There’s a bit of a philosophical debate going on in the Mole household regarding cleaning. My approach to cleaning is to clean a room, then the next, and so on.
My wife likes to put the system on trial and clean the entire house simultaneously. This involves taking out everything that’s put away and spreading it everywhere. A few items get shuffled around, a partial inventory gets made, and then it stays there indefinitely.
When asked about the mess, I’m told that it only takes five minutes to put everything away, yet it all stays out. At some point, circumstances force me to pick up the mess, which takes far longer than five minutes, and I’m the bad guy for ruining the stalled inventory.
This cycle repeats every six months or so.
A few nights ago, I was the villain for not sharing her enthusiasm in downloading some app that plays Thomas the Tank Engine sounds; at 3 am. Our kid was awake and acting like you might expect an awake toddler would at 3 am.
I had just starting working on my get him to sleep process, when she came in, grabbed my phone, and tried to download the app.
The more it didn’t work, the angrier she got and the more wound up the kid became. I bit my tongue for about 10 minutes until she finally stormed out, mad at me for not doing something or doing something, I’m not sure.
Then I got the kid back to sleep. I think we’re now paying $9.99/month to ThomasSounds.com or something, but it’s a small price to pay to avoid a return of that discussion.