2001-05-21~~9:22 p.m.
Oh crap. It can't REALLY be our fault....

There’s a Barenaked Ladies song I like. Part of one line says, “If you’re lucky to be one of the few.. to find somebody who can tolerate you...” While it isn’t exactly the most positive endorsement of marriage, I think it comes pretty close to describing the very core of living in the same house with someone everyday.

I love my husband. If I lived in any other house I am quite certain that I would think he is about the best husband any woman could ever hope for. But I don’t. I live here. And this man is driving me crazy. He will walk over the same piece of paper on the floor 100 times and not pick it up. I’ve tried to wait him out. I’ve tried to see how long it would take him to finally pick the damn thing up. Y’know what happens? I get grouchier than a Survivor with no rice. Trying to outlast him is futile. Then I finally pick it up. I tell him that he wins. I lose. I couldn’t stand waiting one minute longer for him to pick up that piece of paper in the middle of the hall. If you are, or ever have been, a married woman, you already know what he says next. “What paper?”

AAAAARRRRRGGGG!!! Why are they like this? It really is our fault. [Though I have no plans to share that with any of them] We get to be the mommies. We raise our sweet little boys and at some point we are helping to turn them into.... into..... well, men. Bleh. I said it. The “m” word.

I’m thinking that there is a slight possibility that we are doing this on purpose. There are a few different reasons that this may be happening.

(1) It’s a fairness issue. We have to live our whole lives with these asshole men that the prior generation of mothers messed up somehow. Why should the next generation of women have it easier.

(2) We love our boys. And they love us. While we want them to grow up and give us beautiful grandbabies to spoil, we don’t really want them to love another woman more than they love us. We want to be number one.

(3) We like men who will let us get away with things. Men who will shower us with gifts and affection and love us more than they ever loved their mommies until the day we die. But we don’t want our little boys to be taken advantage of by terrible, greedy women.

I guess all three of those things end up centering on the fact that, by nature, women are very competitive with other women. And since we are also the ones raising the women, this, too, would be our fault. This really sucks. I have managed, in the short span of a page that started talking about how my stupid husband won’t pick up a damn piece of paper off the floor, to make a well reasoned argument that women have essentially screwed up EVERYTHING that is wrong with our society. Swell.

So now I have to think about everything I say and do around my boy. And I need to do some serious thinking about exactly what it is I’m trying to raise here. I need to get out the specs and make some long range design plans.

I also need to think about everything I say and do around my daughter. Figure out the message that I am trying to send to her about the kind of wife, mother, and woman she should be when she grows up. Then I have to say and do all the right things to convey that without actually telling her what to do because we all know what happens when moms tell their daughters what to do.

Goodness. That’s a lot of pressure.

-Alice