On Weetabix
My wife, Weetabix, has asked me to write about what it’s like to live with her. She has characterized this effort as a bit of a Christmas present. Now, other than my little foray into cooking, I have not produced anything for her diary. I want to set up a couple of things, so you, the Weetabix Diary Reader, know where I am coming from.
First, I don’t read Weetabix’s Diary. I know it’s publicly accessible. I know that lots of people and many of our friends read it. I know that she discusses a variety of subjects, many of them possibly about our domestic existence. The urge to censor her would be too great for me to handle and frankly I don’t relish the idea of censorship or the inevitable argument that would erupt over such an effort. So, I don’t read it. I am sure it’s excellent, like a lot of my wife’s writing, and judging from what my friends tell me it’s occasionally damn funny. On the flip side, my wife is considerate enough to occasionally ask me if a subject or conversation or event in our lives is OK to put on the diary. I am not certain if this actually changes anything that she writes, but I suspect it does. To this point, dear Weetabix Diary Reader, I won’t be seeing your comments on this essay either. Worry not, however, as I am sure that Weet will keep me informed. Second thing to keep in mind, is that while I write professionally, I work for a computer industry trade publication. I do product testing and write reviews, plus the occasional opinion piece. To this, my writing is nowhere near as polished or as interesting as Weet’s is. I have section editors and an entire copy staff to fix my poor wordsmithing, something I don’t have writing here. Take it with a grain of salt and I hope you enjoy.
Writing
One of the most bizarre events of our lives happened a couple of years ago. I, a long time tech support/electronics/network technician got a job writing for a magazine. In the space of the same month Weetabix, writer extraordinaire and English degree holder got a job in technical support. The complete 180 in our roles in respect to each other was quite a bit of change. Here she was, developing an opinion about various versions of Windows, and here I was complaining about writer’s block and changes made by the copy staff. I think that perhaps she was a little jealous when I first got the job. Then she found out what kind of writing I actually do, and that went away in a hurry. Weet’s writing is a creative exercise, one that she indulges in with a passion. To her, the craft is the reward, and the result a thing of beauty, pleasing to the mind and pithy on the tongue. To me, it’s a means to an end. I don’t really care how nice my sentences are, other than in a general way. She massages words for hours on end to achieve an overall effect. I’m happy when Word doesn’t put any green ‘grammar’ lines under my text. She’s not happy until the entire piece leaves you with something more than the simple information imparted in the text. That leads us nicely into our next point
Literature
As different as our writing styles are, our reading styles are significantly different too. She reads books for the elegance of the prose and feeling given by the author of the book. She admires their craft, or criticizes it, depending on the author. I read books to get a story with new ideas, or that entertains me.
Weetabix has a habit of leaving her latest three or four books in the rack in the potty. Myself, being essentially unorganized, tend to plop down on the porcelain thinking throne and forget to bring reading material. It’s been interesting, as this has gotten me to read all and parts of several of her books. Some books, like Bridget Jones’s Diary, were not bad at all. I liked it better than the movie. Some books, like The Comedy Writer, and Jenny and the Jaws of Life leave me cold. Books are a form of escapism and education for me. The Comedy Writer, is a well written book, but the story is, at least to me, is far too real world. I don’t mean that I have anything in common with the poor sap depicted in the book, it’s just a story on how messed up your life can become and how you can get out of it. (Actually, I didn’t like The Comedy Writer either’weet) I wasn’t happy for the character, I wasn’t sad about what happened, I was just repulsed at the level of realism and ugliness of the real world depicted there. If I wanted real world, I would go outside. This kind of attitude drives Weet nuts. I am CERTAIN that she actually felt her blood pressure rise when read that sentence. I make her crazy because of my astounding lack of appreciation of fine literature. And she’s right. I don’t get it. I do try, and that has had me pushing, pinching, and reading the latest in the Weetabix Library a lot more recently. I liked Watership Down. That may have more to do with the fact that I read hard-core science fiction, fantasy, and historical biographies (mostly presidential), and Watership Down was more along those lines. I read her Unte Reader, her appalling Bust Magazine, Jane, and that cooking magazine she subscribes to. I am trying to see what the allure is and where this level and kind of literature pays off. Weet tells me that every time I read a book that she loves and don’t like it that it makes her a little sad. I really try and I have been trying more. I hope that deep literature appreciation falls on my slow Midwestern brain sometime soon. I’m a little slow and these things take time for me.
