Woman Projects and Other Hazards of Marriage

Do you know what I was doing last Saturday night at one thirty in the morning? Ok, that's not really a fair question so I'll just tell you: I was hanging a dozen or so pictures of my two-year-old on my living room wall. Now for an easy one: Do you know whose idea that was?

Good guess: it was my wife Heather's. We had just picked up the prints from our daughter's two-year-old pictures, and Heather spent a good chunk of the evening framing them. Then at one in the morning, just as I was deciding that I'd done enough flailing attempts at hub writing for one night and was closing my laptop and heading for the shower, it was time to hang the pictures up. Right now.

This was a classic example of a woman project, something that most husbands and males in other subcategories of cohabitation with a woman know well. For those that don't know, or that may be in danger of breaching etiquette during a woman project, let me explain the rules.

1. Woman projects start at eleven P.M. at the earliest.

Men have a basic problem with this first rule. We may stay up late for many reasons, but absolutely not productive ones. If we do find ourselves doing something useful in the wee hours of the morning it's because we procrastinated on something we should have been doing when the sun was by God up. We do it, but we do it with the basic understanding that it's unnatural and inhumane.

Women don't see things that way. If they decide the living room needs to be turned inside out it doesn't matter that the idea occurred to them seven hours before the next work day starts. They can not sleep until the job is done. And neither, by extension, can you.

2. You will help.

I've made the grave mistake a time or two of trying to tell my wife that she'll just have to wait until tomorrow, that if she really wanted the project done she should have started earlier.

Take however long you need to let your laughter fade to a breathless titter.

Granted, she doesn't always need help. She can move furniture with the best of 'em. I will sometimes wait with our daughter in the living room for a long time on a Saturday morning, expecting that Heather is still upstairs getting ready for the day. She will come downstairs and breathlessly explain that she reorganized the entire upper floor of of our townhouse because she, quote, "couldn't handle it anymore."

But I have close to six inches on her, so my services are required for very heavy lifting and anything that must take place from my neck level up. And of course, I do. Because I love her. And because I enjoy being alive and would like to keep that setup going for a while.

3. You will give input.

This is dangerous, and I'm not just talking about the situations where you're always wrong, such as when your wife asks if a picture looks straight. What's dangerous for me is when my wife asks for my input and I...I give it.

A good example is Christmas decorating. I'm a creative person and I work in graphic design, so at inopportune moments that streak can be tripped. A few years ago, while we were still engaged, Heather decided it was time to put some lights up at her parents' house, and since you definitely need some height for this task I had no choice but to tag along.

At some point in the process I raised my nose a little from the grindstone, and my imagination breaker tripped. I started seeing improvements that could be made, ways things could be arranged differently, and above all I had this overwhelming sense that we needed more lights and decorations. Several hours and several hundred dollars later I was clinging to a second story roof at two in the morning. An icy roof. Willingly. Because thanks to Heather I now had a vision. Heather's semi-innocent insistence that I help string lights in the wee hours of the morning turned into a death defying tradition that took several nights to set up and continued for several years after. No one could turn anything on inside the house in the month of December; running the dishwasher would trip a circuit breaker. We had cords going through windows to internal outlets. The snow immediately turned into steam if it touched the power lines in the surrounding neighborhood.

4. You will notice.

Well, no, you won't. But you're supposed to. In the off chance you are not roped into a woman project there is an unspoken expectation that you will verbally appreciate whatever subtle change your wife made if she does something as trivial as, say, knocking down a wall while you sleep through the night like a normal person.

This is tough for me because I am, incredibly, even less observant than most men. It's genetic. A good example is one Christmas morning at my mom's house while I was still in college. My brother and I arrived and immediate noticed that there were brand new beanbag chairs right behind the Foosball table in my mom's living room. "Oh, cool!" we said almost simultaneously. "Bean bag chairs!" And we began immediately to verbally appreciate them.

Pretty observant, eh? You'd think, except that the thing that both of us—both of us, mind you—did not notice was that the aforementioned Foosball table had never been there before because it was also one of the Christmas gifts. We registered that it was there because we had to avoid colliding with it on the way to the beanbag chairs, but we did not, until it was pointed out to us, realize that it was new. "Oh yeah!" We said appreciatively (and quite verbally). "A Foosball table! Cool!"

So it's hard for me to notice Heather's stealth woman projects unless they're pretty drastic, and even then I have only a vague feeling that something is different. "Wow," I might say. "It feels...bigger in here."

"I know," Heather will growl. "I picked up the shoulder-high pile of baby toys and junk. That's why you can walk through this room now."

"Oh," I say appreciatively. "Cool!"

Yes, it's a fact:

5. Some woman projects are woman-only.

Organization tends to be one of them; at least, it is for Heather and me. This is why I cheerfully scrub toilets, scoop litter boxes, vacuum, go to the store, anything just so Heather can do all the organizing and we still share the work equally. I would sooner empty the tank of a port-a-potty at a chili festival with a teaspoon than tackle a messy room, because I am completely organizing illiterate. Here is my organization procedure:

1. Move all scattered objects in the room into a single pile.
2. Frown at the pile for a while and try to formulate a strategy to put everything in a logical place where it will be easy to find, easy to access, and unlikely to be accidentally damaged, while keeping all traffic areas clear.
3. Decide the pile will suffice.

Heather, on the other hand, is an organizational wizard. I have no idea how she does it. Do you remember the scene from The Sword in the Stone where Merlin shrinks an entire shack full of belongings into a tiny suitcase? I think that's what she does when I'm not looking.

Occasionally she makes the mistake of roping me into an organization project, but it never lasts long. I dutifully go through step one of my method and start on step two, and after a few minutes she elbows me out of the way as she works up an organizing frenzy. I have to dodge a floating stack of books and an anthropomorphic blender and flee the room. She huffs and sends me off to scrub toilets or drive to the store in the pouring rain, and all is right with the world again.

Remember these important rules when, late at night, you see that fire in your wife's eyes, only not the good kind of fire. There is no stopping the onslaught. Attempting to go to bed is a fast track to the couch. Failing to notice her handiwork the next day will mean your doom. And do not get in the way when she's in a frenzy of project magic that is well beyond your ken. If you do these things consistently and vigilantly then maybe, just maybe, you will be rewarded.

Too bad your projects never last as long as hers.