Sunday Blues

I am a bit grumpy today. I am by nature a woman of few words. One of the hardest things about becoming a mother was the amount of talking I suddenly had to do - it's impossible to be quiet when you have the constant clamouring of kids wanting attention and asking you stuff. It was quite a shock to me that whereas previously I could get away with saying very little, once I had a child I always had to be chattering away answering questions and having conversations. It wears me out more than any other activity and leaves me drained and nervy.



Today it was the children's father making me talk, to absolutely no purpose. Having mentioned that there were no eggs at breakfast I provided other foodstuffs, and once they were all replete (motherhood has also made me a skilled or at least speedy short-order cook) Himself wandered into the kitchen where I was washing the dishes and opened the fridge, like he does about a million times a day hungry or not. "There's an egg here. One egg. In the fridge", he says. Well what do you say to that? While I was turning the possibilities over in my head ("really? an egg?". "oh is there?" "that's nice") it just suddenly struck me how sometimes conversations are really nothing more than the rattling of a coin in an otherwise empty tin. Pointless. We might as well have been a couple of monkeys chattering and gibbering at each other. It made me feel very cross. I waited but nothing more challenging was said, no further revelations or even a direct request that I could provide an answer for, which would have made it at least a legitimate exchange instead of just useless, pointless words. The next word from him was a rather huffy "well?" which burst from me a narky "well what? what do you want me to say?". And that's how marital arguments start. Mostly I manage to stifle the occasional irritation but this time I just felt so resentful of being made to speak empty words with no purpose. I want to be quiet again.



Maybe I was a bit irritable because of a previous conversation, again typical of our verbal exchanges. Putting the phone down on his family in Iraq, he tried to explain to me the intricacies of the interrelatedness of his brother and his brother's wife - his mother is related to the wife's father-in-law, first he said they were cousins, then he said:



"he is her brother's son"

"so he is her nephew"

"who?"

(silent scream - "THE HE IN YOUR PREVIOUS COMMENT OF COURSE!")

aloud: "the father in law. If he's her brother's son that makes him her nephew" (SO MANY WORDS!)

"yes. no. Her uncle's son is my brother's father-in-law"

"so who is the brother's son?"

"who? Not her brother's son. Her uncle's son. my mother is Kusay's father-in-law's cousin"

"ah, yes, I see" (*sob*).



That's quite complicated and easily confused of course. Very often though we can be talking about one person, just the one, and in response to a statement of mine "he's very nice though" himself will suddenly say "who?". It drives me bonkers to be honest. THE PERSON WE'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT FOR TEN MINUTES. And while we're on the subject, can I mention that his habit of making me repeat everything I say at least twice is really annoying. It's not that he doesn't hear me, because if I keep my lips firmly shut and refuse to repeat my comment, he does respond eventually. I don't know if he's having trouble processing language, like our son, or if saying "huh?" is just an ingrained habit but I really, really - REALLY - wish he'd stop.



Sometimes I really don't think I was cut out for marriage. Polygamy seems like a good option. Make that polygyny (2 husbands???!!! shudder!!!).