Anyone who has been married as long as I have can certainly relate to what I am about to say. It really makes little difference how long you have been married, there are always going to be daily challenges to your relationship. You may think you know how she thinks and she may think she knows how you think, but in realty it fluctuates on an ongoing basis from day to day. After all is said and done, you may never get through a lifetime of marriage totally understanding one another. It really boils down to the simple things in our individual daily lives.

For example, I like cheeses. Old cheeses, the older they are the better they are. I’d been saving three for several months and went to grab a bite yesterday with a couple of crackers and what do I find’ They’ re gone. All my cheeses have been moved (I think someone wrote a book about this) and I can’t find them. I ask my wife what happened and she tells me she cleaned out the refrigerator and threw those old things away, they were getting old. No kidding. So is the wine.

I try to explain that I like old cheese and she shrugs and says she has no excuse; they didn’t look good to her so she tossed them. So much for that. I wonder if they make a zip lock bag with a combination lock on it’ Probably not. I’ve mentioned before that men view the ‘sell by’date on the milk to be just that’ the day they want the milk to be sold’ not the date it goes bad. I’ve kept milk in my refrigerator for weeks at a time when I was single and as long as it came out as a liquid I thought it was ok. When it clumped up, then you had to make a management decision as to what to do about it.

This reminds me of an old friend of mine whose wife washed his collection of baseballs that had been signed. She thought they would look better if they were cleaner. Obviously he was not pleased.

These kinds of issues never come up before you get married; you just never get to the point where you discuss anyone’s philosophy on cheese or collectables. I suppose you are too busy discussing other items with higher priorities. At least this was the case when we got married nearly forty years ago. We were concerned over where to live, how to make a living and so forth.

As I’ve said before, my youngest son is getting married in a few weeks. His wife to be is living with us until she moves into their apartment. I have overheard several rather pointed discussions over ‘ his’stuff. His racquetball stuff, scuba, skiing, bowling, fishing, weights, bicycle, and his model car collection. Where is all of this stuff going and do you really need it’

Of course he answers in the affirmative since he has had all of these things for any number of years and doesn’t want to part with them at this time. She wants to give up the rented storeroom and he thinks they should keep it for a while longer. I tend to stay out of these conversations. There is no winning or correct answer. Let them figure it out for themselves, I can’t offer advice on this one.

I suppose the battle of the sexes continues until the day you die. I have tee shirts that I treasure and if I’ m not careful I will find them being used to polish the furniture. On the other hand my wife (God love her) has every birthday card, Mothers day card she has ever received from anyone in boxes carefully hidden away under the bed in the guest bedroom. The box weighs 200 pounds. Me’ I throw them out as soon as I get them. Read one get well card, you’ve read them all. What’s to keep’

As I’ve written in the past, the household habits of domestic living have probably caused the invention and creation of things which we cannot live without. I suspect that some caveman got tired of dragging all of that dinosaur bone furniture from cave to cave and the wheel was invented as a result. I’d bet cheeses were kept longer in those days if I had to guess.