Other Places
Weet loves big cities. She had a hell of a good time in San Francisco recently, and is planning a trip with me to either Chicago or Minneapolis after we get back from my editorial conference in New Orleans. She is very excited about the trip to New Orleans too. She likes going to these places and has a hell of a time. It’s good for me too, as I am a bit of a mulish Midwestern country boy when it comes to cities. I spent the first fifteen years of my life in a farming community with a population of about 75. I can handle myself in cities, but I am never comfortable. Weet is. She has been drawing me out of my shell and trying to get me to travel to large cities and enjoy it. I oftentimes feel bad that I have trapped Weet in Green Bay. My friends, her friends, and our families all live here. I am deeply rooted here, and content with that. I think that given her druthers, she would live somewhere more exciting, like San Francisco, New York, Minneapolis, or Chicago, not boring old little Green Bay. The only reason that anyone even knows this town is here is the Green Bay Packers. We trapped an NFL team here in the fifties, and it will take a full scale war to get them away from us. Nothing like community ownership to ensure that the team never leaves. If it wasn’t for them, we would only be vaguely known for the prodigious quantities of asswipe we make here. Instead of TitleTown we would be knows as AsswipeTown, or the Asswipe Captitol or Asswipe City. That is if anyone every paid the slightest attention to where their asswipe is made. I think that Weet would fly to a more creative town, a town with a bigger art scene, a town with many more Starbucks Caf’s and erudite book shops. But the Human Anchor that I am keeps her here. Sometimes I feel that I hold Weet back from all the amazing things that she could be doing elsewhere. I don’t know if I am, but I sure hope not.
Around the House
Weet is an interesting creature around the house. She accuses me of nesting on my one end of the couch. I suppose she’s right, I do tend to leave my dishes and whatnot there. She is constantly exasperated at my general slovenliness, and my chronic inability to do the dishes. She puts up with it pretty well, though. I am certain that one of the biggest disappointments in her life is the fact that I am an unwilling handyman. Our domicile is about 50 years old and needs some remodeling. We have been slowly, very slowly doing it. The real problem is that I hate doing it. I don’t like paint, drywall, wood, or trim and all of these things are necessary to fix up the place. She has all kinds of wonderful creative ideas on how the house should look, and what we should do. Many of the ideas that I have been skeptical about have turned out very good. She has a good eye for this kind of stuff, and other than an unending fascination with black and white, very good taste.
On Drinking
Weet can’t really hold her drink. She can drink quite a bit, but she gets tipsy fast. And funny. She’s really funny when she’s drunk. Mind you, she’s not drunk all that often. As a matter of fact, other than the last year, she hardly drinks at all. She has found a bar that she likes, but only goes there when I have a D&D game on Friday nights, which is twice a month. And she usually misses one of them. I picked her up the night previous to this writing, after a night of drinking Boone’s Farm, of all things. She was pretty blotto. This involved a lot of giggling, and then a lot of ‘Whoa, I think I might be sick’. She wasn’t, but it was funny to watch her mouth breathe and look woozy.
On Computers, Technology and How Things Work
Weet is supremely uninterested in how things work. Oh, sure she is interested in basic operations, how to get things to work, but exactly how things work, she could care less. Her car could be run by slave squirrels in little cage wheels, and as long as it moved when she pressed the accelerator, she would be content. However this doesn’t stop her from telling me how to get things done, even in the area of automotive repair. I freely admit that she has guessed right a time or two (or 14’weet), but honestly she doesn’t really understand the internal combustion engine, and other than to annoy me, she doesn’t want to.
Weet does technical support for her company. What she knows she knows. I suppose that she gives and gets technical advice every day at work. I have even lured her into technical conversations regarding the properties of this or that version of Microsoft Windows. It drives her nuts. As soon as she realizes we are talking about something that ‘dorky’ she groans and changes the subject whilst I cackle. Somewhere within Weetabix is a very tiny frustrated engineering student who has been tied up and gagged by the artistic parts of Weet’s personality.
To Finish
I do really and truly love my wife. She is haughty and loving by turns, and my flannel-wearing dorkyness drives her to distraction. Variety is the spice of life, and Weet is all about variety. This intelligent, funny woman is the love of my life and I wouldn’t trade her for anything.
Well, Weetabix Diary Readers, is all I’ve got for now. I have to go back to writing about storage protocols and other obtuse topics for a much less literature discerning audience. Take care all.
Esteban
