June 27, 2007
“Yearn to understand first and to be understood second.”
Well, Ms. Beca Lewis Allen, I keep trying to get my husband to take this advice, but he’s not getting it.
Though I’ll admit I’m not following my own counsel— as I yearn to be understood and to understand second.
It’s a woman’s prerogative, right?
So around and around we go.
The sages believe that souls attract to those who are on the same frequency and that if you move out of frequency, or out of sync, life doesn’t flow and goes into gridlock.
Let’s put that into the context of Mr. and Mrs. If the soul be wife, and she supposedly attracts a soul called husband who be on the same wavelength as she, then why, oh why, is it so much work keeping said man on the same page about a myriad of things, including the toilet seat rule, doing the dishes, vacuuming, dusting, taking out the garbage, and the importance of choosing the Oprah Show over Battlestar Galactica?
I love my Pete and we are lifers no matter what. Yet, it still be hard work to keep him tuned in to the household facts of life that frequently slip between the cushions on his side of the couch or collect with all the whisker hairs behind the sink taps in the bathroom, where I invariably drop my toothbrush.
I was sitting out at my spot by the creek the other evening, listening for sage comprehension advice on the wind, when four male mallard ducks flew by chasing one reluctant female around the sky.
“Oh, brother, all males are alike. They have one thing on their mind,” I blurted out loud.
Suddenly, after nine years of marriage, I had the answer to the law of attraction and all the frequency problems with my soulmate. I quickened my pace back to the house and peeked around the corner into the living room.
In a sultry voice aimed at the man prone on the couch, and raising my eyebrows up and down, I asked, “Honey, would you draw me a bath?”
“Sure, dear,” he replied, moving to sit and get up. I went off to brush my hair, get undressed, and find that little black number I had bought in the city.
I was gone from his sight about five minutes and still hadn’t heard the rush of hot water running into the tub. I came out of the bedroom wrapped in my bath towel to find Pete sitting at the kitchen table with his reading glasses on, pencil in hand, and studying something in front of him. As I drew near and saw what his interpretation of my request was, even my best flat stare impression couldn’t express how sure I was that aliens had just kidnapped my husband and replaced him with a space cadet.
There on a piece of grid paper was his pencil sketch of the new bathroom he’d envisioned for our remodelling project due for construction in 2015.
“Is this what you had in mind, dear?” he queried, ever so unsuspecting to the immediate frequency static and gridlock being drafted in a stalled woman.
Yet I couldn’t help but smile because the moment was just too misunderstood not to be funny.
Author Christina Baldwin once said, “When you’re stuck in a spiral, to change all aspects of the spin you need only to change one thing.”
So I just dropped my towel.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Boost or no boost
June 13, 2007
If at bedtime you find your husband lying prone and beating his chest with a pair of drumsticks, it can mean one of two things—either he’s in the mood for more than music or the “Rock Star” energy drink is taking effect.
Knowing my neck of the woods, life’s like that, and you never know what you’re going to get.
I have yet to find the need to partake in the caffeine punch that, from time to time, makes its way home with my groceries, and that a certain someone (who shall not be named) says he’s just as surprised as I am to find in the bag.
Besides, with brand names that include “Venom,” “Dynamite,” “Go Fast,” “Flying Horse,” “Monster,” and “AMP,” I’m afraid to ingest the stuff for fear that I’ll grow fangs, blow up while speeding, sprout wings, neigh, turn green, or morph and become a sound system for any number of guitars growing in my living room.
Furthermore, and for the most part, I already have more than enough energy for the two of us anyway.
My energy is palpable, especially when a certain trip is looming on the horizon and into the heart of Minnesota for the annual community garage weekend.
Never mind the fact that the day before we left, I literally spent 12 hours pumping and hauling rain water out of my basement by myself since “Mr. Incredible” wasn’t home from work yet.
But even after that “slave to a soaker” affair, I didn’t crack open a energy drink.
I didn’t have to.
Although I scraped my skeleton off the floor to go pick up my beloved at the bus station, my energy quickly returned looking up at the full moon, pondering the distance, as I fed my flat stare with fire balls at listening to him lament how tired he was from the long ride from the city.
