For every human who really needs to take a nap, there is an opposite, much more powerful feline force that really needs you to get off the couch, go to the store, and buy them some more cat food.

In honor of today being my 9th wedding anniversary, I thought I’d write a little about how my husband and I have worked out our own particular division of marital labor in order to ensure a smooth, well-running relationship. Because there are things they don’t cover in premarital counseling, such as how to adjust to the fact that each of you deals with stress differently.

When it comes to handling stressful situations, my husband is in charge of Being Calm, which is best illustrated through the following story.

After we’d been married for three years we bought our first house, and after we’d lived in our house for six months we had a really bad ice storm. We thought the worst that happened was that we lost power, but we soon discovered just how wrong we were when I walked into our bedroom and saw a GI-NORMOUS tree sticking through the roof.

Naturally I called for my husband, and he responded by saying, “What?” Now I’m sure you can picture this situation, so you know the tone I was using. It was not, “Could you please come in here when you get a minute, hon?” It was, “COME! NOW! BAD!” Fortunately he decided to amble in and see what was going on. That was good because I only had the one yell in me, and then I lost all ability to speak and was reduced to quiet whimpering.

So he came into the room while talking on the cell phone to his dad, saw the giant hole in our roof, and… started describing it in precise, rational, scientific terms to his father. Like, “Hm, the hole is about the size of a dinner plate, and the tree is protruding approximately eighteen inches down from the ceiling.”

And I’m standing there looking at him, the love of my life, the man I waited seven years to marry, and I’m thinking, “Who are you, and what is the MATTER with you?! Why are you not freaking out when CLEARLY that is the response called for in this situation?!”

But this is where the whole division of labor thing came in handy, because he calmly organized some roof triage, and I got to come up with a funny story to tell people.

However there are some times when being calm can backfire on you, and that is where I come in. So in addition to getting to do all of the freaking out, in stressful situations I am also in charge of Reasonable Expectations. And I have a story for that too.

About a month after moving into our house, things were going well. I was enjoying unpacking and decorating, and I had just gotten a new job working at a bookstore, which is something I always wanted to try.

One day my husband came home from work and announced that there was a position open at his job for someone to go to Denmark for a year. And he thought we should go. And he was serious. He honestly believed that this was absolutely the best, most rational, most logical next step for the direction of our lives. And he was upset when I responded by bursting into tears and crying for like, an entire day. He said, “I don’t understand why we can’t discuss this rationally.”

So here we are six years later (still living in America), and we’ve gotten our routine down pretty well. He is in charge of Things That Sting, Time, Calling People On The Phone, and Knowing How To Get Around In Any Given Location, and I am in charge of Funny Smells, Sneaking In Decluttering So He Doesn’t Notice It, Knowing Things About People, and Holding His Drink When We Go Out Somewhere.

It works for us.

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about my shoulder, partly because it’s been hurting, and partly because when I go to get a massage my massage therapist yells out things like, “Wow! That wasn’t there before!” as she’s working on me.

I’m not really sure what I would do with more detailed information about muscles and medical conditions, because one of my most deeply held beliefs is that the whole “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is totally wasted on those so-called “hot button” issues. Where it truly needs to be enforced is in the area of my not having to know what goes on inside the human body.

You know how in the last few years companies have been sending us information about how we can opt into or out of their privacy policies? Well, I would really like to be able to sign up for The Right Not To Know Some Things. I would be more than happy to send in a form, or check off a box, or carry around some kind of card stating my identity as a “not-knower”, because then maybe I could prevent the kind of unexpected tragedy that took place in our home just a few days ago.

My husband and I were sitting in the living room one evening relaxing and watching TV, when suddenly, out of nowhere, he flipped to a channel that was showing a documentary on a woman who had an enormous tumor growing out of the side of her body, and we tuned in right at the part where they made the first incision and you could see all of her insides.

These are the kind of situations that I just do not handle well.

I am the person who once, as an adult, burst into tears when the nurse came to prick her finger for a blood test as part of her yearly checkup.

I am also the person who, also as an adult, once required three dental technicians in order to get one x-ray of one side of my mouth; one person to press the button, one to stand next to me and tap my head in an attempt to help me relax, and one to catch the x-ray film the second I projectile gagged it out of my mouth.

Clearly something needs to be done here, and I plan on addressing this issue just as soon as I develop a process for un-searing images from a person’s brain.

I’m at an age now where apparently I’m supposed to be feeling the pull of my biological clock. But I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I’m pretty sure I was absent the day those were passed out.

Since this same time last summer 10 of our friends, family members, and co-workers have either gotten pregnant, had a baby, or begun the adoption process. And every time a new baby shows up, I truly believe that this time, I’m going to”get” it. I’ll be around this precious new life, and my own maternal whatever-it-is will finally just kick right in.

Instead, it usually goes something like this:

Someone sends out pictures of their new baby.
Other people’s response: “Oh, what a sweet baby.”
My response: “Wow! That looks just like a tiny, enraged monkey.”

