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.

Close Minded

My wife had just finished doing the Facebook thing on our laptop.

"Okay, I'm going to bed. How do I turn the computer off", she asked.

"Oh, just close the lid. That'll do it.", I replied.

She paused. "I don't know how to do that."

Her Brain is in Park

My wife and I went into the city to visit one of the museums with the kids. As usual, she drove, and I navigated since she usually has no idea where she is going.

She pulled into a parking spot in a garage next to the museum, but the car was a little cockeyed, so I hopped out of the car to help her get lined up. She started waving at me frantically and pulling on the gear shift.

"It won't go out of park!", she yelled.

I climbed back in the car, glanced at the dash, and told her how to fix the problem.

"You need to turn the car back on."

See, It's Not Just Me

A member of my wife's immediate family recently underwent an extended hospital stay for some lengthy procedures. Prior to their admission, the family was briefed on what the stay would entail.

"I'm really pissed off right now.", she said one day, hanging up the phone.

"What's up?", I asked.

"It's my family. They won't tell me anything about [her family member]."
She continued. "My mom even said I wouldn't understand all the medical terms. It's like they think I'm an idiot or something."

"Hmm.", I replied.

She Needs to Go With Him...

Our son recently started back to school. My wife was telling me about how the first day went.

Her: "Oh. And I added forty more dollars to his lunch account. He only had seventeen in there. I don't how much that is."

Me: "..."
Me: "Fifty-seven."
Her: "Oh."

The Key to Stupidity

"Have you seen my car keys?", she asked me the other day.

"No.", I answered wearily. One of my wife's never ending frustrations is her inability to find her personal items. She has wasted countless hours searching for things. I have suggested frequently that she pick a spot to put her things, and force herself to put them there when she gets home. But in her ADHD-like fog, she just drops them at random.

"Did you look in the car?", I asked. I will admit she will often drop her purse and keys in the passenger seat of her car to avoid this dilemma, but it causes an obvious problem. And yes, I have had to unlock her door for her when her locks unexpectedly.

"Oh!" She dashed to to the garage and returned.

"Well, I found 'em. They were still in the ignition, and the car was on."

Let's review.

She left her keys in the car.

In the ignition.

On.

Now I should point out that the engine was not running. She had just left them in the accessory position. So at least she had not poisoned us all.

Yet.

Do As I Say, Not As I Duh.

The other night, things were just calming down. The kids were in bed, and I was settled in to watch some TV in our home office. As usual, I had my laptop in front of me but wasn't using it.

My wife came waltzing into the room.

"Get off Facebook!", she said, half-joking.

"I'm not even using the computer; I'm just watching TV.", I replied.

"Well, good. People that are on Facebook all night are really pathetic."

My techno-challenged wife recently upgraded her online repertoire to include Facebook along with her 10-year-old Hotmail account. After her outburst, she left to go to bed, or so I thought.

Just a couple of minutes later, she came in again. To update her Facebook status.

Crime is Stupid, But Not As Much as My Wife

There has been a slight up tick in crime in our area lately, specifically car break-ins. Accordingly, our neighborhood association sent around a letter with tips to prevent them.

One of the tips is to always park your car in the garage or at least as close to the house as possible.

Coincidentally, I am currently doing some work on the house, so half our garage is now devoted to tools and my work area. I cannot park my car in the garage.

Here's where the trouble starts.

I usually just park up close to the house next to a light post next to the drive way like this:

This way, I can walk out my front door and easily around to the driver's side while making sure the car is well lit.

This is unacceptable to my wife. The letter clearly stated "as close to the house as possible". So she does just that whenever she drives my car:

She will even move my car closer after I get home from work. I have told her repeatedly that this is both unnecessary and annoying. In this position, I have to walk through the dirt or wet grass to get around to the other side. It also blocks the sidewalk from anyone walking up.

It does not matter. She will not be deterred from her crime fighting.

My Wife, the Luddite

I've mentioned before that my wife is afraid of computers. This fear apparently extends to all electronics.

Example 1. We keep getting letters from our local electrical utility offering us a free, digital thermostat to replace the old, ugly rotary one we have. I'm all in favor of this, but my wife will have none of it.

"What's the big deal?", I asked, "It works the same and looks better."

"But I want to be able to control the temperature!", she barked.

"You still can; you just use the buttons to put in the temp you want. Plus, you can program it to change the temperature when we're not home."

"No! I want to do it!"

"You still can--"

"NO! I JUST DON'T LIKE THEM!!"

Example 2. We don't have cable, so I had to get some of those digital converters to use on the TVs and mount an outdoor antenna. I think the picture looks great, but she hates them.

Because you have to turn the TV on with one remote, and do everything else with another now.

That and sometimes the picture goes a little "pixelly".

On the upside, I'm slowly talking her in to getting cable. I can't wait to show her how a DVR works.

Too Cold To Think

With the recent cold snap, my wife is conflicted by the desire to stay warm and her paranoid belief that we are spiraling into financial doom. She has been keeping the thermostat very low to keep our gas bill low. She finally relented, though, and turned the heat up a bit:

"I noticed that when I turned the heat up, it got a lot warmer!", she told me one evening.

You think?

It's the Most Idiotic Time of the Year

We have have a small tree in our front yard that we hang ornaments for Christmas. The tree is getting bigger, obviously, so my wife got some more ornaments for it. No problem so far.

When I got home from work one day, she asked whether I could not put those up on the tree as well.

"Not right now.", I said.

"Why not?", she asked indignantly. She immediately assumes any refusal of work on my part is due to laziness.