I returned to full throttle energy levels after my shower, but not due to the regenerative powers of the hot water.
A certain someone (who shall not be named) had snuck in to the bathroom to relieve himself and forgot to put the seat down when he flushed, wherein I dropped my toothbrush on the way out of the shower.
Energy drink-free, I blew out of the bathroom with my dripping toothbrush, hair askew and growling loudly at my husband to check his head and also take Jack Elliott’s advice about said seat in his “Squirrel Pie” column in last week’s Times.
Thankfully for all parties involved, there were more important things to focus on, like garage sale issues.
And because it is a fact that what you focus on expands, over the day-long spree of 18 garage sales in Minnesota cottage country, I managed to amass some of the best buys known to woman-kind, including an ornamental hedgehog that promptly drove “Dot” into a barking frenzy when she found it sitting in the screen porch.
And while I know that more junk is just what we didn’t need after down-sizing last year, at least we didn’t have to worry about importing a pathetic piece of sponge half-covered in fabric remnant like we tried to do last year.
But living here on an old farm has its benefits when you find treasures that rival even the best garage sale finds. Finding cool stuff, like an old car parts, gives me energy to do more yard clean-up.
René Panhard and Emile Levassor, who were credited with inventing the first automatic transmission in the late 1800s, were geniuses. But I’d almost bet they never guessed anyone like me would come along and tear apart an old one for innovative candle holders.
If at bedtime you find your husband lying prone and beating his chest with a pair of drumsticks, it can mean one of two things—either he’s in the mood for more than music or the “Rock Star” energy drink is taking effect.
Knowing my neck of the woods, life’s like that, and you never know what you’re going to get.
I have yet to find the need to partake in the caffeine punch that, from time to time, makes its way home with my groceries, and that a certain someone (who shall not be named) says he’s just as surprised as I am to find in the bag.
Besides, with brand names that include “Venom,” “Dynamite,” “Go Fast,” “Flying Horse,” “Monster,” and “AMP,” I’m afraid to ingest the stuff for fear that I’ll grow fangs, blow up while speeding, sprout wings, neigh, turn green, or morph and become a sound system for any number of guitars growing in my living room.
Furthermore, and for the most part, I already have more than enough energy for the two of us anyway.
My energy is palpable, especially when a certain trip is looming on the horizon and into the heart of Minnesota for the annual community garage weekend.
Never mind the fact that the day before we left, I literally spent 12 hours pumping and hauling rain water out of my basement by myself since “Mr. Incredible” wasn’t home from work yet.
But even after that “slave to a soaker” affair, I didn’t crack open a energy drink.
I didn’t have to.
Although I scraped my skeleton off the floor to go pick up my beloved at the bus station, my energy quickly returned looking up at the full moon, pondering the distance, as I fed my flat stare with fire balls at listening to him lament how tired he was from the long ride from the city.
I returned to full throttle energy levels after my shower, but not due to the regenerative powers of the hot water.
A certain someone (who shall not be named) had snuck in to the bathroom to relieve himself and forgot to put the seat down when he flushed, wherein I dropped my toothbrush on the way out of the shower.
Energy drink-free, I blew out of the bathroom with my dripping toothbrush, hair askew and growling loudly at my husband to check his head and also take Jack Elliott’s advice about said seat in his “Squirrel Pie” column in last week’s Times.
Thankfully for all parties involved, there were more important things to focus on, like garage sale issues.
And because it is a fact that what you focus on expands, over the day-long spree of 18 garage sales in Minnesota cottage country, I managed to amass some of the best buys known to woman-kind, including an ornamental hedgehog that promptly drove “Dot” into a barking frenzy when she found it sitting in the screen porch.
And while I know that more junk is just what we didn’t need after down-sizing last year, at least we didn’t have to worry about importing a pathetic piece of sponge half-covered in fabric remnant like we tried to do last year.
But living here on an old farm has its benefits when you find treasures that rival even the best garage sale finds. Finding cool stuff, like an old car parts, gives me energy to do more yard clean-up.
René Panhard and Emile Levassor, who were credited with inventing the first automatic transmission in the late 1800s, were geniuses. But I’d almost bet they never guessed anyone like me would come along and tear apart an old one for innovative candle holders.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)