Or, someone has brought their new baby over to show it off.
Everyone else thinks, “Oh, I want to hold the baby!”
I think…Nothing. Because I am frozen in panic. Because I know the second I touch that child everyone in the room will see that being around a baby isn’t making me want one of my own. And then my secret will be out. I am a girl, and I don’t want a baby.

Although truthfully, it really isn’t that much of a secret. Even babies know I’m not a baby person. Once when I was in my early 20’s my then-boyfriend (now husband) and I were visiting friends who were in the process of moving. Because I was a girl (and, admittedly, not much help in the heavy lifting area), I got elected to stay with the couple’s 2-year-old daughter. Everything was fine at first but then she needed her diaper changed, and despite being a competent, college-educated young adult, I had never before changed anyone’s diaper. As a matter of fact, I am 32 years old and I have STILL never changed anyone’s diaper. (Some people are just lucky).

Anyway, this poor child was so desperate to have her diaper changed that she spent the last 30 minutes or so before her parents got home walking into her room, pulling diapers out of the bag herself, and bringing them to me in an effort to get the process started. Those were some of the longest 30 minutes of my life. It’s a pretty low day when your personal competency is exceeded by that of a 2-year-old.

So the fact that I’m well into my 30’s and this baby thing just isn’t kicking in for me has got me to thinking: what if I just don’t have it? What if, just like there are some people who can’t see certain colors, or some people who can’t hear certain tones, or some people who are missing the gene that allows you to curl your tongue, there are just some people who are born not wanting to have babies? What if, instead of spending all of my time worrying that I am some kind of aberrant freak of nature because I’m female yet have no desire to reproduce, I could let myself off the hook about this, and start noticing what I AM good at?

Because the truly ironic part of this story is that, while I get brain-freeze around anyone under 12 years old, I am TERRIFIC with teenagers. Just at the point when most people throw up their hands and no longer have any idea what to do, that is exactly the point where I have become somewhat of a pro-a natural, if you will.

I suspect that the reason I was missing from the biological clock line was that I was first in line at the “Talking To Teens” station. After seeing everyone who was waiting over in that other line, I knew that one day they were all really going to need my help.

As SOON as you begin to congratulate yourself for cleaning out the catboxes-and I mean really cleaning them; changing all the litter, scrubbing the boxes out, and vacuuming the floor-one of the three cats that live with you will throw up all over the hallway.

I haven’t posted anything new for the past few days, because lately I just haven’t felt good.

I’ve been trying really hard to figure out how I can turn this into a funny story, but all of my brain space has been taken up by thinking about how badly I feel. If a little cartoon balloon appeared over me right now and let you see inside my head, it would just be filled with symbols like, “*!@*!!*^@&*” to disguise what I have actually been thinking.

It all started because I am currently in the middle of one of my “from-one-extreme-to-the-other” sleeping cycles. About three weeks ago, all I could do was sleep. I could not stay awake for more than a couple of hours. Incidentally, this is a perfect example of why I should not be allowed to watch shows like “House” on TV. During this time I was absolutely convinced that I had African Sleeping Sickness, as opposed to, say, just being really tired from helping twelve people prepare for their final exam in Spanish.

Now, I am always awake. I thought that maybe a new place might help my insomnia, so last week I tried sleeping on the couch to see if that was any better. Not so much. All that did was painfully pull a muscle in my neck and cause me to walk around for the next three days with my head permanently turned to the left. That was fun, and not at all embarrassing.

In any event, I’ve had a lot of extra free time to fill up (due to the not sleeping), so I decided to spend some time outside in our garden.

Have you seen the “Simpsons” episode (Episode #284, “Blame It On Lisa”) where Lisa is sponsoring an orphan named Renaldo, and when the Simpsons go to Brazil to meet him they find him running down the street fleeing monkeys, because, as he explains it to them, “I am like candy to them [the monkeys]”? Well, that is EXACTLY what happens to me when I go outside in the summer. Only with bugs, not monkeys.

My husband and I spent the weekend working in our yard, and today I look like I’m covered with some horribly disfiguring and highly contagious plague-like disease from Biblical times. Even my husband, who is a very calm, rational engineer rarely given to any kind of dramatic statement, looked at me this morning and said, “Oh, man!”

So if anyone needs me this week, I’ll be pretty easy to find. Just follow the hydrocortisone trail and the sounds of the TV to the living room, where I will be sitting, bolt upright and wide awake, surfing the channels to find the new, dramatic medical condition which features insomnia contracted from multiple mosquito bites.

And tonight I had to admit it.

Oh sure, there have been signs for a while now:

-the fact that the music from “Top Gun”, the defining movie of my teenage years, now frequently appears in its’ panflute version as Muzak.

-the fact that when I said to one of my tutoring students, “Oh, we’re about to start the chapter on…THE PLANE”, he did not immediately respond with an impression of Tattoo.

