I was watching some program the other day, and no, I don't remember which one. Currently, I'm watching Game of Thrones, Ballers, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, my daily General Hospital, Elementary, The Crown, and Call the Midwife. It's an eclectic mix and hard to keep track. But whatever show it was, one of the characters made a general comment about married folks having nonsensical arguments in a tone that sort of annoyed me. As if all of us married people behaved in the way portrayed on screen.
Too bad I don't remember which show it was because I could go back and raise a glass of wine to drink to that comment.
Sunday, after a discussion about the ads on my blog that suddenly appeared in record numbers, I asked my computer programming guru husband to fix my said problem. I explained how blogger worked in adding the Google ads, what I had recently done and probably contributed to my issue, and I asked if he had any suggestions.
He had a few, but they weren't helpful. Now, I say that through my vast knowledge of operating my blogger account for twelve years and not from the perspective of a shrew, know-it-all wife. I mean, if I were that type of woman, I wouldn't have asked his opinion in the first place, but clearly, he thought differently. I explained why his two suggestions weren't going to work, my concern in even implementing one of them, and thanked him for his help. He continued to stand behind me, and then he zoomed in on the one thing that I knew he would bitch about if he ever discovered it--
--my cordless phone off the hook.
You know how certain things bug you?--like people not taking turns at a four-way stop? Nothing is guaranteed to set my husband off more than a phone, not on its charger. Oh, and a missing television remote.
The cordless phone sits on a charger on my desk. It is rarely used. Not because it doesn't ring but because we now have Google phone, and while it rings there, it also rings on my husband's cell phone.
Which he answers more often than when I call his cell phone.
He usually picks up his cell phone one second before I pick up the home phone to hear a dial tone.
That used to be a trigger for me, but I've just learned not to jump when my phone rings or if I'm in a playful mood, I try to see if I can beat him to it.
But this past week, I knocked the charger on to the floor. It dropped behind my desk--a huge problem because a back is attached to the desk, and I have to crawl under the desk to even reach the charger, and then it is impossible to feed it back up the way it fell without a second pair of hands. The desktop is too wide to use one hand to meet with the other hand threading the charger along the back of the desk.
Immediately, I thought of how annoyed my husband would be to find this charger on the floor. So, I worked very hard to try to retrieve it. I pulled at wires. I attempted to drag it against the wall with a yardstick. I tried tossing it up into the air.
Nothing worked.
What I needed was another set of hands, and not having any, I laid down the phone and went back to work. And promptly forgot about the charger except when I sat down at the desk.
Now let's go back to the moment above.
I finally had this man helping me with a problem that had driven me crazy for far too many days, and was pointed out to me by a reader annoyed at the excessive placing of ads. I needed to deal with it, but unfortunately, old hazel eagle eyes zoomed in to the phone NOT ON ITS CHARGER.
I jumped up at his first comment like a child being reprimanded by his parent.
Tom: "Why is that phone not on its charger?"
Me: "Oh, it fell down behind the desk, and I couldn't reach it. Here, let me crawl down there and hand it up to you. Can you reach that?"
Tom: "How long has it been down there?"
Me: "I don't know. Four days? Three?"
Tom: "Are you kidding me? It's been off its charger for four days? It'll be dead."
Me: "Can you reach this or not?"
Tom: "Yes, I can reach it, but why is it off its charger? The phone will be dead now."
I rolled my eyes metaphorically, not daring to do it where he could see. Had I not answered that question? And yes, I am aware that when something is not on its charger CHARGING, it will eventually die.
I finally reminded him I had some intelligence after the fourth time of his mentioning the dead phone as he tried to turn it on. He's like that when his certain bug thing is pressed. He can't just let it go.
He Yammed on and on about the phone, standing at my desk while I went back to my blogger problem. Finally, after insulting my intelligence for the umpteenth time, I lost it too.
Me: "I know that the phone is dead. I've explained how it went down, and we have other phones we can use at this time. The damn phone doesn't even hold a charge much anymore."
Tom: "What do you mean by that? It doesn't work? Then why is it on your desk? Why don't you just unplug it and throw it away? I don't know why we even have a phone."
Me: "It works fine enough."
Tom: "It doesn't work now. It's dead. Because it wasn't on its charger. A phone dies if it isn't on its charger."
Me: "Yes, you've made that point clear if I didn't already know it before."
Tom: "It's a fire hazard."
Me: "What is? A dead phone?"
Tom: "It's not funny. Lightning hits phone lines all the time. It can cause a fire. You should be worried about that."
Me: "Okay, but we have three other phones on chargers too that we need to worry then. Should we throw those away too? I mean, this conversation has gone so far off the rails it's laughable. I just wanted to see if you had any ideas on fixing this problem I was having with my blog."
That just made him crazier. He ranted and raved about how he'd offered up TEN suggestions on how to fix my problem, and I refused to listen. I tried to remain calm, but I may have raised my own voice until finally, he left--after putting the phone on its charger.
By the time he returned from swimming laps, I had solved my blogger problem, and the phone was charged. He came into the office looking a bit contrite and asked if I had solved my problem. It was all thumbs up at hearing I had done so.
Tom: "What are you doing now?"
Me: "Writing about our nonsensical marital argument on my fixed blog."
Tom: "Oh, boy, I'm not going to come out the nice guy, am I?"
I wisely remained silent.
No comments:
Post a Comment