There's Nobody Else To Do This (ahem) Stuff But Me

Into every grownup's life this moment must fall: the moment when you realize that whether you want to or not, you're fully responsible for taking care of something. And there's nobody else to do it but you.

I'm not talking about big stuff - like parenthood, letting your mother move in with you, or taking over the family business. I'm talking about the little daily stuff we'd all rather ignore, like taking out the recycling.

Here's an example: the liquid soap dispenser at our kitchen sink broke last week. It just stopped pumping soap up. And for a good three days I regularly went to the sink, attempted to get some soap, remembered it wasn't working, felt frustrated it wasn't fixed yet, and walked to the bathroom where there was a working soap dispenser.

It never occurred to me that I should do something about this. For three full days.

And here's the kicker: I wasn't even expecting Cliff to resolve the issue, because he was out of town. Replacing the soap dispenser was clearly my responsibility - who else was going to do it, the four year-old? - and yet I just kept looking at the busted soap bottle with disappointment, and then heading to the bathroom sink.

I'd like to think I'm not alone in this. I know I'm not alone in my family, as I've visited a certain family member's house at a one month interval and found the same junk mail sitting on a side table on the second visit as on the first.

This tendency to overlook obvious responsibility can trickle down to parenting. A babysitter once had to prompt me to teach Sam to put his shoes on himself. Twice a day I sat down on the floor to slip Sam's feet into his Velcro sneakers, and it never once occurred to me that a three year old could really do this for himself.

Marriage compounds this. Even after a task comes consciously to mind as clearly needing to be done, you can still stall a few days by waiting for your spouse to do it. 

Like right now, the red indicator light on our home phone is blinking to indicate we have a voicemail. For some reason, I hate checking voicemail. It was blinking all afternoon as I sat at my desk less than two feet from the phone: it truly didn't occur to me to do something about that. Now I'm just hoping Cliff takes care of it. In fact, perhaps this entire post is just an elaborate way to drop a hint ...

My grownup commitment for the day is to notice some things that need to be done and do them. Not big stuff. Just things like getting rid of the expired medicines in the bathroom cabinet. Because whether I like it or not, I'm the grownup here and somebody's got to do this stuff.

Survival and Second Marriages

Cliff and I have often written about how the divorce statistic you probably know (50%) probably doesn't reflect your reality. (Read what we've said here and here.) Your actual odds of staying together are likely much, much better than 50%.

But if you're already on the other side of a bad first marriage - what do your divorce odds look like if you decide to give marriage another chance?

The Wall Street Journal read a great (and encouraging) article earlier this month, Secrets of a Successful Second Marriage. While second marriages are often shorter than first marriages, this is largely because second marriages begin later in life and often end with the death of a spouse.

"The fact that the divorce rate isn't higher for remarriages shows that a lot of people are trying very hard and with great success to make their second marriages work," says Andrew Cherlin, professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University. "We used to think that second marriages were much more fragile."

The article has some helpful tips on how to increase your odds of success in second marriage.

Gentle Disregard: How Someone Else Can Help You Get Past the Ugly

I caught one story in NPR's ongoing series on obesity in America today. The focus was on the sex lives of the overweight, and the impact obesity can have on a marriage's sexual intimacy. 

It's worth listening to - find the story here.

One man featured in the story particularly got my attention. After struggling with weight for years, he came to feel entirely unlovable. Counseling and a determined effort to get his weight under control helped, but what made him turn the corner was the love of his wife:

"My wife, saying to me, 'I love you and I'm attracted to you regardless of your weight.' That was something I needed to hear and something I needed to believe, though I still struggle with it," Leckbee says. "But it's, now I'm more self-aware, now I understand it, now I'm able to look at it and go, 'My libido is really low right now because I've been eating too much and I'm feeling bad about myself.' I can express it to my wife and let her know I'm feeling this way."

We all need someone who looks at us and says, "I love you regardless of your _________." Maybe that blank is filled in with the word "weight," but maybe it's "stubbornness," or "controlling nature," or "bad breath." Maybe it's all of the above. 

The Indigo Girls have a song, Free In You, whose chorus sums it up:

And I don't know / How you show / Such gentle disregard / For the ugly in me / That I see / And for so long I took so hard. / And I truly believe / That you see the best in me / I'm enough for your love / And the thought sets me free.

Here's hoping you have someone (spouse, sister, father, friend, God) in your life capable of showing "gentle disregard." Knowing you're enough for someone else's love is the best motivation possible for tackling "the ugly in me." 

When Your Wrong, Your Wrong

The only thing standing between you and
this shirt is $22.25.  Buy it at
http://www.zazzle.com/thebloggess. 

