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Living with an engineer involves more than just having to hear the word “efficient” all of the time. A lot of engineers end up in management positions, and that means one thing: they’re bred to supervise. The word “efficient” does get bandied about, in how they think tasks ought to be accomplished.
I already shared my story about measuring butter for baking, and how my husband felt about that. That’s not the only time something like that has happened. Sometimes, I find Jonathan trying to supervise me when we’re completing a project.
To be fair, sometimes I ask for it. I want to help out with all of our big projects around the house, but I don’t always know what I’m doing. “I’m a pair of willing hands,” I’ll say, “you just need to direct them.” I’ve definitely set a precedent for my husband in him trying to manage me. I just shouldn’t be let loose with a power tool, especially the type we use for laying down the hardwood floor in my house, without giving me specific instructions for what I’m supposed to do with it.
It’s just like giving a mouse a cookie: I tell Jon to direct me in specific instances, and he’ll start trying to manage everything I do around the house. For example, I had a method I enjoyed for pulling the staples out of our sub-floor. Jon wanted me to use a different tool, but I liked the rhythm I had going.
At least in these incidents, I had to ask Jon for direction when we first started the project. But sometimes I get managed when I’m doing something perfectly well my own way. The worst is in the kitchen. I don’t know how many times I’ve turned around to find him doing something to dinner. Sometimes he doesn’t think I’m doing it efficiently enough, or the right way, or other times he thinks he’s helping, but he doesn’t have all the facts.
This is definitely not a story about my husband being a goof in the kitchen; Jon’s a good cook. I like it when he handles dinner, and I like when we cook together. But when he wanders into the kitchen when I’m halfway through something, sometimes his uninformed contributions are less than helpful.
Just last week I was trying to make carbonara. The recipe I found first cooked some garlic in oil in a pan, until the garlic turned crispy. The point of this is to really infuse the oil with the garlic flavor; the cloves themselves are discarded, and new ones are used later. Jon wandered in and tried to take off the garlic, telling me I was cooking it too long. He was trying to supervise me, without really knowing what was going on.
Other times, I might be completing a task, and I know I’m not doing it in the most efficient way possible. Maybe my sewing method is a bit wonky, or I’m not painting the baseboard in the most efficient way possible. That doesn’t mean I want to hear about it. I like how I’m doing it; the task will get done just as well, on my own time. We don’t have a government sponsor breathing down our necks about getting the baseboard in the kitchen painted or the buttons sewn back on a coat. Efficiency isn’t a primary concern.
But I love my engineer. I know I have quirks just as annoying as his. It’s just fun to share the unique experience of life with engineers.
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*(The above image by renjith krishnan is from freedigitalphotos.net).