When Jeff and I were first dating, I admired his energy and ambition. He seemed to get excited about everything in life, and was very spontaneous. When it came to something he was passionate about, he didn’t hold back.
It’s nearly five years later, and now I have a much different description for his enthusiasm level. The energy and ambition is constant, which means he can’t relax, physically or mentally. On any given evening, we will finish dinner and put Rachael to bed by 8:30 p.m. My plan afterwards is to kick back with my husband and watch a movie or a show. Not Jeff! He is on the computer obsessing over a possible purchase (his or someone else’s). He brings up five different Google searches at once then curses at the computer for not being fast enough. At the same time, he is on his cell phone, the house phone or both. I sit back on the couch and watch his blood pressure rise keeping my cell phone secretly hidden away, so he won’t commandeer it for his price-hunting mission. After all, when he finally does collapse with a heart attack someone’s got to call 911.
The spontaneity has also lost its luster. It was fun back then when we’d spend three hours on the phone and he would call back immediately to tell me that I should be in bed instead of talking to him. Now, he has fits of impulsiveness that have nearly cost us our lives. He is originally from Southern California, and continues to drive like he still lives there. The Pacific Northwest is riddled with horrible drivers and no mass transit system, so you have to be alert and on the defensive the moment you pull out of your driveway. Many is the time when we will decide on a particular destination, and my husband will stop right in the middle of the fucking street to ask what I think about going somewhere else. I just look at him with shock and scream at him to drive the damn car. He seriously doesn’t get the fact that you can’t just stop in the middle of a two-lane road, because you think barbecue might be preferential to Chinese for lunch.
His passion for every subject is at times exhausting and I have come to the realization that my husband is a ferret on crack. He has a similar rodent-like scurry when he’s pursuing a task and definitely has the same energy level. The mottle-headedness is where the crack comes in, and this weekend’s travel plans were a perfect example of a ferret on crack in action.
Jeff wanted to go out of town. Simple enough, right? Not for someone who labels themselves as the “dealman.” He spent two nights on every travel website known to man, while verbally berating some poor operator in Bangalore when the Alaska Airlines website timed out. By the end of this 48 hours of marathon research, he had several hotel options, and managed to secure a flight later in the day on Saturday. However he assured me that we would be heading to the airport nine hours early to try to standby for the morning flight (like that ever works). Then much in the ferret on crack nature, after detailing each hotel option to me for 20 minutes while I was trying to run errands, he asked me which one we should utilize. The “end” key on my cell phone seemed to be screaming at me to hit it, but I calmly told him that he could choose, which he already had, so I’m not sure why the fuck he asked in the first place.
The sick, sad thing is that I see strains of this same obsessive nature in my toddler. The other day, she was determined to color at the coffee table in the family room. She brought her box of crayons downstairs, two coloring books, and a blank pad of paper. Rachael colored for all of five minutes and abandoned the project, so I began cleaning it up. She went ape shit! My toddler began running around in circles yelling “no, no, no”, then proceeded to bring all of the items back to the table. I looked at her, sighed, and realized that much like her old man, she had the drugged rodent tendencies.
I love them both with all my soul, but my dreams of a sweet, relaxing evening have given way to the hectic reality that is life with rodents on crack. As I attempt to watch a movie, my ferret on crack will be clicking away wildly at the computer and yelling into the phone, while my hamster on crack is running around in circles with her Dora the Explorer DVD in hand yelling “Dodo, Dodo.” All I can say at this point is thank goodness my dog is lazy.
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