When people tell me I'm smart, my standard answer is I'm not really, I just work hard. Yes I went to law school and passed the bar and blah, blah, blah, but I'm actually a moron. I just cover it well. Sometimes. Sometimes I barely cover it all.
Standard examples:
On Monday we had the windows washed. I had to leave before they were finished to pick up Michael from school. When we got home I noticed there was a window screen left in the basement. I ran up and down three flights of stairs a couple of times looking for the window they had forgotten to put the screen back in. I never found it. All of the windows had screens.
Before I called the window company and complained, I called Doug. I told him there was a window that was missing a screen and I just couldn't figure out which one it was. He informed me we have had an extra window screen in the basement for as long as we had lived in the house. He did not laugh at me. We have been together 10 years. He is used to this.
But hey, I have been complaining about not having time to go to the gym lately and I ran up and down 3 flights of stairs 4 times so that's something.
Last night we were putting the basement back together after some work we had done and I noticed that the shelves in our basement storage closet were not built into the wall. They are some crazy rigged system with wood and cinder block. I asked Doug if we did this or if we inherited it. He looked at me and said "8 years. We have lived here 8 years. You are just noticing this?"
I may not be a moron, but I'm clearly not very observant.
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ha! i like this story. also–you are not so much unobservant, you are really just like everyone else. or maybe it is a girl thing?
That is so normal.. you may observe things that your husband might have overlooked, and there are something that you choose unconsciously not observe because it doesn’t interest you at that time
Here is something similar that happened to me sometime ago
http://huriyamanzar.blogspot.com/2008/01/i-am-fine-really-thanks-for-asking.html
@mouthy_broad argh what do you mean by girly thing?????
Uh, do you think you might just have other, more important things on your mind?
I do that kind of stuff ALL THE TIME! It’s so easy to overlook something you look at all the time.
I personally blame it on motherhood because it makes me feel better when I do something like, say, putting the milk in the dish cupboard and not noticing it was there ALL DAY LONG. I can just say, “Well, I was busy parenting.”
Well obviously, with work, and Michael, and your husband, and cooking, and cleaning, and illness, and whatever else you *totally* should have noticed that, Jodi. Geez. You are a moron.
Meh, I do that ALL the time! In fact, just the other day I mentioned something or another that I noticed to my husband, and he gave me the look – you know the one – and said, it’s been that way for YEARS!!
=)
That’s the kind of stuff I do too, and it drives my husband INSANE! Of course, he doesn’t know the names of our kids’ teachers, but I’m the unobservant one!
Oh my goodness, you are not alone – I do things like this all the time! I’ll be driving, and I’ll notice a house or building, and I’ll say to my hubby, “OMG, is that a new house/building? I have NEVER seen it before!” And he’ll just roll his eyes, because clearly, that building/house has been there for years!