My son has recently started a Pre-K program that is taught largely in Spanish. As a result he's started trying to speak Spanish, which is a different thing all together from actually speaking Spanish.

Let me illustrate:

Sam:  Do you know what ice cream is in Spanish?

Cliff:  (Playing along.) What is it?

Sam: Icey creamy.

Cliff: I don't think that's actually the Spanish word for ice cream. I'm pretty sure helado is ice cream.

Sam: You're wrong.

Cliff: (Checking his iPhone to make sure he's right) No, Sam, it's helado.

Sam: Hmph.

Sam has also recently insisted that his eyes are lime green. And even in the face of considerable physical evidence, an iPhone translation app, or good common sense, Sam tends to double-down on his wrongness rather than hint at the possibility that he's not right.

Most of us are like Sam: we have a problem recognizing when we're wrong. Cliff has written about this before (see his entry, On Being Wrong), quoting "wrongoligist" Kathryn Schulz, who says that being wrong feels like being right: until you realize you're wrong.

I guess the real question is, how do you speed up the time it takes to realize you're wrong?

Cliff will be the first to tell you that I'm not an expert at admitting I'm wrong. (Though I'd also say that Sam got his stubborn wrongness traits from both his parents.) But here's one thing I know: feeling absolutely certain about something is usually a pretty good sign that you're wrong: 90% of college professors think they're above average.

My new wrongness goal is to catch myself when I feel certain about something and then to open the door, just a crack, to the possibility that I could be a teensy, eensy bit off base. My new wrongness goal for Sam  is to teach him never to do Spanish vocab battle with a guy armed with an iPhone.


(A comment on the t-shirt above, which I adore: it's taken from the commerce page of The Bloggess, a well known blogger and one of my favorites. Read her if you like funny stuff and you don't mind being offended regularly. But there are some of you, and you know who you are, who really should not click on that link. Don't blame me when you do.) 

Do you smell something?

Somewhere along the last 4 1/2 years family dinners at restaurants became much more complicated. I faintly recall going out for supper when our oldest son was a newborn: We sat his carrier under the table and barely noticed his presence as he slept peacefully through a three course meal. But then he started spending more time awake. And then he expected to get food and drink himself. And then he started craving actual attention from his parents. Throw in some sippy cups, a couple crayons, an unlimited supply of energy and an additional child...well, family dinners at restaurants become much more complicated.

Perhaps the most difficult component of taking two children out to lunch is the looks you get from other diners. There's a strange mix of pity and annoyance involved. Other people's children are only cute and adorable for a very limited time, after all. Once other diners start noticing a child's volume or attitude, it's pretty much all downhill. Because then they find themselves asking questions such as, "Why do they let him dress that way?" I used to ask questions like that...now I consider myself lucky when my son willingly wears something other than green mesh shorts and a Superman pajama top. At any rate, taking your children to a restaurant is essentially inviting strangers to observe you, judge you and - occasionally - interject their wisdom. Thus, we typically choose restaurants carefully and arrive with a myriad of portable appetizers, art supplies and toys in tow. Still, there are some things you simply cannot prepare for, and there are moments where strangers' observations actually prove helpful.

We recently stopped at a small town pub for a quick lunch when our morning hike had been cut short by rain and tired legs. Our weekend camping trip had been lovely, but some warm comfort food sounded pretty appealing. In a shocking turn of events, our son ordered macaroni and cheese. We opted for some sandwiches. I debated whether to order a beer or drink for quite some time. Just a typical meal out, honestly. We even managed to keep our children in their seats and occupied while waiting for the food, which is akin to getting two members of congress to remain civil and rational for an entire conversation. Everything was going quite well. But shortly before the food arrived, our server started behaving strangely.

First, she picked some scattered snacks up from around our daughter's high chair and - in a very concerned tone - asked whether we needed anything. We replied that we were quite all right. Then she returned and said, "Are you sure you're okay? It's really no big deal. Messes are pretty common." Again, we assured her that things were under control, wondering why some spilled crackers were causing such a problem. Maybe she just was not accustomed to serving families? Then - shortly before the food arrived - she brought over a gigantic wad of paper towels "just in case we needed them." We thanked her again, only this time I cheerfully added, "Hey, could I get one of those draft root beers?" As we puzzled over the mountain of paper towels, we started to notice a very pungent and very familiar odor. "Do you smell something?" my wife asked. That's when everything started to make sense. When I replay the moment in my head, it's much like the final scene of "The Usual Suspects." I imagine my coffee mug slowly crashing to the floor as I think back over our server's comments, smell that odor and realize that I have missed the reality right underneath my nose.

