I hate to be so stereotypical and cranky, but seriously, how is it that men think and operate so completely differently from us?? I'm ranting online right this very moment because my overriding urge at the moment is to find small, or maybe not so small, projectiles to fire at my husband... or maybe pinch him until he's polka dotted... or maybe just call up his mother and hand the phone to him.

It started last night. He had mowed the lawn during the day - Oh! The Horror! - and had a backache. He wanted a backrub. But could he find it in his parts to ASK for one? Well, duh, rhetorical question aside, of course not. He had to moan and groan and limp and whine around the house, making snide comments about me being on the computer, until I finally cracked under the passive-aggressive pressure and gave him said backrub. Without poking him in the kidneys, even.

Then we get to bed, and before I have even gotten horizontal, he starts kvetching about my ability to fall asleep just about instantly. The concept that I have been chronically sleep-deprived for a while and a bit doesn't seem to hold much water for him, and he has decided instead that my lack of insomnia is a personality defect. So he's nudging me about that, and THEN as soon as the lights are out he reaches out to hold my hand. Now, for those of you in the audience who are sighing and thinking, "How romantic!" you just reel that right back in. In my house, this is foreplay. Not successful foreplay, but foreplay nonetheless. I let him pretend that he was "just being friendly," right up until the moment when he decided to shift around without warning me, which resulted in me scratching up my own leg with my own fingernails, which were firmly ensconced in his hand. And when I squirmed to the side, I got the weight of his head planted firmly in my cheekbone. None of this was intentional, mind you, but it also was not mood-enhancing for me. Unless the enhanced mood is irritability - which DID increase.

So I rolled over and went to sleep. Instantly. Because I'm a horrible person that way.

This evening, things were fine - great, in fact - until the kids were in bed. He went out of his way to play with Emily for a while, and was reading books and explaining the pictures to Jacob, all very cute. Then he made chocolate banana ice cream. Does this sound to you like a man looking to catch some action? Yeah, me too. And it probably would have worked, except that at 8:00 I sat down on the couch and flipped through the TV guide thingy, and listed off the programs I would be interested in. Okay, it's a Monday night in summertime, so I'm not *really* interested in anything, but I had things I was not disinterested in. His response: "I'd rather watch baseball." Ugh. But, fine, I don't really care. So I turn that on and get a book, ready to fall into our occasional routine in which he watches a game and calls my attention to plays he thinks I might somehow be interested in. Instead, he hops up and plants on the computer for the next 2 1/2 hours.

I hate it when he commandeers both major forms of media in the house, and of course being super-ultra-mega mature and grown-up, I proceeded to pout and ignore him for the evening. Which would have been highly effective, except for the fact that he had so much else to occupy him that he didn't notice.

Around 10:00, I finished my book and there was STILL nothing on TV, so I was so bored that I started doing dishes. He wandered into the kitchen after a bit and said, "Well, we've done a good job of alienating each other for the night, huh?" I sniped back that *I* hadn't done anything to *him* (except pout, which he didn't notice, so it doesn't count). And now he wants to know if I'm "in the mood." Sure I am! To call you bad names and huff off to bed in a snit!

Ugh. It's not that bad. I know that there are people with seriously clueless husbands, or even bad ones, or whatever, out there. I just feel like whining about it, and we all know I don't have a sympathetic audience at home....