From 9:30 last night until 2 o'clock in the morning, my wife and I were building a new large closet. For the first hour and a half our children were helping. But then, obviously, it was bedtime...
I am very tense about various things in my life: making money; how I fit into my community; what the future will be; all the normal things that men think about. And I'm pretty sure it goes without saying that in a room with my wife and children from 13 and down, trying to build things and put things together, I felt pretty darn annoyed at a lot of things that were going on... I even wanted to call all of them "totally stupid" at one point! But guess what... I didn't say a word to anybody! I just kept on smiling and being part of the process, no matter how long it took.
My wife certainly works really hard everyday. Our children are a gift. I can't help but think how ridiculous men, I mean me, can be when we get annoyed. I was getting annoyed, so automatically everybody in the room became stupid to me. Thank God, I didn't say anything bad to anybody, I just helped and made some jokes.
And the last two and a half hours my wife and I were working hard, and we laughed pretty hard together about a lot of the process. I already knew I had to be awake by 6 o'clock in the morning, but I didn't care! I was just happy to go through the process with my wife. She's not a gorgeous model, but she is my wife and the mother of my children. And one of the funniest parts was when the sliding door was heading towards my neck while I was bent over holding a screwdriver. I could not really move, because one foot was in one direction, my knee was sent in the other direction and I was kind of bent over holding the screw and the screwdriver. The door slowly started heading towards my neck and I was squeezing out the words to my wife that now she has a golden opportunity that she shouldn't miss for all those times she was really mad at me; now is her chance if she wants to finish me off and really push the sliding door hard into my neck!
It was 1 o'clock in the morning, and she could not stop laughing. Every time she tried to stop, she laughed even louder and harder... I finally backed out of the closet and looked at her with a funny face and I told her, "You know, you are really laughing a little bit too hard at that joke... is your inner anger against me coming to the surface right now?" Of course, she just laughed even harder... Anyways, by 2 a.m. we finished without one fight, we actually shook hands and said 'job well done,' smiled at each other and lay down to sleep.