Well, I've certainly learned my lesson

And only about 20 years too late.

Today when I got home from work, as I stepped out of my truck in the garage, The Mrs. said to me, "When you put glasses away in the cupboard, put them right side up. Otherwise, they smell."

OK. I don't put the dishes away correctly. I guess that's a job The Mrs. can handle from here on.

Then, after dinner, when I was waiting for MaxieC to settle down enough to take his bath, The Mrs. made quite a little show of putting away the laundry. It went like this:

[Take out a piece of laundry]

The Mrs.: "Harumph. This is wrinkled."

[Take out another piece]

The Mrs.: "[Sigh] This is folded all wrong."

[Take out another piece]

The Mrs.: "This should have gone on a hanger. It's soooo obvious it should have gone on a hanger. I'm starting to think you're doing this just to annoy me."

[Take out another piece]

The Mrs.: "You didn't separate these. Now, I have to unfold each one to see whose it is. You made more work for me than if you hadn't done anything."

Me, CherkyB: "Yes dear. You've made your point. I won't do any more laundry."

[Take out another piece]

The Mrs.: "This is wrinkled because it's folded wrong. How can you mess up folding so badly?"

Me, CherkyB: "OK dear. I've got it. I won't do any more laundry."

[Take out another piece]

The Mrs.: "Tch. This one is messed up, too. They're all messed up. I wish you hadn't 'helped' me."

Me, CherkyB: "Oh, I don't think you have to worry about that anymore."

[Take out another piece]

The Mrs.: "I just can't believe how not helpful you are. This is way more work than if I did it completely myself. I have to redo everything."

Me, CherkyB: "I won't lift a finger around here anymore. I promise."

[Take out another piece]

The Mrs.: "Come on! It's so amazing how you could screw up absolutely every single piece!"

Me, CherkyB: "You know, it's really not necessary to comment on each and every piece of laundry."

At this point, I stopped listening. She didn't stop complaining, but I used my God-given married man defense system and turned on the notch filter that makes it so I can see The Mrs.'s lips move, but I can't actually hear her talking. I hope she found her little lecture cathartic, as I will be nitpicking everything she does for the rest of the month in response.

Tonight, I was served microwaved leftover fish sticks for dinner. There's nothing I like more than to come home from a hard day's work, a day when I got into a long diatribe with a bunch of people who outrank me about how telling me that they want my approval to make a last-minute change to reduce our risk of something bad by 12%, but we don't have any idea (a) if reducing the risk by 12% means that the bad thing will happen 12% less often or (b) how often the bad thing will happen with or without the 12% reduction, doesn't give me a whole hell of a lot of information on which to base my approval, to a wonderful, home-cooked meal of microwaved leftover fish sticks. I imagine if The Mrs. didn't have to refold every piece of clothing we own, she might have had more time to prepare an actual meal. No one to blame but me for that. But, on the bright side - since I won't be doing any more laundry ever, tonight was my last dinner of microwaved leftover fish sicks ever.

Man, are there ever a lot of toys strewn on the floor down here. I'd put some away, but I'm sure I would put some of them in the wrong places, and the time it would take The Mrs. to find the misplaced toys would be more than if I just left them for her to pick up. Normally, I'd pick these up and put them away, but out of consideration for The Mrs., I will resist the temptation. I'll let The Mrs. know that she needs to pick these up before someone trips on them.

I just want her to be happy.

The white goldfish is named, "White-uh". I don't know how that's spelled. The fish I thought was named "Eddo" is actually named "Eddle." I still don't remember the black catfish's name.

Fat Camp last night was a major pain in the butt. It was the last day of finals yesterday, and graduation was today, so all the college seniors were out and about. When we left our gathering place (a "fancy" pub by college town standards where the drinks are overpriced) to hit our dive bar with the $2.50 drafts, we could barely get in to the place. So we hit another place - also packed. Then a third place with the same result. Ended up back at the first place, which was really a sign of defeat.

Today being Friday, we hit Hooter's for lunch. There were seven of us, as the popularity of Friday lunch at Hooter's grows and grows. At one point, all the waitresses stood in a circle around our table and sang "gray squirrel" to us for reasons unknown.

I'm sure we'll be back next week.