Stacie goes on several business trips a year. She and our partner at RSMDME vend at shows in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and some of them are full weekend trips. This is a Good Thing – she gets out of the house for a while (she’s been on work from home for years now), and I get to have the house to myself and the critters. When she’s away, I work on projects unimpeded. Is nice.
If I could stay out of the hostibule for a summer, I’d go on my own trips or vacations and she wouldn’t have an issue with it. She’s said so. The only reason I don’t is that my health issues are eating up all my PTO and keeping me from getting any real overtime in. There’s also the several thousand dollars of medical bills from my four hospitalizations in two years.
I also cook. A lot of what I like she hates with the fiery passion of a thousand possessed monkeys clawing the inside of your colon with their flaming, diseased claws.
So in the weeks leading up to one of her shows I create a schedule. What projects I’ll be working on, what side stuff I want to accomplish, my menu and the ingredients, you name it.
The menu is the biggest part of the plan. I figure out what I’ll be eating at each meal, what ingredients I’ll need, what we already have on hand, and what I’ll have to pick up. Then I make two shopping lists: perishable and non-perishable. The non-perishables I pick up a bit at a time on my way home from work. Between dropping in at the store near work and doing pickup orders from the grocery store on the way home, it’s pretty simple. The perishables I do in one big order two nights before she leaves – if they can’t get something into the order, I can stop at the other store (or a third and/or fourth on the way home) and fill in the gaps.
Then I help her load her car and she leaves. After that I hit the kitchen and start readying ingredients and utensilry for more orderly use.
Is my system. It works. This is what happens when you’re a project manager and control freak by necessity.
I have mentioned our utter disgust with the whole “I want to be like Joker and Harley” thing before. No, we do not want to be like Joker and Harley. It’s a textbook abusively narcissistic relationship, and I got enough of that from Theodora and Boggs. And also, I’m not into spineless subservient submissives. I much prefer women that are forces of god-damned nature. If she hadn’t died on me, I would have married April the six foot redhead dominatrix, and I did marry Stacie who proudly wears the alpha female control freak label as a badge of honor.
Women like that actually have the drive to do what needs to be done to get what they want, and they don’t put up with a lot of stupidity along the way. There’s also a pretty solid understanding of what they expect from their partners. It may not be a formal negotiation and contract, but there gorram is. You don’t need to be a mind-reader, because they fuckin’ tell you what they need or want in no uncertain terms. You also typically know exactly where you stand with them – when you screw up, they tell you.
Alpha female control freaks, they Get Shit Done.
And because that’s how they operate, they expect the same in return without getting all bitter that you’re spelling things out – they see it as communication, not rudeness. Is nice.
One of our mutual requirements is monogamy. Which is no big deal for multiple reasons, most notably that we’re both too busy for any of that foolishness. Stacie and I both have full time jobs and spend a pile of time doing stuff for RSMDME, and I’m effectively a full-time student on top of it. As we have both said on the subject, “who has the time?!” We also have other interests – she’s a full-on pointy-hat-wearing witch with a herd of cats, and as I’ve stated on multiple occasions my life revolves almost entirely around robots, monkeys, and space monsters.
We don’t do Joker and Harley, we’re Gomez and Morticia. Or Zoe and Wash. Isn’t quite as exciting as what happens when you put two complete lunatics into a relationship, but it definitely works for us. And we get shit done.
As I’ve mentioned before, I work with a couple of asshats. Whenever I mention her having one of her trips in passing, the whole “oh, what are you going to do while she’s away? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge” and “when the cat’s away!!11!!” stupid starts. Because, again, asshats.
I usually just roll my eyes and tell them “why would I? Stacie doesn’t really tell me no.” That shuts them up pretty quickly – the two biggest offenders have completely miserable home lives. One lives under his wife’s thumb and takes it out on all of us, while the utter is just an abject failure at life who no woman wants anything to do with.
I’ve mentioned this to Stacie, and she had pretty much the same reaction Morticia did when someone told her they suspected Gomez’s strange behavior was a sign he was having an affair – laughter and utter dismissal.
So the other day I was doing something with Mister Finnegan the Dung Beagle. Don’t remember if I was feeding him, if I had just let him back in, or what. Doesn’t matter. What matters is he was screwing around as is his way.
His screwing around was taking valuable time away from my busy schedule of reading some Mars Attacks! stuff. I finally got annoyed enough to tell him “hurry the Hell up, Finn! I have Martians to think about!”
Then the following conversation ensued, with Stacie yelling up at me from her office:
Stacie: “What did you just say to him?”
Me: “I told him to hurry the Hell up. He’s screwing around.”
Stacie: “After that!”
Me: “What, that I have Martians to think about? Yeah, I was reading that Mars Attacks! book. What about it?”
Stacie: “See, this is why I don’t worry about what you’re up to when I go out of town.”
Me: “OK…”
Stacie: “Your life revolves around robots, monkeys, and space monsters. And food. When I’m out of town if you’re awake you’re thinking about robots, monkeys, or space monsters, or you’re cooking something or eating it. Or playing vidgames.”
So yeah, my wife doesn’t worry about me indulging my base desires because she knows what they are and actively encourages them.
One thought on ““This Is Why I Don’t Worry About What You Get Up To When I’m Out Of Town””