When I pulled back the vinyl table cloth, I discovered a trail of poop cascading down from my lovely daughter's diaper, dripping from the high chair and literally piling up on the floor beneath. I mean, I have been a father for nearly five years, and I have never before seen that much crap. We stopped thinking about root beer and shifted into crisis intervention mode: I ran to the car for different clothes, Amber took our daughter to the bathroom, I used those paper towels the server had offered before we even realized what was happening. It took literally 20 minutes to settle in again, and we were being stared down by every diner in Utica, Illinois. The looks of judgment were out in full force. Apparently these people had never seen a literal shit storm quite like this before.

I apologized to the server profusely, explaining that we honestly did not realize what happened. She obviously recognized that, but opted for hints and indirect communication because she did not want to offend us (see my wife's recent post on the perils of indirect communication). We had wondered why this young woman was behaving strangely. She had wondered why we were so calm about the poop all over...well...everything. I mean, she brought over a massive wad of paper towels. And I responded by cheerfully ordering "one of those draft root beers."

Indeed, eating out with young children is complicated. Not only are you risking an epic diaper blow-out, but you are inviting total strangers to observe you, judge you and - occasionally - interject their wisdom. Here's my question, though: is it possible that other people could actually prove useful in that capacity? After all, that's what community is. Couples and families consistently rely on friends, counselors and even strangers to see what they're missing...to point out the not-so-proverbial poop that's hidden under the high chair. Marriage is every bit as complicated as taking young children out to dinner. At some point, you might need to invite some outside perspectives and wisdom. You also might need their help cleaning up the mess you conveniently ignored.

- Cliff (aka The Husband)

How Biscuits Almost Ruined My Wedding

Warm, buttery symbolic
representation of indirect communication. 

I'm known for hyperbole, so let me say up front that the headline is a bit of an exaggeration. A more accurate title might be, "How Indirect Communication about the Possibility of Having Biscuits at Our Wedding Reception Almost Ruined a Day Several Months in Advance of the Actual Wedding." But that's not nearly as attention-grabbing, now is it?

In addition to hyperbole, I'm also known for indirect communication. Let me share the legendary (at least to me and Cliff) biscuit story:

Our wedding was done on the cheap, and to help the budget stretch even further my fabulous sister-in-law Patti and her equally fabulous husband (Cliff's brother) Michael volunteered to fix all the food for the reception. Patti is an excellent cook who makes meal prep for 250 look as effortless as Thursday night dinner for five. Michael is pretty handy in the kitchen himself, and also has the remarkable skill of carving delicate little things out of fruit.

So a few months before the actual nuptials, Patti took Cliff and me on a scouting trip to Sam's Club. We were on the look out for good reception foods, and of course, free samples.

At one point Patti suggested biscuits for the reception buffet.

"Are biscuits really afternoon wedding food?" I asked, quietly.

"Sure!" Patti responded.

Gulp. My heart sank. Because of course I most definitely did not want biscuits at my afternoon wedding reception. "Help me out here!" I whispered, emphatically, to Cliff, feeling a little indignant that he hadn't jumped in already.

"What?" He asked. And rightly so, I now understand. Because indirect communication is a conversation killer. If I didn't want biscuits, I should have just said so, straight out.

I wish I could say that now, 10 years after our wedding (which, for the record, did not include biscuits), I've gotten better at being more direct. But I haven't, at least not always. For the last month I've been hinting that completing a certain project is a priority to me. Then last Wednesday night, when it was clear the project was not going to be done soon, I said to Cliff (in a pitiful, disappointed voice), "It's just that I really wanted it done for tomorrow."

"What?" He said, again. You notice a pattern here, right?

"I just sorta had it in my head that we'd have it done by tomorrow," I told him, about a month too late.

"Well you're telling me that about a month too late," he responded.

Yep. Did it again. In my indirect-communication-oriented mind he was supposed to know that my frequent reminders about the project meant I had a deadline. Gosh ... it's hard to see why he didn't figure it out. (She says with self-directed sarcasm.)

Lesson learned, again. If I want something, say it. I can't expect Cliff to read between the lines.

Maybe, this is the decade where I'll finally learn that.

How Men Adapt to Parenting

Anyone else hear the study on NPR today? A study of 600 men in the Philippines discovered that single men with high levels of testosterone experienced significant decreases after becoming fathers.

Here's a link to the NPR transcript.

