Sunday, October 30, 2011

He Said She Said

One of the "joys" of working with your spouse every day are the misinterpretations that come because one spouse was communicating in a way that the other spouse can't understand. I'm not talking about clear, concise instructions like, "Please clean the feed up that spilled on the office floor. " Anyone can follow that, even me, at least when I can hear what the other half of our partnership said.

This morning Melissa was in charge of the farm while I attempted to buy some new tires for the truck. When I got home I went out to check on a couple of Melissa's horses and on the cows in the back field. It was wet and cool this morning, so I thought I'd be a nice guy and blanket her horses, except that I wound up not being able to locate one blanket. When you run a retirement farm you always have several spare blankets on hand, so I selected one and applied it to the naked horse. Problem solved, or so I thought.


As I stood filling the cow trough with water, the phone rang. It was Melissa. I explained about the blanket and I proudly explained my solution. She told me to take the blanket off, immediately. Huh ? Is the blanket contaminated ? No, the blanket is missing one strap. I'm thinking to myself one piece of twine and two minutes and the blanket isn't missing a strap any more, but to my credit I didn't say it. The horse was smiling and happy, standing warm in it's minus-one-strap blanket twenty feet away from me. My wife was several miles away and telling me to take the blanket off. I took the blanket off.


She then told me that the cows didn't need water, and she said this knowing I was standing right in front of their mostly empty trough. (I feel the need to jump in here since what I actually said was "the cows shouldn't need water," but Jason's less than stellar hearing is well known in our world ...) Now folks, I'll be the first one to admit I'm not very smart sometimes, but after a life time in the livestock business I'm smart enough to know when the cows need water. What I'm not smart enough to do is to figure out an answer to a wife who's telling me something that is patently incorrect that doesn't lead immediately into an argument. I thought about not acknowledging her at all except to take a picture (yes but were you also going to include a picture of the other two troughs that were full? Just asking because I know how much it is annoying you to read this right now. Hopefully you aren't wondering why I'm giggling right now.) and send it to her but I didn't do that either. So I scratched my head, got confused and then mad and came to the house instead.


Anyone recognize themselves here ?



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Johnny keeping watch while Rampal napped


Missy (unbelievably, we put sheets on a few horses again a couple of nights ago. Crazy October weather!!)


Cuffie


Calimba letting out a big yawn while hanging out in the shed


Lily and Norman (we're finally getting more fall color!)


Dutch napping in the sun


Murphy


Clay, Chili, Darby and Lighty


Romeo and Asterik were surrounded by so much fog my poor little point and shoot camera could not focus on them


Gus and George


Silver, Faune, Winston and Fonzi

5 comments:

EvenSong said...

What a pampered bunch of retirees! We've regularly gotten down below freezing this past week or two, but even old RT hasn't asked for his blankie yet (he doesn't much like it anyway). I did put the heaters in the water troughs tho...
Love the out-of-focus fog foto.

wv="undazzl" When one retires at Paradigm, one gets to unwind and undazzl a bunch.

lytha said...

well did you get tires?

we just had to swap all 8 tires for the winter versions, ugh, an every 6 month necessity in germany (by law).

i could enjoy this lovely cool fall weather more if i didn't feel the big snow coming, what always comes.

i wanted to ask you guys for your horse blanket review again - didn't you write one at some point? you are the world experts on waterproof blankets because you deal with such a variety all winter.

my husband doesn't have to do too much with our one horse. one time he took baasha to the pasture and left his halter on. i said "why did you leave the halter on?" he shrugged. i said, "what if fugly finds out?" and that is a household joke around here, that our horsekeeping might end up on fugly horse of the day when we screw up like that.

SmartAlex said...

As our hearing begins to go, my husband and I spend more and more time fighting over what we THOUGHT the other person said. I mean, it is human nature to misinterpret what the other sex said, but when you add legitimate hearing loss to the equation, the opportunities for disaster are increased exponentially.

Vivian, Apollo's Mom said...

You guys sound just like Pete and I but we are worse. We NEVER understand one another and I am really going deaf. He expects me to telepathically absorb whatever he has told me he has said he told me although I didn't hear a thing so how am I supposed to know whatever he had been talking about? We are constantly swearing that we told each other things that the other one never heard or we must have forgotten them. Just wait till you hit 57 and 60!

RuckusButt said...

Lol! Best line:
"What I'm not smart enough to do is to figure out an answer to a wife who's telling me something that is patently incorrect that doesn't lead immediately into an argument."

You and the rest of the men in the world. As Melissa nicely demonstrates, that's because we are almost never patently incorrect ;) Kidding, kidding.