I have trouble sometimes getting Sarah's true feelings out of her. I find it especially irritating when she tells me a particular thing doesn't matter, or agrees with something when in fact she feels the exact opposite.
When we first discussed moving plans, we figured we'd hang out in Cleveland until she was finished, and then move. If someone made an offer on the house early enough, I could pack up everything and she could stay somewhere for the rest of the month and everything would be fine. Then I thought maybe I could just move anyway. I asked her what she thought, and of course, she said it was fine. The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that leaving my wife alone in an empty house for a month wasn't the nicest thing to do. So I told her I was going to stay. Not too long afterwards, she admitted that she was getting a little nervous having our new house sit empty for so long. So we changed plans again, and now I was going. It's that sort of indecisive, 'I don't want to tell you what I'm really thinking' that drives me nuts.
We tend not to argue much, since most arguments stem from differences of opinions. When it comes to opinions, I don't really have much of any. If Sarah wants to arrange the furniture a particular way, or put flowery sheets on the bed, or hang pictures in a particular spot, it's probably going to be ok with me. Honestly, the majority of decisions that she makes I couldn't care less about. But when it comes to something that I really do have an opinion on, I'll speak up. It's rare, but it happens. My opinions tend to be based on the more logical spectrum.
Case in point, my wife is a Target junkie. She wanders around Target and usually comes home with all sorts of fruity, house beautifying items. A few months ago, our toilet plunger disappeared and was replaced with a far more stylish model. Fine. The only problem was that it wasn't really a toilet plunger, but more a piece of art deco cleverly disguised as a toilet plunger. Sure it looked nicer in the bathroom than the trusty ol' model from the hardware store, but it didn't work worth a damn. When your toilet is overflowing, you don't need art. You need a plunger. I explained my reasoning, and we ditched the plunger.
When I got here to the new house and unpacked, I didn't touch any of the nick-nacky artsy stuff or the pictures. I really didn't care to much what went where, and it made no sense to hang a bunch of stuff, then have her wrinkle her nose at my placement and then move things around later.
Money seems to be a sticking point for other people, too. I'll admit that it seems pointless to me to spend $150 on just your hair, regardless of what they're doing to it. But when Sarah goes to get her hair done, I don't complain. If it's important to her, then she deserves it. Not to mention the fact that she will soon be making most of the money to pay for her haircuts. But not arguing about stuff like that makes it easier when I want to go out and blow $200 on wireless networking gear. We both have our own things that are important to us, and it works out just fine.
I'm sure that sooner or later we'll come up with more ways to annoy one another, but right now I'm pretty darn content.
---
100 pounds of shit in a 25 pound sack.
