Project Happily Ever After

Next week, fellow blogger Dina Eisenberg at This Marriage Thing tells me she’s going to offer us all the following challenge: For the entire month of November, thank your spouse three times a day.

I agreed to participate. After all, I write about the ups and downs of marriage. It makes sense for me to support this cause. Yet there’s something about giving thanks and filling myself with gratitude that’s always felt counter to my basic nature. I come from a family of natural complainers. We have elevated complaining to an art form.

Our conversations generally revolve around terrible things that have happened to us, and somehow they all end with laughter. Complaining makes us feel better. It works for us.Yet, once a year at Thanksgiving, Mom – the best complainer of all of us – does an abrupt about face and wants us all to give thanks. We sit at the table, stare at one another and have a conversation that goes like this.

“You go first.”

“No, I went first last year. It’s your turn to go first.”

“No, I need to think for a while. I don’t know what I’m thankful for. I’ll take a pass.”

And then, someone takes the easy way out and says, “Okay, I’ll go. I’m thankful that we are all together and that we have food to eat.”

We all give that person a dirty look, because that’s cheating. Someone says that EVERY year. Of course it’s nice to not be the only person left on the planet and nice not to starve to death. Any schmuck can come up with that!

So, as you might expect, I was a little worried about accepting this challenge of Dina’s. Could I—Mrs. Complainer—find three nice things to say to Mr. Strong and Silent every day? Could I even find one?

And as I worried about failing her challenge, life seemed to present me with one complaint after another. These complaints weren’t always about my husband. They were mostly about my to-do list, and how I never seemed to cross anything off of it. I would tackle one task only to have it get right back on the list.

Like yesterday, the UPS guy finally delivered this kitchen island that we’d ordered in May. We’d paid half upfront. In early July the company that made said island called and said it was ready and would be shipped in a couple weeks. I agreed to pay the rest of what was due.

Big mistake.

July comes and goes. No island.

I call the company, of course. They tell me I’ll have it any day now.

August comes and goes.

By September I’m threatening legal action. No island.

Last week I called and I said I wanted my money back. I threatened to go to the attorney general’s office and file a complaint for fraud. I’m not sure if one can actually file such a complaint at the attorney general’s office, but it sounded good.

I got a call saying that UPS would be delivering the island the following week. Then I got a call from UPS to make an appointment to deliver the island.

I thought, “Finally, I can cross ‘incessantly call kitchen island company’ off my to-do list.”

The island arrived. It was broken. The iron feet were sticking out of the box. They were scratched and bent in many unusual directions. I stared at the big box for a while. Then I walked away from it.

“I can’t deal with this,” I thought.

The box could sit in my entryway for the rest of my life as far as I was concerned. Yes, I was that defeated. The kitchen island company had won. I’d lost. I’d just spent $800 for a broken island. I could have invested that money and lost it in the stock market instead.

Later my husband looked at the box with the warped feet sticking out. He said, “Don’t take this out of the box. It’s broken.”

“I know. I don’t plan on doing anything with it.”

He looked at me. I looked at him and I said, “This is just symbolic of everything in my life right now. I can’t get anything done. As soon as I think I’ve gotten something done, it comes back to haunt me.”

I walked away, sat on a step, and put my face in my hands.

That’s when I heard him on the phone. He was talking to UPS. He was filing a claim. Then he hung up and called the kitchen island company. He filed another claim. It all took about 10 minutes.

He hung up.

“I just took care of it,” he said.

“Thanks. Thank you for taking care of it,” I said.

And just like that, I knew I could accept this challenge. I had many, many things to feel thankful about. I might not find three every day, but I can definitely find one.

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Tags: happiness, marital advice, self-help

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Happiness advice, Random Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.