A Blogger’s Assignment… Things that mystify me

Okay, that makes bet­ter sense. Even though I like to think I know every­thing, I don’t.Seeing that sec­ond def­i­n­i­tion, I think I’ll choose to talk about my wife. She puz­zles me men­tal­ly and she is also obscure and mys­te­ri­ous. But what exact­ly about her mys­ti­fies me?

One thing I don’t get, is why she does things a cer­tain way even though she knows that anoth­er way would pro­vide bet­ter results.

For instance, she will swear she told me to do some­thing or gave me a piece of infor­ma­tion, that appar­ent­ly was vital, even though I am pret­ty sure she nev­er did.

Okay, I will admit, that most of the time she prob­a­bly did tell me. But, my brain is very full. I have to take care of the bills, the bud­get, I am on the Board at my com­mu­ni­ty’s coop­er­a­tive, as well as the chair­per­son of a com­mit­tee, I work 3rd shift, I help my son with cub scouts. I mean, I can only retain so much. There are estab­lished rules to pre­sent­ing infor­ma­tion to me in my family:

1. You must have eye con­tact. This is cru­cial! If I break away, then you have lost my atten­tion and need to start all over. I can have full on con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple, but if I am look­ing at some­thing else or my com­put­er, then I am on auto pilot and not lis­ten­ing to what your say­ing. I am just giv­ing our estab­lished respons­es to ques­tions, “uh-huh, That’s fine, what­ev­er you decide, yes dear” those kinds of things.
2. You need to have me repeat back what you have said, so you know that I have it all and that it is in my brain some­where. But again, with eye con­tact, I have been known to repeat things back when on auto pilot.
3. You prob­a­bly should also write it down for me or have me write it down and place it some­where I will con­stant­ly see it. Post it on my com­put­er is handy, or set an alarm on my PDA. Email works best!

Okay, Look­ing at the above makes me seem like I am real­ly incom­pe­tent. I’m not, but for vital infor­ma­tion, those steps should be followed.

Sad part is, my wife knows this! We have had full dis­cus­sion of this! But she nev­er fol­lows through on this! So how can I be at fault for for­get­ting things!

It also does­n’t help that she has a pho­to­graph­ic mem­o­ry. She uses the argu­ment that she nev­er for­gets any­thing I tell her! But yet, that same mem­o­ry does­n’t work for her when she has to dri­ve some­where for the sec­ond or third time. Go figure!

Anoth­er thing that mys­ti­fies me about her… I don’t get why she decides to ‘play dumb’ when­ev­er it involves show­ing her some­thing on the computer.

She used to pro­gram com­put­er code with her moth­er when she was a teen, yet she can’t fig­ure out how to sort a col­umn in Excel, or oth­er begin­ner func­tions. No mat­ter how many times I tell her either. I think she does it so that I will get fed up and do it for her. But this woman strives on effi­cien­cy, so would­n’t it be effi­cient for her to do it herself?

And last but not least, I don’t get how she is allowed to say or do stuff, but if I try to say or do the same types of things, I get in trou­ble! We’re equal here, so I should be allowed to swear when I stub my toe!

The more I think on all this, the more I think she does these things just to get to me.

Mat­ter of fact, I think she may have actu­al­ly told me that once or twice… but I don’t think she had made eye con­tact, so I can’t be sure on that.

Even though my wife mys­ti­fies (okay… annoys) me on the above, I love her and would­n’t change a thing!