This is how we wake up in the morning: The Pug, deciding it is time to eat (again!!!), walks on our heads until we get a clue and take our heads off the pillow.
Or I should say, The Pug walks on T’s (my spouse) head until HE gets a clue, because I’m usually comatose at 5AM. T, being a smart sort, goes downstairs and feeds The Pug. This tends to satisfy her for a couple of hours until it’s time for her to walk, when she begins the game of who she can rouse first.
It’s always T. Always. And he really, really doesn’t much care for having to get out of bed, so he rolls over to me and says “I fed The Pug, you get to walk her.” As if I would possibly be up and awake to feed The Pug first! Nine times out of ten, I roll out and walk The Pug.
This morning, however, I decided I wanted that extra ten minutes and it wasn’t pretty. This is something to file in the Top-Ten things NOT to say to your spouse while you’re in bed in the morning.
HE says: “Pug needs to be walked.”
I say: “Fine, walk her, please” and turn my back to him.
HE says (with just a tinge of whine): “I got up at 5 AM and fed her. YOU get up and walk her.”
(aside: I haven’t opened my eyes during this exchange, I’m really, really comfortable and I know darn well that opening my mouth before I open my eyes is a mistake, but acting on impulse, I leap into the fray….)
I say: “Why do you have to turn everything into a pissing contest? Can’t you just walk The Pug this one time without making it tit-for-tat?”
What a nasty, rotten thing to throw at your spouse at 7AM. Especially rotten when you’re spewing without thinking — one of my least desirable characteristics when I’m awake, and really foul when I’m half-awake. Besides, men will win pissing contests every time so what was I thinking? Problem: I wasn’t thinking.
Here’s another problem: I do that to him ALL THE TIME. It’s not unusual for me to remind him that she who cooks does not do dishes, nor does she do coffee if SHE’s the one out walking The Pug. Oh, and did I mention that morning walks with The Pug mean waiting for what seems like hours, shivering, while she sniffs every square inch of the lawn for the perfect place to pee? Since we live in a townhouse next to a lake, there’s A LOT of territory to sniff. For her, it’s like reading the morning paper at a very leisurely pace.
To make things worse, he did roll out and walk The Pug, and I didn’t even drag out and make coffee. Yes, it was heading downhill fast and it wasn’t even 8AM.
Of course, I was oblivious to the fact that I had really pissed T off until around 2:00 PM, when I was in the middle of catching up on work and he decides it’s high time to let me have it. The man really knows how to nurse a grudge — after giving me the required drubbing, which I completely deserved, I grovel. And it was sincere groveling. I was a bitch, no question about it.
Sticks has a great description of how ADHDers handle getting angry. He says we get angy, then forget 5 minutes later why we were angry and decide that whatever we were angry about wasn’t that big of a deal anyway. And that’s really how it is. He and I are alike in that regard — anger burns hot for about 3o seconds and then dies.
Not T. No, he likes to nurture it, shape it into boulder-size chips and then toss it like a fireball right in front of you. The man was a preacher for 10 years and isn’t shy about tossing hellfire either. But the worst part is that even after one has groveled, it takes him 8 or 9 hours to get over it. When he tosses that chip hard 5 0r 6 hours after the fact, it hits me like a freight train aiming for the tunnel, especially when I’m smack dab in the middle of something that requires actual brain cells functioning to complete.
He tossed, I groveled and guess what? In 3 hours it’s going to be time to feed the pug again. Maybe I should just get the quid pro quo out of the way now and feed her early. Maybe I just need to plan on doing both.
Pug: 2, Me: 0
