His Turn

According to a survey I read recently most married couples argue about money, family issues and sex. As I've mentioned before, we are not most married couples and as such our arguments are usually confined to the grocery store. My husband does the grocery shopping every week and never complains unless I go with him. However he is a methodical shopper, and plods dutifully up one aisle and down the next, whether he needs anything there or not. I, on the other hand, flit about the store with gay abandon, from one section to another, grabbing stuff as I go. It drives him absolutely crazy, and he hates it. I am an affront to his orderly nature.

Another cause of arguments in our house are my skills - or lack thereof - in the kitchen. I hate cooking with a passion. I can cook sort of, I just don't want to. I'm easily distracted, hence my timer is usually the smoke alarm. I have to confess that on my bad days I have caused flames to shoot out of the oven, and burned the bottom clear out of a saucepan. I am Gordon Ramsey's worst nightmare. When I do venture into the kitchen, it is usually followed by a call to Rob, "Tell me again, how how long to I boil the spaghetti ?"  or  "How much water was it that goes in the rice ?".  It is usually met with "Oh for God's sake woman" followed by the necessary instructions. I have to say, he isn't very patient. I freely admit my daughter is a better cook than I am, and I'm happy to keep it that way. To be fair if my children weren't such picky eaters and didn't keep accusing me of trying to poison them, I might be prepared to spend a little more effort on meals. Until then, too bad.

Rob blames me for all our pets, and there are a lot of them. If you really want to see a dust up, it is pretty much guaranteed when I try to bring home a new animal. Admittedly when I went out to buy an ice cream cake for Sid's birthday, I skipped right by Dairy Queen, hit the pet store and brought home a kitten instead. However not every creature I have tried to adopt has been successful, the baby squirrel I tried to keep got fed to the cats. Maybe not deliberately, and I can't prove it, but by insisting that it got put out at night for its mother to find, pretty much signed its death warrant. It was a cute little bugger too, even tho' it was riddled with fleas. Of course, there is also our latest addition - the jird. Now that I stop to think about it, Rob is right, I am responsible for most of the pets, so I'll let him have this one.

He thinks I swear too much. Personally I prefer to think of it as possessing a colourful vocabulary. But honestly,  to anyone who has been following this blog, can you really blame me ?  I have always like to read advice columns, it gives me a degree of satisfaction to know that someone out there is a bigger loser than I am. But now I know why this blog has been so popular, after reading about our trials and tribulations, who can't help feeling smug ?