The Straight Poop

Just another typical day at the office...

Me: (type-type-type, click-click-click)
Cellphone: Ring!
Me: Hello.
Wife: Um, can you look something on the internet for me?

First off, she does this frequently, as the only website she knows how to access is Hotmail. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I have given up trying to teach her to do it herself.

Me: (sigh) Sure. What do you want to know about?
Wife: Um, chronic diarrhea?

Somebody please shoot me.

God helps those who helps themselves

This conversation happened this morning and is pretty typical. We were both getting ready for work.

Her: (Doing her hair, cat is bugging her) Could you check to see if the cat has food and water?
Me: (Shaving) Sure!

Five minutes later...

Me: (getting dressed)
Her: (Still doing hair, cat still bugging her) HAVE YOU CHECKED ON THE CAT YET?!?!?
Me: No.
Her: (stomping off) UGH! I'LL JUST DO IT MYSELF.

She will frequently ask me to do these types of small tasks thinking it will save her time and energy. She does not realize, however, that I am usually doing something else and these things go to the bottom of my list. She is just too overwhelmed by everything she has to do (i.e. how can I do my hair AND feed the cat at the same time), that she sees no other choice than delegation. It bothers me because it is if she assumes her time is more valuable than mine (and the cat is hers).I am trying to teach her that the following would work much better.

Her: (Doing her hair, cat is bugging her) Hmm, I better go see if the cat needs food and water. He seems really anxious, and it will only take a minute.

As long as I am around to save her, though, it will never happen.

This Old House...Will Never Be Finished

Some time ago, I took on a major undertaking. I was going to finish my basement.

It has taken far longer than I anticipated, however. I am almost always interuppted by my wife's cries for help (see my post about lawn mowing for an example).

She cannot seem to make a connection, even though I make the greatest progress when she either leaves me alone or takes the kids somewhere. Invariably, she will call me away from my hammering and splackling to help her in some greater endevour, such as hanging a picture on the wall or killing a bug.

I cannot express enough how her helplessness hinders us all. Whenever I go out of town for work, she immediately starts lining up friends and family to come over and help. She needs to be hand-held through every, little thing. Any failure on my part to provide complete and total assistance results in her calling me lazy.

So I have to roll my eyes whenever the following happens.

Almost every night, after everyone goes to bed, I retreat to my half-finished basement for solace. It is a place only a man (or our little boy) could love. I will lift weights, tinker with an old computer, or just watch sports on an old TV.

But every few weeks, my wife will venture down there and ask me why I am doing these things and not working on getting it completely finished.

I then gently inform her:

1. We got the kids to bed at 9:00 PM.
2. It is now 10:00 PM.
3. I go to bed at 11:00 PM. There is, therefore, not enough time to do anything productive.
4. I need to nail studs into the floor and the walls. This requires the use of an extremely loud nail gun.
5. Did I mention that is 10:00 PM?
6. I also need to sand the unfinshed drywall. This is extremely dusty and requires extensive clean up when finished.
7. 10:00 PM.

Before I get any backlash for my apparent laziness, please recall that at this point in the evening, my wife has been lying in bed for an hour. The kitchen is clean, but that was done by me.

But in her view, my relaxing in the basement is worse than her sleeping. It is somehow anti-work.

I promise to get it finished one day. When the kids are in college, most likely.

Feel it hot, hot, hot.

As a reminder, I do all the cooking. Like most men, I really enjoy grilling out, and this summer I have whipped up barbecued chicken, pork chops, hot dogs, burgers, you name it. My favorite, however, has to be a nice, juicy steak. I make sure to marinate them and really watch them closely.

Despite all the grilling I have done, my wife is deathly afraid of food poisoning from undercooked food. I am a bit anal about this myself, so I use a meat thermometer to check before I take stuff off the grill. Nevertheless, my wife always asks me to cook her steak/chicken/chop longer than mine, just to make sure.

What happens, of course is I get a nice, juicy steak with just a little red in the middle, and she gets a hockey puck. She will also then complain that it is too dry.

Did I mention that she will also usually put her food in the microwave for an extra minute after I serve it? Just to make sure.

Somebody Save Me!

I have mentioned before how quickly my wife can become overwhelmed by common stressful situations. This is her way of referring to it. A more truthful analysis is that her neurons are not firing quickly enough figure out the proper solution. Cooking is one example of this.

