Company's coming, so it's time to start a project.

Byline: WRITE ON By Jeanne Schneider For The Register-Guard

Scott is absolutely the best husband in the world, and I dearly love him. That being said, he drives me crazy - at least on Tuesdays.

Every Tuesday night, our Bible study group gets together for a meal, study and prayer, and every month a different couple hosts. When it's our turn to host for a month, I usually spend most of Tuesday digging out this hovel, er, that is, tidying up around the house a bit.

I can always count on Scott to pitch in and help, albeit in his own inimitable way. He will invariably pick a Tuesday to start major and/or minor projects around the house, which may or may not be completed before our guests arrive. It is not unusual for him to suddenly remember that the toilet in the guest bathroom needs to be taken apart for some obscure reason and, oh, guess what, we don't have the needed replacement part to fix it, which entails a trip or two to Jerry's, and it just so happens there has been a rush on that particular part recently so it's been back-ordered a fortnight ... you get the picture.

It's this type of surprise that keeps the fun and mystery alive in our marriage (as well as causing me to develop a nervous tic that the doctors tell me will fade with the passage of time, say when I'm in my dotage and have forgotten my own phone number).

I never know what to expect, but on one Tuesday I came into the house and was nearly knocked over by a potent odor. "What's that smell, dear?"

"Oh, that. ...' It seems he had been "helping to clean the house" by cleaning out the garage and discovering an old bottle of a foul smelling liquid of some sort. What better way to dispose of it than to pour it down the toilet - figuring the smell would just flush away like my Chanel No. 5 in the hands of a little grandson.

Wrong! The house reeked for hours. My eyes were watering, and I'm not sure, but we may have discovered a new way to easily peel wallpaper off the walls.

Even though it was January, I felt compelled to open up doors and windows in an attempt to air out the place, to no avail. I ended up lighting every scented candle in the house in an effort to mask the odor. It seemed to work, or perhaps the lining of my nasal passages was so traumatized that my sense of smell has been forever altered. Come to think of it, I did notice our guests giving us funny looks, like they were trying to refrain from asking where we had hidden the body, and one of them mentioned not being aware that a rendering plant had recently opened up in our neighborhood.

The very next Tuesday, Scott decided it was time to clean out our chimney by burning one of those special chimney sweep logs. This is a remarkable product, cleaning off layer after layer of creosote and other gunk that builds up inside the chimney. However, instead of just melting away like my resolve to diet every time the dessert cart passes by, all that stuff falls into the fireplace over the next 24 hours, where it sits in a smelly heap and the resulting stench gags anyone who happens to walk within two blocks of the house.

It took me a while, but I finally figured out that he starts these special Tuesday projects so I might see how busy he really is, taking care of important, can't-wait-another-minute tasks so he doesn't have to help with the housework.

I have decided it's best for all concerned to just go along with it. Now, when Tuesday morning rolls around, the first words out of my mouth (well, right after "Good morning, Dear" and "No, for the 100th day in a row, we are not having chocolate doughnuts for breakfast") are, "Dear, I don't think I'll need any help with the housework - why don't you just sit and watch television all day? I think I read that there's a program on the History Channel today covering the making of Cecil B. DeMille's 'The Ten Commandments,' complete with Hebrew subtitles."

So far, it's working pretty well, but I have noticed a subtle smile on his face when I ask him to raise his feet so I can vacuum under them, and I know he is thinking, "Ahhh, it's working, another Tuesday - no chores!"

Jeanne Schneider of Eugene is a 49-year-old retired medical transcriptionist.