Sunday, January 10, 2016

Ewwwww!

Hubs and I share a lot of things.  We have a communal sock drawer.  We wear a lot of the same t-shirts.  We have dog boots and a jacket that we wear when walking the dog or taking him out.  We don't even mind if the other takes a sip out of whatever the other is drinking.  It's safe to say that after nearly nine years together we've exchanged a lot of cooties.  But I draw the line at toothbrushes, so to eliminate the possibly of this happening I buy two different colors and assign one to each of us.

The other night we were getting ready to go to bed and I saw something that disgusted me.  Hubs was using MY toothbrush.  I immediately pointed this out to him, to which he replied "mine is the red one and yours is green." And I was like "no, mine is the red one and yours is green."  At this point he pointed out that we'd been using the same toothbrush since I bought these ones around the beginning of December.  I was disgusted.  He was unbothered.

I am happy to report that we now have new toothbrushes and that he knows which one is his.

*****

To further illustrate the differences between hubs and me, I give you this example.  Hubs handles all of our financials*.  This is something that he does really well, even keeping an old fashioned check register (something I haven't done since approximately 2002 when my bank introduced online banking) and then balances to the online banking total weekly.  Whatever, he handles everything, and I don't dispute his methods.  Anyway, yesterday morning he was paying some bills and was getting visibly frustrated.  The source of his frustration?  Apparently the balance he showed and the balance the bank showed were off.  How much were they off?  Ten cents.  Not 10 dollars.  Not 100 dollars. Not 1000 dollars.  A dime.  Ten pennies. One tenth of one dollar.  To me this is literally no big deal at all.  None.  Back in the day when I actually kept a check register, I didn't get stressed until there was a disagreement approaching $100.  To be within a dime would have been a cause for celebration.  To him, one penny is a crisis.

I chose this as a good time to go grocery shopping so I could get out of the house, since the alternative was to pour over a bunch of financial crap to find a dime.  I'm not being dramatic or exaggerating when I say that I would prefer dental work to this task.  Thankfully, by the time I got home he had found the offending dime and everything was balanced to his satisfaction.

*I always am "in the know" about all of our finances, he's just the one who's responsible for making sure the bills are paid on time, transferring money to savings, etc.

*****

Addendum to my Welcome, 2016 post:

When I wrote about my October-December reading, I had a feeling that I was leaving something out, and sure enough, I did.  I left out The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom.  This book was a gift from a friend who thought I'd enjoy it.  First off, the book isn't religious at all.  You could just as easily replace "heaven" with "the afterlife" or similar.  Essentially the book follows the narrator after his death as he meets five different people whose life he impacted, some of which he didn't even realize.  It's a really good book (and a quick read!) that makes you realize that as you go about your life that the people you meet can change the trajectory of your life, sometimes without you even realizing it.

With the addition of this book, met my reading goal for 2015! 

10 comments:

  1. I liked The Five People You Meet in Heaven too!

    The toothbrush story made me smile :)

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    1. It really is a good book! I'm glad you've read it too!

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  2. Lucky – you’ve almost doubled the wardrobe without spending the extra money.
    I couldn’t even manage that with 2 sisters..... I was the eldest but the ‘runt’ – the shortest, stockiest, tiny hands, tiny feet..... is there a song in there somewhere?

    Hahahahahahahahahaha... sorry! sorry! sorry!
    We had the same thing happen to us.
    I came home with a new electric brush that happened to be the same brand and colour but with different coloured bands at the bottom of the brush head.
    Unfortunately the hubby isn’t into noticing minor details like that.
    His brush still has a coloured rubber band at the bottom of the handle so he knows that’s the one he’s supposed to use.

    We handle our finances the same as you. We both know what’s going out and coming in but it’s his task to pay the bills.
    The hubby is treasurer for an organisation he belongs to and we’ve had a few occasions where we’ve been chasing dollars across the pages to get the books balance. I would’ve run for the shopping too – it was no fun at all.

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    1. The thing about it is that I'm usually the one in our relationship that doesn't pay close attention to details and he's very details orientated. Not this time though, I guess.

      Someone once told me that it was "old fashioned" that hubs controls the finances and that I'm very hands off. It's not old fashioned at all...it just so happens that money and organization are two of his biggest strengths.

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  3. I agree on the toothbrush thing. That's why mine is always pink and his is green or blue.

    And just last week I spent an hour searching for that missing dime, except mine was $20. But I would've looked for a penny even. Its part of my OCD.

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    1. Seems like the color coding thing isn't all that uncommon. Kudos on keeping your accounts managed so well!

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  4. Hahaha!! I totally agree with you on the toothbrush front, and we have a similar strategy. Besides the colour coding, my toothbrush is always in a holder slot on the left and his is on the right.

    I look after the chequebook & bill payments, while dh looks after the investments. And yes, I keep a chequebook register, and I do balance it every month or so. :) A dime's difference wouldn't really bother me, but it DOES bug me on a certain level. ;)

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    1. We used to have "assigned" slots in the toothbrush holder but then I got a new one which has three holes instead of four so now everything is off balance and we're still trying to figure it out. :)

      I love chequebook as opposed to checkbook. Sounds so much fancier!

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  5. I had to laugh, with a slight shudder, at the toothbrush incident. Like you (and the others), I draw the line at sharing toothbrushes. I make my husband buy his, and I buy another brand that is slightly different but he doesn't like, so we always know who owns which toothbrush. The way he squeezed the toothpaste used to drive me nuts, till we started buying separate toothpastes as well!

    Yeah, my husband is more OCD about finances than I am. I usually just glance over the credit card bill (which has almost all our bills), and ensure I can recognise every item. My husband goes through them line by line, matching receipts to the bank record. He keeps spreadsheets recording major bills (power/gas/insurance etc) over years and years. It's quite handy when it comes to doing my taxes and expenses, I must admit. I wouldn't be quite so organised!



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    1. I might just have to copy the separate tubes of toothpaste thing! How hard is it to squeeze from the bottom of the tube towards the top? I mean really.

      The OCDness with finances definitely helps out at tax time!

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