Silence

Sometimes I just go quiet. No words flow from my lips or fingertips. Don't know why it happens, it just does.

When I'm in silent mode, I usually won't initiate a conversation. I have no trouble responding to another's overtures. I remember how to talk. I just don't particularly want to.

The Engineer gets uneasy when I'm quiet. He worries that I'm mad at him. Heck, if I was mad at him, I'd growl at him. Wonder why he hasn't figured that out after ten years of marriage.

Some of my friends worry about me. I guess I can see why. I'm usually the sort who'll talk your ear off, so it's abnormal when I'm mum.

Isn't it okay to not talk when you don't have anything to say?

I will make myself communicate with friends and family even when I'd rather not, simply because I don't want them to worry. Once the conversation starts, I'm always interested in what they have to say.

I've never learned to force myself to overcome writer's block, however. Maybe it has to do with the lack of immediate feedback. Maybe it's because anything I write seems like drivel. This soliloquy being point in case. Reading back over what I've written, it's gobbledygook. Seems to me silence would be preferable.

But I wouldn't want anyone to worry, so, hey, I'm alive and well.

On the Road Again

but not off line this time. Lookee what I got for Christmas --

a baby 'puter.

My next post may well be from Arizona!

I Beg Your Pardon?

I know what I said and you know what you heard, unfortunately, it's not the same thing.

If that doesn't describe interpersonal communications, I don't know what does.

I dearly love the Engineer, but he speaks geek and I speak nerdette. Sometimes, more often than I like to admit, we are not on the same wavelength. I suspect his growing up with an identical twin didn't help matters. He has an expectation that a grunt, a shift of the shoulders and a twitch of the mustache should speak volumes. To the Twin, they do. Makes it difficult to play cards with them because each knows what the other is holding -- and they won't switch partners, they are always a team.

For years I've been trying to convince him that I am merely the Wife, not the Twin, and that I can only glean broad emotions from grunts and twitches, not Russian-novel-length concepts.

He doesn't seem to comprehend me any better. Sometimes he'll ask me to repeat the same thing half a dozen times. Don't know if he honestly doesn't understand what I'm saying or if he hopes that I will change it if he asks me enough times.

Our conversations end, on a regular basis, with me telling him, "It's a good thing you're cute."

A conceptual bypass happened between a friend's lips and my ears the other day. There was a vital piece of information assumed but not known. I ended up blithely trotting down an unintended path that ended with both of us going, "Huh?" at the end. It was one of those "well, duh!" moments for me once the little bit of information was revealed. Should have known it all along, but it never occurred to me.

I love words, as I said yesterday, but it really helps understanding if both parties are using the same dictionary and facing in the same direction.

A rose by any name might smell as sweet, but unless you draw me a picture, I won't know what you're talking about. P.S. I agree with you, Cicada, it's nice to be able to use the full vocabulary and know you'll be understood. That's one of the reasons I like college better than real life. Also agree on phlegmatic, it's been up at the top of my favorite words list many times.

I Want to Take a Poll Tonight.

Sometimes I think the Engineer was put on earth to make me nuts.

If he has a piece of knowledge that I need, he thinks I know it because he knows it. Does he think I acquire this knowledge by osmosis?

Or he will be talking about one thing and change the subject without letting me know, or pick up a lapsed conversation hours later without any warning, then act like I'm an idiot because I don't understand what he's talking about.

This evening, he was talking about wearing his New Balance "river sneaks" in Idaho on vacation and asked, as he was staring at my new pair and my old pair of New Balance shoes, if I had shoes good for the trip. Then commented he guessed I did since I had a new pair.

I said planned to take the old New Balance, but I didn't want to wear them to wade in the river because I didn't like squishy shoes. He looked at me like I'd just grown a second head and said, "No, I mean flip-flops."

Huh?

I keep reminding him that I am not the Twin, I cannot read his mind, but he keeps assuming I can.

Is this normal spousal behavior, is it Engineer behavior, is it just plain weird, or am I an especially unperceptive wife?

Would you folks out there in the blogosphere who are reading this, please, drop me a comment about communicating with your current or previous spouse or significant other? Any insight or editorial comment or "my partner does such and so" story will be appreciated.

And hopefully enlightening, scurrilous or amusing.