Recently Read Books

  • A Delicate Truth- John Le Carre (fiction)
  • Perfect - Rachel Joyce (Fiction)
  • The Expats - Chris Pavone (Fiction)
  • An Event in Autumn - Henning Mankel (Fiction)
  • Winter in Madrid - C.J.Sansom (Fiction)
  • The Brothers - John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles - non-fiction
  • LIfe Among Giants - Bill Roorbach (Novel)
  • Empty Mansions - Bill Dedman (non-fiction)
  • Woodrow Wilson (non fiction)
  • Lawrence in Arabia (Non-Fiction)
  • In Sunlight and In Shadow by Mark Helpren (Fiction)
  • Lesson in French - Hilary Reyl (fiction)
  • Unbroken- Laura Hillenbrand (Non-Fiction)
  • Venice, A New History- Thomas Madden - (Non- Fiction)
  • Life is a Gift - Tony Bennett Autobiography
  • The First Counsell - Brad Meltzer (Fiction)
  • Destiny of the Republic - President James Garfield non-fiction by Candice Millard
  • The Last Lion (volume III)- William Manchester and Paul Reid (non-fiction, Winston Churchill)
  • Yellowstone Autumn -W.D. Wetherell (non-fiction about turning 55 and fishing in Yellowstone)
  • Everybody was Young- (non-fiction Paris in the 1920's)
  • Scorpion - (non fiction US Supreme Court)
  • Supreme Power - Jeff Shesol (non-fiction)
  • Zero day by David Baldacci ( I read all of Baldacci's Books)
  • Northwest Angle - William Kent Krueger (fiction - I have read 5 or 6 books by this author)
  • Camelot's Court-Insider the Kennedy Whitehouse- Robert Dallek
  • Childe Hassam -Impressionist (a beautiful book of his paintings)

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Women

I spent two straight weeks with the Lovely Sharon over the Christmas holidays.  I can’t tell you how nice that was or how much I enjoyed it.  As you may know, for some seven months of the year, we live in different cities and I visit her in Palm Desert where she lives during those seven months.   When I am lucky enough to spend concentrated time with the Lovely Sharon, it reinforces just how much I don’t understand her.  I am not alone in this male bewilderment of the human female species. I call them a species because that is exactly what they are.  The human male is a completely different species.  The male is undoubtedly the less intelligent of the species, but frankly the easier to understand. If a male says to another male, “Nice shirt, did you get dressed in the dark?” The male with the questionable shirt takes no offense and responds with something, like “Do you want to buy some naked pictures of your wife?” What these two, less than intelligent males, are actually saying is “Hey pal how are you doing?” Which is responded to with “Great buddy how are you?” Simple right?

Try those same words with a woman.  I challenge you to go up to a woman and say “Nice blouse, did you get dressed in the dark?”  I can guarantee you that this will not end up good for you.  There will either be crying or violence.  If there is violence, it will not have been initiated by you. Ask the same woman if she wants to buy some naked pictures of her husband and she will no doubt immediately contact her husband, chew him out and demand to know what the heck has he been doing?   It will take the poor husband a couple of hours to grovel, plead and swear on his dead mother’s life that he has done nothing wrong and he does not know what she is talking about.

 If I ask the Lovely Sharon if she likes or liked something (such as dinner, a movie, the shirt I am wearing) she usually responds with, “Its ok”.  She never just says “yes” she says “Its OK”.  I am supposed to be satisfied with that answer. I am supposed to understand that OK means yes.  If she asks me if I like something, such her outfit (I have previously written how men wear clothes and women wear outfits) and I if respond with “Its OK” she immediately says “So you don’t like it?”  I try to explain to her that if OK means yes to her, it should mean yes to me.  It irritates her when I answer with “OK”.  She wants a yes not an OK.  However when I ask for a yes rather than an OK, she replies that I know that OK means yes. So then I tell her that when I answer with OK she knows that it means yes.  She then answers that it did not sound like a yes it sounded like a “not so much”.   This conversation has no end.   The simple “OK” has two different meanings in our household depending on who is saying it.  OK?

 I continue to be irritated with people, usually women, who drive into the bank drive through window or lane who have not yet started the paper work for their transaction.  Two weeks ago I went to the bank where there 4 drive through lanes.  Every lane except one had 2 to 4 cars ahead of me.  I went to the lane with one car, with a woman at the wheel.  I figured great, I will get through in no time.  I waited for 15 minutes.  I realized at the 10 minute mark that she was just then putting her paper work in the pneumatic tube.  Silly me, I thought she was just waiting for the teller in the bank to finish with her deposit, but no, she had not even sent her papers into the bank.  The cars in every other lane finished and left and new cars took their place and these new cars went through the line.  Not me and the lovely lady ahead of me, we waited and waited and waited until she was finished with her paper work.  This is one of those things in life that completely drive me crazy.

My mother, who I dearly love, also drives me crazy. If I call her after a week of no calls she asks “Why didn’t I call her during the week?”  If I call her Tuesday and then call her Thursday, she asks, “Why didn’t I call her Wednesday?”  I am pretty certain that if I called her at 10:00 a.m. and at 5:00 p.m. on the same day, she would ask me why I did not call her at lunch.

The other day, Presidential candidate Michelle Bachman was badly beaten in the Iowa caucuses.  The next day, she was indicating that she was pulling out of the presidential race.  So here she is at the microphone before the world press making a statement that would be replayed for days throughout the world and what does she include in her remarks?  She mentioned that on caucus day, when she was campaigning; her husband was buying sunglasses for their dogs.  Gee, does she really think this is the kind of a thing that a man would want disclosed to the world press? “While I was working, my husband was buying doggy sunglasses.”

Women drive me crazy.  I try to understand them but it is impossible.  You know Stephen Hawking right? He is a scientist, a man who knows more about the universe and how it functions than most of the world’s population.  He is brilliant.  He has written books, articles and gives lectures despite the fact that he has had a motor neuron disease since he was a young man. He is confined to a wheel chair and talks through a computer simulated voice.  He is almost 70 years old.  He has learned to communicate to the world, write books, give lectures and talk by twitching his cheek. His book a "Brief History of Time" explained such concepts such as cosmology, the Big Bang, black holes and light cones in a manner that the average person could understand.  He seems to know everything about the universe and how it all works.  When asked what he thought about women, he responded, "Women. They are a complete mystery."

Don’t worry about it Stephen, despite your brilliance and your perseverance, you are in the same boat with the rest of us.  Women, rule the planet, men just think they do and it is very difficult to understand our beloved women.

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