NYBG Holiday Train Show 2014

A lot of times I leave some of the less happy details off the blog. Well, I'm going to tell you, this was a tough trip. I was really looking forward to taking James because he loves trains, and the holiday show seemed like a really special thing to do during the holidays. Based on the website, the tickets for the three of us were supposed to be about $50 which we debated. After all, James is still only 3 and unlikely actually remember this trip, and Miranda hates the car. But we figured he'd enjoy it so we made the effort.

When we got there, parking cost $15, and the tickets for the three of us were $72 because it was a "peak" day. It was December 23rd, so actually there weren't very many people there at all. Also it was raining. I was beyond angry. I tried to rally, I tried... but I have been very very tired from getting up to nurse Miranda for 8 months. I did not rally.

James is still pleased.

When you view a place through a $87 glasses, it's not surprising that it fails to live up to the holiday spirit. It's prohibitively expensive for a lot of families. Even as empty as it was that day, the line through the trains was slow-moving and a little boring for little kids, so James kept trying to escape us and cut the line. I did not enjoy telling him 500 million times to wait with us. Having most recently gone to the awesome Manhattan Children's Museum, this felt a bit ill-conceived.

James is having fun (train coming!), I am fake smiling.

Um, is that a train or a rolling cookie tin?

Look, I understand, that my kid is 3, and also not the best behaved 3-year-old ever, so maybe it was just not ideal for us, personally, but you should be warned.

Checking out normal trains with a new buddy.

Also when you arrive they take a nice family photo in front of a green screen. On the one hand, it's a really nice photo, and the photographer was great. On the other, why is it in front of a green screen? We're at the Botanical Gardens? Why can't we take a real photo? Also, the photo costs another $22, which is almost exactly the amount that we were ripped off for "peak days" so I just couldn't bring myself to pay for it. This made me even sadder. (Vicious spiral now....)

Here's 3 of 4 family members instead.

Okay, this thing is amazing.

Also, all of the settings show the modern settings of the city made in natural materials which is wonderful art, but gives everything a vaguely creepy feel. Haha. There was a children's craft area elsewhere, which was pretty good. They suggested that there was a train/tram/trolley to ride elsewhere on the property but if this was the case, we never located it.

The steam engines of hell.

Oh look, it's a little body of water the children cannot go near. That makes sense.

A train he can't sit in! Or do anything with! Yay!

Being who I am, I complained to the NYBG. To their credit, they refunded the $24 and changed the website to reflect the real prices. I don't feel a lot better, especially since I passed up the photo, though I'm happy enough to have the $24. But I don't think this will be a yearly tradition... if we go back at all.

• Children's Museum of Manhattan - December 2014
• James goes apple-picking- September 2014
• Also in the Bronx, the Bronx Zoo- October 2012

Things My Wife Complains About #20: Watching Television

My wife watches a lot of what I consider to be good television. She watches dramas like Mad Men and she watches comedies like Modern Family. She also has a seemingly insatiable appetite for terrible television, which three factors have conspired to bring out in horrifying fashion.

Factor #1: DVR. Because FIOS is cheaper than Time Warner, I felt justified in paying extra for DVR technology, which has emboldened my wife to record shows she would never risk the shame of watching in real time. Did you know, for instance, that there are several programs about families with at least ten children? That there are several programs about people with hoarding disorders? That my wife has watched, or is currently watching, all of these programs?

Factor #2: Netflix streaming. With the assistance of the Roku box, my wife is able to stream some of the worst programs, documentaries, and films ever created. Many of these shows nobody has ever heard of, including the people involved in the acting, production, and distribution (I leave out writing because these shows could not possibly have employed writers). It is not uncommon to find my wife on Episode 72 of a show that not a single person alive has seen.

Factor #3: James. At the age of ten months, James does exactly two things: (1) run into things and (2) cry about having run into things. If you put James in a rubber room with no furniture, he would run into the rubber wall, cry about having run into the rubber wall, and begin licking the rubber while also crying. While James does the two things he does, my wife often watches television.

Factor #3

What does my wife complain about? You're not going to believe this, but there are a few things. She complains about my skill operating the DVR. I fast forward too fast. That's an actual complaint. When I offer to let her operate the DVR, she complains that I won't do it for her.

She complains that I turn off the television when she's not watching it. The idea is that she might want to watch it again soon, and if she does, what is she supposed to do? Turn it back on??? My wife mistakes energy efficiency for not caring. We had a conversation about this.

