The Troubleshooter

The Troubleshooter
>
>
> MY Pookie, God love her, spends her every waking moment
> doing chores, thinking up chores to do, or thinking up
> chores for me to do. On a weekend night when its time for
> normal people to wind down she will curl up on the sofa with
> a magazine and a sleepy look in her eye. I will be in my
> chair, almost drooling with non productivity, which to her
> Protestant way of thinking is one of the seven deadly
> sins. She, on the other hand will look up at me with a
> lascivious look in her eyes and say: "This Magazine I'm
> reading says right here in the home maintenance section that
> you should check your dryer duct to make sure a bird doesn't
> build a nest in it and burn the house down.
>
> Of course I'm thrilled to hear this revelation because
> I have often wondered why all of our houses keep burning
> down. I know better than to say something smart so I act
> bemused to hear this interesting tidbit of home owner
> information. Also, I'm acutely aware that if I make a
> wisecrack, six months later a bird will build a nest in our
> dryer duct and burn our house down. So I act interested.
>
> But all I am interested in at the time is watching the Suns
> Play the Blazers while I'm surfing the internet on the
> laptop to find out more about my cholesterol. I make an
> interesting discovery. Stress is what raises your
> cholesterol. Also, stress can give you a heart spasm and
> make you croak. I'm more determined than ever to stay
> relaxed now. To me relaxation is being productive in a very
> manly way because it ads years to your manly life.
>
> Moments later she pipes up again. "It says here that
> you can go to this cool website and type in "handyman
> tips" and watch a video of a handyman explaining how
> to do all kinds of household projects from pluming a kitchen
> sink to remodeling a house." Apparently she has
> forgotten about the last thing I tried to plumb.
>
> Now she has lost the sleepy look in her eye and is
> enthusiastically thumbing through the pages. "How
> many minutes did you use your text messaging this month? she
> asks.
>
> "Not very many, but I did just use it." A friend
> of ours texted me to reminded me it was our anniversary
> Friday, I neglect to tell her that part because I already
> made sure she knew I remembered our anniversary. We made
> plans. I just didn't think it prudent to mention how I remembered.
>
> "So would you say you use it five, maybe six times per
> month?
>
> Actually, I wouldn't say, because I don't want to think at
> the moment. "Yeah, give or take."
>
> "It says right here that I could save up to seven
> bucks a month if I canceled our unlimited texting. I never
> use mine"
>
> It is tempting to suggest that she should start right now but
> I'm on shaky ground here because I don't want to lose my
> unlimited texting privileges. It's very handy to text
> when you don't have time for an actual phone call or you don't
> want to have a phone conversation that could turn into a
> detailed dialog when you just want to send a quick message,
> or if your in hot water. Convincing her to keep the
> unlimited texting is doable but it would require me coming
> up with all kinds of provocative thoughts and lawyerly
> arguments which would be stressful. Also the game looks
> like it could go into overtime.
>
> I need to come up with something because it has been my
> experience, that if I don't have unlimited texting and have
> never needed it anyway, for some reason in the near future I will most likely be using up texting minutes faster than the rate at which the
> national debt is tallied and suddenly there will be an
> emergency and I will need to send a quick text such as
> "house on fire" and my texting minutes will
> immediately expire.

Therefore I will have to call and try to
> explain to her why I didn't rush out and check the dryer duct
> the moment she brought it up months ago. I will remind her
> that if she wouldn't have canceled my immortal texting
> minutes we wouldn't be having this argument, which, by
> the way, could give me a heart spasm.

Luckily the leak from my last plumbing project will extinguish the fire, a small victory for me which will settle the score. The score is Blazers 106, Suns 103, Cholesteral 199, National debt: negative five hundred
> trillion, Pookie: positive five hundred trillion,
> me two, Unlimited texting zero, Marriage: 15 years.