The One With the Cow

I asked Em this morning while catching up on her blog if she saw the one about the Far Side. Yes, she said and offered without hesitation, "I like the one with the cow."

Now, Em came to the marriage with at least as many Far Side books as I had and they were at least as well used and well read as mine. In fact, the scan I did of my favorite panel came out of Emily's book.

She is no stranger to the Far Side comic and has been a lifelong devotee. Her ability to recall minutiae about things that have no importance is famous. She knows as do most humans in the western world that many Far Sides have cows. It's like saying the one with the caveman or the one with the pithy caption.

I won't dwell on this as the brain power and storage I have devoted to remembering such things is actually beyond human comprehension. It is a magnificent waste. Em has to spend time thinking about things that would drive me to drink... erm, more.

She has to remember how to fold the towels. I have to reverse engineer an already folded towel in order to remember how to fold the towels in the proper Schrumpfian way. It has been handed down through the years as though God himself bestowed the knowledge onto the first woman in the lineage.

To reverse engineer a towel, you unfold it slowly, fold by fold and then try to duplicate what you just learned. Except the first fold you learn is actually the last fold you make. So you also have to perform a complicated reversal in your head. It's all too much for me. Now I'm staring at two unfolded towels. I am starting to panic a little.

Em does the money. While I am quoting Simpsons lines that no one gets and spouting off trivial facts about what Robert Shaw was drinking the night they filmed the famous "U.S.S. Indianapolis" scene of Jaws, she is remembering the quarterly water bill will be coming in the mail. Better remember to save a couple hundred bucks just to be sure.

I routinely have to call her if I am out. "Hi, do we have money?" My friends find this to be an atrocity of manhood, but she has a system and that system includes me not balancing the check book, so I go with it.

I suggested once to make things easier and more open to both of us, we switch to a Quicken type system, because if you put it on a computer, it is suddenly a game to me and I do it. I am virtually organized and realistically a ticking time bomb. She distracted me by playing the "let's see if you know where this dish goes", game. I still don't know where the dish goes and until now, forgot all about my suggestion.

I can take a hint. The dish must belong to Dave and Greg.

Let's not start on the laundry, eh? I am not to touch the laundry unless there has been an accident or emergency and Emily is more than 60 minutes away. I can't conceive of a day in which I would soil every single pair of underpants I own, but whatever alternate universe Bill is doing to have that much fun, I say go with it. Party like a rock star, dude.

When Emily is gone, I do my laundry the same way I did my laundry in college. I pretend that each load is costing me a gallon of gas or a pack of cigarettes or part of cover charge to get into the bar and I cram the clothes into the thing and bungy cord the lid down. Last time I put some spare pavers on there just for good measure.

When the clothes are done, they are compressed like a form in the shape of the wash drum, dimples and all. The bonus is they are totally dry! Score! I just saved a buck fiddy on drying!

I don't understand her problem with my method. It's efficient and energy conservation minded. Sometimes I don't even use soap! And fabric softener? Fabric softener? That is a myth brought down to us by a money hungry production conglomerate foisting upon a weary consumer an expensive liquid that does nothing! Fabric softener indeed. I have never tried on a tee shirt and said... "Hmm, I like it, but it's just a little stiff... maybe it needs some fabric softener."

I have gotten on a little tangent there; as I am wont to do from time to time. Meanwhile, Em, who just sung my praises for being so helpful to her this week is vacuuming upstairs while I sit here and do nothing. I suppose I should go rectify that. I at least need to get a cup of coffee and go point out spots I think she could have done better. After all, chores are everyone's responsibility.