She complains that Netflix doesn't offer closed captioning, an essential when James is crying on the floor, which again is half of the time. This is not a complaint against me, but my wife sees Netflix's lack of closed captioning as one of the singular injustices of the modern world.

Possible Solutions!

1) Unplug television

2) Never turn off television, practice DVRing, hire a stenographer to write transcript of Netflix dialogue

3) Teach James to do more than two things (hard)

James's pensive face

Things My Wife Complains About #19: My Complaining

The other day my wife, without the faintest sense of self-awareness, said she was so tired of hearing me complain. This would be a little like Ahab telling his wife he's tired of her obsessing.

Understand that we carefully worked out a system, which neither of us follow, where she's free to complain, so long as she doesn't complain about me. In this instance, I was boldly complaining about some complaint that wasn't specific to me, though here my wife and I enter into philosophical disagreement. Consider the following statement:

"I can't believe you didn't make two bottles!"

To my wife, this isn't a complaint about me. It's an observation, or perhaps an expression of surprise. Possibly, it's a complaint about the nature of bottle making. When I point out that she asked me to make "a bottle," I'm accused of complaining about her complaining. Then my meta-complaint is met by the following question:

"Do we even have the same son?"

This is also not a complaint. It's an honest inquiry, or maybe a meditation on experience versus reality. At worst, it's a bit of humor designed to defuse the high-stakes game of bottle preparation. My wife stocks bottles of formula like she's preparing for Simulac armageddon. When I watch James, I only make a bottle if he's hungry, a practice so barbarous it's a wonder social services allow me to live at home.

At this point, I'm done meta-complaining. I say that, to the best of my knowledge, we do have the same son, who immediately commences screaming for seven thousand hours.

Possible Solutions!

1) Complain about her complaining about my complaining about her complaining

2) Insert James into the middle of the complaints, assuring he grows up to resent us both

3) Vow of silence (hard)

Things My Wife Complains About #18: Dropping Things

The first trimester was exciting, the second trimester was mostly pleasant, and the third trimester is scary and uncomfortable. A major problem is that my wife always drops things (she's less coordinated now) and has no way of picking them up (she is the shape of a cartoon snake in the middle of digesting a small mammal). Rather than do something helpful like pick things up for her, I instead started an "Oh No Diary," named for the sound she makes every time something relatively minor goes wrong (spoken like Minnie Mouse finding out Donald Duck is coming over for dinner and, despite her repeated requests, duckin' it). Here are a few diary entries, starting with the drops:

Dropped tissue beneath couch

Dropped photograph on floor

Broke nail

Moved pillow

Found clothes on top of dry cleaning bag

Got butter on toaster

Then to chronicle this special time in our lives, I started augmenting the "Oh No Diary" with choice third trimester quotes, such as the following:

"Skittles.com sucks."

"Can you get a napkin fast before the syrup goes down my shirt!"

"WHY DID YOU TAKE THE REMOTE CONTROL FROM ME?"

Note: The answer to the former was "no" and the latter "because you asked me to change the channel."

Possible Solutions!

1) Never get more than six inches off the ground, so as to keep everything within reach

2) Live in an MC Escher print where gravity will eventually send whatever you dropped back down to you

3) Deliver baby (hard)

34 Weeks + 3 Days

Things My Wife Complains About: #16 Not Caring Enough About Her to Correct Her Grammar

It's hard teaching writing. Not only do you have to correct the mechanics of students just beginning to master the language, but you also have to suffer the grammatical insecurities of those around you, always tiptoeing around "who" and "lay." Were it not for my grueling two to three day/week schedule, I might consider doing something else entirely. Instead of constantly explaining the difference between the subjective and objective position, I long ago decided to let people speak however they wish without worrying over my interjecting (little-acknowledged rule: gerunds take the possessive).

You can imagine my incredulity, then, when my wife leveled the complaint that I don't care enough about her to teach her correct grammar. Since there's some thinking that fetuses may be able to hear from the womb, my wife further complained that I don't care enough about my powerful seed to teach him/her correct grammar.

My wife and I have been dating for over four years. We've been married for over a year, and she's been carrying my powerful seed for four months. At what point will she be secure that I care about her? Will it be our tenth wedding anniversary? When my powerful seed graduates from college? When we ease into retirement at the age of eighty? Oh, the complaints she'll have then. If I cared about her, I'd massage her rheumatism. If I cared about her, I'd help her find her teeth.

