storytimewithjoe | Menial Things

Are you married? Or are you in some form of Long-Term-Relationship? Then I’m sure you’d agree with me that every single day of every single week of every single month of every single year of your relationship is absolutely and completely peaches and cream with a side of tasty fat-free Win-Sauce. Right?

Oh HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYuuuuulllll no!

I think it is fair to say that most, if not every single one of us, have a few quirks here and there that give our relationship a bit of “spice”. (And by that, I of course mean that we drive each other a bit cray-cray).

One of those typical “married-people” annoyances that I find myself doing now and again involves nagging at my hubby to finish things. My darling husbear has a condition that I refer to as “completion-blindness.” What does this mean? This means that when working on a project, he will hit a point where, in his mind, the project is complete. Completion does indeed (usually) mean that an object that existed only in its raw bits and pieces yesterday now has taken on a 3-D recognizable and functional form. But there’s an issue. The tools, or the scrap materials, or set-up is still all over the place, waiting to be put away before somebody trips over it and breaks something.

Over the course of years, I’ve learned something. It isn’t that he is lazy. I’m pretty sure he isn’t trying to “accidentally” kill me. And it isn’t that he is trying to encourage me to jump off a bridge in frustration now that all the insurance paperwork is in place. So what is it? It is that, in his mind, the task is done. And because the task is done, nothing else need happen. So he can go back to reading, right?

Siiiiigh.

When I find the laundry still in the basket sitting on the bed, but not actually put away, I have to tell myself, “No… he isn’t being Mr. Passive-aggressive. He isn’t trying to push my OCD, ADD, Inner-Joan-Crawford buttons. Instead, he got distracted, and out-of-site-is-out-of-mind. No more, no less. Ohhhhhm… Ohhhhhm….” But in the midst of my frustration as I repeated in my mind over and over “he made it all the way up the stairs with the laundry! He folded it. He came sooooo close to finishing the job. Why didn’t he make the additional couple of feet to the closet to actually put it all away? Perhaps I need to increase the beatings…”, I sat down on the bed and thought about it from a different perspective. And as I calmly thought about it, I realized something - I kinda do the same thing. (He admits while squirming a little bit)

For me, there are some projects that I really, really get into. But then that last final itsy-bitsy menial task is, for me, sooooo annoying, or sooooo painfully bland that I just cannot bring myself to get around to it.

I think for instance of my last sewing project. I got the whole outfit done in a weekend. And I hung it up for an evening to allow the cloth to settle and stretch before doing the hemming and button-holes (which anal-retentive creature that I am, I insist upon doing by hand). But then the next day I looked at the project and inwardly went, “Le Siiiiiiiigh. I really, really, really hate, hate, HAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE hand-sewing. Maybe tomorrow night.) And the same thing happened the next night, and the next night. A month later, the outfit was still hanging there, waiting for my attention.

Then there is pressing. I have no problem sewing an outfit. But to actually pull out the iron and properly get the wrinkles out? TORTURE! I ain’t no Martha. I do NOT take a perverse pleasure in pressing the perfect pleat. In fact, I hate it, hate it, hate it. My preferred method of ironing? I go all straight-desperate-bachelor. I take a moist washcloth and the wrinkled garment, and throw them in the dryer for about 10 minutes. Any wrinkles left from that are clearly meant to be.

Putting away laundry? TORTURE! That’s why this is one of the few domestic chores at our home that is totally on Paul. For whatever reason, I am not all about folding up T-shirts and arranging them nicely in their drawers. For whatever reason, laundry in drawers to me makes as much sense as organizing paperclips. Just jam them in there and close the drawer!

And then there is present-wrapping. My hubby is a true Decorative Artist when it comes to this. He will match up the pattern on the paper, and do his best to hide the scotch tape. Then we have the ribbons and the bows and all the frill-frills. Me? Again, there is that “done” concept. To me, the “done” hits when I am happily leaving the store with that feeling of a caveman back from a fresh kill. But then the stomach-churning reality hits – “I still gotta pull this thing out, and wrap it? Ugh!” For me, one of the single greatest inventions EVER was the decorative gift bag? Because if it were up to me, under the Christmas tree would be a bunch of items stuck in grocery bags and stapled shut. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy how pretty wrapped-packages look. Rather, I have absolutely zero, zero, ZERO talent for doing it and making it look pretty. At best, pressies from me look… um… “rustic”. Yah… we’ll go with that.

So every now and again, I walk into the house and trip (literally) over that thing that I told my hubby to put away. So naturally, I limp along into the other room and let loose. “Why don’t you put things away?!!!!!!!” I ask angrily while trying not to cry over my hurt toe. “You never finish what you start!!! Are you trying to kill me???? (assorted Bitch, bitch, bitch, yell, scream, momentary turets, etc)” And his response? Calmly, astutely, and maturely he says to me, “Excuse me, but… you do that too.”

I HATE it when he holds up a mirror. What am I supposed to say? “GASP!!!!!” I might say as if just drenched by a pitcher of ice water. “Well…. I… uh… but… uh… well… uh…. THAT’S DIFFERENT!!!!!!“

I’m not sure what’s worse. The pain of a stubbed toe… or knowing that I just got busted by tall, blond and hunky for being a hypocrite. I think the latter.

The toe will heal. My pride? I guess time will tell.