The Yankee is a great wife. She’s fun and silly. She appreciates my silliness. She is very smart. We exist together well and shuffle along in a reasonably efficient manner when such frivolous things as “work” or “other plans” interfere.
We had a pretend disagreement on Twitter last night about silverware in the dishwasher. Somehow this became a discussion about brownies — she threatened that I would not get a snack, I took a picture of them in defiance, she accused me of licking them. And then two other families became involved in the Twitter conversation. One took a very clinical and precise approach of efficiency and ergonomics. (They’re architects.) Other friends contributed, and their part of the conversation became about the proper use of the toothpaste tube. We all have our pet peeves. And for those particular friends, the debate rages on at the beginning, middle and end of the day.
Personally, I’m a wherever-the-thumb-falls-on-the-tube kind of guy. I assume most people, and particularly, most guys are. That his lovely wife, a photographer, disagrees with him, an editor, only speaks to the nature of the gender difference, organizational tendencies and the way they get along. Probably it also has something to do with their professional roles.
And this is my theory that will go precisely nowhere. Your formal training inspires what you do in the most minute way, which is really probably what started you down your professional or avocational path to begin with. I submit that the chicken came first, but in a calcium carbonate format. Take this, for example. About the only thing I’ve ever naturally done well is string a bunch of words together in a way as to seem almost credible.
But I digress.
My wife is a lovely lady. And about the only thing we disagree about is the preferred method of waking up. Her alarm goes off. She hits it and wakes up. She is one of those.
I maintain that the best treatment for an alarm, if you must have one, is to pound the plastic casing in a highly ritualistic manner in precisely timed increments. Sociologists, I believe, call this hitting the snooze button.
And I wore it out this morning.
Normally this is where I would delete all of that, write “I just wrote eight paragraphs on oversleeping” and move on with my day. But I’m rather proud of those eight paragraphs, so they’re staying in.
And this was a day of a one quick meeting and signing a bunch of things. It was a day of computer disorganization, class preparation and a teaching demonstration. There was another quick meeting, this time with bubble wrap and styrofoam peanuts.
Now, I am wrapping up the evening with the newspaper. There is apparently something in tomorrow’s edition that will stir conversation, and also many faces in the photographs. Every week is a little better than the issue before, so I’m eager to see what they’ll have tomorrow. No snooze button for me.
Lots more tomorrow.
