Husband Follies Episode #62
Sometimes it is SOOO easy to make fun of my husband Gary. Yes, I am the creative one, and my husband is the methodical, exacting, engineering one in our relationship as I have written about before. (Read the other husband follies stories here, here and here.)
Sometimes though, sometimes, I feel his methodical brain needs one too many spreadsheets. He’s got a son like that too.
Sometimes I feel like he overcomplicates things when he is trying to fix or solve something. He is Mensa smart (true fact) and I am clever-smart. My cleverness serves me well. I happen to think clever smart is superior, but don’t tell him I said that.
I often feel I could shortcut a task more successfully. I usually don’t try and let my husband go about his fifteen step process to fix whatever. As just one example, when he is trying to find a document, he has to figure out what file and then what sub-file of a sub-file, of a sub-file he might have filed it in on his computer. I have all of my documents alphabetized in one large folder and I can find things in a nanosecond. It could take him twenty minutes. Yet he thinks his is more organized.
We were recently going over finances for our new home that we are building and I put figures together in the air, and then jotted them down. My husband rejected everything I said and had to build a spreadsheet. His conclusion of the figures was the exact same as mine even with my sloppy methods.
By the way, he posted this cartoon once about me, and it describes me to a tee.
Because I am creative, I am a person who can figure things out when needed, and I use my creative problem solving methods. When something is broken, I used to (before Gary) just “jimmy-rig” the item to get it back to functional. I can figure out how to use unusual materials (the creative side) to get the job done. (Thus the term jimmy-rig.)
NOTE: My husband in our latest discussion on this topic told me he never heard the term “jimmy-rig” even though I have used it before and we grew up in the same area of the world. He uses the termĀ “jury-rig,” and then looked up both terms. It seems jimmy-rigging is more complex than jury-rigging or some such nonsense. Wouldn’t rigging a jury be tampering legally with something though? I am confused. And yes, these are actual conversations we have together.
From the flood, we were about to lose an armoire that was hand painted, and I was a bit sentimental about it. (Ok, I am sentimental about EVERYTHING!) While opening one of the cabinet doors, the door split in half. (Being exposed to water can do that to furniture – it is very destructive.)
I wanted my husband to try to fix the armoire, because in my mind, it was an easy fix – it was a clean break leaving grooves, and I thought some wood glue would work to slap that sucker back together. I suggested using a short bungee cord to hold the two pieces together. The fact that I even know about wood glue and bungee cords tells you that I have done the jimmy-rigging thing a time or two. Duct tape is my specialty though.
No, my husband said. He would have to take the door off the hinges, get a furniture clamp (expensive) and use wood glue. He thought it would take a lot of time and was reluctant to do it thinking it might not work anyway.
So I took it upon myself and got the wood glue, slapped it on like crazy, used packing tape to hold it together, put a fan on it, and voila, an hour later the cabinet door was back on, as solid as can be. This took me all of about ten minutes of labor. My husband didn’t say a word.
One of these days, he will learn how to do things more simply. Until then, I am sure I will have future “husband follies” to report!