Jen is not perfect

You did not misread that. You can also pick your jaws up off the floor. I did actually just put into black and white (or whatever the background and font colors happen to be on this blog) that I think Jen is not perfect. While some readers may find it hard to believe that I don’t think Jen hung the moon, it’s still true. I love my wife as much as a man can love a woman. She and the kids mean the world to me. But she’s far from perfect. She gets on my last nerve sometimes. She also annoys the tar out of me with some of the stuff she does. Here are some examples:

-I really do think that the woman is incapable of making a decent pot of coffee in the morning, because I’ve never tasted any evidence that points to the fact that she actually knows how to make coffee.

-She seems to be physically unable to push the button that lowers the garage door (even though it’s right by the door going into the house), because my father-in-law has told me how often he drives by and sees it open, therefore having to get out of his car and push the button himself so no one will just walk into our house.

-She doesn’t pay attention to the various alerts in her car telling her she needs an oil change or her tire pressure is low, so Big Daddy has to check her Expedition every week to make sure she’s not ignoring something important, then convince her that oil changes actually are really important.

-She absolutely refuses to deal with insects/other Hawaiian wildlife that wander into the house, so she calls Big Daddy to take care of them.

(Are you sensing a pattern here? Big Daddy does a lot.)

-She finds it completely acceptable to let the kids wear their pajamas all day if she isn’t planning to go anywhere.

-I don’t always care for the way she uses her southern charm and Georgia accent to get what she wants from me, and her parents.

-She will not cut Beau’s hair so that he doesn’t look like a little girl.

-She frequently takes my Mustang out on errands when she’s taking 2 or less kids with her, and since she drives like a maniac I worry about the safety of not only my wife and kids, but of my beautiful car.

-She makes our children look like they belong in a stinkin’ Gap Kids/Baby Gap window display with all the preppy clothes she dresses them in.

-I have serious doubts about her ability to consume any beverage besides water and Mountain Dew. (Okay that doesn’t so much annoy me as it just seems weird to me)

Those are just a few of the reasons why Jen is not perfect. That’s not to say that I love her any less. In fact, I love her more because of those things. When we were dating, I had no idea what I would be getting myself into by marrying Jen. She was an almost perfect girlfriend/fiancée. She would literally do everything she could for Reed and me, right down to getting less sleep so that she could cook us meals every night, or leave something in the freezer for me to heat up later. She lived 25 minutes away from Reed and me until we were married, but she still made time to make sure Reed and I were well taken care of, despite her very busy schedule as a Drill Instructor. I’m not the smartest man on earth, but I’m no dummy. I knew very well that she was trying too hard, and that once we were married she probably wouldn’t try to keep up the act. After we did get married I found out that she is actually really great at taking care of her family and the house, and she enjoys it.  That part wasn’t an act at all. (I’m very thankful that she enjoys it, because I really love coming home to a spotless house and supper cooking so I have more time to spend with my family.) However, after we were married I also found out that she annoys the living daylights out of me sometimes. I found out things that I couldn’t possibly have known beforehand, because I never lived with her. One of the most annoying things I found out on the very day that we were married is that she has the uncanny ability to take up an entire bed while she’s sleeping. I’ve alluded to this fact in previous blog posts, but it’s worth repeating. SHE TAKES UP THE ENTIRE BED! And for the life of me, I cannot figure out how. Jen is not a large woman. She’s a Marine who is capable of sleeping in a tiny twin size rack in the middle of a war zone. And yet, when at home in our California King size bed (which I bought because I thought perhaps I would have *some* room to sleep in it) she manages to take up the entire thing somehow. And it annoys me. Like any other red-blooded, heterosexual man with an unbelievably beautiful wife, I like to be able to sleep in the same bed, nay, the same room, as her when I’m not deployed. She makes it hard to do though. I’ll admit that I was more than a little annoyed when I was home on leave and was pretty much forced to go sleep on the couch in the basement on more than one occasion because Jen left me no room in our bed. Granted, one of those nights I did get a visit from Madeline not even 5 minutes after I had laid down, and so we got to lay on the couch together watching Finding Nemo while she went back to sleep with her head resting on my chest. As a father, I will never be annoyed that being kicked out of the bed by my wife meant I got some time with my daughter in the wee hours of the morning. But let’s be honest, I could have just as easily held Madeline if I was in my own bed.
I have more than enough idiosyncrasies of my own, and I know for a fact that I make Jen mad. A lot. Trust me when I say that she’s much closer to perfect than I am. I’m always doing something to T her off, like leaving my socks in the middle of the bedroom floor, leaving my shaving cream splashed on the side of the shower walls, and always forgetting things. So really, we’re equal in our levels of perfection. She gets mad at me a lot, and she’s always doing things to annoy me. It’s a good balance.

So you see, I’m not quite the dedicated follower of Jen as you all thought I was. She’s my wife and I love her so much that is hurts sometimes, and I never want to know what it’s like to live without her. The past (almost) 5 years have been the greatest of my life and I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world. But good God, that woman really irks me sometimes.

(Just to be clear, this post wasn’t written because I’m mad at Jen or anything. I’m not venting because she did something in particular that annoyed me. I just thought that I should paint an accurate picture of our marriage, given that most of my mentions of Jen make it seem like I worship the ground she walks on. I love her, but I know she has plenty of faults.)

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