When your husband irritates you...

I usually write the Christmas letter we send out to our family and friends.  Adam may give some input but I have the ultimate editorial control because I am the one who does it.

This year, our aging printer gave its last gasp and I ordered another one from Amazon.  It came in short order, you know Amazon.   (unpaid celebrity endorsement--if we're imagining I'm a celebrity)

It's still in its box.  Mark and I were all set to hook it up one day but the instruction manual is right on top of the box looking all intimidating and menacing and it makes me squeamish so I am leaving it in the box until Adam can attend to it.

(Mark said I'm a coward.  He's right.)

Adam is deeply entrenched in Boy Scout rechartering (you're jealous, right?) so he hasn't pulled the printer out of the box either.

The point of all of this is, Adam printed the letter at work.

Right after he hijacked it.

I had carefully not written anything about me in it because I didn't want to.  I write about myself to my little heart's content here on my silly blog and no one has to read it but when I send something into someone's home, I feel differently about it.

Adam added some things about me.  I protested and told him not to.  He is as disobedient as he is un-intimidated by printer instructions though.  He changed it a little but he said that it was staying.  I am at his mercy because of the whole printer instruction thing and because it is against my nature not to have sent the Christmas cards by now!

I was feeling frustrated with the dear man, fuming and washing the lunch dishes.  I was doubly irritated with him because when we were decorating the Christmas tree he took oodles of pictures of me.  We are all well aware of how unphotogenic I am.  "Stop taking pictures of me!" I would say.

"No," he would say.  (See?  Disobedient.)

Then he said he wanted me to put them on my blog.  I told him I didn't want to put them on my blog.  And I wasn't going to, because disobedience runs in our family.

Then, while I was still cleaning up the kitchen, I reconsidered.  I thought it wasn't such a terrible thing to have a husband that wanted you represented in the family Christmas letter and it was perhaps even sweet that he doggedly took pictures of an uncooperative and unphotogenic subject like me.  I went from feeling frustrated to feeling loved.

And that's not a bad place to find yourself.

Just for you, Adam.  Here's one of the pictures you took:

As you can see, decorating a Christmas tree takes great concentration.  Just look at the razor focus.  That's the festive pin I wore to church that day.  Mark said, "Mom, I like that pin but why are you wearing an egg?"

Who knows?