Researchers acknowledge this may have something to do with sleep deprivation - a common side effect of parenting. But even so, the research is encouraging. Lee Gettler, a Northwestern researcher and the lead author of the study, explains:

"It's not just mothers that have an innate, kind of biological orientation towards childcare, men have that ability, too. And so I think that this can really broaden our idea of men as fathers and what the traditional role fathers should be perhaps, or what it means to 'be a man.'" he said.

That's kind of cool.

New Data on Approval of Black-White Marriages

Normally the entries on this blog touch on all that touch-feely relationship stuff. Today we're taking a  divergence to highlight the findings of a recent Gallup poll on interracial marriage.

The latest findings (which you can read about here, also the source for this graph) show that 86% of Americans now approve of black-white marriage.

In 1958 when Gallup first asked this question (though worded slightly differently, "between white and colored people"), only 4% of Americans were comfortable with relationships that crossed racial lines. So the current numbers are a sign of significant growth. Just the same, I don't know whether to feel thankful that 86% of the population is now behaving reasonably, or horrified at the 14% still struggling to come to grips with a diverse landscape.

Gallup has broken down the numbers further, showing that blacks are more approving of black-white relationships than whites. College education increases likelihood of approval. Those who are politically independent (89%) are slightly more approving than Democrats (88%), and significantly more approving than Republicans (77%). And for the youngest adults, disapproval is only 3%.

Use Your Bugs & Wishes

Our son's first day of Pre-K was earlier this week, and it started with a parent/teacher meeting. I asked his teacher about discipline plans (not that my perfect angel would ever be in need of discipline). She explained their policy of "quiet reflection time," and then she said something brilliant:

"We ask them to use their bugs and wishes." 

What?

Essentially, the teachers help the students express how they are feeling, and what they need to change to feel better. "It bugs me when the other kids don't help me with this puzzle. I wish someone wanted to do a puzzle with me."

The preschoolers are learning something most of us only partially get as adults: you're half way to a solution once you learn to express what's bothering you, and what you want to change.

Wouldn't we all be a little better off if we used our bugs and wishes? 

One Good Reason to Go to Bed Angry, One Good Reason to Eat Ice Cream

Great graphic from the original NYT Mag article. 

The New York Times Magazine ran a great - if unnecessarily long - article over the weekend. Focused on "decision-fatigue," the article took us through study after study that highlights how sugar intake, time of day, and your previous activities can sink you when it comes to decision making.

Luckily for us, Fast Company ran a summary of the article, and I made the decision to skip the 7 page version from the NYT in favor of the 3 minute read from Fast Company.

This is getting to be like some sort of Babushka nesting doll ... but here's my summary of the summary, with some thoughts on how it relates to marriage:

Don't make important decisions back to back: Resisting a piece of chocolate cake in the morning makes you more likely to cave for cheesecake at lunch. Willpower is like a muscle, and it gets exhausted. So when it comes to making decisions with your partner, spread the decisions out over a few days.

As an example: suppose you and your partner are remodeling your living room and need a new couch. Plus you might wants a big screen TV. Together you couch shop in the morning. Though you love the $3000 designer sofa, you make the wise decision to buy a $700 couch so you don't have to banish your children to the kitchen every time they want a snack. Next stop, Best Buy: sure, your budget says 32-inches, but that TV-the-size-of-your-car is on sale.

Anybody else thinking, "I've already saved money on the couch, so why not splurge on the TV?" That gasp you just heard was the sound of your worn out willpower unsuccessfully trying to rouse itself to protest the purchase. 

Don't have important conversations after you've just made a lot of decisions. My husband knows that 6:45 p.m. is always my worst time of day. The kids are starving and hungry for attention, he's just walked in the door from work, the telemarketers are calling, and there are 6000 small tasks that must be accomplished before one of us can get dinner on the table.

Fixing a meal for your family may seem like a small task, but it involves a lot of small decisions: what vegetables? will the kids eat what we're having? whose drinking milk, whose drinking water, whose drinking a Rum & Coke? can I safely hold the baby while taking the pizza out of the oven and talking on the phone? (The answer to this one, from personal experience, is NO!)

Again, our decision making muscle gets worn out, even from these small things. Do yourself a favor and don't start any big conversations.

Don't be afraid to "sleep on it": Let's say you've had a busy day, with lots of stressful decisions at work, and lots of willpower decisions at home. And then you find yourself bickering with your spouse. Stop cold in your tracks, and ask to postpone the conversation to the morning. Let your will power and decision making muscle rest, and you'll probably find the conversation goes a little smoother.

Grab a snack: If you're a dieter, you really should read the Times article. But if you're not a dieter, here's an excuse to grab an ice cream cone: A quick shot of calories has been shown to improve decision making. Just don't through the will power out the window.

