Me-PS Part 2

I have mentioned at length in other posts that my wife becomes incredibly frazzled behind the wheel of a car. This is especially true at highway speeds.

We live in the suburbs of a major metropolitan area. My wife recently had to drive downtown, and naturally, she came to me for help.

Her: "Okay, how do I get downtown?"

Me: "The same way as always. Take I-XX west into downtown."

Her: "I thought that was closed?"

She was correct, to a point. Part of a major interstate is temporarily closed where we live for major road work. Through traffic is routed around the closure, but one can still access the downtown area since the closure is on the opposite side of the city from us. I explained this to her, just as I have every single time she has to go downtown.

Her: "Are you sure?"

Me: "Positive. I go that way all the time."

Her: "Okaaay."

Ten minutes later, she calls me from the road.

Her: "I missed the exit onto I-XX west. The sign said the road was closed."

Me: "Did the sign say the road was closed past downtown?"

Her: "Yes."

Me: "Then it was okay to go that way. Just like we discussed."

Her: "Oh. So what do I do now?"

We spent the next twenty minutes on the phone as I guided her, turn by turn, to her destination.

Lots of gift, but math's not one of them.

My wife recently got a gift card from someone, and she asked me to look up the balance online.

Me: "It was ten dollars."

Her: "Cool! I have another one for the same store for $20, so that's like 35 bucks!"

Me: "Thirty."

Her: "Oh. Right."

Hello. What?

My phone rings. It's her. As usual.

Me: "Hello?"

Her: "Oh, hey. I forgot why I called you. Let me call you back." Click.

She never called back.

The Education Train Stops Here

My wife and I both acknowledged when we had children that they would reach a point in their education where my wife would no longer be able help them with their homework. It would seem we have reached that point with our oldest child.

My wife is frequently baffled by his homework, and she must ask me whether he is doing it correctly, even while he is explaining it to her.

Our oldest child is in the second grade.

Don't Do Dish; Do That

My wife and I go through this little dance every couple of months.

Since I stay up later and get up earlier than she, I will usually load and run the dishwasher before I go to bed. How it gets unloaded is another story.

Her: "Thanks for running the dishwasher, but can you put the dishes away before you leave in the morning. It would save me a lot of time trying to get get the kids ready."

Me: "Sure, but I thought you said the noise woke the kids up too early?"

Her: "I don't care about that. I just need some help."

A few weeks go by...

Her: "Thanks for putting the dishes away, but just let me do it. The noise woke the kids up way too early, and they were driving me nuts."

Me: "Okay, but I thought you said you were too busy to mess with it?"

Her: "I don't care about that. I just need some time to my self in the morning."

A few more weeks go by...

Her: "Thanks for running the dishwasher, but can you put the dishes away..."

I swear we have gone back forth on this six or seven times just in the last couple of years.

Using the Me-PS

My wife decided to take our kids on a little trip to a children's museum a couple of hours away. The problem is that she left with no map, no plan and no clue, other than to ask me how to-sort-of get there. That part was actually easy for her.

The problem was that she could not get home. The city she went to is composed of some one-way streets, so she could not return exactly the way she came. She could not comprehend the directions she was getting from the locals, so she proceeded to call me every few minutes as she inched her way back. I was in meetings all day and could not talk her all the way through. At one point, she even left the city successfully, but was headed in the complete opposite direction.

She ended up arriving home some two hours later than expected. I mentioned getting a GPS, but she said, "Oh, that's too much trouble."

May Quickies

From a phone conversation just now:

"I just saw a cute top I want to get. Oh, and our daughter has a 104 fever and probably needs to go to the doctor."

Nice priorities there.

And later:

"So the dog was really whiny and crying earlier, and I couldn't figure out what his problem was. Then I realized I clipped his leash to his ear instead of his collar."

How do you miss that badly?

Quickie: Bonehead at the Bank

She just called me this morning to explain to her how to cash a check at a drive-up ATM. I had to walk her through:

1. Putting her card in.
2. Entering her PIN.
3. Putting the check in the envelope.
4. Putting the envelope in the right slot.
5. Doing a new, second transaction to withdraw money.

The Temperature's Low, But Higher Than Her I.Q.

Another result of my wife's ongoing paranoia about our finances is our fighting over the thermostat. Right before she goes to bed, she will lower the thermostat to the low 60's to save energy overnight. There is only one problem; I typically stay awake about two hours longer than she. To combat this, I often turn the dial back up to the high 60's. As a side note, she is also deathly afraid that our furnace will break in the dead of winter, and we'll all freeze to death.

One night she got up around 10:30 and noticed the furnace was running and looked at the thermostat.

She. Freaked. Out.

"What are you doing?! You can't turn it up that fast! You'll break it!" she screamed.

"Break what?" I replied.

"The furnace! You have to turn it up gradually just until it turns on!"

"Do you know how this works? It's not going to make the furnace come on 'harder'. It just turns the furnace on and leaves it on until it reaches the temperature and then turns off."

"Yeah.", she said slowly.

"But that's not what you said. You thought that the furnace would blow itself up trying to get up to temperature. They aren't designed that way...", I explained.

"Whatever.", she fumed.