This really had my eyes rolling. Once, when my daughter was an infant, she became inconsolable. No matter what my wife did, she could not get her to stop crying. She simply couldn't take it any more and the anxiety was getting to her. So she did what she normally does in these situations: she came to me for help. Normally I expect this, but this time I couldn't believe her.

I had just finished mowing the grass in the middle of summer. I was hot, sweaty, grimy and covered with grass. She blocked all this out and brought my daughter outside so I could hold her. I explained to her how inane her request was. She got very ticked off, but mostly because she realized how much sense I was making and that she would have to continue dealing with our daughter.

I did go in, get cleaned up and rescue her from the screaming baby, though.

The grass is always greener...when I get to take care of it.

Like most husbands, I am responsible for the care and feeding of our lawn, though my wife and I occasionally butt heads on the best method to do so.

When we first bought our house, the lawn was in bad shape, as the previous owners were older and did not have the energy to maintain it. To get it back into shape, we started subscribing to a lawn care service. Not only did the grass improve, it is now a bit out of control. I have to mow it once a week to keep it looking nice. I also trim around the house and other parts of the landscaping.

After I finished my regimen the other day, my wife made a comment to the effect that I had not done a thorough enough job and that the grass was too long. She is quite a bit more meticulous when it comes to outward appearances, so the first part was not expected. What bugged me was the comment about the length of the grass.

We have had this discussion on more that one occasion. For the weather and soil in our area, it is recommended that one mow their grass at the highest setting to maintain the healthiest lawn. I reminded her of this again that this tidbit of knowledge comes not from me but from:

1. The lawn care service
2. Our aging neighbor with the immaculate lawn
3. Her parents

My opinion is usually worthless to her, since she usually assumes I am lying to her. But once she realized that someone other than me (specifically her co-dependent parents) had said it, she dropped the issue, albeit reluctantly.

She was determined, however, and went outside to trim on her own. We have an electric weed trimmer, and in all my use of it, I have never discharged the battery completely. She came back in some time later stating that the trimmer no longer worked. She had used it so long and so meticulously that she had indeed run it down. She had also trimmed the grass in places to near golf course fairway length. I reminded her of the discussion we had, but she stated that she wanted it to look neat. This included grass I planted to cover some small bare spots.

Fast forward a week. I was mowing the lawn the following week. Most of it looks great.

Except for where she trimmed. These areas are either dead or choked with weeds.

How does the lawn look now, sweetheart?

Computers Scare Her

Again, thank you for all the comments. Your support lifts a significant weight off my shoulders.

Let me first reassure everyone: If you are reading this, I can guarantee that I am not your husband. I know this because my wife is afraid of computers at best and thinks they are the spawn of Satan at worst.

She claims it is the result of a supposedly traumatic computer class she was forced to endure as a child. Fast forward to today, and you will see that her only interaction with them is via a Hotmail account I set up for her many years ago. She can only open it because I placed a "Hotmail" shortcut on the desktop in the middle of the screen. For the record, here is a list of things involving computers that confound her:

1. Opening attachments

Hotmail's procedure for this involves just following a couple of "click here" links. She is never sure if that is what she is supposed to do.

2. Forwarding e-mails

She asks me how. Every. Single. Time.

3. Opening a document

Me - "I placed the file right on the desktop next to the Hotmail icon. Just double-click on it, and the document will open."

Her - "I don't understand."

4. Surfing the web

When she wants to know our bank balance. I have to log on and show her. Every. Single. Time.
Yes, I have the site bookmarked. Yes, she knows the password (or at least I told her. She has probably long since forgotten). She has managed to click on links in her e-mail, so maybe there is hope.

5. Anything. Just...anything.

Plus, everything I'm doing must be a "game". Checking our investments? Game. Reading the news? Game. Editing videos of the kids? Game.

Of course she never sees me edit this blog. ;)

Shoo Fly, Don't Bother Me

I mentioned in a previous post how my wife is a bit paranoid about our finances. One way she attempts to save us money is keeping the thermostat set so high in the summer, that the air conditioning never turns on. This is fine to a point, but the house can get quite stifling in the afternoon heat.

To combat this, my wife frequently likes to "air out" the house. She cannot do this by opening windows, however, as she is not strong enough to push them up. Instead, she frequently just opens the front door.

