I Own Half This House

You know how it is after you settle into a relationship with another person and then things kind of start to uncover within yourself? After being with Kristin for about 5 or 6 years I found myself uncovering some fairly ridiculous logic and had to finally acknowledge that I was mixed up a bit about how relationships work. Fortunately for me Kristin has been all about the patience in this area. Let me give you a couple of real life examples of how this went -

We would decide jointly Saturday would be our chore day. I would wake up crabby on Saturday morning, sure that Kristin didn't understand what it was like for me to not get a day off and just relax. I would go downstairs and turn on the coffee pot that she had set up the night before. I would let the dog out and then get my cup of coffee. She would get up behind me and I would be immediately crabby sure she would expect me to continue working while she was doing her chores even though she started after me - harrumph! So I would start my chores, the shower, she hates cleaning the shower so I have sacrificed and taken the shower as one of my chores. She would interrupt me cheerfully "hun, can you help me make the bed?" - ugh, I would pout into the bedroom to help make the bed. She would look up at me and say, "you know, I am really against you, I spent last night tossing and turning just so you had to help me make the bed." "Oh, and I have been showering all week, just so you would have to clean it." WELL---I would look up and just start laughing - I had to, how could I not when I realized that she was absolutely right - somewhere in myself had decided that if she didn't make things such a mess I wouldn't have to do chores.

There are a few other good examples of my view being a bit askew, but a favorite of mine was trimming the shrubs. We had shrubs at our last house. Kristin trimmed the shrubs. She never trimmed the shrubs often enough for me. Why I thought I should have an opinion of about how often they would get trimmed when it was something she took care of I still cannot say, but one day I decided I wanted to trim the shrubs. Kristin was immediately resistant to this. There were a few reasons, maybe even good ones, but I would not be stopped - so what if my attention to detail was not the same as hers, or that I had never used the electric trimmers and she had other plans for her day, or that I have a history of weeding even the flowers out of the garden to make it look neat - I wanted those shrubs trimmed and it sounded like fun and I looked at her and said - "I own half this house and half those shrubs, I am trimming them." I must have been in quite a mood because she was able to maintain calmness and not laugh in my face. She did however remark, "well, I own the half this house and half those shrubs and you are not entiteld to cut half of the shrubs down." So she calmly offered a few pointers and helped me get the trimmers out. She then promptly left. Let's just say the bushes were trimmed beyond trimming - I have an odd sense of neat, and maybe trimmed off a little more than needed to be taken off. To this day, we still laugh a bit about the use of my partnership in buying the house to get a turn at trimming the bushes.

So now here we are years later, two dogs, two cats a fixed up fixer upper house and no shrubs, two showers, and a much bigger lawn. I have some to realize that the dogs do not bark at the mailman to annoy me, they are bored and they chase him successfully away, every single day. The cats don't barf up hair balls all week because they are against me and want me to do laundry. I understand that owning half the house is a gift rather than a burden and when it is a burden we share it. On the other hand I still have my moments.

This week I found myself having 10 royal minutes of 'princessness'. I have a goofy resistance to needing people. It makes me really mad when someone sees a vulnerability - can you imagine being Kristin? Anyway, I was on my way to work and instead of wearing boots I had on my work shoes. It had snowed about 6 inches the day before and Kristin was still sleeping which meant the driveway was not snow blown off. I had to wade through the snow to the garage and get the car out. I got stuck in the driveway. Now I did not want to get out and get my feet wet so instead of shoveling spent a few minutes going back and forth trying to work my way over the slight hill to the alley from our driveway. I called Kristin as soon as I was out of the driveway to let her know that I had just managed my way out of the driveway. There was a bit implication in my voice that my troubles were her fault...just a bit of nerve, don't you think?!

When I got to work I had an e-mail from her with one simple question - "Hey, how come my half of the house is always the one that needs something done? Why can't I own the dining room instead of the driveway?" Apparently owning half the house entitles me to remove any or all of the snow from the driveway - LOL!