Nit-picky

I am not an easy person to live with. I freely admit this and make no bones about it since this is simply the way I am. After a grand total of eight years as a full-time stay at home wife and mother, I want things done a certain way. My home is like my office. And I am the boss that the administrative assistants fear and talk about in hushed tones around the water cooler, lest I come up behind them and hear what they're saying; because then I will make them cry and beg to be fired.

Thing is, after doing this for so long, I've come up with things that work in so much as making the smallest amount of time produce the best housecleaning results. So I've become picky. Then again, some things I was picky about before I ever started house-wiferey (real word)... I just didn't know it until I started co-habitating with someone else. Now my picky is nit-picky, or so I'm told.

And my husband has the memory capacity of a fruit fly. So that last night when I walked into the living room and found him lounging and sprawled out with his shoe-clad feet up on my side of the couch I kinda went stupid. In part because I've been stressing this point for a month and a half at a rate of no less than 5 times a week. And in part because this is new behavior. And lastly, I've come to find out, it's a huge, gargantuan issue for me. I blame my prior ignorance as to it's largeness on not having come across this particular sticking-point before... with an adult, anyway.

I didn't realize that, "NO Shoes on the Couch!!" would ever be something that I would have to say to a 45 year old man. I'd expect this from a child. My son is two and does this all the time. It bothers me, but I'm rational enough to realize that he hasn't heard this phrase nearly enough for it to sink into his little skull. Hubby?!? No excuse is ever gonna work on his part.

I wish to clarify at this time, that if he didn't have his shoes on, I wouldn't give a running rat's ass if they were on the couch... now, as I was saying...

I worked for Kirby vacuum cleaners as a sales person at one point, I know the things that shoes track around in a suburban/city existence ~ and for the sake of kindness and non-puke-factor, I'll spare you. But we live in the country and have, without conscious effort of any kind, become something of a wildlife refuge. We have two non-mouse-catching cats that we actually claim as ours and the rest are not ours, they're squatters, but they include: two chickens, a possum, a skunk, and an armadillo. We also get visited by several other outdoor cats each and every day, and now we have some escaped turkey wandering around as of yesterday. Not to mention any number of unwanted guests such as the local fire-ants, WTF-kind-IS-That spiders, tree roaches and geckos. I'm pretty sure there are other things out there but I am, and strive to remain, blissfully ignorant of them. So it is probably even more obvious now why I'm so bent over hubby's shoes on the couch, on top of the fact that they wind up where I always sit.

So last night, for what seemed like the gazillionth (again, real word... thank God we're not playing Scrabble.) time of walking in to the shoes-on-couch scene after being out of the room for a quick use of the bathroom... well, I sort of snapped. Out of my mouth flew something very close to this statement; "If you don't stop putting your shoes on the *bleep* couch I swear I'm gonna run in here at top speed and jump-land on them since they're in my spot!"

Considering that scales scream and run the other way when they see me coming, this was not an innocuous statement, because were I to do that, I'd no doubt break his leg or ankles (the way he was sitting) or damage him seriously in some way. But even with that said, I'd never follow through on it! It was a hot-air threat made out of frustration, because I'm smart enough to know a few things...

One: Shoes going up my butt in a flying-anger-leap landing would damage me in ways I really don't want to consider. Two: If I break his leg, I'm going to have to cater to his every whim and if I'm gonna damage him, It would be far better for my mental health to just break out the shotgun and take him out of my misery. Three: The last time I got angry enough to want to damage my spouse, karma kicked my ass. In short, it's just bad JuJu.

However, I also knew that whatever I said about the shoes-on-couch needed to be dramatic enough to stick with hubby, because as I've said, he has the memory of a fruit fly and obviously my prior kind requests fell on deaf ears and even upping them a notch to not-so-kind requests has done nothing to change the situation. I needed to say something so over-the-top that he'd replay it in his head the next time he went to put his feet up on the couch with his shoes on, and maybe give pause, and maybe even take off his *bleeping* shoes before he puts his feet up.

So I said what I said.

And now I'm the antichrist.

And "vicious". And some other choice adjectives that I won't go into.

And...'frankly Scarlet, I don't give a damn' as long as his shoes stay on the floor where they belong... cause I'm nit-picky like that.


An 'In Un-related News' PS. On day two of mousetraps, and no catch (or sprung traps) yet... Could it be that Mister Jedi Mousy is coordinating a sneak attack?

An 'In Un-related News' PPS. I've joined Canucklehead's Scavenger Hunt and I think we should all pray for Nancy... she was pretty screwed... whatever happened with all that anyway?