Home Decorating As A Bloodsport

It strikes me that this is swiftly becoming a place of far too much seriousness. As such, before this post is over, I promise that I will interject some much needed, juvenile humor into it, with a good, solid warning beforehand so those with more delicate sensibilities (i.e. my mother-in-law) will know to stop reading at that point.

Also, to further the effort to keep this from becoming too serious, I've decided to add sort of a "Dear DLOG" feature. So, should anyone have some pressing questions, feel free to send them to us here, and one or more of the DLOG staff will respond. Keep in mind that the DLOG staff consists of me, a five year old girl, a one year old boy, and a rubber skeleton that hangs in my cube and goes by the name of Hermie. If I have to, I'll involve management. You might want to formulate your questions appropriately.

So, this weekend continued the long trek of trying to get the things we've been toting around all of these years into their appropriate places in our new house, and that included a Saturday night of attempting to hang a picture over our fireplace. Like many tasks that my lovely wife and I have undertaken together in that past, this one ended with the picture still quite secure in it's place on the floor while we exchanged withering looks and barbs across the room.

While sitting and stewing at the situation, I came to a sudden and horrifying realization - I was wrong. Totally and completely wrong. I can not describe the angst that comes with trying to be reasonable once I've gotten a really good brooding going and then realize I have nothing to brood about. Part of me wants to be angry, like maybe if I sit and be mad for another few minutes I'll have some epiphany that I really wasn't in the wrong. Fortunately, I was able to shut that part of my brain off long enough to see what had happened.

Apparently, unbeknowst to me (but knowst to my wife), I have a really terrible habit of dismissing the ideas of others when I think my ideas are better. Upon thirty seconds of reflection, this is completely true. When trying to tackle some problem, if you try to explain an idea to me, and I either disagree with it or don't fully understand what it is you're trying to suggest, I will dismiss it outright and push my own agenda.

I have no idea why I'm so sure I'm right about things, or if I even am so sure. I mean, I can't stand it when people dismiss the ideas of others based on preconceived notions without even hearing what the other people have to say. It's the arena of political pundits and fundamentalists. I do not want to be lumped into that crowd.

Even worse than that though is the thought of what I'm doing to people when I do this. How demeaning is it to have someone treat your ideas as something not even worth consideration? Even worse, I'm doing this to my wife, whose ideas I constantly rely on. We're supposed to be a team, but I'm blowing off her ideas as if they're worthless. In short, I was being a *#$%.

Given a little thought, I know that this in part comes from my upbringing. My family was supportive, which is good, but we had a really bad habit of enforcing our ideals as if they were laws. People who disagreed were open for mocking, and if we were good at anything, it was mocking people. Since we all maintained the same set of opinions for the most part (the mocking rule applied within the clan as well), the idea that we were right and the rest of the world was wrong became second nature.

So here I am now with yet another terrible habit that I have to try to break. It's amazing to me how long it takes to retrain my own brain to behave like I want it to instead of just switching back to my old self. You'd think that as sentient beings, we would be able to just decide to behave a certain way, and that would be that. If only it could be so easy.

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AND NOW WE TAKE THIS SENSITIVE AND THOUGHTFUL POST AND DRAG IT DOWN INTO THE GUTTER, WHICH, LETS FACE IT, IS WHERE MOST OF YOU WOULD RATHER IT BE. STOP READING HERE, OH TENDER READERS.

SERIOUSLY. ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO CONTINUE. WHAT WILL BE READ CANNOT BE UNREAD.

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So, here's a question for the fellas; you ever drop a duece, and then check it out afterwards and try to guage just how big a cellmate you could stand if you found yourself incarcerated? No? Just me then.

Dangerously Low On Grog - your source for thoughtful introspection and shameless bathroom humor since 2008.