Mt. Rainier and Lenticular Clouds - Dec. 2008 copyright: JMM

July 17, 2008

Men are from Mars and all that rot

"Oooo! Lookey!" I squealed, as I opened up a solicitation for a new craft kit of the month club. "A bead kit of the month! Hm. Cool projects...." as I scanned the flyer and just automatically reached for the acceptance card and envelope.

I'm more talking to myself than anything else. Brian's watching TV and w/o looking away he goes, "Why don't you just make the projects from your own stuff, using the picture?"

"But, it's a bead kit of the month club."

"You have enough beads to sell your own bead kits of the month club!"

It was like I was speaking Swahili and he was speaking, well, German.

Again, I beseech, "But this is a BEAD kit of the month club." What isn't he getting here? Number one, it's a craft kit of the month club. I love those. I already belong to one. I've belonged to some kind of craft kit of the month club for many years now. Number two, and most importantly, this one has beads. How can this point not be crystal clear to him? What part of "bead kit of the month club" isn't he getting?

Finally, exasperated, he looks at me and goes, "That would be like, back when I was brewing beer, if I stock piled all my grains and hops, but kept buying new ones to brew just new beer, and never using the old stuff." Clearly, he expects me to relate to his beer/bead analogy.

I look at him, puzzled, thinking to myself....but hops and grain go stale...beads don't go bad or get stale!

"But....this a bead kit of the month club....with cool projects."

*Sigh* "Whatever makes you happy, Schmaby"

Is it me?

20 comments:

  1. nope.trust me,it isn't you! i have similar exchanges with my beloved. often.

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  2. Aw, you have a sweetie pie for a hubby -"whatever makes you happy"- sheesh, I'd like to hear that!

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  3. Boys. They just aren't ever going to get it. Besides, let's just think about the amount of storage space taken up by a few beads vs the space taken up by cases of empty bottles, 5-gallon carboys, brewing kettles, finished product, etc. etc. No comparison. You can buy a hell of a lot of beads before you even get close. So there, Brian.

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  4. Aaaahhh...things like this make me happy that I am SINGLE.

    The only people I have communication problems with, on occasion, are my kids, so if I get tired of explaining, I can just pull the old CAUSE I SAID SO......Hahahaha!!!

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  5. lol i love reading husband wife stories. its so amazing how differnet women are from men and vice versa. they're so simple minded it's scary...

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  6. DP - Ah, I see you have experience in the homebrewing realm yourself. Plus, beads don't explode all over the bathroom like his batch of cranberry ale did one year. We were scraping cranberry bits off the walls and ceiling for months. Fortunately, only the airlock shot out of the top of the carboy with a fountain of sticky wort. I handed him the 409 and a roll of paper towels, said, "knock yourself out" and I went shopping.

    Good, thanks for the input ladies. I thought it was just me.

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  7. Anonymous11:44 AM

    Ah, but when you are finished with a project, all you have is a thing made out of bads.

    When we homebrewers finish a project, we have BEER (or mead). How can one compare a beaded trifle with the sacrament that is BEER?

    I've never had a carboy pop like that. Did he pitch a massive amount of yeast, or what?

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  8. nope, it isn't you. it's "them" vs "us". men don't differentiate subtleties the way that women do.

    although, i'd just love to see a what an exploding bead project would look like.

    go on, join up!

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  9. Joe - not sure what happened when the cranberry ale erupted....there was kreuzen EVERYWHERE.

    Ah, but when you have drunk your last drop, I can still wear my beautiful beaded jewelry!!!

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  10. See, there is only one man I want to be in a position to have this kind of argument with, and as he presumably has them with his lucky Missus, I'll just pass.

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  11. Claire - I think the "whatever makes you happy" was more of him being resigned to the fact that I'm gonna sign up anyway.

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  12. Anonymous3:31 PM

    Nope, it's not just you....

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  13. lol!! and well said to your replies about the beer/beads analogy

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  14. Do you sell your stuff online? Or do you just do your own jewelry and gifts, etc? I'd love to see it.

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  15. Michael is the same way,but I couldn't tell you about what at the moment.Often we agree on a LOT.I WAS a man way too many times in my past lives.

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  16. Anonymous10:29 AM

    "Ah, but when you have drunk your last drop, I can still wear my beautiful beaded jewelry!!!"

    Ah, but like you with the beads, I'll be making MORE! :-) I just replaced a dying refrigerator this week, so now I have a dedicated lagering fridge for the first time ever, until the condenser gives out entirely. Can't wait.

    As for the cranberry ale, I'm guessing there was an uninvited microbe, and plenty of them. Perhaps the berries weren't steeped at a high enough temperature or something. The worst I ever had was a brown ale in an insufficiently sanitized bottle. That was fun.

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  17. Brewing beer is one of those things I've always fancied doing but never quite got round to.

    Jus sayin ;)

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  18. I hate power issues with men, like I'm getting with my husband. He just finally painted the base in our powder room (after MUCH nagging and threatening to hire someone else to do it) TWO years after we redid the linoleum. He's in construction, so that's part of the problem. He does know how to do it, but takes his sweet time. He wonders the same thing about me and books--since he doesn't read. I don't do beads or I'm sure he would say the same thing as your husband!

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  19. Joe: It erupted during primary fermentation. I had added the cranberrries during the last 5 min of the boil and then cooled the wort and racked it into a 6.5 gallon primary fermenter and pitched stepped up liquid Wyeast. Vigorous fermentation brought the krauesen up the bese of the plug, a small piece of skin from one of the cranberries closing off the airlock. Luckily the plug blew before the carboy exploded, still the ale hit the ceiling with significant force.

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  20. Anonymous9:51 AM

    I see. I hadn't considered blockage, which should have been obvious. Duh!

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