Cheryl was complaining this morning. Before you rush to judgement – of me – for telling on Cheryl, let me say up front that I complain just as much as she does. Only, my complaining tends to be more whiney, grating, and down right irritating.
But let us not talk about me, and instead focus on Cheryl – my intended target. (We’ll get to me shortly.)
Cheryl was complaining about her ratio of recreation to responsibilities this morning, but I was having none of it. “I saw you on the computer this morning,” I pointed out. “Yeah,” she replied, “but you saw me when I’d just sat down. I was only on it for ten minutes.”
“You want me to check?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can check the console logs to see what the computer was doing and when. Do you still want to stand by your ten minutes?”
“Show me.”
“Go to Applications, Utilities, double click Console, make sure Console logs is selected and click kernel.log.”
“I don’t know what all this means.”
“Neither do I, but see this… that’s when the Mac woke from sleep. And see this… that’s when you put it to sleep.”
“Well, it didn’t seem like I was on for half an hour.”
Now, some of you may be patting me on my virtual back for my cleverness. Some of you may be sneering at Cheryl’s smug prick of a husband. Some of you, if you’re really smart (or at least smarter than me), will see the trap laid by my clever wife.
Now she knows how to check the MacBook’s logs, to see how long I spend not doing the things she’s asked me to do.
Anyone out there know if it will do any harm if I start deleting my system logs?
Don’t spill it, John! The code is the code! Brotherhood is brotherhood!
Reindeer games? Is that what you guys do when we’re not around?
John has gone over to the dark side. We won’t let him play in anymore reindeer games.
Stephen, not only did he do laundry, but he cooked AND did the dishes.
But Stephen, it’s gold I tells ya, GOLD!
Clean the bathroom? Why? I don’t clean the garage or the basement, why should I clean the bathroom?
(John: you keep spouting off about laundry, and I’ll have to come over there and sit on you.)
Ladies . . .
I’m with you. Pick up your underwear, change the toilet paper roll, clean the bathroom, and that’s like talkin’ dirty to me.
I speak fluent laundry. That’s gotta count for something, right?
I get doubly pissed off if flowers are presented as an apology. And I’m with Cheryl about the housework. You want me to be happy? Make a bed, dust a room, take care of an entire load of laundry. Frees up some of my day and you’re a hero. Those two things result in the one and only thing a man wants so we’re both happy. The question is… how much is sex really worth, guys? :-)
I was thinking something along the lines of ironing.
Okay, two observations. First, forty dollars? What’s with that? Flowers grow in fields. Any sensible man would park his car along a roadside ditch and pluck some dandelions for free. At the very least, if he absolutely must visit a florist, he should ask for clearance items, like flowers that are already wilting, or floral arrangements returned by a bride whose groom woke up that morning and grasped his folly.
Second, about house cleaning. All a man has to do is invite his friends over for beer and football. His wife, terrified that his friends might see dirt, and subsequently return home to tell their own wives about the dirt, will embark on a cleaning frenzy that will not only excuse the man from domestic duties for the remainder of the week but will also free up the television from exasperatingly infinite reruns of “Friends.”
Actually, Stephen, one time John spent $40 on flowers and I was mad at him because it blew our budget. I don’t like him spending money on flowers or jewelry. All he needs to do is clean the house and I will forgive anything.
Sounds like you need to spring for a bouquet of flowers, my friend. Gerls always fall for that I’m-sorry-have-some-tulips ruse. You’ll be off the hook for a whole week, which is time enough to come up with a solution.