Betsy Lies....

This is for anyone who ever hears my wife tell stories about the things that I do at home, or ways that I help Betsy out. This could include chores, caring for the girls, basically anything that can be defined as doing my share. So to her awesome co-workers and especially their spouses who may have heard bits of the lies that Betsy said about me and believed it. I think it's awesome that she is so believable and that she says so many nice things about me, but...

I want to make it clear that I ONLY do the bare minimum of everything I can and I try to get out of everything possible. I am as lazy as you will get from a husband. I like to just sit on the couch with the TV on and play games on my cell phone. I don't even think I average a shower a day (more like once or twice a week). Basically, I love to go to my "nothing box" and well, do NOTHING. I make every possible attempt to ignore any requests made by Betsy. I like to sit in a chair in my garage wearing only my underwear, maybe a tank top and stare at the neighbors occasionally throwing rocks at them. I leave my clothes all over the house, I do NOT put any dishes away. If she asks me to go to the store for something specific, and I CHOOSE to go, I never get the right items and usually buy things we do not need or things that I think are cool.

Now, I did recently clean the entire house, but before you get any weird ideas that I do this often...I DON'T (once a year). My favorite in-laws were coming to town for a special occasion celebrating just how awesome their daughter is and remind me what a bum I am, so I felt a little ambitious and motivated to do a little more this time. If I could have hired a service, I would have. Now that I think about it, I cannot understand why I did not do that. I could have easily found someone walking around aimlessly looking for work. Yeah, we may have lost some things to theft, but at the end of the day, I could have napped all day and the house would have been cleaner than it was before. Maybe not be much, but a little.

It's funny now that I think about it, but I remember the way that my mom would clean the house while my dad only worked. He would come home and go to the garage and tinker with things, come inside and eat dinner and go back to the garage for some more tinkering before coming back inside for a little television and then to bed. He pretty much came and went as he pleased with 8 monster kids even before me. Now I see where your going with this (Betsy you too). If that was the life I wanted, then I did something terribly wrong when I married Betsy, because she is not that kind of person, nor will she ever be which is just the way I like her.

Regardless of how awesome Betsy may be (she is), she has many faults (more than me), like lying. She must have gotten that from her mother (just kidding Judy). So when she is telling you stories about how much I help her, or anything that sounds too good to be true, keep believing it!

Thanks Betsy! You amazing lovable human! There is no one better (outside Maura and Mollie)!!

A Clean House...sort of?

So about a week ago, I stayed home from work, my in-laws (my favorite in-laws) were coming into town to attend Betsy's 40 under 40 reception and she seemed a little stressed about the state of home and let me tell you, I HATE to clean! Worse than that, I hate to dust. It seems so easy and there are way worse things to do (IE: bathrooms). Now, I had the opportunity to clean WITH Betsy the night before, but I thought it would be more appropriate and maybe the right thing to do it the next day while everyone was out, because everything is so much easier when the girls are at my mom's or daycare.

I made the decision to do it, still not sure why. I put on some great music, play it loud, kick the dogs outside and go. I can tell you that being married to Betsy for these past 10 years, I know what and where she looks when someone else cleans the house. This can be an extreme advantage or disadvantage. For example, I vacuumed for her in our bedroom and thought I did a pretty darn good job. She comes home and the first thing she does is compliment me on how nice everything looked, but then she asks if I did "the carpet test?" What the heck? So she proceeds to get on her knees and starts to pull on the carpet and of course begins to pull up dog hair as if I never vacuumed. Lesson learned. I can tell you that I do not do the "carpet test" to this day, but I am better at vacuuming.

So I am cleaning the house. Now here's the kicker, now that I have spent my entire day off cleaning the house preparing it for in-laws, and my VERY first thought was..."these girls will get home and mess this house up!" One of the things that I truly appreciate about Betsy is that she can keep things pretty cleaned up for a little bit, but when she starts to let go, what a domino effect because when she gets messy, it is like a green light to stop picking up and then we all start to get messy. I remember when we were dating and I would walk into her room and there was no floor, just a pile of clothes everywhere.

I like a clean house as much as the next person, but man, where is the maid service?

What was I thinking?

We currently belong to a super church with a lot of great people, with a pretty amazing pastor. One Sunday we were in service when they played this video about participating in Team World Vision, running in a marathon (May 2011) in Lincoln to raise money for kids in Africa. I have to admit that I have moments where certain things tug at the "heart cords" and I secretly have always wanted to run in a marathon, or I should be honest and say that, "the idea of running in a marathon" has always sounded like a really cool thing to do, right? I also kept hearing people talk about this love for running and how they get hooked after their first marathon (Liars..).

Well, after something thinking about it, I thought, "OK I think I can do this, and I kinda want to do this." There was some time before one of the informational meetings were scheduled in case I wanted to change my mind. I can tell you that Betsy did not think I would do this (she has been super supportive). I went to the meeting and became a little more confident that I could do this. Then I saw the "PRE-training" 1/2 marathon schedule. The confidence pretty much went out the door. The down side of all of this is that I felt like I had made it to the meeting and I should go ahead and sign up since everyone there was doing it. If I was smarter I would have made a run for the door and not looked back, but...

