WHAT ? WHY ????

 Why am I still amazed at the male mental process ? That has got to be a problem with my brain, the fact that I just can't, for the life of me, understand how men think. Or Do They ??? Think . . . ????

Over the past weeks I have been making a list of all the MANY things that totally puzzle me about The Man. I am at a loss to make any sense of any of this so please write me if you have an explanation for any of the following.

TRASH . . .   The Man pays to have his trash picked up 2 times a month.  There is a HUGE garbage "can" that sits out by the road and twice a month the garbage men pull up with their high tech garbage truck which automatically lifts the can and empties it into the truck untouched by human hands. Very seldom is our trash can full when the garbage men arrive. The reason for this is that The Man insists on burning his garbage because he doesn't want to fill up the trash can.  ?????????????????  Isn't the trash can there so you have a place to put your garbage ?  Am I missing something here?  Twice a week I am sent out to the fire pit with plastic grocery bags full of garbage including anything from beer cans to chicken bones. My job is to set this collection on fire and burn it all.  HELLO !!!! . . .  Cans and bottles do NOT burn.  And so then after the fire has burned itself out I get to collect the non burnable items from the fire pit and throw them in the trash can out by the road.  Now I'm not a rocket scientist but doesn't it seem that if we just tossed the grocery bags full of trash into the trash can it would save me a step and also keep from polluting the air from  burning all sorts of plastic?  

HALIBUT . . .  Every year The Man insists we bring with us to Florida a large cooler of frozen Alaskan halibut that we either pick up in Alaska or The Man's son sends to us.  First, it is super expensive to ship anything from Alaska, never mind a huge, heavy cooler full of frozen fish. (The two years that we drove to Alaska we carried a freezer with us that was plugged in each night when we stopped on our trip home. BIG PAIN IN THE ASS !!!  The fish gets to Michigan with us and we put it in the freezer in the garage. The we leave for Florida the fish goes into a cooler that keeps it frozen for about 3 days if we don't open it. Once in Florida the halibut is put into the small freezer, (in the guest bedroom of all places),  that The Man insisted we buy for the specific purpose of storing a shit load of fish.  I have only one question regarding all this . . .   WHY do we need all this halibut if The Man doesn't eat fish ????????  Any given night that I suggest we have fish for dinner The Man makes all sorts of excuses of why we should eat something else. He has flat out said that he does not like fish.  And yet here we are with a freezer full of it.  

HEAT . . .  We have established that The Man is always cold. That is a fact and I can appreciate that. But The Man ALSO does not like to be hot.  (I have attempted to move him to the Bahamas where it is always about 75 degrees and balmy but he just won't go.)  So in order to be warm we live in Florida in the winter and to be cool we live in Michigan in the summer.  Good Plan . . . So then why, if the air conditioner is on in the house, are all the windows and doors open ???????  In Florida I am in charge of temperature control and I have learned to live in a house that is a constant 78 degrees.  (My blood must be thinning because I actually don't mind most of the time.). In Michigan The Man is in charge of temperature control and it is a crap shoot as to what it will feel like in the house at any given hour.  In the morning the heat goes on to take off the chill.  Never mind that it is going to be 87 degrees by 9:30 AM, the heat will go on.  Then he forgets to turn the heat off when he turns on the wall unit AC . Now we have a battle between the furnace and the AC unit so The Man opens the windows !!!!!!   I just go outside and sit in the shade under a tree.

NO PARKING PICNIC TABLE . . .   The Man has a picnic table. It is old and it is made of wood and it is probably on it's very last leg but I LOVE to sit at this table in the summer WHEN/IF it is under the big maple tree in the yard. Unfortunately the picnic table is NEVER under the tree. Instead it is sitting out on the grass in the bright blazing sun because that is where the septic tank is.  Stay with me here folks, it gets a bit confusing.  It seems that The Man, in his infinite wisdom, has decided that the picnic table is the perfect way to keep people from driving/parking over the septic tank. And you may ask WHY people would even consider parking/driving over the septic tank ? WELL . . . that would be because when they pull into the yard they see The Man's car parked right up next to the house by the back door. It is only logical that one might assume that since one car is parked next to the house then all cars should park by the side of the house.    NOT !!!!!  The Man is parked exactly half way between the back door and the septic tank. (I personally wonder why the septic tank is buried that close to the house but I don't even want to go there.) By parking in this particular spot The Man can get out of the car and into the house with a minimum of effort. There also happens to be a telephone pole directly in front of the septic tank so anyone who drove into the yard and considered parking next to The Man's car really can't do so without driving around the telephone pole which would then put them in the middle of a huge lilac bush.  Bottom line is that NO ONE is going to park on the septic tank ! BUT . . . in The Man's head he has to have the large picnic table strategically placed next to the telephone pole to keep persons from parking there. I have attempted to suggest we put a "No Parking" sign or a little white fence in front of the septic tank but that has all been met with much distain and so I just shut up. If I want to sit under the tree in the shade I have my chair and if we ever have guests over for a picnic, (THAT will NEVER happen), they will have to sit in the sun and bake to death while sitting over the septic tank.  EWWWWWWW !!

ELECTRIC OUTLETS . . .  The house is OLD. It was built a zillion years ago as a tiny two room farm house.  Over the years it has been added on to so it is a bit of a mismatch of rooms. The one thing that ALL the rooms have in common is that the electric outlets are old and few and far between.  There are, at most, two outlets in each room and most of them are hidden behind the numerous pieces of furniture. If you are lucky enough to be able to get to an outlet there is a very good possibility that it will have a spider web of wires plugged into it.  Not only are the outlets overloaded at least half of them don't have cover plates on them. Not only do the outlets NOT have cover plates on them almost all of them are loose so that if you try to plug something into them the plugs fall out. Last week in an attempt to cover the smell of propane gas leaking from the kitchen stove, (I am told by The Man not to worry because, "It's ALWAYS been like that!" ) I purchased a small candle wax warmer that plugs into the wall. You put a cube of scented wax into the bowl on the top of the warmer and low and behold the house smells of garden flowers instead of propane gas. Only problem is I can't find an outlet to plug it into. I foolishly just assumed there would be a spot for this warmer but when I started looking I realized this was not going to work.  The first outlet and most practical one logistically has been put into to wall UPSIDE DOWN. You know how outlets have two up and down openings and then a round opening under them for the tree pronged plugs. Well, this outlet has the round opening ABOVE the two slits. No problem for a vacuum cleaner or such but the candle wax bowl would be upside down and that just won't work.  OK so I'll check out the kitchen . . . oh wait, there is only one outlet in there and that is filled with appliance plugs.  The outlets in the bedrooms are all too loose and the candle wax melter is too heavy to remain in the plug.  I finally found an outlet that was right side up and tight enough to hold the warmer but it already was full of wires. I managed to find one of those strips that you can plug several things into it so that I could plug the wax warmer into the wall. This would all be great except that this particular outlet is in a far corner of the house and the smell of scented wax just doesn't make it all the way to the kitchen which is where it stinks of propane gas. 

I GIVE UP !!!  I have three other things on my list of "WTF" items but I am just getting my blood pressure up so I'm going to stop for now and go sit under the maple tree in my chair. I can't smell the propane from there and I'm not sitting over the septic tank.