It's the Little Things

Just to give you an idea of how conceptually simple things can turn into complex problems requiring a planning committee to solve (not that we’d actually have time for those committee meetings!) and that all you can do in these situations is laugh hysterically, consider that last night was trash night. No problem…It was Thursday night – a two-trash-bag night: One for the kitchen trash, and one for the diapers. I pulled the trash bag box out from under the sink: Uh-oh…Only one trash bag left. We didn’t pick up trash bags after Monday night when we got down to one. So here’s how the conversation went down between Cristi and I:

Tim: Uh-oh…We only have one trash bag. I guess we’ll have to leave the diapers up there until Monday.

Cristi: I didn’t know we were out of trash bags. I was just at Target the other day!

Tim: Wait a minute…I mentioned Monday night that we were getting low, and I guessed that we’d have to “conserve trash bags”. (Aha! I said it! Not my problem!)

Cristi: Well, I don’t know who you said that to, because I was in Philadelphia!

Tim (a few minutes later – I suffer from the Calvin syndrome): Wait…This isn’t my fault! You told me after I got home from work that you had gone to Target and Wal-Mart. I didn’t know you were going beforehand. (Whew! Absolved of responsibility once more!)

Cristi: True, but you didn’t tell me that we were getting low on anything! I can’t pick it up if I don’t know!

Tim: Well, it’s not as if we had a whole lot of conversation time between you getting back from Philadelphia and now.

Cristi: Why didn’t you just put it on my Facebook page?

We both laugh.

Hey, it’s not pretty, but it’s our life! We learned, oh, almost 3 years ago now (after Lauren was born) that some things just don’t get done, and that will just have to be all right. Thankfully, we can still laugh at each other, realizing that there’s “blame” on both sides, but also realizing that, despite how simple we try to make it, our life is just very complex. So we don’t get spun up about the little things. If we did, we’d both have ulcers, we’d be nervous wrecks, and our kids would be convinced we had lost it…well…okay…two out of three’s not bad…