“Even the wisest people won’t make good choices when they’re not rested and their glucose is low,” says Roy F. Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University and a self-control expert. “The best decision makers,” Baumeister says, “are the ones who know when not to trust themselves.”

Clear eyes, full hearts

Fall has officially arrived. Not merely because temperatures are dropping and leaves are falling, but because football season has kicked-off (thanks be to God).

Full disclosure here: autumn is my favorite season, and – honestly – it’s not even close. September nights are filled with memories for me: crisp air, hooded sweatshirts, camp fires, apple cider, new classes and high school football games. Granted, I did not grow up in Texas, but it’s fair to say that R. Nelson Snider High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana is a place where football tradition runs deep. Every game was an event, and every year brought championship ambitions.

Author H.G. Buzz Bissinger documented a year in a small Texas town that lived and died with every high school football game in the book, “Friday Night Lighqwts.” My experience was nothing like that, but the book resonated nonetheless. Since that book was released in 1989, a successful movie and TV series have been spawned. That series just recently capped off its Emmy-nominated final season, meaning that a great many retrospective conversations have been taking place with the creator/writer/director Peter Berg (sample questions include, “Do you remember that one time when the team won the game on the final play? That was awesome!"). Some examples can be found here:

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6766070/clear-eyes-full-hearts-lose

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/16/137823040/as-friday-night-lights-ends-its-still-texas-forever

During one of these interviews, I heard Berg state that the show worked because it focused on so much more than football. It was about small town life and relationships and – perhaps more than anything else – marriage. In fact, the show ended up hinging upon the coach’s marriage far more than upon football realism. Berg said recently, “That marriage became one of the dominant experiences of Friday Night Lights, and we never saw that coming.”

My wife and I have been watching “Friday Night Lights” for a while now, and Berg’s comments got me thinking. Eric and Tami Taylor have an incredibly real, honest and complex relationship. Otherwise, I doubt I could have talked my wife into watching. She had little interest in watching a show about football, but the characters’ relationship just worked.

There’s a phrase that Coach Taylor and his players scream every Friday night in the locker room. “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” During a recent NPR interview, Berg confessed to writing that slogan himself after watching high school football players in locker rooms all over Texas. But then he said something really interesting, “I think it’s true that if your eyes are clear and your heart’s in the right place, it’s pretty hard to lose in life…The idea of living your life with that kind of clarity of purpose was something that kind of rubbed off on me”

We generally try to avoid clichés here, and I am not completely convinced that Berg is right. After all, some spouses’ eyes are clear and their hearts are full, but something fundamentally changes along the way. Just like in football, game plans must be adjusted. Regardless, I see a lot of myself in the Taylors’ relationship, and in the Panthers’ slogan. Perhaps that's especially true in the fall. When my kids put on their Bears jerseys next Sunday (and they will), I will probably find myself saying, “Clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose.” Interestingly enough, I will not be talking about the final score...not totally, anyway.

- Cliff (aka The Husband)

Toyota: Today's Top Source of Marriage Advice

Great brand for marriage advice. Makes good cars too.

So once you start looking for marriage tips in unexpected places, you find it everywhere. Today's source is Toyota.

Toyota is known for two things: darn good cars, and a really good manufacturing process. Those of you with any ties to industry know about their lean manufacturing efforts: assembly lines with unrivaled accuracy and efficiency.

Part of what makes Toyota's factories a success story is the principle of the Poka-yoke (which, if Wikipedia is to be believed, is ポカヨケin Japanese.)

What exactly is a Poka-yoke? Good question. Let me tell you:

A Poka-yoke is a mechanism that helps someone avoid mistakes. "Its purpose is to eliminate product defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors as they occur." (Thanks again, Wikipedia.)

Relationships need Poka-yokes too. Cliff and I have one we use with Sam, our often overly dramatic 4 year-old. Whenever he's in the midst of breaking down over something small, one of us grownups will make him aware of his near-breakdown by putting our hands behind our ears so our elbows stick straight out, and then flapping them wildly. Silly, but that's the point. It's a Poka-yoke that reminds him to watch his behavior.

Cliff and I also have a Poka-yoke we use when a conversation about something unimportant threatens to devolve into a monumental fight. We stop each other by saying, "Wait ... is this a ceramic snowman?" (For the extended version of this story, see here.)

I'm pretty sure we have a dozen other Poka-yokes, if I just think about it long enough. And our marriage could stand the creation of a few more warning signs, red flags, and blinking lights.

Do you have your own Poka-yokes? Share your story!