I’ve just had a weird realisation.
I never have to ask “Would you like to put the bins (garbage) out?”. I never have to ask “Please put the bins out”. I never have to demand “Put the ******* BINS out!”
My partner likes putting the bins out. He asks if it’s “bin night”. Often he asks a day early, and I have to tell him that it’s not “bin night” today.
I think I’m living with a freak!
I thought of another one. This occurs on the walk from the parking lot into the grocery store.
“Do we really need to get all this stuff?” means “Can we just get the (limes, steak, cookies) that I want to eat in the next half hour, and could you come back to the grocery store sometime without me and get all the (toilet paper, milk, stamps) that I don’t really need right this instance?”
I’ve been working with him on the concept of if I don’t get (toilet paper, milk, stamps) right now, the need does not disappear. We will still need the item, it’s just that I’ll have to make an additional trip to get it. He’s having a hard time catching on to that idea. Then again, when he lived alone, he spent weeks with no milk, no toilet paper, nothing but beer and ketchup in the fridge. I may be fighting a losing battle.
I absolutely hate taking out the trash. It isn’t a simple job of carry the stuff out and toss it in the big trash can. No siree, Bob. Over here in Germany, we get to sort our trash. We do have to seperate cans under the sink - one for compostables and one for other stuff - so it isn’t as bad as it could be. The compostable stuff just gets dumped in the big brown trash can. It is the other one that causes me problems. I get to sort through all of the crap and decide if it recyclable, in which case it goes into the big yellow bag, or else toss it into the big black trash can. UMMM YEAH! Fun times. Did you ever have to sort nasty yoghurt cups, cat food cans (which go in a box to be carted off to the local collection center someday when I have time,) milk cartons, and various assorted nasties with drops of yoghurt, milk, etc? If all I had to do were carry the bag out and toss it, it would be no problem. But, no. We go through all this “sort your trash” crap, and risk getting a fine if we do it wrong, and guess what? It happens (quite often, I am told) that the trash pickup company dumps all of the crap into one landfill anyway. Oh, joy.
“Would you like to take out the trash?”
Uh, no. I would rather peel my fingernails off one by one and stuff them down my urethra whilst the cat uses my balls to sharpen her claws.
Wow, that was [sup]shudder[/sup] graphic.
[crosses legs]
The ‘instantly knowing where any one item is in the house’ is not a phenomenon limited to women - an ex of mine could do the exact same thing, at times it was almost uncanny. For example, one time I had been looking for my wallet, and had been shouting through 'Did you take my wallet? You sure? I can’t find it. You sure you didn’t have my wallet?’ etc . . to which he’d shout back ‘Look in the drawer, it is in the second drawer down where it always is’ in a what-a-dork tone. This at a point in the morning when he hadn’t yet ventured into the kitchen. I looked for ten minutes, getting more annoyed and shouting through increasingly hysterical accusations of theft every other minute, turning the drawer upside-down and still no luck.
Eventually he takes pity on me (either that or my whining got too annoying), bent down, stuck his hand in the drawer and in a second without even looking at what he was doing withdraws his hand with my wallet in it. It was too freaky, I got goosebumbs.
My SO is from the US and is currently trying to persuade me that ‘turd’ can be meant affectionately and is not quite the term of abuse that it is here in the UK. I remain unconvinced.
Gah, we have that in the Netherlands too! We’re officially obliged to sort all our trash into “Veggies/Fruit/Garden” and “other”. But there’s only TWO trash compounds in the country that are equiped to process the separate flows of trash already. And the one my trash goes to isn’t one of them!
I’ll be damned if I let the state condition me into a practise that I won’t have to observe for another 5 years anyway, so here’s your gray plastic garbage bag with EVERYTHING in it, thanks.
(A pair of neighbours of mine are SO environmentally correct, not only do they USE the little green VFG bin [for naught, as can be seen above], they make a point to place it right behind my tree-burning, gas guzzling, Peugeot 306 1.4 :rolleyes:. I can’t count the times I’ve knocked their stupid bin over while backing out, tossing potato peelings all over the street. Idiots.)
My hubby thinks “Tell me what you think of situation X” means “Tell me what to do about situation X.” If I don’t do what he suggests he’ll say “You never listen to me.”
I listen very well. I value his opinion much more than I value most other people’s. But, no matter how many times I make up my own mind about things, he is always surprised when I do.
And “I’m resting my eyes.” means “I’m sound asleep, but don’t you dare change the channel.”
Apparently I’m supposed to learn that “Oh, I thought of something. Would you like to go out to see my brother play and sing at a coffeehouse on Friday?” means, in fact, “I am paying very close attention to what you are saying, and the fact that I inturrupted you in mid-sentence to bring up another subject is in no way a reflection of my concern for your topic or interests.”
:rolleyes:
This isn’t exactly a semantic thing, and it didn’t exactly threaten my marriage, but here it is anyway.
This evening my wife says to me, “Oh, Chagiya, very forting.” (Let me add here that my wife is Korean, and although she understands some simple English, she doesn’t speak much of it. My Korean is more or less good enough for most of what we need to say, and we use a lot of English words mixed in. It’s pretty comical to hear us talk.) (Oh yeah–“chagiya” is, I don’t know, “sweetheart” or something.)