-the fact that I began a sentence with, “When I was growing up in the ’70’s”, and the student I was tutoring gasped so heavily I thought he was going to implode.

-the fact that when I try to explain the parts of speech by singing, “Conjunction Junction, what’s your function?”, or, “Lolly Lolly Lolly, get your adverbs here!”, my students don’t join in and sing with me. Instead, they surreptitiously look around for the nearest exit.

But tonight I saw something that forced my out of my denial and into the truth: the cultural experiences that played a part in forming who I am are “officially” old. I realized this at the music store when I saw that the 3 disc sets of 80’s hits on sale for $9.99 looked EXACTLY like the 3 disc sets of the music that I consider to be “old”.

Clearly fictionalized stories of my childhood, involving phrases like, “barefoot in the snow”, and “uphill both ways” cannot be far behind.

I have noticed a lot of changes in my life since I entered my thirties, but the most mystifying one to me is the inordinate amount of concern I have over the sharpness of our kitchen knives. I often find myself wistfully recalling the Ginsu knife commercials of the 1970’s where they sliced up aluminum cans and thinking, “Why can’t my knives be that sharp?”

So about two weeks ago I finally took our knives in to be professionally sharpened. Everything was going along just fine until the man helping me asked me what I wanted him to do about the edges on one particular group of knives, in a tone that suggested that, a) I should know exactly what he was talking about, b) clearly the mere fact that these knives even had this type of edge should have been keeping me up at night, and c) I should apologize for even owning that kind of knife, much less bringing it into a professional cutlery establishment.

I decided to do what anyone would do when faced with a room full of sharp knives, dangerous machinery, and a very large man with bulging, tattoo-laden biceps who tests knife blades by slicing off his own arm hair. I told him to do whatever he wanted.

So he did, and now that our knives cut well again I am ready to be seized by a new compulsion. I’ll keep you posted as things develop.

Over the last few days I’ve had a number of encounters with lizards. This is unusual for me because, one, I stay inside a lot, and two, I generally only notice the cute and furry kinds of animals, like kitties and bunnies. But all of a sudden lizards are turning up everywhere, both literally and figuratively.

Last week I was talking to one of my coaches about how much I love summer, saying that I felt like a lizard just lying on a rock and soaking up the sun. The very next day I was walking down my driveway, and suddenly I came upon a lizard just lying on the concrete and soaking up the sun. It was very synchronistic and deeply meaningful, right up until the time my husband came home from work and declared that it was not actually sunning itself, but in fact was dead.

So I kind of forgot about lizards until they came up again today, twice. Then I thought that maybe someone, somewhere was trying to send me a message, so I did a little research on animals to see what lizards represent.

However the entertaining part of this story is not in the actual message itself, but rather in the method of its’ delivery. Apparently whoever was sending me this message decided that I wasn’t listening very well, so they decided to “kick it up a notch”-or two-on the drama scale.

First we discovered that the driveway lizard was actually alive, when he leaped into the air and ran away as my husband was preparing to bury him. Then this afternoon, as I was talking to another coach on the phone and sharing my whole me-as-a-lizard metaphor, I saw my cat, Tigger, triumphantly trotting inside with a lizard dangling from his mouth.

Rather than dwell on just how creeped out I was, I will hasten to assure you that the lizard was unharmed and was safely returned to the wilds of suburban Atlanta, although it did involve a very frantic lizard rescue operation, and I may never feel comfortable walking barefoot in my kitchen again.

I’m definitely paying attention now.

My favorite reason to tell a story is to make someone laugh. So to brighten up this rainy Sunday afternoon I offer the following “funnies” for your entertainment.

Under the category of, “Words You Don’t Want To Hear”…

From my chiropractor, the first time she was examining me on the table:
The Doctor: “I’m sure that both of your legs probably are the same length.”
Me: (To myself) Nothing good can follow that sentence.

From our bug guy, who came to de-wasp our porch:
The Bug Guy: “I’ve never seen anything like this before!”

The Bug Guy, on his second visit to clear the porch: “If I’d done this all at once I would’ve taken this box in to show everyone at work.”
Me: “Oh, great! So we could become famous as, ‘Those Wasp People’.”
The Bug Guy: “Oh, I already tell people about you.”

From my massage therapist last Friday as she was working on my shoulder:
The Massage Therapist: “Hm.” Then silence.
Me: (To myself). I think that in this situation, ignorance really is bliss.

And to anyone whose job requires them to work either with the general public or with young people, I offer these two anecdotes gleaned from my own personal work experience.

This actual conversation took place when I was working a shift at the information desk at a bookstore:
Me: “Hi, how may I help you?”
The Customer: “I’m looking for a book on war. The cover is red and the letters in the title are white.”
Me: “Um, there’s no search field in our data base for colors.”

This actual conversation took place the year I started my own tutoring business.
The Student: “My teacher hates me.”
Me: “Why do you think that?”
The Student: “Well, I was just sitting there in class, and then suddenly my jacket was on fire.”
Me: (Silently) Yeah, she probably does.