Ladies' Night Out

Today we feature the latest installment of Things Overheard at Ladies' Night Out, which the Princess attends whenever she needs some good blog material. Just kidding! Of course she goes mostly so she doesn't have to cook for one night.


Spouses and children feature prominently in many of the conversations on these evenings. Also dogs. Since the Princess has only one out of three of those, she does a lot of listening.


This time we contemplated the tendency of husbands to, while holding down very responsible, high-level important jobs like designing future space stations, exhibit a marked inability to find anything located in their own house without first consulting their wife: "Honey, where do we keep the mustard? How about the milk? Well, where do we keep Timmy's diapers? Uh, where do we keep Timmy? I mean, he's ours, right?"


I related what the Hero had once given as an explanation for such baffling behavior, soon after we were married: "When a guy gets married, all his brains just fly out of his head."


The ladies considered this, and then said that while they personally would have put it not quite so bluntly, this was essentially the case.


Much dismay was expressed at the tendency of fathers to play roughly with their children and to allow them to do things the mothers would never consider, such as letting them drive the family car while still, technically, a toddler. Of course I am just kidding. But one father, apparently ignoring the mother's advice that perhaps he should not allow their two-year-old to play with a Sharpie permanent marker in the father's office, did just that, and soon had a nicely autographed scribble on his wall.


Further ignoring her advice to research the best way to erase Sharpie marker from one's wall, the father put primer over the marks, which promptly bled through the layer of primer. And the next layer. And the next layer. Seven layers of primer later, Sharpies are strictly a controlled substance in the father's office.


Another father relishes the fact that the church ladies bring food to people who are sick, just had a baby, painted seven layers of primer on their walls, etc. When his fourth child was born, he wanted to know who had signed up to bring them dinner for the next couple of weeks.


"How about so-and-so?" he asked. "She makes great food. Is she signed up? Oh, this is great."



"Honey," his wife reminded him, "the baby...we're excited about the new BABY, remember?"



There was a lively discussion concerning dogs, specifically one named Ollie who is the center of sibling arguments daily. "Every time they walk Ollie, he gets away from them," the mother reported.


"How big is the dog?" someone asked.


"Uh, nine pounds."


Clearly, Ollie is having fun strutting what little stuff he has.


Ollie also has a charming habit, whenever the boys tell him it's time to go outside, of promptly performing an act right there in the house that immediately renders an outside visit quite unnecessary. 


Let's hope Ollie doesn't get hold of any Sharpies.