I was planning to title this post “What Women Want” but it seemed presumptuous. I can’t honestly speak for half the population, only myself. Also, it reminds me of that movie, which reminds me of Mel Gibson, who is the worst person on the planet.

I’ve thought a lot about a comment that was made on my A Better Day post from a week ago. In that post I vented about my household, my husband, my responsibilities and some general frustrations that probably all women can relate to.

My friend and fellow blogger (he really is a friend we’ve known each other since high school) responded with this comment:

“Y’all do make life more difficult on yourselves. I mean the whole cookie thing….are you looking for immediate Beatification? Just sayin.”

I know. It made me want to punch him in the face too. I quickly replied that he (actually I think I said “you guys” referring to every male on the planet) just didn’t get it and never would.

I stand by that statement.

However, I should at least attempt to explain what I want. It is not Beatification. It is not recognition in the traditional sense. What I want is for my spouse to LISTEN  to me.

I spend entire days where, seriously, no one listens to me.

The twins wake up for school and I try to make conversation with them. They ignore me. I tell them to shut off all the lights before they leave. They ignore me. Usually when I say good-bye, I tell them “I love you.” Most often the response is silence, a door slamming shut, or some grumbled…”yeah, yeah, whatever.”

Once the twinkies wake up I ask them to get dressed, usually 13 or 14 times before getting any sort of response. Most mornings I have to resort to idle threats to get them to put on their stupid pants. Then I tell them that it does not matter who sits where in the van, knowing that they are not listening and we will have this same argument tomorrow.

I do a bit of volunteer work. Not a big deal, but time-consuming. Much of that time is spent answering questions about information that I have already sent out or have said 10 thousand times. Grrr…

It makes me want to scream. I usually do scream. And curse. And slam my fist on the table. It’s all very mature and ladylike.

We had a speaker at our church, Libby Roderick, who talked about listening. She did exercises with us where we had to speak to someone we did not know for a few minutes. The other person was not allowed to speak. Not allowed to say one word until our time was up. Then we switched and we had to be the listeners. It takes a minute, but once you realize someone is just listening. Not thinking about what they will say next, not focusing on anything else. Just listening, you feel good.

And when no one listens to you, you feel like crap.

The very least I can expect is for my husband to listen to me.

When he asked how I felt that day and I said, “not great” he obviously did not listen. If he had he would not have asked me to bring him dinner.

Which wouldn’t have used up the last of the stupid cookies.

Which would not have made me angry and led to dragging out the flour and the sugar and the stupid chocolate chips in the middle of the night.

Because, if he ever listened to me he would know that I felt obligated to make more, instead of skimping on them for him or buying crap for Taryn to take in her lunch.

Now do you understand? LISTEN. It’s that easy.

On a side note, the next day he brought home the cooler I had packed the food in. HE DID NOT EVEN EAT THE STUPID COOKIES!!!!!!!! Do us a favor, throw them out before you get home. It guarantees that the next batch of cookies will not have arsenic in them.