Party Time is Coming Soon

So in a few days, it is time for our Annual Christmas Party. Boy is there a lot to do (more since my wife is planning it, so all kinds of things have to be done that don't really have to be done, but she's convinced herself are essential. (ohhh yeah, I'm gonna catch grief from this))

Let me escape from the parentheticals and run down how this is going to play out.

First, she is going to read my this and feel upset and indignant at me. She will convince herself that I just don't know what I'm talking about, and don't really understand all the things that need to be done to get a party ready.

Second, she is going to talk to her mother about it and get confirmation that she is right and that all this stuff needs to be done. As she is her mother's daughter, the things she thinks are vital, are often the things her mother always tagged as being vital. So for this example, I'm going to lose the "appeal to a higher authority"

Third, she will confront me and run down her list of things that have to be done before the party. Most of the items will need to get done, but will not involve long periods of time or anguish unless you are her. What she will not do is list all the innane and unimportant things that will absorb her entire conscious being at about 12:30 on Friday night when we are laying in bed and I'm mostly asleep. At this point, she will start to tell me "how little she got done today," followed by what she has to do tomorrow and how she has no idea how it's all going to get done. Then she will trail off and I will almost fall asleep again. At which point she will start talking again and this will repeat for the next 25 minutes.

I must take a brief pause to explain this last portion, or I will give you a misleading picture of my wife, and perhaps give her a complex. Neither of which I wish to do. My wife is one of those women who grew up with a mother and sister that liked to recall their entire day to each other. We're talking just to the level above when they swallowed and breathed. Not only that, but they have no trouble telling the same story to three or four people one right after the other. The concept of "no, is too much, will sum up" is so foreign to them that they aren't even sure it is a valid concept.

So if we have not spent much time talking since I've gotten home from work (for whatever reason, maybe I was playing a computer game, or we watched a movie together... doesn't matter what, but we couldn't talk being the outcome) then she just is not biologically capable of just falling to sleep without at least telling me a little bit about how her day went. And a little bit could encompass four stories, including how she dropped the knife twice while buttering her toast. (well okay, it could include almost anything, but that as she can't eat toast, and doesn't really like butter on things). It's a biological imperative, I just kind of wish she would succumb to it slightly before I'm about to pass from consciousness.

Fourth, she will fail to realize that if she assigns me a bunch of these tasks, I can have them finished in a much, much shorter amount of time that she can. The only problem being, that means she isn't the one to do them. And as my wife has a slight case of terminal perfectionism (which comes with a whole boatload of control issues as you might imagine) this can cause a problem. Not only does she not want to give up control because *gasp* other people will be affected. She also cannot accept that the job can be done in that much less time than it would take her. The fact that I can is mostly due to a) not being a perfectionist b) being a realist as to what is necessary and c) I can commit my complete focus to the task at hand, whereas her being female (normally this non-single mindedness is a gift), as well as her illness make this almost impossible for her.

Not only that, but my mother and her mother have both volunteered to help her get ready. We're fine. There are things to do, but none of them are so large as to be insurmountable. The dining room table needs cleaning off. It won't take that long if we move the stuff and sort it later. Even if we don't, most of it just goes back in boxes. Honestly, she's great about not just moving stuff, but actually putting it away, but it's almost a sickness. Sometimes you have to just move things, but she's pretty much unwilling to ever consider the shortcut. I'm too often willing and eager to take it. It works out well to put us together, but on some things she just doesn't even SEE the alternate course as an acceptable option. (ie leaving for a trip. We are 5 hours late leaving and we are going to get there at about 3am at this point. She hasn't emptied the cat's litter box and hasn't vacuumed the main floor (so we can come back to a clean house). The cat's box has to be emptied (I'm just finished loadng the car, I'm not sitting around) because you can't leave them for three days with a dirty litter box. But it's time to cut and run on the vacuuming. My wife? No, she comes in as the car is just finished being loaded and says "Okay, I've just got to vacuum and do the litter box, and we can go." Cooler heads prevailed and the cats were taken care of and our friend actually ended up vacuuming while we were away when she came to check on the cats.)

I love my wife, and I am excited about the upcoming party, but she always makes these things into the world judging us very closely on our performance, and as such, it's alway a huge deal to get ready.