Again, this is not necessarily stupid, but we do not have a screen door, so bugs immediately start flying into the house. She always complains about this as if the two events were not connected. Of course, the insects in the house aren't really her problem. Like most husbands, I have been tasked with killing them.

This leads to the next demonstration of stupidity. I also mentioned previously that I do all the cooking because of my wife's inability to concentrate or multi-task. The other night I cooked a pasta dish and announced dinner was ready. I was able to quickly feed myself and the kids, but my wife, who finds it difficult to focus, kept getting distracted by one task or another and could not make her way to the kitchen.

By the time she got there, she complained that the aforementioned flies were landing on her food. She then asked if I would stand there and wave them away, since she could still not bring herself to sit down and eat. I told her that it was impossible for me to stand guard over her food and get anything else done. And by that I mean killing all the flies that got in the house.

She has since agreed to stopped ventilating the house via the front door.

You found me & Mo' Money

First off, welcome to those coming from True Husband Confessions. It seems my little secret is out of the bag. Thank you for the kind comments. I felt for sure as soon as people saw the things I said about my wife, that there would be a call for my lynching. Thanks for noticing that I really do love her. She just makes me crazy sometimes (but then, don't you all?).

On to the entry:

I have only stated that I am an "educated professional". Suffice it to say I have a well paying job. Far from being in debt, my wife and I have quite a bit of money invested. We made a lot of the right choices early in life and always save money here and there.

When I say "we", of course, I mean that I chose to invest my money and manage it myself. Prior to our marriage, my wife's parents handled all her finances. She was very nervous combining our savings, partially because it meant passing the mantle of responsibility to me, and partially because she had no clue how much she had or what to do with it. I, on the other hand, had no problem with it. What's mine is hers forever. With this in mind, here are two little gems:

- As a wedding present, my parents gave us a large some of money. I immediately began to research where to put the money for the short term, as we were looking to buy a house soon. Should I put it in savings, buy a six-month CD, or what? She got very nervous about what I was doing and said, "Hold on, it's our money! We should both be involved!"

"You are absolutely right.", I said. "What would you like to do with the money."

Silence. Then...

"Umm, invest it?" she asked.

Sigh. (In case you are curious, I found a high-yield money market. And we love the house.)

- Though we are doing well financially, my wife always feels I should make just a little more money. She frequently tells me to ask for raises that would get me laughed out of my boss's office. But my favorite is when she suggests that I get a part time job. I always have to gently remind her that this would require me to be away from home more often, something that causes her no end of grief. Once she realizes what would be required of her in my absence, she quickly recants her request. But she always brings it up again a few months later.

And how often am I away from home normally? 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM. Every weekday.

I'm OK if You're OK

My wife has an annoying habit of correcting me when I speak to people on the phone. I usually tune her out, but one instance was particularly annoying.

Someone called me and used the standard greeting , "How's it going ?"

I answered with my standard response of "Pretty well" and went on with the rest of the conversation.

My wife immediately piped up, "You're not doing pretty well! You're allergies are terrible! You've been stopped up and sniffling for days!"

After the call, I had to gently instruct her that we were using polite greetings, and no one really cares about the state of my sinuses.

I just called to say duuuuh.

My wife just called to tell me she could not find her cell phone. She wanted to know if I could call the number so she could hear it ring.

Then she realized that she could just call the number herself.

I was blind..

My wife and I both wear glasses, but she hates wearing hers. Nevertheless, she needs them to drive and see any distance greater than six feet.

Despite this, she can never find them. If she tires of wearing them, she just sets them down on the nearest spot. I have helped her find them after leaving them on her desk, the kitchen counter, the coffee table, her car, her purse, etc.

She refuses to follow my suggestion for keeping track of them: Keep them on your face.

My wife knows better than you do.

- The dome light in my wife's car has a delay so that once you close the door, it will stay on for about ten seconds. This is supposed to give you enough time to put the keys in the ignition, buckle your seatbelt, etc. She doesn't like this, because she thinks the light will stay on after after she exits the vehicle, even though it always turns off after that delay. She has thus chosen to just turn the light off completely so that when you open the door, the light stays off. I always put it back to where it belongs when I happen to drive her car, but she always turns it off again later.

- I walked into our home office (where we also keep the ironing board) the other day as my wife was walking out. There was a strange smell in the air. "What's that burning?", I asked her. She winced and said, "Oh, can you smell it, too? I was ironing this shirt, but it says 'Do not iron' on the label".

