If At First You Don’t Succeed…

My husband loves to think that he knows everything. At least yesterday he did.

Today he thinks he’s an idiot and knows nothing.

Tomorrow, I haven’t a clue as to his frame of mind. Some of his thinking is Aspie driven, some is ‘male’ driven, and some is just randomly his own. It doesn’t help when he has family members telling him that there is no such thing as Aspergers, that he most certainly doesn’t have it, and that he needs to divorce me because all I ever do is try to ‘control’ him.

Hmmm. I wonder who really is trying to exert control.

Steve recognizes and acknowledges that he is very absent-minded. The other day I had to walk him step by step on how to turn the oven on. He had completely forgotten how to work the electronic pushbutton controls. We’ve had this oven set for almost two years now. You’d think he’d remember.

For years now my Sweetie has been battling a very large two section gate on our fencing that opens to his ‘junk yard’ for parts cars behind his shop. I grew up in a family that was in construction trades. I watched my dad, uncles and cousins all build their own homes and spec homes on weekends as they worked in commercial construction during the week. My dad actually worked on the Space Needle here in Seattle back in the early 1960’s, and there was a photo of him with his co-workers on the front of a Life magazine issue.

When Steve bought the lumber for his shop fence, I quickly sketched out a couple of diagrams of building ideas, and suggested how the gate could be built since it would be large, heavy and on uneven ground.

“Do I have to build it your way?” he challenged, as I showed him my paper.

:”Well, of course not,” I answered. “Since you work on cars and with metal, not wood, and you don’t have any construction experience, I thought I could share some of my knowledge and experience with you.”

He ignored my scribblings and walked away. He built a six foot fence with barely ten inches of post sunk in the ground. He wouldn’t cement the posts in. He wanted to save on lumber so he put the posts twelve feet apart and put twelve foot lengths of fencing in between.

Needless to say, he built two twelve foot long ‘gates’ that had two wimpy hinges on each side that sort of swing together in an attempt to shut. Mostly they just drag on the ground and don’t close. But it’s his fence and his project. I’ve kept my mouth shut.

The other day the Hubster came storming into the house after failing to get his gates open. He charged over to Kidlet and informed him that he was to help fix the gates on Saturday.

Whoops. Kidlet has baseball and won’t be home until late. Hubster wasn’t happy.

I had just about opened my mouth to mention that if Steve had built his gates the way I suggested to start with he’d be having no problems with them now. Fortunately I was able to gulp some coffee down and stifle my impulse. It wouldn’t do anything other than cause strife at this point.

But I do love that sign. Men, take heed!