My Wife is Crazy

It may be that I am still a little buzzed–-hard to tell what with Daylight Savings Time and all. I mean, seriously, I have enough trouble with my own personal time-space continuum without random fuckery so farmers and golfers can piss mutts and miss putts.

Anyway, apologies in advance for the teal deer stream of consciousness brain dump I am about to perform, but I have been thinking lately that men, in the collective wisdom of millenia, should have, by now, made some sort of progress in understanding wives. I just can’t fucking figure them out and I refuse to believe that its impossible. There’s gotta be some sort of DiVinci-Fibonacci code that would allow me to at least get a small glimpse into what the fuck their damage is. There’s gotta be.

The sum total of what I have been able to figure out about my wife is stuff she does not like, and, as it turns out, she does not like a lot of stuff. At the top of the Stuff My Wife Does Not like is things I say, things I do, and things I merely think about but She Can Just Tell By Looking At Me.

Now, this in and of itself is of no great concern. There are many people out there whom, I am sure, have some sort of personal or emotional defect and, for this reason, may not like me. Or who grow offended when I offer a very witty yet insightful comment on the human condition or scratch my balls in public. But I do not live with these people, so their petty griefs are of no concern to me. The wife’s petty griefs are also of no concern to me, but they do make me powerful curious about how the hell they became griefs. This weekend was like Grief City Central. Every time I opened my mouth, I got into trouble. And I opened it quite a bit.

It started out pourly as I was slightly less than sober upon arrival at the house on Friday (see what I did there? Pourly. Pour. It’s shit like that that she does not appreciate. How can you not? Honestly.). So she all immediately critical. “Why are you drinking at work?” she says.

“Open container laws,” I tell her. “You can get locked up for boozing on the street.”

She does not think this is funny, which is just plain crazy because I laughed out loud. My wife has no sense of humor at all. None. I call her my Little Black Rain Cloud because Eeyore thinks she’s depressing. Well, I don’t call her that in public because people might think it was racist and I don’t call her that when she can hear me because That One Time I Did went spectacularly wrong. Seriously. I think she was offended, and I don’t think it had anything to do with the black comment.

Anyway, I’m in the door two minutes and I am already in the doghouse. Can’t I even take my coat off and have a relaxing shit before you start in on me.

She also has no interest in my pooping. At all. I would really enjoy having someone be interested in the finished product, as poop can be informative about your overall health and well-being. A really good poop is very satisfying and I find it a little sad that this is another thing that we can’t talk about. Like my Mail Order Russian Intern. I brought her aboard because she was seriously hot and her writing sample contained a statement that women were less likely to be involved in crime because they were not as strong, aggressive or smart as men. When I explained this to the wife, she was really fucking angry. She did not understand why I would hire a hot chick to look at who already knew I was stronger and smarter than she would ever be. Plus, wicked cool accent. Oh! And she has a Cindy Craward mole on her left upper lip. Serious hotness. I described that to the wife and the only thing she thought to ask is why I would notice a mole on the Mail Order Russian Intern lip when it took me days to notice she dyed her hair. It was after I told her I was more interested in seeing if she had a mole on her ass and I had to start looking somewhere that I decided that the Mail Order Russian Intern was one of those things we could no longer talk about. Like pooping. Sad really.

So Friday night did not go well.

I spend Saturday shuttling my daughter all over creation. Two soccer games, lunch, then volunteer orientation at the SPCA. I’m in freaking agony because I spent three fucking hours on a concrete floor hauling shit around and I am currently suffering acute bursitis in both knees. Plus a busted and infected toe. So we return and I’m planning on taking a pain killer. So I pour a glass of bourbon and the wife sees me and says “Are you going to drink that?”

I am at a loss. I have no idea how to respond. This is the World’s Stupidest Question Ever. Why would put anything in glass except if you were going to drink it? So, at dinner, she puts some food on her plate. I ask if she’s going to eat that. She picks up the salt, I ask her if she’s going to use that. Food goes in her mouth, I ask her if she’s going to swallow that. As soon as she gets up and turns around I ask if I can tap that.

That answer to the last question was no.