"Why on earth would you iron something that specifically says not to?", I asked.

"It was wrinkly", she replied.

What was this garment that she just had to iron? One of our son's t-shirts.

Quickies

- My wife loves her drinks ice cold, so she puts them in the freezer to cool them fast. Unfortunately, she forgets she put them in there. Her water bottles will freeze completely, so she can't drink them. But the worst is when she puts cans of soda in. They actually explode, spraying frozen syrup inside the freezer. She still does this repeatedly, because she just has to have those cold drinks.

- I do all the cooking in our house. My wife claims she becomes "overwhelmed" by cooking. She uses this word whenever she is required to do something that requires concentration or multi-tasking. Sometimes I will come home from work and not feel like cooking. My wife balks at this since she claims that she was not able to eat all day because she was watching our children. This is idiotic, because if she were truly hungry, she would just eat when they do (this is what I do on weekends). Last night I did not fix dinner since we had a lot of leftovers: chicken, spaghetti and meat sauce, lots of vegetables, fruit, etc. She would only have needed to heat something up in the microwave. So what does my starving wife choose to have for dinner? A single cup of yogurt.

- Our garbage disposal is in need of repair. It makes unholy noises when it is run. In the meantime, I have asked my wife to scrape food into the trash. This happens frequently since both she and my son often do not finish everything on their plates. Back to the "overwhelmed" issue, she will often just put dirty plates, food and all, into the sink with the purpose of dealing with it later. As she rinses other things off during the day, the food will invariably fall off the dirty plates and go down the drain. The drain will then back up. She will then sheepishly admit that she "accidentally" put food down the drain. Again. She also lets other things fall down there, too, like spoons, small glasses, etc.

- After recent and frequent power outages, I bought several bags of ice to keep our food cold. Once power was restored, we obviously did not need the ice as much, and my wife needed some room in the freezer. She called and asked what she should do with it. I had thought ahead and not made any ice recently, so I suggested she empty one bag into the rather large ice tray inside the freezer. For some unknown reason, she could not open the bag and dump it in the tray. Without calling me, she simply gave up and put the bag in refrigerator, where it proceeded to (slowly) melt, and drench most of the food (she had placed it on the top shelf of the fridge).

I still have plenty more.

Introduction

I have a secret. I have never told this to anyone.

My wife is an idiot.

I am not saying this in jest. She is, quite literally, the dumbest person I know. Don't misunderstand; I love her very much. She is a wonderful mother. She has a degree in teaching and has an unbelievable talent and patience with children.

But there is a vacancy about her. She seems to lack a basic understanding of the adult world, which is why I think she went into teaching and preschool eduation specifically. Theirs is a simple world of right and wrong, black and white. My wife is befuddled by complexity and nuance.

This is troubling for me. I am her opposite, and I love to read about, explore and discuss complex issues like religion, politics, and history.

My wife mostly likes to gossip.

Here are some examples of her thoughts and opinions:

Religion - She is convinced, even after multiple discussions, that Jesus of Nazareth was not Jewish. (We are Protestants and attend church quite regularly.)

Politics - When Bob Dole was running for president in 1996, one of his platforms was to eliminate the federal Department of Education. I understood it to mean that states and local districts would be responsible for their own funding and curriculum. She thought it meant that there would be no more teachers, and she would lose her job.

History - I don't even try to discuss history with her. She just sort of stares at me.

I know this makes me seem like an elitist and a snob. I am neither. While my wife grew up the daughter of a college professor, I grew up in a working class family. I paid for college using the G.I. Bill. Much has been said that members of the military only join as a last result, since they could not find a job or get into college. The truth is that some of the smartest and most highly skilled people I have ever met were in the military, and they could run mental rings around my wife.

I have met plenty of "good old boys" who think they are dumb in the ways of the world, but they possess a common sense and know-how that is more impressive than any college degree. I speak of men who can reassemble car engines and perform complex repair work effortlessly. With these men, I can speak easily and have much in common.

My wife possesses no such skill. There is little common ground on which we can meet. She lacks the inherent ability connect her thoughts as well as those of others. She gets confused easily. She can't even cook meals in our house, because managing more than one pot at once overwhelms her.

I have many more examples. I need to speak of this for my own sanity. If you think I am jerk for saying these things, I understand. But please continue to read and try to understand.