Now, those of you who know me, know that I DO NOT run for anything unless I am being chased or I am running for the front of the line for food. I will also chase someone for a cinnamon roll. EVEN in my prime I could run about ten feet without requiring oxygen, but if I went past that I was falling to the ground yelling for someone to call 911. Unfortunately, there are some people who have got to see that happen and I am sure it is pretty entertaining.

I can tell you, after three weeks of this "PRE" training and getting ready to start the fourth week.....I have passed out 4 or 5 times and have almost fallen off the treadmill like every time I get on it. People who love to run are crazy, I am not sure what even gets you excited about this. For example, this weeks schedule states to run for 3min, then walk 1 min for a total of 35 minutes. It sounds easy enough, but let me tell you...3 minutes seems like forever when you are running, plus I am not a little boy and next week I am "supposed" to run for 4min and walk 1 min for even longer. Ha, should be interesting. Now, I will say that TODAY (only today so far) was probably the first day since I started that I actually enjoyed the run (I did put a double cheeseburger on the treadmill in front me for some extra motivation). We will see how Monday goes...as long as I remember that I am doing this for these kids in Africa, I think I can make it.

I cannot even imagine crossing that finish line next year, mostly because I cannot even imagine running for 4 min one time, so stay tuned and I will keep you updated as this journey continues. "It's for the kids." "It's for the kids." "It's for the kids."

Did you write it yet?

It always amazes me, that when I decide to do something with Betsy how easily I forget that agreeing to do something with her means I need to commit 100% from the word "yes." I can remember hearing stories about Betsy, when she could not wait (and usually didn't wait) to do things that she was excited about. During the first ten years of marriage, that never changed. For example, when we wanted to paint, we would go to the store, spend a lot of time trying to choose colors and when we found the right one, we would buy the paint and return home. As soon as we would get home she was ready to start painting and the sissy that I was, wanted to game-plan how we were going to do this, with the hope that we would start the next day, week or whatever. Move forward and you would think that I could remember this. Since we wrote our first blog together, I have been asked at least once a day, "have you written on the blog?"

Now, I appreciate and find it great that when Betsy commits to something she is in all the way and is excited about it. Me on the other hand seems to find the 'idea' of doing it more exciting then actually having to do anything. I admit that I have some sort of laziness bug (I blame my family) that sometimes distracts me from things I should be doing. For example, Betsy asked me this evening, "Have you written your blog yet?" At that moment I was involved in something very, very important, even almost life changing...

Well, I was updating my ipod and jotting down some very important tasks for tomorrow, such as check email when I get to work, stop at Starbuck's before work assuming I leave on time, and some other things that I cannot remember. You know, important stuff unlike someone I know playing 'angry birds' on her fancy ipad. I know what you are thinking because I thought it too, "Gosh Betsy, it is obvious rick has some things to do and is very busy, leave him alone, right? Instead of being an adult, I instantly turned 4 or 5 years old and acted as though Betsy interrupted me as if I was involved with a life or death situation. I am not sure why I acted that way, I would love to chalk it up to being a guy, because I am sure it would have probably been way easier to respond, "no honey, I have not gotten a chance yet, but I am planning to do it as soon I am finished, thank you for reminding me." Or even better, I could have posted something to the blog before her and not had to worry about it at all.

So I would like to take this time to announce that I am not going to get as distracted as I normally do, and that I am going to try and act a little older than 4 or 5. The sad reality is that it may happen, and it may not, at least not as fast as preferred or expected. Well at least today anyways! The great news is that now instead of watching a horribly boring Monday night football game, I get to watch "It's complicated." Yeah, I admitted that out loud, don't judge me!

Cheers,

Rick

What do you mean?

In my opinion, listening is a skill that we will always both be working on in our marriage. I know I'm guilty of getting distracted and not devoting my entire attention to Rick and what he's saying.

Usually, I try to hide it by just pretending I've heard what he's said, then later, if it comes up, I must either admit I wasn't listening or claim that he never told me that in the first place.

He's guilty too. Lately, I've noticed a new tactic. Instead of saying "What?" when he's not listening, he says, "What do you mean?" But, it's not working out so well.

For example, today, I said, "I think we should turn this into a playroom." Rick said, "What do you mean?" My response was, "I mean, I think we should turn this into a playroom. Really, what else might that mean?"

Maybe we should quit pretending and just say, "Sorry. I wasn't listening. Please repeat."

The Rules

One thing we learned in our first ten years of marriage is that anything new can spur a good fight. But, this project is supposed to be fun, so we thought we better establish some guidelines for our posts.

Rule #1
If someone gets their "feelings" hurt, the blog comes down.

Rule #2
No shots below the belt. After 10 years, we know where and how hard to hit. 

Rule #3
If there are stories that should not be shared, either spouse can play the "off the record" card at any time for any reason.

Rule #4
No mush-mush.

Rule #5
We promise to protect the identity of loved ones in the event of a really good story.

Cheers.
Rick & Betsy