Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Leave my stuff alone and I won't bash your head in. kthanx

I'm married to a man who regularly goes through my stuff and "puts it away." Causing me to look for it and not find it for up to a few weeks to a month. This is usually done with things that are time sensative.

The first incident of him putting my stuff away happened during Fall Quarter 2005. He put away my Spanish Phonetics notebook. I spent three weeks looking for it. Do you know how long three weeks is in student time?! I had to use a different note book causing my information to be scattered in several places instead of being all nice and concise in one spiral notebook. He knew I was looking for it and didn't know where it was. Yes. He "put it away" then forgot he did it. When I did find it I had almost failed a test and had to compile my notes so I could study for my comprehensive exam. So, I yelled, I threw a fit and I thought he got my point. Putting away things of mine would lead to trouble. Trouble is not fun.

The second instance (well, the second major fit throwing one) came while I was taking a senior seminar class on Don Quijote. I checked out a ton of books. I hadn't read Don Quijote before and I wanted to do some catch up research. I was also writing a 5 pg paper on Delmira Agustini and a 5 pg paper on Frida Kahlo. I think I had 20 books in all. So, the computer area was a mess, I'm a student and things aren't always neat and tidy. I told him I had a lot of books checked out and I needed him to leave them alone. We had a fight about that, he didn't think I should be able to have my stuff everywhere, but he agreed to leave them alone when I said it'd be like me packing up some of his video games cause they were in the way. And a few days later... He put some of my library books in boxes. I didn't notice right away, I had finished up the papers and my extra reading, but I got a library notice and asked him if he'd seen any library books. "well, you have a lot of books" was his reply. I countered with a "These books would have a library scan bar on them. Did you put some of my stuff in boxes?" "...yes." And sure enough a good 5 books from the library were shoved in a box. I threw another fit. This time his "putting my stuff away" cost us money. Not a lot but it was still money. He said he was sorry and grumbled about not being able to keep track of my stuff. .

Then we moved and I found a box of shoes I hadn't worn in a while. These are shoes I liked, shoes I would wear if they weren't in a box. I asked him how long they'd been in there. "Oh, I put them away in a box for you last September." Major fit #3 for this same issue.

And our most recent row about putting my stuff away. We're getting settled into a new place. I'm trying to get our stuff out of boxes and find places for them. He keeps putting stuff back into boxes because it looks neater. I started putting papers and other items in between the computer and the printer (a 3" gap that makes a nice slot for things). I came into the computer room after work one day and saw that my papers had been moved. Some of them were on top of the printer but the stack was a lot thinner than it had been that morning. My first question was if he threw any of it away, which he didn't. Then I asked where it was. "it's all on top of the printer." No it's not. I was missing the invitation to a friend's bridal shower. I couldn't remember if it was that weekend or the next weekend. And I hadn't called to see if it was a surprise one or not, so I didn't want to call (that and it'd be embarrassing). He kept looking for it and couldn't find it. I was tempted to look through a box that appeared behind the computer chair but he assured me that it was only books. Today I was fed up with his exasperated "i know it's around here"s and looked through the box. Not only did I find the invitation, I found a lot of my books thrown pell-mell into the box. there was some of my collector toys (packages damaged from the books) and a few unimportant papers about our insurance coverage.

I think I'm going to chop off his hands so he can't move my stuff around.

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