Weather Report

It’s a crisp, clear, chilly forty degree morning in Houston. I rested and relaxed after having the first full weekend to myself since September of this year. For those of you that have been following lately, I didn’t go to the party. She made a last ditch attempt, and played the “The kids wanted to put up lights outside this weekend” card. I let her think she played me. Since I wasn’t going anyway after the veiled threats, it’s always better to let them think that they’ve won. You see, unlike us, in terms of relationships, women keep score. The keep score with an accuracy and precision that would make the most stat loving baseball fan cringe in jealousy. They don’t write the score down. It’s indelibly seared upon their brain synapses. They might as well carve it in with a wood burning tool. Been married 20 years? That’s been how long she’s kept score, plus the time span of your entire relationship prior to wedding day.

A piece of advice. Never, ever get ahead in scoring. The shrapnel, burns, and radiation poisoning from the inevitable nuclear mushroom cloud as you go ahead is capable of singing the hair off your face thirty miles away, through the telephone. You might as well be at ground zero pushing the little red button yourself. The safest possible method is to attempt to keep approximate track of the score yourself. If you find yourself winning at a better ration than 1 in 5, it’s time to roll over and let her beat the shit out of you in at least the next three. Better yet, use that strategic brain of yours and try to pick the battlefield – preferably three in a row in which a decisive rout by the female in question will mean next to nothing in the big picture of the war. (Hint: Pick a losing argument where you’ll lose the least meaningful territory when you fold your cards and lose on purpose. It’s a win win for you if you manage to rehash an old argument you’ve already lost. She wins again, you lose no ground, and she’s tied up the score, again.)

After the huge blowout Thursday night, the box score of the game shows: Sigo 2, Michael 1, and not a single f-ing thing resolved. One big fight, and you know what? Nothing about my life has improved in the slightest. Again, the price of honesty is frequently too high – the cost of giving a Sigo the benefit of the doubt in terms of expected reasonable, unselfish, or logical response to a given situation – INFINITELY higher.

My personality being what it is, I HATE having a huge fight, arguing for hours, saying things both of you regret and didn’t really mean, and then the whole issue dropped like a hot potatoe, with nothing resolved. I detest the fact that fighting, honest discussions, or ignoring each other for hours all have the same result – no resolution and nothing ever changes. It’s the part I hate most about our relationship. It’s the one sided deal that ensures she’ll always keep doing what she’s doing, nothing will change, and once again I’ll get to either suck the shit from her tailpipe, or leave the situation completely. I always end up staying. All of the many positives of this relationship ultimately don’t end up balancing out the fact that in order to stay, I have to sacrifice me as a person. Her way or the f-ing highway. Some things never change. But it’s a crisp, clear, chilly forty degree morning in Houston. It’s a real nice day not to be me.

Michael