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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

I Love To Hate You

No, not the Erasure song. What's the one thing about your wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend/significant other, that really drives you up the wall, that really makes you livid to the point where you'd actually say "I am fucking livid!"?

For me it's The Demon's habit of obsessive tidiness. I don't just mean that she like to do a bit of household cleaning, oh no, if only, no she tidies things constantly. I can't lay something down for 5 minutes bar it's 'tidied'. If I kick my trainers off, as I like to do when lying on the couch, she looks at me like I've taken a shit on the carpet!

. . . but that is only half the problem.

When something is 'tidied' by The Demon, it has maybe a 70% chance of ever being found again. This happens regularly.

"Where's my (insert random object here)?"

"Erm . . . I put it somewhere."

"Where?"

"Somewhere safe."

"At the risk of repeating myself, where?"

"Erm . . . don't know, I'm watching Home & Away right now, I'll find it later."

. . . of course she never does.
This drives me fucking insane. TV remotes, bits for cameras, money, tickets, you name it, they've all found there way into her tidiness netherworld, never to return.

I look forward to finding out that I'm not alone.

11 comments:

A new Ron,ron,ron a new ron,ron said...

Indeed you are not alone, my haggisd-eating friend. Mrs. Ron, for all her good points, does exactly the same thing but also likes to move the tidy stuff around every now and again, for the sake of change. The "batteries" drawer, for example, will be the batteries drawer for a while. Not surprisingly one day I head there to replace the batteries in my Maglite, and suddenly it's changed to a tea-towel drawer. I ask where the batteries have gone, and she "need a minute, now what did I do with the batteries...."
Of course by using batteries I've set myself and the wife up for a tirade of battery-use insinuation. Let me point out this is a purely hypothetical example of things that happen on a regular basis and may or may not involve batteries, tea-towels or any such drawer related items.

Inchy said...

That's right Ron, we all have a 'battery' drawer, where we keep the 'batteries' for all our walkmans, cameras, and Maglites!

Methinks you protest too much, my celtic cousin.

Auburn~haired~artist said...

Okay, I admit the tidiness thing is a woman thing. There IS a reason for it, but it makes no sense to men, so I won't bore you with it.
After 18 years of marriage, four children, and currently, five dogs, I have developed a plan that eliminates issues like that. Everyone has a basket - even the dogs. When I clean the house, all my husband's little treasures (socket peices, misc screws, notes, and other stuff that may, or may not, be important) go into his basket. same for the kids, and the dogs toys. If it's not in the basket - the dogs have eaten or burried it in the back yard - not my fault. That's not an excuse, they WILL eat almost anything!

My husband and I have had to join forces where the battery drawer is concerned. With teenagers, the battery drawer is ALWAYS empty. So I have a battery drawer in the kitchen that is filled with all the dead, and half dead, batteries that the kids leave laying around. Then, there is a "secret battery box" in the back of the linen closet that has fresh batteries (for important things). If my husband were to ever reveal it's location to our children . . . that, would turn me into Lou Ferrigno from the Hulk.

~Susan

Helga Hansen said...

I'll happily ruin the trend and say that I don't have an obsessive need to tidy... AND I usually remember where Mr H has left things... usually because the man can't see for looking. Bet he's not the only one!!

MommyHeadache said...

Nothing about him drives me crazy...which either means he's perfect or he is perfect. I am a slob and he gently tidies in an unobtrusive way.

I suppose I do find it a bit irritating that he likes to spend sunday afternoons pottering around the garden relaxing whereas I like to be at the very least being out and about and preferably getting pissed at the pub. But that's the worst thing I can say.

Inchy said...

Damn Emma, you pair appear to be irritatingly well matched. I hate that!

Steve said...

The only thing that annoys me about the wife is that when she's in the middle of some computer based artwork the whole house comes to a standstill in the meantime... all plans are put on hold and the ticking of the clock gets very loud. Apparently my loud sighs and banging things about don't count as gentle hints...

Anonymous said...

Um, erm...I'm afraid I'm with your girlfriend here! She's controlling her little world and your the big boof head who lives in and messes it up. It's a girl thing.

The other end of the spectrum is that you could live with a total slob; and I did have a friend like that and she turned her boyfriends into Martha Stewart just out of desperation for a bit of hygiene and order. Hahah.

I know, I know, you just want a bit of a balance in housekeeping but well, I don't know any answers for you except just stay tidy!!

Inchy said...

Ok, I'm not the tidiest of guys, but I always know where my shit is. Still, at least that's all that really annoys me about her. It's not like she tortures small animals or anything like that.

Suzy Norman said...

Mr Norman will quite frequently forget the most important part of the mission I send him on. 'Let's have tea and those nice Belgian M and S biscuits' I coo. He comes back with tea sans biscuits. This happens with wine and nibbles too. Like a schoolboy scientist, only the liquid surfaces.

Anonymous said...

.....or boils bunnies