Boundaries are important

I took the liberty of compiling a short list of boundaries. You might like to cut this out and post it on the fridge if you dare (Please make sure you erase any link to this blogsite. I have quite enough shitsake in my own life already thank you)
Please feel free to personalise it before you put it up.

To my darling (fill in wife’s name here)
In the interests of taking our relationship to a new and exciting level, I think that it is important that we both set some boundaries for each other.
These are meant to make our communication a lot better, our relationship a lot less ambiguous, and ultimately to create a greater sense of intimacy.

1. First off. I will not answer you when you mumble questions to me when you are lying in the bath upstairs and I am doing something (surprisingly important to me) downstairs. I will not grit my teeth and stop what I am doing and slowly walk towards you saying "what?....What?....What?" until I can hear you. Instead, I will simply not answer. You will quickly learn not to do it. Getting annoyed that I can’t hear you will not help.
2. Along a similar vein. Unless it is given me in writing (emails are acceptable), I accept no responsibility for forgotten engagements / important tasks to be done / bills to be paid / school pick-ups to be done / instructions to be followed. You cannot tell me retrospectively that “I told you last week. Remember. You were in the living room. It was 7.13 pm”. It only counts if it was in writing. I have noticed that often when you do tell me these critical things, it is under your breath, while I am having a conversation with two children and trying to juggle performing a task. Even if I say yes, make eye contact and nod my head. I still didn’t hear you. I am just nodding to make the moment get past more quickly so that I can get back to doing the one thing I was doing originally. Before the task. Before the two children. The original thing. My head is still there. It never left. I am nodding, but I cannot hear you.
3. Getting to first base is never going to work. When I say that it will it is not strictly accurate. In the interests of honesty you need to know that I am wired differently to you. I cannot stop until the match is over. If I am fit, I will sometimes be able to go into extra time. Perhaps even a penalty shoot out. At which stage I will want to sleep. But I will never be able to stop at first base.
4. There is nothing wrong with my bowels. The loo is quite simply the last spot in the house where I can go and not have three children asking me something at the same time. Yes, I could finish up in three minutes like you. But then I wouldn’t get a chance to read the paper. Would I. I know going to the loo at the kids dinner and bath time is inconvenient. I’m sure it’s just a co-incidence.
5. I understand that you have been hearing the same after dinner stories for the past decade. But the rest of the guests are enjoying them as much as you used to. I could get a new stable of stories, but this would necessitate me going off for four years backpacking around the med and following a principle of free love. I think it will probably work out best if you just try not to get annoyed with the exaggeration. And please try not to correct the stories. Especially not before the punch line.
6. Me doing the same thing wrong five times over a period of seven years is not a pattern. A pattern implies a frequency of occurrence. Smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day is a pattern.
7. You cannot take the best traits of the husbands of all of the women in your book club, and mould them into something I am meant to be. Yes her husband might be financially responsible and stable, but he dances funny and wears his jeans half way between his belly button and his tits.
8. When you come back from book club and know all about the sex lives of all of the other couples in the group, and I then ask you “Shitsake, what did you tell them about our sex life?” And you say “nothing. I didn’t talk about our sex life at all” I don’t always completely believe you.
9. It is actually completely reasonable for me not to get you anything on Valentines day (yes, even not making you a hand made card) when we have specifically and jointly decided not to buy into the shallowness of valentines day.
10. Most importantly, the fact that you have a far longer, far more deep and meaningful list of things I need to work on changing, and that I could only come up with the above nine points is not a reflection on who needs to change more. It simply confirms that you have greater powers of recall. And no boundary in the world will ever change that.