Possible solutions!

1) Correct every grammatical mistake, quietly biting my bleeding tongue while she complains about the way I correct her unfairly/gratuitously/cruelly
2) Only speak in Spanish, where her grammar is far better than mine
3) Insist she only speak when spoken to--don't speak to her (hard)

 

Looking professorial

Things My Wife Complains About: #15 Pregnancy

For someone who complains about how heavy her coffee is, my wife doesn't complain that much about being pregnant. On the whole, she enjoys carrying my powerful unborn child. I believe Baby Clou is a good influence on her.

Still, my wife does occasionally complain about the way certain food tastes. She thinks the Panda Puffs cereal she's been eating for 1,354 consecutive days tastes like Thai food, and while she likes Thai food, she doesn't like it for breakfast. Good thing she's not Thai, or she'd only eat two meals a day, which would be down from the four meals she currently eats. She invented a second breakfast. Take that, Taco Bell Fourth Meal.

Much of my wife's complaining centers on eating, which isn't new; it's just much more violent. It's also considerably more challenging, as my wife's tastes change on an hourly basis. Here is an incomplete list of things she's craved in the first trimester:

Vinegar
Milk
Condor Egg
Red Fruits (e.g. Cherry)
Peanut Butter
Salt
A Single Plum Floating in Perfume Served in a Man's Hat
Granola
Scotch

Just kidding. She's been craving rum. Lots of rum. On French toast.

Mostly, my wife complains about my inability to carry my powerful unborn child. She likes to poke me in all the places she feels extreme discomfort. I get poked in the abdomen every day. It brings us closer together. That's another thing my wife complains about: physical contact. The weight of my arm hairs is oppressive. She complains in equal measure about the absence of physical contact.

There are no possible solutions. But the good news is that all my friends with children have assured me that pregnant woman become increasingly rational, fair, and kind throughout their pregnancy and into the subsequent decades of child rearing. So that's a relief.

"A Single Plum Floating in Perfume" from The Simpsons

Things My Husband Complains About #2

Kevin documented our ride home from California. Reposted here from his Customer Service Circle of Hell blog:

They Call It Hotlanta Because It Is in Hell
The last two times I’ve flown, I’ve spent an unscheduled night in a city unrelated to my destination. My first impression of Atlanta was that a disproportionate number of people there wear shirts with unintelligible mottoes like “If you are giving one hundred percent, give ten percent more!” or “I look like I care but I don’t.” My theory is that these shirts are designed for the Rapture, so the Divine has clear instructions on whom to take, and who can stay.

Of course, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to conduct this sociological experiment had my Airtran flight not landed fifteen minutes after my connecting flight departed. A wise man once told me that it’s important to fly early, so you can take a later flight if your scheduled one is delayed. Unfortunately, on Airtran, the noon flight is the last of the day.

When the delay first snuck onto the screen, I scuttled to a checkout counter, where a woman informed me that the weather was not Airtran’s fault (indisputable) and, accordingly, Airtran had no responsibility to get me to my destination that day (disputable). Time: 11:00 a.m. Post-wedding hangover: violent to very violent. When I asked if there was anyone else I might speak to, she told me I could wait for her manager, a man whose plan was to first avoid me, then avoid eye contact, and ultimately intimate that I was lucky to be speaking to him at all. But I did not feel lucky.

Still, I might have made my connection had Airtran not spent so much time ushering people onto the plane who did not, in fact, have seats. Or, more accurately, people who had the same seat. The man next to me, for example, had the same seat as another man. They were both large men and had never met each other and, as progressive as San Francisco is, it seemed unlikely they would share a seat for five hours. Nevertheless, they were better off than my wife, who did not actually have a seat. Instead, she had a hole where a seat was supposed to be (see above). The first flight attendant greeted my wife’s request for a seat as though this was wholly unreasonable, but the second flight attendant helpfully ripped a cushion off someone else’s seat.

Airline seat without seat part

In Hotlanta, a kind but painfully slow man confirmed that the next flight left in the morning, but not before a little comedy routine with the other kind but slow people at the counter. This is how the routine went: my program won’t refresh, and we can’t make reservations—wait, just kidding, the program doesn’t have a refresh function! This routine was so funny, he called in his boss to get in on the joke, who agreed that suggesting the program could refresh was outrageous. Then there was some light banter about how cold the fan was. Then he told me he couldn’t offer a hotel on account of the weather—airtight Airtran logic—but he could give me a phone number, where I could talk to somebody who would give me a reduced rate.