So she tells me I’m very forting. I reply with a “Hmmm” and a nod of agreement, hoping that whatever it is will pass by without requiring too much of my attention. I continue washing dishes, she continues folding clothes. But it bothers me. I’m forting? I don’t think she knows the word “farting,” and anyway, I’m not farting. I have always prided myself on my sphincter control. She looks up again and repeats, “Oh, very forting.”
I’m using all the clues I can gather. Her brow is knit and she’s pouting a little; she seems to be concerned for my well-being. Then it hits me! I’m all stooped over washing the dishes, because my back was bothering me a little today. I’m not forting, I’m “Poor thing!” She’s expressing sympathy! She recently picked up the expression “poor thing” from somewhere, and has assigned it an adjectival role. As for the pronunciation, the Korean language doesn’t have the “f” sound, so Koreans often confuse it with “p.” Go figure. They also don’t have a “th” sound, so it often comes out like “t.” Forting. Foor ting. Poor ting. Poor thing. That’s it!
Foreigners are funny. Oh wait–I’m the foreigner here.
I’ve learned that, if I’m just in a normal mood, and out of the blue Ms. D. asks me, “What are you upset about?”, the proper answer is NOT “Nothing if you just stop asking me what the fuck I’m upset about.”
I’ll ask if he’s done something or other, just wanting to know if it’s done or not, and he thinks I’m trying to pressure him, or imply that he should have done whatever it was by now. And I just want to know if I can check it off as done, or if I should move it to my “still to be done tomorrow” list. (I think he must have been trained by his ex-wife. In other areas, though, she seems to have trained him reasonably well.)
If I say, “Gosh, the grass is long,” I’m musing on the state of the grass, with no ulterior motive. If I mean to ask Mr. Lestrange to mow the lawn, I say something like, “What’s on your gender for the day? Do you think you might have time to mow the lawn?” Okay, so it’s not “Get up and mow the lawn!” but it’s pretty clear, I think. He never seems to misunderstand that.
Um, my portion of that last post should have begun with the sentence “I have the opposite problem with Mr. Lestrange.”
Makes more sense now, doesn’t it?
You lost me right after the bit about “What’s on your gender for the day?”
Mr. Winkie’s (I really need to think of something else to call him) favorite phrase is “We need to _______.” That would not be a problem if he actually meant we. He doesn’t. What he means is “Winkie, you need to _______.” We’ve had numerous discussions that go this way – If you mean that you think I need to do it, then say it that way. Don’t say we unless you mean we. If you say we when you mean me, then I’m just gonna get mad. I think he has finally learned to say it the way that he means. I still don’t generally do it, but at least now I can just laugh at him outright instead of getting ticked first.
On his side, I’m the one who generally doesn’t feel a need to do something right this minute. If I say I’m doing something, usually that means that I plan to get to it in the next coupla days. He takes me with a grain of salt now.
Podkayne writes, <<In our house, it’s, “Okay, if you don’t want X, you suggest something–and if you suggest it, yer cookin’ it.” He usually warms up to X pretty quick. >>
I am divorced. I have a list of ten characteristics that my next husband must have. #1 on the list is either he must cook, or eat my cooking without complaint. I am the inventor of sheetloaf, vegetable gloop, and pseudofried rice. I’m skinny for a reason.
AKAmame writes, <<I offer you the phrase “domestic blindness”. It comes in very useful round here when Mr Mame is unable to locate simple objects like the potato peeler (in the second drawer down, where else?), or stack of clean, folded clothes on his side of the bed that contain his missing jeans. >>
My former roommates and I had a notebook. Each page contained a checklist describing “clean” condition for each room in the house. It was the only way two neat freaks and a slob could live together without my bursting into tears from being bossed around. I still don’t know why towels have to be folded, and not just shoved in the linen closet. I mean, you’re just going to hang them up wet eventually anyways. I don’t think this is gender related, as they were both guys, and I’m not.
Heavens, I only wish domestic blindness were on the Y chromosome. Then I wouldn’t have to ask someone to help me find my iron so I can finish my quilt blocks…
Corr, who managed to make pasta salad from a box quite pasty (no typo)
Sorry, that should be “agenda.” It started out as a joke, and now we just say it without thinking.
I’m amused by the garbage difficulties most of you seem to be experiencing, as I have almost the opposite problem. When Mr Nim is home (he works offshore 6 weeks at a time), he takes out the garbage almost every time he goes outside, often at least once a day. This wouldn’t be so bad, except that he deliberately does not replace the trash bags in order to wind me up. Then he gleefully listens to my cry of frustration as yet another wet teabag hits the bottom of the bagless trashcan. (Every time I ask him to do something, he interprets it as nagging, and does sneaky little things such as this to make himself feel better about it. A desperate attempt to reassure himself he’s not pw’ed, perhaps.)
I wouldn’t wish for the opposite, though. When I ask Mr Nim to do something, I admittedly often want it done right now. Especially if it involves crumbs on the counter. (How anyone can scatter such a quantity of crumbs with 2 pieces of toast is beyond me. Must be another one of his revenge techniques. And it works.)