Tuesday, August 01, 2006

The Toothpaste Cap

Every couple most have a toothpaste cap, no? That is, the one insignificant household point of contention that you never anticipated before cohabitating, yet drives you insaaane. She never puts the toothpaste cap back on! Gah!

Our toothpaste cap is batteries. Epu likes to store things in inconvenient ways, but since the only things he generally stores are his manly tools and computer stuff, I could care less if he wants to encase each one individually in lead and file them in a tackle box buried in the backyard. However, he feels strongly that his manly jurisdiction extends to the storage of batteries, of which our household has many, due to the large battery needs of baby toys and portable listening devices.

I wouldn't mind about his battery dominance if it wasn't for the portable listening devices. I have an mp3 player that uses AAA batteries and, because I use it heavily, I have to frequently change and recharge those batteries. From time to time, the batteries disappear from where I keep them -- currently in a small square tray in a kitchen drawer -- and I know that Epu has found them and spirited them off to the battery box. In our old house, he kept the battery box at the bottom of a wooden bench/toybox in his office, so retrieving my batteries required lifting tons of debris off the lid/seat, removing several reams of printer paper, photo paper, etc. from the box, pulling the Tuppperware battery box from the bottom of the trunk, opening it and trolling through the many different-sized batteries to find the ones that I need.

When my batteries disappeared last night, the process was a little more annoying than usual because I didn't know where he had decided to store the battery box in the new house and I had to search his office before finding it in the linen closet.

Whenever I complain about the inconvenience, and plaintively ask him to stop moving my batteries, we always end up in a screaming match, because he firmly holds the position that "batteries belong in the battery box" while I will not let go of my position that he can put HIS batteries wherever the F he wants, but these are MY batteries over which he does not have jurisdiction.

This has been going on for years, but with Nutmeg, the fights are a little different, because battery box vs. leave my batteries alone is punctuated by her repeated opinion of "Don't want Mommy and Daddy to talk like that."

Yes, this makes us feel guilty. But someday, I know, Nutmeg's future husband will move her personal data into a cumbersome data hierarchy on the hard drive implanted in HIS earlobe, and she will understand.


Bert said...

My dear, you are such a brilliant writer. Laughing out loud over here. :)

Kori said...

I agree with Bert---perfectly written. As for the batteries, if that's the only thing that irks you, good for you! Mike and I could list a thousand little things, most of which we don't complain about anymore. But oh, we have our moments.

Hence, my phrase, "Why did you Mike up the computer again? I can't find any of my files and there are 8,000 different open windows in 10 different applications! ACK!"

tessence said...

The *only* thing? Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. On the computer, I am probably the most annoying one, because Epu always sets up a separate account for each of us on each computer, and I always refuse to use my separate sign on and then whine about his settings.