Customer Damnation in Atlanta

I called the number, spoke to a human being, and hoped against reason this would work. This did not work. I walked to the busy area where shuttles arrive. The first driver with Comfort Suites painted on his van assured me that he was not going to Comfort Suites and, in retrospect, I should have taken this as a dark omen, as my wife did, who was convinced the driver had no idea where he was taking his van. I had a good feeling about the second van with Comfort Suites painted on it, even after the driver was assaulted by a man in one of those people movers that only GOB from Arrested Development uses. Alas, this driver was also not driving to Comfort Suites. At this point, I called the hotel and asked what, exactly, was painted on his driver’s van. He said, unsurprisingly, Comfort Suites. After asking each arriving driver where his van was going, I finally identified the correct van. This is what was painted on his van: Econo Lodge, Ramada Inn, Country Inn.

Comfort Suites is a bit of a misnomer, as it’s difficult to feel comfortable when you’re using every last bit of energy not to attack the man who doesn’t know what is painted on his own van, and it’s sort of a stretch to call a room a suite when it’s made entirely of bathroom tile. I don’t recommend staying there, or flying Airtran, or flying, but I do recommend Jeff and Inga, whose beautiful wedding made the trip well worth it.

Things My Husband Complains About

Reposted from Kevin's Customer Service Circle of Hell blog:

Hell's Angels

Flying from New York City to Detroit is quick, only about an hour in the air. So you can understand how frustrated I would be when I arrived 13.5 hours late. Here's the time-line:

Flight #1: New York to Detroit (Delta): Canceled

I'm thinking, well, stuff happens. Weather, mechanical, best to be careful. Surely, they'll put me and my wife on a later flight since it's mid-afternoon. Wait, what's that? You want to send us the next day? Through Minneapolis, which is several hundred miles past Detroit? And you believe this critical information should be delivered via a robot that doesn't leave a phone number where I can ask follow-up questions? Eventually, I found a phone number and an android who would confess, when bullied, that it had lied about (minimum): 1) there being no other flights that day, and 2) their ability to place me on another airline. Eventually, we were placed on an American flight leaving 75 minutes later. It had a connection in Chicago (again, going past Detroit), but at least we'd only arrive four hours late. Why the flight was canceled remains a mystery.

Flight #2: New York to Chicago (American): Delayed

My attempt to get a meal voucher (since we're missing dinner with our friends) is dismissed with something between indifference and abject hatred. To be expected, but I'm getting a little worried because that 75 minute window between when one flight lands in Chicago and the next flight takes off for Detroit is shrinking. And the delay stretches. And now the best case scenario is that the plane lands 20 minutes after the connecting flight is scheduled to take off, and my wife is weeping on account of not being able to see her friends, and hating to fly, and having to spend the night in Chicago for no good reason.

Flight #3: Chicago to Detroit (American): Delayed

Hooray for this delay! After sprinting through O'Hare with despair in our hearts to catch a connection that had surely already left, we find that the plane is still there and the kind attendants are willing to let us board it, even though boarding is over and the doors are sealed. But wait!

Flight #3: Chicago to Detroit (American): Canceled

Two flights--on two different airlines--canceled in one day, surely this is a personal record. There is no mystery here, though. The flight was canceled for the trivial reason of not having a pilot. Hotel and meal vouchers for all, leading to this exchange:

Me: May I have a meal voucher for my wife, as well.
Attendant: This voucher is for you and your wife.
Me: $10 each?
Attendant: $10 total.

We'll dine like kings in Chicago for $5 each! We'll split a "Chicago-style" dog and bottled water--who are you to ask for more? Later, this conversation happens:

Other passenger: You can use that voucher almost anywhere in the airport.
Me (inside my exploding skull): ALMOST ANYWHERE? Thank God, it's only five hours until our next flight leaves because I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight!

Flight #4: Chicago to Detroit (American): On time

This was a relatively painless flight. They did try to move my wife across the plane but failed. We had a nice time in Michigan.

Flight #5: Detroit to New York (Delta): Lost reservation

We're not in the system. The several confirmation codes I have are meaningless. This is confirmed by the attendant behind the desk. My wife explains most of the bad things that happened, while the attendant makes phone calls and whispers things like "this is strange" and "it's just not there." But wait!

