Change, Gender Wars and Common Sense

The old sands are shifting under my feet.

Again.

The oldest kid is now home from school. Please note that the places where he dropped all his shit when he walked in the door from college on Sunday, are still covered by the same piles of shit now that it’s Wednesday. Over/under on my private odds board is 16 days before they’ll get picked up.

If we were not having a Bat Mitzvah in the family in 5 weeks, that number would go up to 96 days, or one day before he leaves for college again, but since Mrs S’s family will arrive here, one way or the other, in just a few short weeks, I have faith it will get picked up.

Fools hope?

The garage is still packed with crap from the remodeling/water damage/put shit away for the winter activities. Funny how the first layer of stuff goes in so neat and organized. Makes a nice foundation for the rest of the crap that gets tossed on top.  I was picking through the stuff Sunday afternoon, trying to make heads or tails of it. Since college kid is home and since his job doesn’t start for a few weeks… seems that I could make him do it. That Audi of his doesn’t run on water. I pay for jobs, he’ll want to work for  me. Mrs S pays as well. She doesn’t pay as well as I do, but she does run the company store. When I suggest something for him to do the response is “quit trying to make him do your chores”, when she suggests something; “you shouldn’t be asking anything other than ‘how high’”.

So I poked around in the garage overcome by the idea that I was going to have to clean the garage. Mrs S came out to take out the garbage and saw me out there, “what am I doing out here you ask?” in my sad voice meant to invoke feelings of empathy and some guilt about the state of the garage, a state I had nothing to do with. She didn’t bite “Well Sank, if it bothers you so much then you just clean it yourself.” I turned up the empathy play; “I’m just trying to find a little space on the floor for the bucket I’m going to stand on when I hang myself out here.”

Hmmm.  “Well there’s some room right under the rafter over there, that should work pretty good. Let me think where the good rope is.” She does always know where stuff is.

I had an interesting observation from my side of the gender war.  I have realized the following key difference between men and women. Every argument/discussion/developmental opportunities review that I have with my beloved, is in fact a continuation of every other argument that I’ve ever had with that same woman. That’s ‘cause… she remembers stuff.

Women, it seems, never “clear their cache” when it comes to arguments. This is exactly the opposite of me, I never remember what we were talking about anyway so every discussion is kind of like a new adventure.

What I can remember however is where I filed my daughter’s speech, the one which summarizes her Torah portion, which I happen to know she wrote in November of last year. I know this because actually I wrote it.

Kind off.

Speaking of ghost writing, the three of you left reading this, remember that assignment on Saturday Night Live for her museum project?  You’ll all be happy to know that I got 99 on it. The family went out to dinner to celebrate our collective score. Mrs S did some of the art work, I wrote the paragraphs and the assignee, she explained what had to be done.

Over and over again. The assignment, not just the 7^th grade.

Speaking of the Bat Mitzvah. Daughters Bat Mitzvah. This is our last Bar or Bat anything. It’s funny,  one day you’re fleeing out of a McDonalds Playground because your kid just left a streak of dookie down the slide after she just  packed a diaper at the top of it, and the next day she’s up on Bema reading from the Torah. I’m not sure where the time went, cliché I know. Hard to imagine that in two years we’ll have our first college graduation.

Note that next year we’ll have a high school graduation but I still resist all efforts to make that event into anything more than a hearty congratulations. High school- expected, now go do some real work.

I’m also good at providing Tech Support for the family. Got a call at work “Computer’s running really slow, can you take a cab home in the middle of the day and fix it.” This was from the Daughter. Apparently she couldn’t get to her daily Justin Bieber YouTube fix.

A situation BTW, that knocked the Deficit Story AND the death of Bin Laden off the front page in our house.

“Go axe your brothers”.

I got home. Mrs S is at the computer with a face that usually reserved for me. “this thing’s slower then hell. Can you fix it? If not get a new one.” Both my boys we’re up looking at it. All three of them staring down a computer as if their collective ESP would make something happen. I’ve been on a lot of tech support calls and I know how this stuff works.

“Turn it of off and then uh  turn it back on”

“Can’t, you’re (meaning me) logged in”

“Doesn’t matter” “yes it does” “No it doesn’t, Mom’s an admin” “can’t turn it off” “ya” “no” “ya” “no” “no” “ya”..  little trick I picked from thousands of hours of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd.

Mrs S had a comment “Dude, we can’t turn it off, you never listen to us about this stuff, remember when the Commodore 64 wasn’t working and I asked you to… and then the Apple IIE and then the time with the blah blah blah”

I walked over, reached behind the computer, yanked out power cord, handed to my oldest. “there… it’s off.”

Went back up stairs. Later that night I asked “how’s the computer?”  “Oh.. working great. Thanks Dear”.

Then again, sometimes things NEVER change.