Women are Absolutely Insane...

...But they are also often right.

I know women. I was raised by one (two, really, if you count my grandmother). I have two as sisters, I have dated several, married one and (while I can't personally vouch for it) I believe I was birthed by one. The fairer sex is a completely different animal than men. In fact, at times I am astounded that we can actually mate, without creating some sort of tragic mutant.

Men are simple creatures. We require few things, food, drink, big screen TV's with sports programming, and the occasional physical affection, mostly in that order of importance. Other than the aforementioned TV, we generally don't care or worry about home decor. It exists only as a place to sit, put stuff down, or prop your feet up. The correct Feng shui placement of the sofa and the dining room table doesn't even register to us as something we should care about.

Women (even the really cool, less crazy ones) are a completely different story. During the 18 years that I lived in my mother and father's home, we had at least 50 different furniture arrangements. All of them were perfectly acceptable. The first four or five times I was called upon to lug a sofa across the living room (or even worse across the house) I thought, "Ah, Mom has some master plan for the house that isn't clear to me. Obviously she has discerned a problem with the current placement and is rectifying the situation to achieve most efficient house flow." Nope. She just got bored with where stuff was.

I've been married a little over two years now. I know that I am the first person ever in the history of humankind to get married so I feel like I have to share the knowledge I've gained in that time for the benefit of those that come after me. The last two years has been like an extended documentary on the discovery channel, but with more throw pillows.

As women go, mine's pretty normal. She's not big into makeup or high heels. She likes me in a t-shirt and shorts as much as (if not more than) dressed up. She's not overly emotional (I'm the girl in that regard), and she lets me pursue my hobbies (ie. writing this and playing video games). However, she did not completely escape the inherited loonyness of her gender. She also falls prey to the illogical need to rearrange.

We got married and moved into our first house in July of 2004. We moved out of that house in June of 2005. In that year she changed the furniture at least five separate times. The palette she had to work on was pretty miniscule too. The house was (maybe) nine hundred square feet and was divided into one long room combining kitchen, dining, and living areas, and two bedrooms separated by a bathroom. You'd think that in such a small space, there'd be at most two or three different ways to get everything to fit. But Ella managed twice that many variations. No sooner did I get used to a particular setup than I'd come home from work to "the look." The look that says, "I know that your feeble brain is pleased with the fact that nothing is between your recliner and the television, but that's not enough for me. Higher beings need more stimulus in their environments, and since my powerful brain has enabled my musculature to weaken, I'll be using you for manual labor for the next several hours. Wheee!"

This past Sunday morning started normally enough. I awoke a little more than an hour before Ella did. I spent the hour playing Madden '07 on my new prize possession, the Nintendo Wii (not to be confused with the expression of joy used in the previous paragraph), then I settled in for an afternoon of football. Ella generally doesn't mind me watching football on Sundays and I generally try to keep it to a game and a half or so. Sunday, the Saints were facing a tough Atlanta team to try to maintain a lead in their division and so my wife (being the sympathetic and loving woman she is) pretty much left me alone until late in the fourth quarter. By that point the Saints were way ahead and it was obvious that Atlanta would not be making a comeback. That's when she sprung it on me.
"I want to rearrange."

"Sure, babe. The game is almost over and then I'll help you. What exactly do you want to move?"

At this point I was thinking, the TV from that wall to the other, or the dining room table from horizontal to diagonal. Something simple. I was thinking simple, until she answered,

"Everything."

That was not what I had in mind for my Sunday. But, I'm a good husband. I try very hard to do as much as I can for Ella, because I know deep down I don't deserve her. If I keep doing nice stuff for her, maybe she won't notice she's too good for me.

"Everything, huh? Like...everything?"

"Like making the front room the TV room, making the TV room the office, making the office the dining room, and cleaning up everything else."

"So, everything. Okay, it'll just be a couple of more minutes."

As I've already said, the game was pretty much over, and I had actually planned on getting up immediately to help her with whatever she was coming to talk to me about, but knowing that I would spend the rest of my Sunday lugging furniture suddenly made the final three minutes of a blowout game very, very important.

We did indeed move everything (thanks to an assist from our friend Kellen, and my Brother-in-law, Chase). The new location of the TV is one that Ella had suggested the day we moved into our house, and I had flatly refused. The room was just too long in my opinion. It would make my TV look small, and the acoustics would be all wrong for surround sound. Boy, was I wrong. Not only does the TV look just as big (if not actually bigger), the surround sound is actually more balanced in its new location. We now have more room to play the Wii, more seating room, and a much cooler (and cleaner) office. Oh, and we got our dining room table back, but I'll probably cover that in junk within a day or two.

Women are assuredly crazy, and mine is no exception. But they are also pretty smart. I bow to your superior intellect and decorative skills, Ella. I'll gladly admit when I'm wrong, especially if it leads to a superior movie watching experience, and the physical affection doesn't hurt.