The Pinteresting Story of a Burger King Girl and her McDonalds Guy

As is probably fairly obvious from the lack of content posted of late, I am in a bit of a slump. I tried to work through it in a more organized fashion and found myself about half way through a first draft, ready to hang myself with my undershorts. Fortunately, I seem to have plucked just the right stone from the dam and the entire wall has come down. The flood of content that is forthcoming is going to drown me if I don’t keep writing, so I apologize in advance for the weeks of silence followed by this manic increase in production. At present, we are faced with an absolutely maddening blessing in disguise. The fire that consumed our home has left us with an empty canvas upon which to paint our dreams. Now, we COULD be quite content by merely reconstructing the house that was once there, but that would seem a waste. We have been given an opportunity here and I can’t see not making the most of it. That being said, CHOICE (as it were) seems to be the Phantom in this Opera. Let’s face it, buying a home is stressful and one can only find the “right” home when one is willing to compromise. But what if you didn’t HAVE to compromise? What if you could have any house you wanted in just the location you desired? That is the age old Real Estate mantra, isn’t it? What are the three most important factors in purchasing a home? LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. For most, the location dictates a sacrifice or two where the house is concerned. We, however, own our desired location and have the good fortune of being able to BUILD the house of our dreams without compromise or sacrifice. You see, the wife and I are pretty simple people and don’t have an interest in owning a Mansion. Our perfect home would be on the comfortable side in scale, but too much is really nothing more than a lot of bathrooms to clean. That being said, the size we desire is well within our reach and the vast array of possible styles and varieties make this harder than one would have first believed.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining, I simply want to point out that this whole “options” thing isn’t as dreamy as it sounds. The process goes from confusing to mind blowingly complex when you factor in the desires of two VERY different people. Stylistically, the wife and I are generally on the same page, however, the devil is in the details. To have a full appreciation of the factors involved here, you need to understand something about the wife and I. She is a Burger King Girl and I am a McDonalds Guy. What do I mean by this? Well, in short, I am happy with a Burger in a box and she . . . well she has to have it her way. I say this with all the love in the world, for as you all know, I truly cherish my wife. The truth of the matter is that she can be one of the most difficult people in the world when it comes to purchasing almost ANYTHING. A desire to shop is not the problem here. I certainly don’t mind doing some leg work to find just the right item or just the right price. Hell, I will stand outside a dressing room for hours with a cheery smile on my face every time she comes out with a different outfit on for me to critique. She promptly disregards my critique, but demands it all the same. No, shopping isn’t the problem. The problem is, once an acceptable item has been located the inevitability of the following makes my blood run cold and a shiver run down my spine. “Do you have these in Black” she will ask the dressing room attendant. Now, I was with her when she picked up this pair of pants, and I know full well that they only had them in Grey. I silently ponder to myself, if you didn’t want a pair of grey pants, why the fuck did you try them on? And then she seems sincerely disappointed when the attendant confirms what we already knew . . . “We only have them in Grey”. And now the game is on. “How about this shirt . . . do you have it in short sleeves?” My response is as follows: “Oh for Christ’s sake woman, buy the fucking shirt and I will cut the damned sleeves off when we get home. Can we leave now?” Of course I never say any of this. Instead I supportively scamper around the store making sure that we didn’t somehow miss the pants in black or the shirt in short sleeves.

So it goes with all her purchases. The expectation of customization is so foreign to me that it still causes me to scratch my head when she launches off into one of these perilous conversations with the closest unwitting store clerk. The look of desperation in their eyes as they meet with mine is heartbreaking, but it is all about survival man. The best I can do it shrug my shoulders at them when my wife isn’t looking. Regardless of how many times she is faced with the inability to have an item “her way”, she never fails to ask. It is as if she believes that one day, by some stroke of luck, all garments will be produced on site and should the need arise for a certain style of pants in “black”, the small army of migrant workers in the backroom will just whip up a pair from scratch. Oh shit, and don’t even get me started on coffee. I think this is really where the problem originated. My wife is a Starbucks fanatic. As simple cup of coffee is nowhere near good enough. The complexity of the order is on par with one’s ability to memorize the entirety of the periodic table right down to the atomic weight of Boron. I flat refuse to order her a coffee of any sort. I simply don’t have the mental capacity or patience to rattle of the list of custom features required to get an acceptable brew. It is getting so bad that I have even taken to having her lean over me at a drive through so that she can “order the fucking thing for herself”. I, on the other hand, am quite willing to accept mediocre products so long as the purchasing process is quick and simple. If I want a Cheeseburger and it comes with an item I don’t desire, I simply pull back the bun and pluck the undesired item from the patty and fling it out the car window. It would never even occur to me to get in a pissing match with the 15 year old kid at the drive through as to whether or not he can prepare it without said ingredient.

So, you see, we have a problem on our hands. Having weighed through thousands, perhaps millions, of house plans I am quite willing to accept an “off the shelf plan” so as to avoid the cost of an architect. Did I mention I plan on building this thing myself? The fewer cooks in the kitchen come build time, the less likely I will be to throw myself from a freaking bridge. Still, I love my wife, so with every plan I have shown her I simply smile and nod as she begins to dissect it like a frog in science class, moving a door here and a wall there (never mind structural integrity). We have even gone so far as to create a Pinterest page to catalog our ideas for this new home. Truth be told, I know not what use this could possibly be since every item we pin is “sort of” like what she wants. “I like that chair, but in a different color . . . pin it” she says. “But Honey, they don’t make that chair in any other color” I say in complete deperation. Her reply is always the same . . . “Well, we can ask anyway”. “Yes Honey”. There is no use in fighting it. The only comfort I have in all of this is that one day many years from now, when she lays me down to rest, my customized coffin will be the talk of the graveyard. In the end, this all brings me to one startling revelation about our marriage. I now know that the reason she married me is that she could have me in short sleeves, without pickles, and completely decaffeinated with lowfat whipped cream on the side. Until next time, R.