With modern devices, you can get a phone app to control the volume. They’ll never know that you’re doing it.
Same for me - except it’s only 38 years. I wouldn’t even care if it just got rearranged. No, I have to hear about how I didn’t make the most efficient use of space for the entire time the reloading takes. Can you guess which other things I won’t do?
Speaking as a man, I am appalled at the idea of peeing standing up with the seat down. I’ve never even considered doing such a thing, even when I was living alone. I have to use the seat sometimes too!
Me too.
But that’s because I can’t help but notice (and adjust if necessary) the state of the toilet seat, so I’m somewhat baffled by how adamantly some women insist on the seat being left down.
They, I assume, want it back down after we’re done.
Speaking only for myself, I only care in the middle of the night, when I probably haven’t turned the lights on. And am not fully awake. I’ll notice the seat is up in the daytime.
Yeah sitting unaware on a toilet with the ring up is not pleasant.
What’s the list up to now?
That sounds manageable.
Which reminds me of one thing about my husband that aggravates me: he can lay down and be asleep within five minutes. Me, I need to avoid blue light for an hour. I need the mood lighting, the white noise, sleep mask, complete darkness, the whole song and dance, and even then I’m going to be tossing and turning many nights.
I’ve mentioned this before, I believe. My wife will make a stir fry (and a very nice one), but it takes her three or four measuring spoons and two or three measuring cups to do it. I’m pretty much a “this needs a dash of this and a little more of that” cook myself…I can’t imagine what she is putting in that has to be measured to that degree of accuracy. This is always apparent to me because doing the dishes (regardless of who cooks) is my job.
I can understand that there might be a couple spices she wants to measure, but using up basically all of our measuring utensils on a simple stir-fry? Now, for a cake? OK, though I measure mostly by “feel” and get acceptable results. I suspect she thinks, “This stir-fry needs about a quarter cup of soy sauce,” and then actually measures it when she adds it. Neither the precision or accuracy seems necessary to me.
But I love it and I love her.
It’s also the expectations. Most parents understand that kids aren’t going to be perfect and there are thousands of books telling parents that.
Not enough of us put the same understanding to our spouses.
My son is like that. My daughter is closer to you, but not as bad.
My son would ask for a bedtime story and be asleep before the end of page one. My daughter needed the whole library read to her.
You know how your spouse, or other close family member, will start a conversation about some topic, and due to shared experience, you quickly get up to speed? Like, they say “Hey, I talked to Bob about the thing…” and you quickly remember what they’re talking about, without a lot of specifics?
My wife thinks this is a superpower that only she has. Because when she starts such a conversation, it is completely vague with no context whatsoever. So I don’t always immediately catch up. She will, out of the blue, say something like “oh yeah, I talked to her, and she said we should do it.” When anyone else would start the same conversation by saying “Oh yeah, I talked to my mom, and she said we should visit.” I, of course, have no idea who or what she is talking about, so I have to ask “and who is ‘her’? Do what?”
Me. I can fall asleep just about any time, anywhere. I’ve fallen asleep sitting in a desk chair (no arms) or on the toilet without toppling over. I fell asleep sitting on a small stool once. When I complain in the morning that it seemed to take me a long time to fall asleep the night before, my wife will snort derisively and say I was out in about 10 minutes. She, OTOH, can lie awake for hours, only making it worse by stressing over not falling asleep. The ticking of a clock in the next room can become an obsession upon which she’ll fixate until she gets up and moves the clock.
Whenever she would marvel at how easily I fall asleep, I used to say it was because I had a clear conscience. I no longer say that, because she took it as an implication that she does not.
ETA: I am not narcoleptic. I just know how to clear my mind and relax until zzzzzzzzzzzz.
That’s pretty common, I think. My wife does that a lot.
Her business is really busy and she has a lot of projects, and I can’t remember the reason for her last business trip.
Fortunately, she’s getting better at hiding her irritation.
Gaah! You’re triggering me!!!1!! 
Ex-wife would cook only from a recipe, measure everything as if performing nuclear chemistry, use a clean measuring tool for every ingredient, and create a mountain of dirty cookware for a simple dish. To her credit, she did it skillfully but verrry slowly, never spilling, burning, boiling over, or breaking anything. The results were as good as the recipes were. Which varied between OK & fantastic. And she did her own clean-up afterwards.
I by contrast am more of the by guess and by gosh, that looks about right school of cooking. My hand is the only measuring tool needed for spices, and one measuring cup suffices for any / all bulky, dry, or wet ingredients. Once I get moving, I’m much more slapdash so breaking, spilling, boiling over, or singeing was just to be expected. But dayum was the food ready quickly. And I did/do my own cleanup. Which is nearly zero utensils, but nearly always some kind of sorry mess on / in / around the stove, etc.
We hadn’t been co-habiting a week before we knew not to try to jointly prepare a meal. Not long after we realized we were both happier if we didn’t even watch the other at work; just hide in the other room until it was time to savor the results.
So many wrongs mismatches packed into that short mistaken marriage. Can’t honestly say “wrong”; can say “waaaaayy too different”.
That is not a factor in this household because both toilets have the seat down all the time. If they are left up, ring or no ring, the dogs – the ones with the telescoping necks? – will use it as a drinking source. This despite there is a perfectly good bucket of water in the kitchen closer to where they hang out.
Drinking.
I’m not anti-alcohol - I will very occasionally have a drink. But apparently, any gathering, with or without an occasion, requires spirits and/or beer. Heaven help you if you expect them to be satisfied with lemonade and soda. I dunno - maybe it’s just me.
We have this, too. Starting a convo without a shred of context, or changing gears mid-discussion. I often have to make a time-out symbol with my hands and ask “what’re we talking about?”
Oh, and we have no toilet seat drama because we always close the lid. Everyone has to lift someting to use it.
The late Mr. Salinqmind: First, used to dribble pee on the rim of the toilet, and it eventually built up into a hard brown crust which no amount of swishing with a brush and Ajax could dislodge. I didn’t mind cleaning the potty, but that hard pee stain was going to stay there. He complained about it once, and I said he made it, he could find something in his vast set of tools to scrape it off. Because I wasn’t and so he did…Second maddening habit: draping his clothes that needed washing ON TOP OF THE HAMPER. Not in it. On it. For a while, after I pointed it out, he decided to wash his own clothes separately while I did the whole rest of the household laundry. But that, of course, didn’t last.