Flight #5: Detroit to New York (Delta): Delayed

We're there, after all. You only have to look capable of crying or screaming for long enough. The flight is about 30 minutes late, but by this point, the delay seems positively generous. When the very, very bumpy flight is over, there are other planes at the gate, but this scarcely matters. We're home, and our hatred of domestic air travel cemented.

Final Stats!

Actual flights: 5
Delayed flights: 3 (remarkable since we only booked 2 flights)
Canceled flights: 2
Lost reservations: 1

Things My Wife Complains About: #14 Stairs

Ollantaytambo Ruins, Peru

If only the world were flat. Thomas Friedman's book would make sense, and every sunset would be awesome. Also my wife would complain about one less thing. Alas, the world is not flat, and human civilization has only added to my wife's misery in its insistence on building up and even down. New York is a particularly egregious offender with its miles of skyscrapers and subways, and while elevators and escalators sometimes provide access, other times there are only stairs, which recently joined the list of things that turn my wife into a person unwilling or unable to communicate with other human beings.

(Most things on this list are states of being--being sleepy, being hungry, being hot, being cold--and several have already been chronicled. When these things overlap--when, for instance, she hasn't eaten and it's getting late--the world grows blurry, and animals act strange the way they do before earthquakes and tornadoes.)

After walking up a long flight of stairs, my wife will often ask, "Why did you make me walk up those stairs," as if it were a deliberate decision of mine to locate the F train two stories below West 4th Street. Once, before attending the opera, she protested, "You know I don't like stairs," implying that it would be better not to attend the opera if stairs were going to be involved. Our current house has not one but two sets of stairs, and it is only a matter of time before she sees this as a deep moral failing.

Possible solutions!

1) Hovercrafts
2) Only go down stairs; make people meet you there
3) Relocate to a two-dimensional universe, a la the 19th-century novel Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions (hard)

Things My Wife Complains About: #13 Being Profiled

As an English-speaking thirty-year-old white male of European extraction, it's difficult for me to find opportunity for linguistic/age/racial/gender/ethnic discrimination. I suppose for a time I paid more for car insurance than was strictly necessary, and those scars are real. I try to sympathize with the injustices leveled around me, but I had difficulty finding the proper compassion for my wife during our recent vacation in Colombia.

Would you believe that in this Spanish-speaking country someone had the audacity to answer my wife in Spanish? I mean, this is 2010.

I tried, inadequately, to put myself in her shoes. How would I have felt were I in Scotland, say, and someone just started speaking English to me? My imagination failed. I couldn't fathom the injustice. Worst of all, the women who profiled my wife were British. They were trying to speak Spanish just because they were in a community where everyone speaks Spanish. Could you be more provincial?

Proposed Solutions!

1) Refuse travel to Central and South America, the Caribbean, the Iberian peninsula, California, Texas, Florida, and several neighborhoods in greater New York City to limit exposure to future profiling.
2) Purchase Spanish Rosetta Stone, Levels 1-5: play discs backward to unlearn Spanish language.
3) Don't talk to--or listen to--anyone who doesn't know the languages you speak and the situations where you prefer speaking those languages (hard).

Things My Wife Complains About: #12 Treating Her Badly in Her Dreams

Sometimes my wife wakes me up in the middle of the night to complain.

She might say, for example, that was so mean what you did. When I counter-complain that I have no idea what she's talking about, she assures me that I was very mean to her in her dream. When I counter-assure her that she's being unfair, or at least slightly insane, she refuses my logic. Sometimes she asks for an apology.

Every once in a while my dream-life doppelganger does something truly reprehensible, and she holds it against me all morning.

Possible Solutions!

1) Never allow wife to fall asleep
2) Convince wife that, as Freud suggested, all dreams are wish-fulfillments and she unconsciously desires whatever bad treatment she receives
3) Enter wife's dreams through Avatar-like technology, so I can battle my malicious double or at least avenge his wrongdoings (hard)

 

Things My Wife Complains About: #11 Failing to Predict or Identify Where She Wants or Needs to Be

My wife likes to do things sometimes. It's difficult to say when, as many times she prefers to do nothing, but when she does want to do something, I'm often given several seconds to determine what to do and where. The other night my wife texted that she was on Lexington and Third (two avenues that run parallel for approximately ten miles). She was hoping I would meet her, and after multiple counter-texts (sample text: where are you?), I called to determine what stretch of Manhattan she occupied. After a conversation in which I failed to guess her location (87th street) or where she wanted to go (unknowable), I was chastised for not knowing either of these things. When she returned, she decided that I didn't want to go anywhere, potentially on account of not loving her.

