On Training and Other Marriage Truths

I have not been able to stop thinking about this article all day. (The link is not optional. Anyone who's married should thoroughly read it!!) My boss forwarded it to me, as a result of me sending him this other article, which is a geeky look into toilet seats. As genial as it is, it seems to be true, too. I have been trying to apply these training techniques for a while now, but only as an amateur, and today, after reading the brilliantness of Amy Sutherland, I saw the light.

I was all wrong. I was trying to ignore a negative behavior, true, but I was not rewarding the positive one! The freacking laundry basket that had been sitting in our bedroom for over two weeks, and I was determined not to mention it. Even though I was running out of underwear. Even if there were clothes there I had almost forgot I could wear. To be true, I have to say it didn't work. I had to burst out when a suitcase joined the basket (for two days!), and nag in the worse possible way! But maybe if I had started kissing when the basket disappeared, I would have gotten better results? I am setting out to training camp. Let's see if Amy is right!

On Being Suspicious

Last week my friend was here, and life is not smiling on her. So, my husband was asking me how she was.
"Not too good," I replied, "I think I should really try hard to spend more time with her this summer."
"Sure. You can go there any time you want. Actually, maybe you can meet somewhere else, once in Seattle, once in LA, once in Vegas... During the summer you should make time and spend your weekends with her."

How nice. How incredibly great. "You really have a great one," said my friend, "It's almost too good to be true!"

Uhm. Too great??? Does he have an affair and he's just trying to get rid of me???

On Knowing Each Other

Overheard at dinner last night:
"So what is your wife's degree on?"
"I don't know about her undergrad, but she has a master in linguistic."

The wife in question was not obviously there. I advised my friend that he was threading dangerous waters. Not knowing what her undergrad is is pretty dangerous. That is the kind of thing that, at the beginning of dating, you're supposed to pay attention to. Because it's not okay, two or three years after you have met each other, asking "so, what did you graduate in?" It doesn't fly!! We told him we were going to make sure someone else asks her when he's not around, or he should go back to his in-laws and figure it out.

Now I have to wonder whether my husband knows what my undergrad is in. And then again, I'm an engineer- if you have been around me, you know it's pretty hard to forget that!! :D

On Being an Awful Seventy Year Old

I have manias, like everyone. I consider myself pretty easy going , but in the end I see myself becoming more and more engrained into my own habits, my own ideas, my own perspectives. So, one of the worse (for my husband) has to be the location of objects around the house. I had never thought about it, but I realized my husband tiptoes around me when he asks me where to out certain things- like laundry, pots, and groceries. Initially, I was irritated- c'mon, you don't know where we keep this and that in the house?? Then I realized that I am a panther (in Italian, it means I am quite aggressive) when things are displaced. I get truly pissed off when I cannot find my favorite pan in the right cabinet, the pasta on the right shelf, and the socks in the right drawer. So, it's yet again about me: getting me annoyed and ask me where to put stuff is actually better than getting me pissed off because I can't find something. He picks his battle right! Since I took notice I have been trying to keep myself at bay, and not yell at him, but in general I realize I have the path set to be a 70-year-old lady set in her ways, who has dinner at a set time and eats always the same three things, and grandchildren cannot move any items else they could be verbally executed by grandma.

*sigh*

On Full Disclosure

Okay, Okay... after much bickering, I have to admit- my driving compulsion is not limited to cars (or other moving vehicles, like bikes, roller blades, skis). It extends to TV. I drive the TiVo. And not just back-seat drive, this I actually monopolize! (I surrender it only during Formula One!)
Did I mention how much I love my husband??

On Driving and Being Driven

I admit to be the WORSE backseat driver on earth. It's stronger than me, I am TERRIBLE. I am coming to term with it, but seriously, when I say I am bad I mean it. I point the way. If I am not saying it out loud, I am pointing interiorly. On the bright side, I manage to keep this at bay with people I don’t know very well, but the more comfortable I get, the more I start taking control of their driving habits. My MBA classmates can confirm to this (sorry ladies!).

What this mean is that, with my husband, I am so bad that I "might" be driven, but I am actually DRIVING all the time. I tell him which lane he should be in, tell him what speed he should drive (usually higher than the one he drives at), and better yet, I actually POINT the way HOME! As if he didn’t know where we live!! If I am in the car with him, he might be holding the wheel, but I am driving- I give him a lot of credit for bearing with me when we go somewhere. Do you know how hard it is for someone to always tell you, over and over again, how to get to your own apartment??? I can only imagine, so I love him so much more because he doesn’t yell at me, he doesn’t get upset, and he doesn’t even make fun of me (anymore). I would be the one getting upset and yelling at me. Ehm, at him, whatever!

What is best, though, is that while he never complains (I would say he has given up), sometimes I try to operate a certain degree of self restrain. That’s when he misses the exit, ends up in the wrong lane, and has to make impossible u-turns in ridiculously narrow roads. (Okay, it doesn’t happen ALL the time I manage to shut up, but sometimes is good enough and to the point!) I think this gives me moral latitude to point the way out loud for the next ten times we’re in the car together. And, yes, I still understand how much he must love me to put up with that!

On Husband’s Inebriation

Apparently, “Drunk” trumps “Right Answers”.

Conversation last night after a bottle of champagne (I GOT A BIG GIRL JOB!!!):

“…Then you don’t really love me”

“No”

I thought right answers were embedded in the source code. Boy was I wrong (and I hope he enjoyed the couch!).