When I first was approached with the idea of going to Romania for a week in March I had a bad feeling about the timing. Due to the timeline of a project at work I knew that the first 2 weeks of March was out of the question. That left (by process of elimination) the last 2 weeks. I knew that the project that the trip revolved around had some key dates in early April. My gut told me that the 3rd full week of March was going to be the timeline of the trip. Therein lies the problem for (as [bad] luck would have it) that was the week of my wedding anniversary. This (of course) made informing the wife of this trip much harder.
The good news about travelling on the company dime is that everything is paid for and you get to see new places and meet new people. When I say everything is paid for I mean almost everything. There are expenses that cannot be expensed (as it were). One of these is the extra amount of money that would need to be spent on my anniversary due to being gone on the actual anniversary date. This would include ordering wine with the dinner (something we seldom do) and an appetizer (something we occasionally do). If you take the amount that I would have to spend (now that the celebration would not be on the actual date) and subtract the normal budgeted amount for an anniversary dinner (or whatever) you have the “extra” expense I am speaking of that cannot be expensed to the company but is actually due to the company asking me to go on this trip (I think I could have said that better but I hope you get the point).
Anyway, last night the aunt arrived to watch the kids and the wife and I headed out to dinner. The food was awesome, the company was great (in case you are not following closely, I mean my wife) and all was well. But…
Let me tell you about my wife’s enemy. She has few enemies but this would be her main enemy. The enemies name is Silence and the wife has been fighting her since long before I first met her. My wife views Silence as something that must be attacked (offensively) whenever it is met or found. I sometimes sit back in awe (silently as there is no room for me to speak) at my wife’s ability to talk, non-stop, for long durations of time. Even though silence is a large gulf of space she continually throws shovels of words at it in an attempt to fill this unending void. The trip to the restaurant was about 45 minutes and she killed it off without even trying too hard. She also (despite fighting the effects of one glass of wine) held her enemy at bay for the entire trip home as well.
This need of hers to fill the void is a long standing (14 years last Tuesday by the way) joke between us. We will be on a 30 minute drive in the car and (after talking for 27 minutes of it) I will “inform” her that she “only” has 3 minutes to go to accomplish the goal (I guess) of filling all the Silence for the entire trip. This is always met with “the look” followed quickly by (at least) 3 more minutes of talking.
Now, I am not necessarily a fan of Silence (though at times it serves a purpose) but I prefer to fill it with music or talk radio (when I am in the car at least). One time early in our marriage the wife came home from work to find me sitting on the couch with no TV or music on (and I think the lights were out) and it took a while to convince her that nothing was wrong with me. I decided not to do that again (such was the pain of having to explain that Silence was not always bad – she was unconvinced).
In recent months I have been promoting the idea of a “Silent Saturday” at our house. The idea is that we (the four of us living in our house) would not communicate verbally for an entire Saturday. I think it would be cool, the wife sees it as a way of letting the enemy into the house. Words cannot express how against this idea she really is. I offered to only have Silence until noon, she would not agree. I offered the option that only I would be silent (which, let’s be honest here, would not be much of a difference) but even then she did not like the idea. I guess carrying 100% of the conversation (instead of the usual 98%) is just too much for her.
OK, that is enough picking on the wife. In 14 years of marriage I have found her to be the perfect yin to my yang. I found myself talking about her way too much while on my trip to Romania. I am sure that the Romanians were quite tired of hearing about my awesome wife and all my methods for trying to keep her happy and showing her that I love her. Whether it was during a training presentation, while sitting around the dinner table at a restaurant or while sitting in the lobby of the hotel, those around me got an earful of my wonderful wife.
Honey, despite my constant blogs that would suggest otherwise, I love you.
Jon
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