Qualifier
2005-03-07, 11:56 a.m.

Y'all, I know I pound on my beloved DishWasher quite a bit here. I realize it sounds like I think he is just an idiot, and I just ride his ass constantly.

Well, he's not stupid. He's provincial. Is that a fair assessment? He has lived in a small town his whole life, except for attending (and graduating from) UT Austin. But it seems his life in a small town has allowed him to believe it's acceptable to keep his mind rather narrow. He's never been challenged to think big, to get his mind out of the small town and realize there's a bigger world with lots of different kinds of people and points of view out there.

I don't look at it like it's my duty to expand his mind whether he likes it or not. I just find that in our daily discourse and interaction, that I at times have to take a crowbar and force a little daylight into a neglected and cobwebby portion of his brain.

He just hasn't experienced much of the stuff that I have experienced in life. His experiences are very different. Sports sports sports sports sports, titty bars, beer and sports.

He is smart. He can spell big words. He can figure things out. I believe that he feels secure in a role where he leans on me to spell the big words for him, and figure things out. I didn't sign up for that, and I know he's bigger and better than that.

We all pigeonhole ourselves into roles. He works hard at keeping me from falling into my roll of sock-folder and bed-maker. I work hard to keep him from falling into a role of dumb-man-depending-on-smart-wife.

I love him with all my heart. I can't imagine NOT spending the rest of my life with him. We have fun. We make each other laugh. We sit around being perfectly still and quiet, watching trash on tv. He laughs his ass off at "Friends" for the love of Pearl. What more could a woman want? Well, if he was able to watch What Not To Wear, that would be good, but he just can't.

I realize I do get on here and bitch about him, but this is a relatively safe outlet for that. It's petty stuff, for the most part, it's the stuff that Fun Girlfriend Laura wouldn't even pay attention to, but Stern Wife Laura lets it get under her skin, so I vent here.

Let it be hereby decreed that the stuff that just pisses me off, the burrs under my blanket or whatever that metaphor is, are few and far between, and are the stuff that I have no doubt we will look back on and laugh about. We already do, in some cases. Or I do. I explain I'm not laughing AT him, I'm laughing INSTEAD of him, and he claims not to understand what that means, but I don't believe him.

And to leave you with something funny, DW led me in a P90 sculpt session this morning. Our videotape finally broke, but he remembers all the exercises, so he led us in a 30-minute weight lifting session. But he doesn't remember the names of the moves, so he made some up.

"Elbow arm thingies."
"And now shoulder arm thingies."
"Pull up your pants."
"Pull up your pants fly."
"Back fat."
"Chicken."

The perfect thing about all of this is that I knew EXACTLY what he meant by each one.