I graduated from college without ever taking a single class in engineering. I had no interest in this field and was quite content to become a simple minded kindergarten teacher. Little did I realize I would soon join an elite group of engineers who keep the every day life of man kind running smoothly.
Yes . . . I'm talking about WOMEN.
I would bet that 98 % of women are like myself and have never taken a single course in engineering and yet each and every day we accomplish feats of engineering that a man would never attempt. I base this theory on how my home is "organized" and how I can pretty much put my finger on anything that is needed by The Man. How often do you find your man standing in front of an open refrigerator or cabinet staring into it for a good five minutes before he asks you where something is? At this point you don't even hesitate to give him detailed directions on how to find the mayonnaise on the left side of the third shelf down just in back of the pickles. We can do this because we have "engineered"our homes for the maximum capacity and efficiency to keep our daily lives as stress free as possible.
We can cram thirty pounds of food into a pantry the size of a toaster oven. AND we know exactly where everything is in that pantry and what we may be running low on. Some of us may appear to have "cluttered" homes but do not doubt for a single second that we can't locate anything we need.
Not only do we know where everything is we also know WHY that particular item is where it is. The guest towels are on the top shelf in the linen closet because we don't use them as often as our every day towels. It just makes perfect sense !
Enter The Man who has no idea of, well, petty much anything. Over the past week I have pondered the "thought process" of the opposite sex only to discover once again that there IS NO thought process. Habit and impulse are the two motivating factors in the world of men. If he has made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich once in his life time he will continue to make that sandwich EXACTLY the same way for the next 90 years. If any portion of this action is changed by someone The Man is lost. God forbid you toast the bread or purchase apricot jelly instead of grape the world comes to a screeching halt until things return to "normal".
Consider this weeks chili recipe . . . Don't get me wrong . . . I LOVE a man who cooks but a little flexibility really could be helpful. It all started with the shopping list. Canned DICED tomatoes, not minced. sliced, or whole tomatoes are required even though I had a can of crushed tomatoes already in the pantry they could NOT be used. We HAD to go to the store to get diced tomatoes. Also required was SWEET onion, (not yellow onion . . . can you tell the difference when cooked in a pot of chili?), and other assorted ingredients that were not already here in my home. I DID have frozen hamburgers but we had to have chop meat. (Is an hamburger not just chop meat formed into a patty?), a can of tomato sauce, (not tomato paste or a JAR of tomato sauce), and RED kidney beans.
Once all the ingredients were gathered it was time to chop and sauté. The Man needed TWO separate fry pans, one to brown the meat and one to brown the onion. . . . ?????????? Engineering 101 states that an efficient cook use as little cookware as possible. Cook, combine and simmer EVERYTHING in just one pan. And naturally The Man had to ask me WHERE the fry pans were. (He has been living here for six months for the past four years and still doesn't know where I keep the pots and pans.) The chili was good but really not as good as you would have thought considering all the EXACT ingredients we needed. I've made chili for years and it NEVER contains the same ingredients. It us always made from what ever I happen to have in the fridge and pantry at that particular time. Sometimes I use left over spaghetti sauce and what ever type of canned beans I happen to have on hand. And it ALWAYS tastes just great to me!
The second thing that's been going on here that challenges my finely engineered home has to do with the bath mat in our master bath. Our master bath has a walk in shower with sliding glass doors. There is a "towel" bar on the outside of the shower door which I use to hang a decorative bath mat. This bath mat is white with a lovely dark grayish blue design on it. It is a small, thin mat.
ON THE FLOOR there is a LARGE dark grey, soft, fuzzy bath mat. This mat stays on the floor between the two sinks and when I take a shower I slide it with my foot over to the shower. The Man seems to find this to be too challenging because EVERY time he takes a shower he puts the decorative mat on the floor for when he exits the shower and then LEAVES it there. I get that he has not grasped the logic of using a fuzzy mat that is ALREADY ON the floor but at least hang up the other mat after you use it.
I guess he never took an engineering course either.
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