Modern Translation: The Awesome Wife’s Guide (Rule #12)

(This is the 13th post of this series. Click here to read the entire series.)


* Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquility where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.

I have to admit, I am pretty proud of myself and how I am doing with these rules. Sometimes a story or thought or rambling pops immediately into my head when I read each rule. Most of the time, however, I have to think on it for awhile. Whenever I hit a writer's block, I ask my husband how he thinks I could accomplish said goal for him. Each & every time I have asked, his response was "You already do/are."

<Smile>

When I first read Rule #12, I was translating "peace, order and tranquility" to mean feng shui, trickling water fountains and the smell of lavender in the air. Immediately, I felt a sense of failure since I own too much furniture & not enough mirrors and we rarely use candles or room fresheners because of my husband's scent sensitivity. I guess you could count our leaky faucet as having the same affect as a trickling water fountain, though.

That lead me to feeling awful for how long it has been since I completely cleaned the house. With the deck project still in full swing it has seemed sort of pointless to clean. It's been too hot & there have been too any sweaty, dirty family members sitting on the furniture every weekend for a month now to bother vacuuming.

Then I got to thinking about the serious earful I gave my husband when he accidentally knocked a mug of beer off the end table this weekend & managed to coat an entire 10 foot section of the wall with drippy brown goo. (No lie, I measured... 10 feet!) I certainly didn't create a space of peace and tranquility that night!

Feeling like a major wife fail, I emailed the Hubs and asked "How can I achieve Rule #12 for you?" His response (surprise, surprise) was "you already do," followed by a series of bullet points listing the ways in which I do so, to support his thesis statement. (When my husband is in work mode when he replies, I can expect anything from a PowerPoint to a flow chart or data analysis graph.)

I think a few of the Wife's Guide Rules thus far have demonstrated the difference between a wives perception of her role/job/success and a husband's perception of her role/job/success. Here are my husband's bullet point responses and how I was viewing the situation:

Dear 1950's Housewife, 


It's not often enough that either of us gets an opportunity to renew ourselves in body & spirit. There is just too much on the to-do list & not enough hours in the day. Plus, some crazy lady at our house keeps insisting that we work on these insane home remodeling projects! Hopefully soon we will be able to take a vacation & work on that body and spirit business, but for now, we'll have to settle on little reminders to renew our faith in ourselves, each other & our relationship. Little exercises like the one the Hubs and I did today (ie: reminding each other what we appreciate about each other & just how we view the other person) can be just as refreshing- or at least just enough to get us through another round of work, home repairs, and/or the craziness that is life!


Have a pleasant day, 


Mrs. 2010's Housewife