Noggin Thought

Wedding planning is an interesting endeavor. I never thought I would have so many discussions about the smallest things…Do you think this would look nice? Well what color should it be? How many of them do we need? etc…I just want it to happen. I want people to be comfortable. I want people to be well fed. Those don’t seem like difficult things to accomplish. I don’t care about decorations; if you saw my home you would understand. I don’t care about flowers. Actually, I think they are a waste. Flowers are very expensive, and die after a few days.

I’m looking forward to my wedding day…being over. Not because I don’t want to get married. On the contrary I definitely want to be married. It’s the preparation leading up to this one day that is so annoying, and such a ripoff. I just look forward to the days after the wedding. We can live our lives and be happy…and try not to focus on all of the debt we will have from that one day.

Ooh needs bedroom furniture. The closet is too small and many clothes are still in boxes. Yes, my closet is a little larger than her closet but I also don’t hold on to nearly as many clothes and things as she does. I have a closet and a chest of 4 drawers. It works great. If I start to run out of space, I look at my clothes and determine what I’m actually wearing and donate what I’m not. Granted, I only keep 2-3 weeks worth of clothes so I do repeat things often. But, so what… that’s what washing machines are for. And who cares if I’m wearing the same shirt I wore last week or 2 weeks ago, as long as it’s clean. I know this is the male way of thinking and I should be more understanding, but why. If I perceive something as odd, gaining an understanding of it doesn’t automatically make it less odd. But, I digress…bedroom furniture. A chest of drawers and a wardrobe.

Ooh picked out a nice looking chest of drawers that should meet part of the clothes storage need. I costs double what I would pay, but so what. I don’t really have an issue with that. My issue is with the wardrobe. That selection is going to be about double what I would pay but it is also for less function. When there is a complaint about lack of functionality, I would think more functionality would be desired. But it doesn’t seem so in this case. It seems like the item needs to look pretty and expensive. The only people that will see it is us. We’re probably not going to try to sell it in the future. So doesn’t it just need to work?

What’s more important style or substance? Form or function? I say substance and function. I think that’s because I’m not the most stylish form out there.

I may be overreacting, I may just want something to write about. I’m sure it’s the engineer in me wanting to be frugal and efficient. We’ll see how things go.

The other day while watching TV, Ooh sits down next to me and changes the channel. I was quite surprised at this, so I promptly changed the channel back to what I was watching; which happened to be an interesting show called Project Earth that I recorded on the Discovery Channel, but that’s beside the point. The point is I was a little shocked. So, after I countered the sneak attack channel change, I hear, “I can’t wait to get my own TV”. I decide to finish watching my show, there was only 5 minutes left, and ask “Why can’t you wait to get your own TV?”, because of course, in my mind, there’s nothing wrong with this one; it works fine for me. Ooh says, “Then we won’t have this issue…it was a commercial, I thought I could change it.” My first thought is to say “What!?!”, but I decide to go with a more calm approach of, “You could just ask me. I would do the same if you’re watching something”. I usually try to go with a more calculated response in these situations. I’m more interested in trying to solve a problem, not win an argument. Although I really do like to win.

After a little more back and forth, it was somewhat resolved. But I still had this nagging thought about Ooh being inconsiderate, but Ooh isn’t an inconsiderate person. For a few days I couldn’t shake this feeling.

Recently, Ooh says “I shouldn’t have said that I couldn’t wait to get my own TV, I didn’t mean that.” So I take the opportunity to ask why the channel change. Ooh says, “Because you don’t watch commercials. I thought you weren’t watching anything”. Then everything clicks. During this viewing I didn’t skip the commercial. Now that doesn’t mean it’s ok to change the channel without asking the person watching TV, but I get it now.

I know this is a small thing, I mean c’mon, it’s a TV show. But the important problem here is communication. I didn’t tell Ooh that I thought it was inconsiderate to change the channel without asking. Which may be why I didn’t get the explanation of the sneak attack channel change being based on my TV viewing habits. So we both could have handled the situation better.

If we can’t communicate on the small things effectively, we won’t be able to communicate on the larger things.