A full-on rant about Suzanne

You know, the very first bloglike site I set up on the net, back in 1995 or 1996, was a place for me to complain. It was about dumb-ass drivers, and helped to greatly defuse my irritation at morons on the roads around this region. Rather than steam at them when I was in the car, I'd just sit back and smile and think, "man, I'll write about your ass when I get home."

I am a little surprised I've forgotten how useful sites like that are... to me.

Suzanne is really starting to bug me in certain ways. Trying to explain those ways to her in person doesn't seem to be working, so I guess it's time I flamed about it here. If I can't do it here, I might as well just go drown myself in pudding or something.

Is it too much to ask that once you tell an adult something important, they'll remember it, and act on it?

I have pretty much given up telling Suzanne not to let the cats out. I've told her, and told her, and explained calmly the reasons why they can't go out... they'll get hit by cars, injured or killed by other wildlife, or eat something that will make them sick. Somehow, after all these years, I am amazingly good at not letting the cats out. Damn near 100% blockage, as a matter of fact. Yet every damn week, I come home, and Gina and/or Bert is sitting outside or wandering around in the road. And sure enough, I ask Suzanne about it, and she just sort of lamely says, "they got out."

No, they did not GET OUT. You fucking let them out. You were too clueless to look down, at your feet, while you went through the front door. You didn't check to see if they were waiting to spring for the great outdoors. You just weren't fucking paying attention.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I sent her a manifesto of sorts. I explained, carefully, the background on why I moved here in 1996 -- that two of my favorite cats were killed in the road near my old house, and I wanted to keep them safe -- and explained the methods by which one can keep the cats from going out. And I offered to help her learn those methods as simple habits. And I told her that if she could not or would not do these things, and something happened to one of the cats because she let them out, this relationship was probably over.

The cats still go out.

I don't think she understands how serious I am.

If Gina or Bert is killed in the road, I will call the movers, and Suzanne will leave this house that very week, and that will be it.

That's the deal I made with the cats. They would be safe. If Suzanne is the weak link in that chain, she cannot live here.

Period.

And is it too much to ask that an adult human think, observe, then talk? A typical scenario with her involves her looking for something, usually something that's in plain sight or in its customary location. Tonight, for example, it was the television remote upstairs. Rather than spend a few seconds looking around the place that the television remote usually lives, next to the bed, she came downstairs and outside to where I was enjoying a cigarette.

"Is there a remote for the TV upstairs?"

"You mean the one that's been upstairs for years?"

"I looked around and didn't see it... where is it?"

"Then you didn't look around."

I walked away and finished my cigarette, and !miracle! she located the remote, in its usual spot. Next to the bed. Where it's been for years.

I always tell her, "wait five seconds, THEN talk." And she never does. It's always easier for her to ask dumb questions than to simply use her eyeballs and look around for five seconds. It's "easier," in some weird way, for her to spend two minutes looking for me.

Even worse, if there's something she's looking for and she does need for me to describe where it is, and I do so -- and my directions are pretty good -- she comes back later and says, "I couldn't find it."

"It'll take me five seconds," I tell her. And it does. I find it. Exactly where I describe it.

Since this is a rant, I'm not that much interested in hearing comments along the lines of "well, she just needs things explained differently."

I don't give directions in languages other than English any more, and she supposedly speaks that language. And the style of "directions-giving" that I use now is the same that has worked for many years, with hundreds of different people. I once talked a stockbroker through installing a motherboard in a grumpy AT&T PC6300 over the telephone. And this was 1987, when such operations were more difficult than they are now.

Somehow, Suzanne just doesn't get it. And I am really not sure how to change the way I explain things to accommodate that. I know if I do, I'll have to dumb things down to the point where even if she doesn't feel condescension, I'll feel it.

I do not want to marry a nine-year-old. I thought I was marrying an adult.

I'm on a roll now. With butter.

She's not thorough. She does almost everything half-assed. Tonight, I asked her to bring in some dirty dishes that had been in the living room, so that we could have some stew I'd spent the afternoon cooking. I told her, "we need bowls, could you bring the dishes in?"

Sure enough, she brought the dishes in, washed the bowls, and the remainder of the dishes are sitting on the table, dry, dirty. How much harder would it have been to, say, at least put the other dishes in the sink and run some water over them?

By comparison, Nancy never did learn the trick of putting pots and pans in the sink and running water in them so they could soak. Nancy would leave them on the stove so that the crud would weld itself to the inside of the pot. Suzanne doesn't usually do this any more. Usually.

If she would just be thorough about things. About anything. I mean, she has to have developed that skill to be a success in law... how does that not carry over to home? At work, if I leave something done half-assed, and it breaks, I end up being the guy to fix it. Around here, I guess she figures that if she does something half-assed, I'll be here to fix it.

Speaking of which, she initially thought she could get away with the old, "that's too hard for me to do, so I just left it until you could get home and do it."

Nu-uh... not only will I NOT put up with that, I will teach you how to do it, and next time, when you claim you forgot how to do it, I'll tell you, "well, you should have paid attention when I showed you how to do that last time." Attention is a severe problem of hers. She just... doesn't notice things. Anything. A nasty side of me figures that if I wanted to have an affair, Suzanne would be the perfect woman to marry, since she'd never notice the long blonde hairs in the bed or the purple silk underwear hanging from the light fixtures or something.

But that's not what I wanted.

I wanted someone who'd be observant. Capable. Adaptable. Aware. Someone who remembered things, paid attention to important details.

I'm not sure I've got any of those things.

She told me a month or so ago that when she went to sign up for eHarmony, their little personality profile basically told her she was looking for someone to run her life. She protested strongly.

Well, she may not have been looking for such a person, but I am getting used to the idea that when we get married, I will end up as that person anyway.

Fuck.

I reiterate: this is a rant. Those of you feeling the urge to bitch at me about all this and tell me about how I'm no peach are welcome to climb up your own assholes until you vanish, because I really don't give a shit. Go get your own site and bitch there... this is my space for ranting, and I haven't really done it in a while, and I need it.

The odd thing is, as much as these things distress me, I'm still closer to an ideal than I've felt I've been in a very long time. She has these little things that bug the living shit out of me, but they're small failings compared to the fatal flaws that some women in my past have had.

So, it's progress.

I just wish it didn't feel like getting sand in your eye.