bignoseduglyguy

The Home Front

Taking a week off work is all well and good but it does take its toll on spousal relations. I started the week well with a few chores and tasks, like T-Cutting as much of the the car-scrapes-bollard damage out of the 806 as is humanly possible, without once referring as to how it got there. To do that would have been self-defeating as it was my fault. Instead of parking the 806 in the street, I parked it in our off-street bay which has bollards either side, thereby ensuring it meet it's predestined fate when driven out by another unnamed party. Having said that, as it gets closer to the end of the week and I relax, I find that I have spent the last few days faffing around with lots of things but accomplishing very little, not that I necessarily want or have to 'accomplish' stuff. This last point - the simply pleasure of faffing around - was stressed to SWMBO this morning during one of our periodic and tiresomely tediously 'you don't understand me, I don't understand you' arguments. These arise because she is somewhat 'task-driven' to say the least, whilst I am less so at home as I have my fill of such things at work. Whilst we are both essentially tidy people, I am happy to tolerate/live with untidiness far longer than SWMBO who displays a need to control her environment more than I. Having said that, I occasionally vent about the lack of my identity in the flat because, as the one who is at home the most, the flat is more a reflection of SWMBO's taste than mine. I have heard it said that this is common in women who give up work to raise families, because the home, along the family car, shops and schools become their 'workplace' and it is natural that they wish to create an environment that they are comfortable in. Whether or not this is actually the case I couldn't say, but certain elements seem to point in that direction. For instance, I am perfectly happy to let the kids run riot on occasion as kids enjoy living for the moment and do not perceive the resulting mess as chaos, simply the by-product of having fun. I'd rather let them spend the day like this and slave-drive a tidying-up session at the end, whereas SWMBO simply sees tidying-up-as-you-go-along as the more sensible method to employ. Although I can see the (grown-up) logic in this, I just don't think kids 'work' like this. Kids are creatures of 'the here and now' genus and we should revel in their lack of convention and constraints, their total absorbtion, their wonderment, their logic and their imagination. Re-reading this, I am aware that it might come off as an anti-SWMBO rant. This wasn't my intention when I sat down to write this post, I was more interested in why we (and I'm sure millions of others) tend to disagree on the same subjects repeatedly and I'm pleased to say I have found the reasons, if not the answer. SWMBO feels hard done by with her lot in Life, tries to the best of her ability to be the best Mum in the world as well as run the house, do the bills and keep the family together and can't understand why I don't see what she's about. On the other hand, I tend to feel hard done by with my lot in Life, try to the best of my ability to be the best Dad in the world as well as hold down a job that pays for it all without feeling too guilty about spending 12-14 hours a day doing so and can't understand why she can't see that. Now I have that sorted in my head, I just need to work out how to deal with the fact that SWMBO thinks I am a bigamist geek who secretly married my PC specifically to spite and spurn her in favour of hours online in the spare room. Maybe I'm just one of those people who looks guilty all the time.