Two days earlier, I had been critiqued for neglecting to have memorized the weekday timetable of the Port Jefferson branch of the Long Island Railroad, a line I've taken nearly three times in my life. In my wife's defense, I was given almost an entire minute to direct her through Penn Station while she repeatedly bemoaned her inability to locate the Port Washington branch.

Possible Solutions!

1) Always stay no more than fifteen feet behind wife, even at the risk of surrendering my career or entering womens' bathrooms
2) Meet at the Pizza Hut on 50th and 7th, no matter what
3) Commit every bus, train, and plane schedule to memory, identifying fashionable spots at each stop (hard)

Things My Wife Complains About: #10 Eating Fortune Cookies

After purchasing a tree, dragging the stand out of the closet, putting the tree up, watering the tree, and stringing the lights, my wife complained that the lights were not distributed evenly enough around the tree. That might be post worthy, but something happened immediately after the conversation that was even more post worthy, which was my wife giving me a fortune cookie that I opened to discover the following message:

"It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness."

Flush with the thrill of serendipity, I triumphantly held the slip of white paper before my wife, who willfully ignored the ancient wisdom of mass-produced fortune, complaining instead that I had eaten the cookie, which she felt entitled to eat, even though she had just eaten her own fortune cookie, message unknown.

Possible Solutions!

1) Don't eat anything before offering it first to wife.
2) Convert to Judiasm and purchase electric menorah.
3) Cancel Christmas and/or Chinese food (hard).

Things My Wife Complains About: #9 Not Putting Her to Bed at the Exact Right Moment

My wife prefers being awake to being asleep. It's one of the reasons I married her. Although she loves being awake, it endlessly annoys her that I don't put her to bed at the exact moment she wants to go to bed. I italicize wants because one must differentiate what my wife believes she should do from what she wishes to do. It's my responsibility to recognize this dichotomy, make a unique nightly decision in her best interests, and enforce this decision in a way that respects her autonomy. When I fail to do this correctly, which happens six to seven times a week, it is her burden to complain.

Possible Solutions!

1) Remove all light bulbs, so as to give the apartment more of a sleep-inducing feel
2) Replace collapsing, spring-less mattress with mattress that massages muscles, doesn't cause one to wake in excruciating pain
3) Rock and roll all night and party every day (hard)

Things My Wife Complains About: #8 Loving Fake Football Players More Than Her

Most men aren't happy that the word "fantasy" now refers almost exclusively to men hurling themselves into other men, but that's the world we willingly created. I've chosen to embrace this world by creating a fantasy team so formidable it has yet to lose. My friends from college and I spend a not insignificant amount of time each week tinkering with our teams, proposing trades to each other, vetoing trades to each other, and writing newsletters about our teams' performances. So when I'm submitting an article to said newsletter late on a Monday night instead of, say, going to bed with my wife, she complains that I love my fake football players more than I love her. She couldn't be more wrong. The players aren't fake, just the entire world we've built around these them. Big, sad difference.

Possible Solutions!

1) Convince my wife to accept my vice as innocuous, social, and even educational, at least until I drive down to Delaware to place several teaser bets on teams my players are on in critical Week 15 match-ups.
2) Create a fantasy league for my wife based on "Jon and Kate Plus Eight" with points granted for tantrums, Kate emasculating her husband, children mugging for the camera, and Jon defending his dalliances with twenty-something women by claiming he's doing it for his children.
3) Watch a movie or something instead (hard).

Things My Wife Complains About: #7 Not Having Opposable Toes

Last night, while struggling with something or other, my wife bemoaned her lack of opposable toes. When I pointed out that nobody has opposable toes, she declared, "Well, that just sucks."

I don't even know what to say about this one.

Possible Solutions!
1) Get lots more sleep.
2) Study captive chimps to learn their secrets.
3) Mate with a lower-level primate and hope that evolution blesses your child with opposable toes (hard).

Things My Wife Complains About: #6 Posting Boring Updates to Her Blog

The Belle and Sebastian song "My Wandering Days Are Over" begins, "You know my wandering days are over / Does that mean that I'm getting boring?" It's a rhetorical question. Of course, the narrator is getting boring. If his wandering days were still going on, he might be a little not boring, but too bad they're over. Right now, he's probably writing a boring blog or reading a boring blog or having a boring conversation about reading or writing one. Those are the only options in the modern world.