"Because it's dark out.", I replied.

"So?", still indignant.

"I. Can't. See. The. Branches.", I said.

"Oh."

I've Got a Secret

My wife wasn't necessarily being an idiot on this one; rather, this is an issue that probably exists in most marriages.

My job allows me the flexibility to work from just about anywhere. I am paid very well for what I do, but there is often a cognitive disconnect for my wife between the lifestyle we enjoy and what I have to do to sustain it.

In particular, she is particularly maddened by the time I spend on the computers. During the evenings, after the children go to bed and everything is buttoned up for the evening, I gravitate toward toward our home office. Sometimes I am working; sometimes I am not. Were you to look in on me, you would be just as likely to see me working on a report for work, or surfing the web. I am able to manage my time with this pretty well. During the same period of time, my wife will either be sleeping or watching TV, but it has always bothered her greatly that I was in there.

She will actually yell at me to "get off the f***ing computer!", to which I will respond "and do what?". Her answer is usually "I don't know!", "Anything!", "Work on something around the house!", or something equally helpful.

So the other night, I decided to just sit with her and go slack-jawed watching TV with her instead. The result was amazing.

She began to talk to me. Really talk to me. She is anxious about our money given the state of the economy and what she hears on the news (we're actually doing okay). She wonders if we will be able to making the big, necessary purchases coming up (we will). She eventually drifted off to sleep, and I went back to the office.

What's so amazing about that? Through all her griping and screaming, her real desire was being drowned out: all she ever wanted was to to talk to me; to have me reassure her and let her know that I had a confident view of what we need to do as a family.

So why did she not just ask me for what she wanted? Men have pondered this for generations, and there is only one answer: insecurity. To come to me and ask to speak to me would somehow debase her, sublimate her. What if I said no? Who am I to deny her? Husbands and wives are equals. She shouldn't have to ask. I should just know. And this is something wives have struggled with for generations.

To the women reading this, don't be afraid to ask for these things. He is, after all, just another human being. He deserves the same respect you would give anyone else. If your family is like ours, your husband is wrestling with the responsibility of supporting an entire family. You may not understand his priorities, but he does have them. Don't be afraid to boost him up. My wife once told me that she rarely complimented me because she did not want me to "get a big head". Why? I suppose she thought it would elevate me above her in the marriage. But marriage is not a battle to see who is better; it is a relationship and you are a team. Boost him up, and he will work even harder for you.

And husbands, listen to your wives, not just what they say but also what they don't. Just let them talk, and the truth will be revealed.

Sometimes, It's Not So Cute

A lot of these stories are funny.

This one is not. My wife often lacks the ability to appropriately prioritize things.

I was spending the evening with the kids recently when my wife was working a part-time job. I was trying to help my daughter change into her pajamas when, in the process of trying to escape, she slammed her face into my knee.

She started crying so I picked her up to calm her down. That's when I noticed the blood. I quickly surmised it was coming from her nose so I trotted over to the bathroom, grabbed a wet washcloth, and held her head back while applying some mild pressure.

She calmed down, and I cleaned her face and hands off (she had been instinctively rubbing her nose during this process). Within twenty minutes she was back to normal and playing happily. Both kids went to bed without incident.

When my wife got home later, I started to recount the story.

"...and I looked up and saw the blood on her face, my shirt, her clothes..."

"Whoa", she interrupted, "there's blood on HER NEW OUTFIT?!"

"Well, yes."

She starts to simmer and make exasperated noises.

"Wait, you're not mad at me are you. Are you saying it's my fault that her clothes are stained? Don't you even care how she's doing?", I continued.

"Just shut up.", she replied.

She spent the rest of the evening cleaning the few drops of blood out of our daughter's clothes.

Square Peg, Round DVD

The other day, I turned on the stereo for the kids to listen to in their playroom. I noticed there was already a disk inserted, so I figured she had already been listening to something.

The player refused to start however. Upon ejecting the disk, I realized she had been attempting to play a DVD in the CD player.

I supposed I could chalk it up to confusion, since we sometimes play CDs on our DVD player, but this particular stereo is about seventeen years old.

Scary Technology

Recently, my wife and I stopped off at the grocery to pick up a few things. She was just picking some stuff up for herself, and I was tagging along.

As we approached the checkouts, she breezed past several of the kiosks where you can check yourself out, and chose to wait in line elsewhere, even though she only had a few items.

"Why don't you just go to one of the self-checkout things?", I asked her.

"Those things scare me.", she replied.

I could understand this if we were in our eighties, but we are quite a bit younger.

Missing the Onramp to the Information Superhighway

I've spoken before about my wife's fear of computers and technology in general. Specifically, anything designed in the last twenty years is like kryptonite to her. So our conversation last night surprised me.

She has managed to somehow join a social networking site (ala. Facebook or MySpace) run by her college sorority.

"Could you put some pictures on my site?", she asked casually.

"Huh?"

"Could you put some pictures on my site?", she repeated.
"A lot of my friends have pictures of their kids and stuff on their sites, so I want to put some on mine."

"I can help you get started, but you will have to do it.", I replied.

"Why, can't you get to all my stuff on the computer?".

This is a persistent misconception. She has her own account on our computer, and she is convinced that I have unfettered access to everything she has or does. I have told her repeatedly that if I wanted to I could, but I do not, in fact, know her password, so I cannot get into her e-mail or anything else. Furthermore, I explained, I do not have access to her site.

She sighed disappointedly. You just can't have it both ways.