I…wow. This is possibly the most personally relevant and helpful thing I have ever read on this message board. I do this. Mine is usually tied to monthly hormone fluctuations, but still, I frequently get that panicky, “Oh God, he doesn’t want me anymore, I need to make sure he still does,” thing, and wind up asking him 23920 times and I know he’s annoyed with it and I’m annoyed with it but it’s like this compulsion. This is an entirely new way to look at this. I’m going to tell MrWhatsit also.
OK, this makes sense. I guess I was envisioning an office worker with OCD or something.
My wife doesn’t like to drive or navigate when we are in unfamiliar areas, so she’ll pretty much just kind of wait for me to figure it all out. She also doesn’t really seem to get how long things take so she always underestimates how long it takes to get somewhere. Other than that, she rocks.
Let me see, things that my wife does that bug me the most:
[ul]
[li]Dishes in the sink - Her version of doing the dishes consists of throwing everything from the counter into a sink of soapy water and then leaving it. Just because the counter is clean, does mean they’re done! On top of that, I’ll have to pull everything out, and get rid of the cold, murky water and start over.[/li][li]Along that same line - loading dishes in the dishwasher. I like having a little organization when I load the washer meaning make sure all dinner plates/bowls/glasses make it in before anything else. It makes unloading so much easier when you only have to open one cabinet to put everything back instead of eventually having to open every cabinet in the kitchen to put one or two things in each.[/li][li]Bathroom cleanliness is terrible. Floss laying on or near the sink, makeup powder everywhere. Bits of toilet paper on counter. Robes/towels/dirty clothes laying wherever they were taken off. Clumps of toothpaste globbed up on the sink edges. I mean, what the hell is she doing in there? Fighting World War 3?[/li][/ul]
I do give her credit though, when it comes time to get down and do some nitty-gritty cleaning, she can do much better than I ever will. Give her a couple hours while I take the kids to the store, and I can come back to an entirely cleaned house. So basically, during the work week it is a pig sty, and the weekend is spent cleaning up the mess. I prefer to try and keep the house semi-clean during the week so I can actually relax on my days off.
Hahahaha, you sure she’s not trying to off you? How much life insurance do you have?
My main complaint with my DH is that he takes his clothes off and either leaves them on the bedroom floor, or puts them on top of the lid on the hamper I store the single socks in. About once a week, I go in to that hamper to see if I can dig out a pair of socks that made it in to different laundry loads (and were therfore singles when I put them in there), and I have to move all his worn but not quite dirty yet clothes that he doesn’t fold and put away or hang up. Drives me nuts!
He’s also a slow thinker/decision maker, but it balances out my impulsiveness. To be honest, after being with him for a decade, his slowness has helped me develop my patience, so it’s a good thing.
I know I have some pretty bad habits too. I tend to zone out when he’s talking to me, which is rude, and I repeat myself a lot. I also do dishes differently then him, so if I start them up, and he takes over, he gets irritated about how I’ve put them in the sink.
Cooking anything somehow involves the use of every single pot, pan, dish, utensil, and kitchen appliance we own. And then she’ll just pile them in the sink, where they’ll remain unless/until I wash them.
When I cook OTOH, the kitchen actually ends up cleaner than it was before I started, and the cooking dishes are all washed and put away even before we eat.
Ooooooooh yeah. Last night, I get home to find that the kitchen has apparently exploded. There are dishes everywhere. Pots and pans on the stove, on the counters, cutting boards all over the place, food piled on plates all over the island.
She had made a stir fry. A STIR FRY! And every dish in the kitchen was dirty.
sigh
Me: “Thanks for dinner, sweetie. I’ll clean up.”
It took me two hours to do the dishes. I kid you not.
Oh god no. If I’m not getting down and dirty with work or hobbies, I shower when I get up in the morning and that’s it. If I know I’m going swimming later in the day, I won’t even shower then.
This I can identify with. Mine set a new record last week: 98 degrees Fahrenheit in a room at B&B in Vermont in February. I’m just glad we didn’t get a natural-gas surcharge in our bill. Thermostat controls, to my wife, are not temperature setting devices, but binary switches to be shoved completely in one direction or the other.
My apologies to you and to sandra_nz. I’m guilty of posting-before-coffee and failed to include the necessary context. Here’s a pic of my nest. Hopefully the reason for uninterrupted preparation is a little more clear.
I tend to do that, too, and my hearing is getting worse as I’m getting older, too. In our mid-forties, way too many of our conversations consist of, “What?” “Pardon?” “What was that last word?”
We do balance each other out too, though - I tend to be more impulsive and think that I can do anything, and he tends to go slower and think things through before doing things. I encourage him to try new things, and he prevents me from getting trapped in a basement by a futon frame that I’m pretty sure I can carry down there myself.
1.) She’ll pick up, without recap or preamble, a conversation we started a long time ago (an hour before, or several hours, or even on a previous day), and I have to try and figure out what she’s talking about. Always good for several minute’s confusion.
2.) Sometimes she’ll apparently ask me a question based upon a line of thought that’s been going on in her head. Again, it feels like coming in at the middle of a movie. I’ve clearly missed something, but it’s not clear what. In fact, it’s hard to tell if this is the case of an unverbalized self-conversation preceding her statement, or if I simply can’t remember that it’s part of an unterminated conversation we had in the past. I usually just ask her what she’s talking about, to save time.
3.) She tells me that sometimes I do both of the above, as well.
4.) Even after all these years (and even though I’m familiar with the similar topological demonstration), I’m always amazed when she performs the incredible Removing the Bra Without Taking Off Her Shirt trick.