Eventually, my wife will complain about Things My Wife Complains About, and things will get really meta. In the meantime, things have become only mildly meta, as I'm using her blog to register her complaint about how boring her blog is.

Proposed Solutions!

1) Resist the temptation to catalog ever trip, concert, athletic event, wedding, baptism, bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah, quinceanera, spelling bee, parade, rave, exorcism, and intervention and only update the blog when something interesting happens.
2) Redirect the mission of the blog to documenting inherently interesting topics like unintentionally hilarious NFL apparel.
3) Only do not boring things all of the time (hard).

Things My Wife Complains About: #5 Trying to Win Competitions

Go Karts 2008

Long after she had ensnared me, my wife extolled the virtues of being difficult, pronouncing that men enjoy competitions and, accordingly, working to earn the affections of women. She pointed out that this is why men enjoy playing sports, playing video games, etc. She seemed pretty pleased with herself. You can imagine my surprise, then, when my wife complained about my fulfilling the destiny she had determined for me. More precisely, she complained that I came in first in a Go Kart race, arguing that if I loved her, I would have committed myself to making sure she enjoyed her time Go Karting instead.

Here's what I like to do in a Go Kart: hang back until I get to a wide turn; jam my cart into the nose of the next cart, pushing it into the wall until it spins around and ideally begins smoking; win.

Here's what my wife likes to do in a Go Kart: take pictures; lose.

My wife also intimated that I came in first not because I enjoy winning but because I would rather spend time with the girls at the front of the race. Go Kart tracks are up there with art galleries and martini bars for the best places to score hot chicks.

Me: "That seat belt looks great on you."

Hot Chick: "Thank you. I can see that your advanced driving is suggestive of sexual performance."

Proposed solutions!

1) Cease to find pleasure in winning, committing myself to a life of mediocrity.
2) Drive backward to assure I can't win.
3) Bribe other drivers, including children who constitute most Go Kart drivers, to drive slowly and poorly, so wife can win (hard).

Things My Wife Complains About: #4 Saving Lives

At the end of Denis Johnson's story "Emergency," an AWOL soldier asks the deranged hospital orderly purportedly driving him to the Canadian border what he does for a living, and the orderly answers, "I save lives."

I hope I didn't just ruin the ending of one of the best short stories of the last twenty-five years.

Anyhow, I'm like that orderly. I save lives. Not in an abstract sense through literature, though that's also true, but in a concrete sense, via the several pints of blood I donate each year. It's an easy way to assuage my liberal/Catholic guilt over not planting trees or toweling off baby seals or something. I knew I loved my wife when I asked her to donate blood with me and she not only agreed but also almost passed out doing it. That's what I call commitment to a bit! More specifically, she turned pale and started shaking, and when the disinterested orderly-type person vaguely offered her blankets or juice, she shook them off bravely, insisting on filling her bag. If you don't fill your bag, you don't save any lives and you're just some loser missing a lot, though not quite enough, blood.

When you donate blood, they give you a sticker. Voting and blood letting are the only times anyone gives you a sticker after the age of eight.

Did my wife perform all this heroism without complaint? Of course not, though she was still in the complaint-masking stage of our relationship, so it was all pretty minor. I rewarded her by asking her to go steady, 1950s style. She hasn't been hot to donate blood since then.

Proposed solutions!

1) Find, or create, an oil slick and wipe clean all the baby seals
2) Travel somewhere exotic where you're not allowed to donate blood due to the communicable disease you almost certainly acquired.
3) Become a vampire and start taking blood. This only works if you donate the blood you take, not if you drink it (hard).

Things My Wife Complains About: #3 Planning Enjoyable Activities

We have a fun little weekend planned. M. Ward in the sweet seats in Central Park then the Red Sox-Orioles game in Baltimore with friends from Charlottesville. A husband might feel pretty satisfied organizing these two events--satisfied, that is, until he learns his wife wishes neither event had been planned! It turns out wife is a busy bee, and all this fun hangs over her head like the sword of Damocles.

Proposed solutions!

1) Don't plan enjoyable activities.
2) Plan enjoyable activities that are certain to be derailed by natural disaster (pity we can't enjoy these 1989 World Series tickets, for example).
3) Plan enjoyable activities that don't actually exist so that when they're mysteriously cancelled, you benefit from planning them, as well as not having to go (moderately hard).