The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie

It’s January 5, 2012 in Southern California, so naturally it’s 80 degrees. Last year, we didn’t have much of a summer. Maybe we won’t have a winter either.

My street is still a mess from the wind storms that blew through here the first week of December. Giant palm fronds clog up the gutters in front of our house. An apt metaphor for my writer’s block.

Well, not really. At night, after both children are asleep, I have been tempted to write, but even more drawn to watch “Game of Thrones.” I blame Jessica of “The 24 Year Age Gap” (Blogspot) because she brought it up in her blog and I had nothing to watch and I figured, “Okay, I’ll try the first episode…”

Three weeks later, I’ve watched all ten episodes, read all 700 plus pages of the first novel and am about 350 pages into the second. I’ve taken to calling Odie “Milord.” Meanwhile, he is obsessed with “Elder Scrolls V:Skyrim.” Every time I say “I got my husband Skyrim for his birthday” I feel like I’m confessing something dirty.

I want you to know that I’m not going to be one of those writers who starts a blog, gets you hooked, then stops writing. I have been let down by many such bitches in my life, and I will not join their ranks.

The winds came roaring through the first week of December and blew all my mojo away. Yesterday, Odie set a desk up in front of the windows in our living room, scooted the Pack N Play up beside it, and made me a work space. I love him so. I feel inspired. I have a work space now. I used to write in my TV watching, reading and nursing space. Since I can’t see the TV from my new desk, I feel confident that I can get work done.

And speaking of Odie setting up my work space, I have learned the best way to get him to do something is to ask him to do something else. I have been nagging him wife-style to help me make our second bedroom into a play room for about a year. I was going to do it behind his back, but he found the boxes and asked me what they were for, and the only thing I lie about in this relationship is my weight.

If I have a plan, Odie has a different one. We never agree on the way things ought to be and we are both convinced the other is wrong. Even when I think there is no possible way he could disagree with a plan of mine, like putting up curtains to replace the fitted sheet we have hanging from the horizontal blinds, he finds a way. Why would we spend money on curtains when we don’t have shelves in the garage? How can we possibly clean out the junk room and make it a play room until we have shelves in the garage? You know what would help make us organized?

Were you about to say “shelves in the garage”? You’re wrong. It’s a giant toolbox (I’m just kidding. It’s shelves in the garage).

It’s gotten to the point where whenever Odie asks me a question, that’s my answer.

“You know where we should go for dinner?”

“To get shelves for the garage?”

“You know what I want to buy for Viva?”

“Shelves for the garage?”

He knows I’m mocking him, which I guess is mean. But I’m on target here.

So I nag about the playroom until he cleans the kitchen. Because the man is a procrastinator and he will do everything except the thing he has to do. Even if the thing he has to do is easier and more fun, it’s still the thing he “has to” do and not what he “wants to do.” He will do three hours of yard work because I asked him to install curtain rods.

I’m going to pressure him to put up some shelves in the garage tomorrow, because I really need the laundry done.