Women are from Venus,

Men are from . . . Well, I Just Don't Know Where They're From!By Terry Ward

I don't understand men. No. I really don't understand men. And I actually like my husband right at this minute. (Of course, let's not push it, that could change quickly.) I'm just not sure what they're thinking processes must be like. I mean, why don't they put a paper towel under they're toast when they're buttering it? Is it so that a maximum degree of crumbs will be covering the area - kind of like a dog marking it's territory? And then there's the whole big issue of dishes. Last week I started a new job and my husband very nicely made dinner and did the dishes for several nights. I was quite pleased with this little showing of consideration. It was when I went to put a cup on the counter in preparation to pour a cup of coffee that I realized that the counter was covered with crumbs and little indefinable sticky substances from dinner that were best left unexplored. Of course, I was aghast. Any woman knows that "doing the dishes" means that you do all the little peripheral jobs, too - wiping the counters, taking out the trash, sweeping the floor. Men don't get it. They take the phrase "doing the dishes" literally.

And, by the way, what joker in the dishwasher industry came up with the phrase potscrubber? Are they laughing? Having a good time? Guys, "potscrubber" does not really mean that it will scrub scrambled eggs and lasagna off of cookware. What it means is that there is a good chance that your plates will come out clean with this cycle if you've rinsed them well. If you insist on putting scrambled egg encrusted items in the dishwasher, the end result will not be considered a functional, yet beautiful objet d'art by your beloved. AND, you will lose all points for being the happy little helpers that we all know that you are.

And then there are the "projects." Seventeen years ago, I was sitting on the back steps of our house enjoying a lovely, sunny, spring afternoon. My husband began poking at the ground nearby with a shovel. Soon, poking became digging. Within a week there was a crater next to our house. Now the object of this exercise was to move the cellar door from one side of the house to the other (YOU figure it out). This is a project that is still in the active file. Oh, we do have a lovely new cellar door mounted, BUT there are no steps. Anyone planning to enter that way takes their life in their hands. Quite happily, we continue to use the old cellar entrance, and fondly anticipate the joy of someday entering the cellar on the left side of the house.

I suppose my favorite manifestation of the "project" is this, well, I guess you'd call it something of a male nesting experience. Any time I've ever asked my husband for help before company comes (my favorite is before our annual Christmas party when my nerves have reached zenith proportions), he feels that it is just not good enough to vacuum the living room. No, this is the time - two hours before guests are to appear - to build that new set of shelves in the living room, or perhaps, yes, a completely different lighting scheme is in order. One year before the Christmas party, he enlisted our sons to make paper snowflakes to decorate the house with. There they sat, my husband and all his little fathers-in-training, happily cutting away to their hearts' content all over the

kitchen table (and the floor, and in the living room, and of course, the trail to the bedroom for glitter . . . ). It was a truly heartwarming scene. Norman Rockwell couldn't have done better. Except, have you ever tried cleaning up those little tiny snowflake scraps? Especially when you're determined to make your house look like you always live with a clean bathroom. You can't. It's like trying to get rid of those annoying foam things they put in packing boxes. You can't get rid of them. They reproduce and mutate. See what I mean? They just don't get it.

There's a lot of talk about why men are like this concerning housework. Some speculate that they do it because then we'll get frustrated and quit asking them to do anything around the house. Fair assumption. It seems to work well on me. Others insist that women want to control the house and therefore nothing that their mate does will ever really meet their standards. Hmmm. OK. So, this is a bad thing? Me, I don't really have a hard and fast explanation. But, I think it has a much deeper and more elemental root. It has to. Think about it. Look how fast God made Eve. He knew. Just think what that Garden would have looked like without her. I don't like to say that the man made in God's image was probably a bit defective in the housekeeping wiring, but . . .