

Him: So I ordered my certificate today.
Me: OK
Him: I also bought myself a little something.
Me: That’s fine.
Him: I got myself a t-shirt to wear around the house.
Me: (blank look)
Me: You’re kidding, right?
Him: And I’ve decided that I’ll let you pick ONE t-shirt from my pile to get rid of.
Me, thinking to myself: Oh, honey, you have NO idea what you’re in for!

So I threw one t-shirt away. He thought I was going to pick one with bigger holes in it, but I told him that I picked from what was in the laundry and didn’t want to pick from the closet because I’d end up picking one pile of shirts and didn’t want to make him mad. Little does he know that his t-shirt pile would be getting smaller anyway.

Also while I had his shirt hidden in my desk at work along with my needles and thread, Mister started asking me if we have a sewing kit. I had to lie and say no because I didn’t want to reveal why I had a sewing kit with no needles or black thread, so I bought a small kit at the store. He had something else he wanted to fix, and it took every ounce of strength I had to keep quiet about my plans.

The new and improved t-shirt is now in the trash, though I’m not sure why Mister wouldn’t be proud of my handiwork. I’m such a good wife to be mending his clothes!

Or, as Mister says, “You know this means war!”