Here, let me give you a...no
May 31, 2000
I HAVE helped my husband on occasion and we CAN work together. Of course, there was the time 20 years ago when I painted the trim in one of the kids’ bedrooms. Okay, I’m not Michelangelo, but gees, Louise, it was just the trim for heaven’s sake. He’s a perfectionist; I like to think of myself as a generalist. But we CAN do things together.
We can drive places together, as long as he drives. We do pretty well making Christmas lists together, as longs as I shop. We make breakfast together: he smushes up the frozen orange juice and doesn’t get in my way, and I make the eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast, and put it on the table. We CAN plan all kinds of things together—the garden, redecorating, vacations.
However, we’re frequently a little impaired in the “to do” department because he’s of the “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well” school, while I mostly just want to get it over with so we can have some fun.
Lately, however, we’ve been trying to put our finances on the computer together. I know how to use a computer; I’ve even taken a QuickBooks class. What I don’t know how to use is money. Of course, I know HOW to use money; you take it to the store, you buy things, you run out, you go home. Oddly enough, even in light of this simple plan, we don’t always see eye to eye on management practices. We can discuss things in theory, but when we get right down to, “Isn’t this adorable?” we’re better off with separate checkbooks.
Here’s a somewhat typical conversation from last week when I borrowed some money from his checkbook to pay for things I bought for him and his family (as in our children).
“Liz, you are supposed to write down the amount of your withdrawal in this column and THEN you subtract it over here. Then you take the duplicated and file them in this file.”
“That’s stupid—just subtract it. See my checkbooks is just fine.”
“Let me see your checkbook—what’s this long arrow pointing down here for?”
“Well, yesterday I bought a wedding present and then found something cheaper so I returned the first present and this is where I added the amount back in.”
“Why does this check have no number? And are these spaces just supposed to be BLANK?”
“Oh, that! I had to give the kids blank check to pay their library fines and the one with no number, we’ll just call it AA, is a deposit slip I wrote at the grocery store when I ran out of checks.”
He rolls his eyes and gives me back my checkbook. “I just wish you wouldn’t write checks when you don’t have any money in there. You are always rushing to cover your checks.”
I say, “Honey I can make the deposit at the main office tomorrow morning and it’ll be fine. It takes two days for a check to clear anyway and this is Friday, so, really, we have the weekend!”
He writes the checks in the calm of his office with a calculator at his elbow. I write them for people who are racing out the door screaming, “Mom, Mom, ohmygosh! I can’t graduate if I don’t get my fines paid off today!” I write them at the grocery store at 5:30 when people are coming to dinner at 6. I’m always trying to snatch success from the jaws of disaster while he insists that we can make calm, rational decisions, no matter what the circumstances. Only naturally, he never seems to have any circumstances.
So back to my being a helper bee for my helpmate. I used to think that we actually had to be a team in the sense that we had to match. I now realize that we’re batter off just filling the roles that nature has suited us for and it works out fine. He’s good, I’m fun.
For example, last Wednesday about 7 p.m., just as I finally laid down on the couch and opened the paper he said, “We really better get those tomato plants you bought in the ground or they’re all going to die.” The problem with this is that we didn’t have to just stick them in the ground, we still had some weeding and tilling left to do.
But I now realize that what my little “dirt devil” needs out there in the garden is company. The man was an ant in his past life. So I said, “Sure, honey, I’ll help,” and I went out and planned where I wanted to put those tomatoes, and the cucumbers and the lettuce, while he pulled out the grass and dug in the mulch and generally comported himself like the trooper he is. We had a dandy time. I did some desultory weeding and rearranging, but mostly I just watched and enjoyed.
Then we sat on the front porch and planned what we’d do with our produce and watched the rain fall and smelled the honeysuckle he’d planted last year. Ahhh, that’s the kind of job we do really well together.
I HAVE helped my husband on occasion and we CAN work together. Of course, there was the time 20 years ago when I painted the trim in one of the kids’ bedrooms. Okay, I’m not Michelangelo, but gees, Louise, it was just the trim for heaven’s sake. He’s a perfectionist; I like to think of myself as a generalist. But we CAN do things together.
We can drive places together, as long as he drives. We do pretty well making Christmas lists together, as longs as I shop. We make breakfast together: he smushes up the frozen orange juice and doesn’t get in my way, and I make the eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast, and put it on the table. We CAN plan all kinds of things together—the garden, redecorating, vacations.
However, we’re frequently a little impaired in the “to do” department because he’s of the “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well” school, while I mostly just want to get it over with so we can have some fun.
Lately, however, we’ve been trying to put our finances on the computer together. I know how to use a computer; I’ve even taken a QuickBooks class. What I don’t know how to use is money. Of course, I know HOW to use money; you take it to the store, you buy things, you run out, you go home. Oddly enough, even in light of this simple plan, we don’t always see eye to eye on management practices. We can discuss things in theory, but when we get right down to, “Isn’t this adorable?” we’re better off with separate checkbooks.
Here’s a somewhat typical conversation from last week when I borrowed some money from his checkbook to pay for things I bought for him and his family (as in our children).
“Liz, you are supposed to write down the amount of your withdrawal in this column and THEN you subtract it over here. Then you take the duplicated and file them in this file.”
“That’s stupid—just subtract it. See my checkbooks is just fine.”
“Let me see your checkbook—what’s this long arrow pointing down here for?”
“Well, yesterday I bought a wedding present and then found something cheaper so I returned the first present and this is where I added the amount back in.”
“Why does this check have no number? And are these spaces just supposed to be BLANK?”
“Oh, that! I had to give the kids blank check to pay their library fines and the one with no number, we’ll just call it AA, is a deposit slip I wrote at the grocery store when I ran out of checks.”
He rolls his eyes and gives me back my checkbook. “I just wish you wouldn’t write checks when you don’t have any money in there. You are always rushing to cover your checks.”
I say, “Honey I can make the deposit at the main office tomorrow morning and it’ll be fine. It takes two days for a check to clear anyway and this is Friday, so, really, we have the weekend!”
He writes the checks in the calm of his office with a calculator at his elbow. I write them for people who are racing out the door screaming, “Mom, Mom, ohmygosh! I can’t graduate if I don’t get my fines paid off today!” I write them at the grocery store at 5:30 when people are coming to dinner at 6. I’m always trying to snatch success from the jaws of disaster while he insists that we can make calm, rational decisions, no matter what the circumstances. Only naturally, he never seems to have any circumstances.
So back to my being a helper bee for my helpmate. I used to think that we actually had to be a team in the sense that we had to match. I now realize that we’re batter off just filling the roles that nature has suited us for and it works out fine. He’s good, I’m fun.
For example, last Wednesday about 7 p.m., just as I finally laid down on the couch and opened the paper he said, “We really better get those tomato plants you bought in the ground or they’re all going to die.” The problem with this is that we didn’t have to just stick them in the ground, we still had some weeding and tilling left to do.
But I now realize that what my little “dirt devil” needs out there in the garden is company. The man was an ant in his past life. So I said, “Sure, honey, I’ll help,” and I went out and planned where I wanted to put those tomatoes, and the cucumbers and the lettuce, while he pulled out the grass and dug in the mulch and generally comported himself like the trooper he is. We had a dandy time. I did some desultory weeding and rearranging, but mostly I just watched and enjoyed.
Then we sat on the front porch and planned what we’d do with our produce and watched the rain fall and smelled the honeysuckle he’d planted last year. Ahhh, that’s the kind of job we do really well together.
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