Now we’d already agreed that I was to play poker on Saturday night. So post-dinner, I am meandering around and killing time prior to departure. She says if I still intend to play because now my son is sick. I say of course, my son was sick all day and I wasn’t around and he showed signs that he is real power vomiter who can hit what he aims at. Then she lets fly with this corker:

“That’s not what I meant.”

What? What the fuck does that even mean? This statement, which fucking chicks use constantly, makes my head fucking hurt like there are tiny glass weasels gang raping a large ceramic anteater with a single large broom handle. And, no I have no idea where that imagery came from, and I am not the least bit concerned that head pain triggers thoughts of sodomy. But I probably should be.

Anyway, I inquired as to what she actually meant and suggested to her that she should say what she means rather than simply emitting words and then muddle the intent of those words by stating the words were simply words and should not be linked to meaning because that was not her intent.
She got mad. She just does not like taking any advice from me. I am not sure why.

She instructs me to text or IM when I leave the poker game. At 8am, she calls me to see if I am alive. She seems disappointed when I answer. She is not thrilled that I lost $150 and even less so when I explain I was catching bad cards. My buddy mocks me for playing badly, prompting me to say I haven’t been this unlucky since my wedding night. This pisses her off for some reason, so I say “That’s not what I meant” and hang up.

I get dropped off stumble through the door and fall immediately to sleep. I do not disrobe, I do not even remove my footgear. I fucking collapse and am out cold. Eight minutes later, she’s antsy to have a conversation. She’s worried about her friends upcoming gamma knife surgery and wants to share these fears with me now.

There are a few impediments to having a meaningful conversation, especially a serious one, with someone as close to unconsciousness as I am. First, I am general lacking in empathy and human warmth, so concern for the well-being of others is something I need to think about and focus on if I am to have any luck in mimicking genuine feeling. Second, I have been drinking all night and into the morning and while this generally brightens my mood and makes me eager to hold forth on all things great and sundry, I have passed the convival stage and am hovering on that line between unconscious and comatose. Good place to be if you are in a dark room with a bed and some pillows, not so good if a worried woman has pulled open the shades on a bright sunny morning to seek your opinions on the efficacy of the gamma knife. Third, ...well, I cannot now remember what the third thing is, but I am pretty sure there was a third thing.

So she gets all the pain and worry for her friend out of her system. I slur something soothing in Gaelic and pat her hand which I know from seeing commercials about shows on Lifetime is something that makes fretful women calm down and stop crying and/or talking. She sniffles a little and looks at me and says, “Are you going to sleep?”

The little glass weasels come back and they seem angrier.

I am now struggling to contain the two nearly overwhelming feelings of needing to laugh out loud at the sheer absurdity and cry helplessly like an eight year old girl in the trunk of a car. This triggers a very loud fart. I mean it was a real ripper. Blew the sheets right up and I suspect it may have even caused the shades to stir a bit. Reeked like only stale bourbon chased with cheap beer and synthetic meatballs can reek. Which is, you know, pretty bad.

The wife is now pissed off again, so the hand patting didn’t take I guess. “Can’t we ever have a conversation without you being disgusting?”

Assuming this to be a rhetorical question, because the truth is more mind-numbingly obvious than the are you going to drink that question (see above), I apologize and note that I am a bit gassy this morning. She also does not like to discuss my gas, which is another subject on the Things We Can’t Talk About list.

She’s also not wild about lists, though she does have an entire single subject notebook with column lists entitled “Tim’s Problems”. She was showing it to the gamma knife friend last weekend and tittering over it, not realizing that several years ago I added “And a bitch is one” to the fourth page. Her friend thought it was funny, her not so much.

I think her lack of humor is caused by stress. Or vice versa. I told her she needed to cut down on her stress levels, earning me a recitation of everything that causes her stress. I got two mentions.

Seriously, boys are all wives this crazy? I honestly don’t remember if she was crazy the whole time we dated off and on, mostly because I was in college and I really don’t remember much of college, but I am relatively sure she wasn’t completely nuts. But lately it’s been a long ride on the slow boat to Crazy Town.