Foot Down. Kind Of.

The first thing you should know is never start a home DIY project with your type A Army Officer husband. He will make you ill. He will make you want to pull all your hair out. I don't know why I decided that this was the project I needed to put my foot down on, but it was. The annoying thing about being a follower is that there are times when you're done with doing things someone else's way and people look at you all crazy-like when you stand up and start asserting YOUR WAY. It all started Saturday with an easy albeit tedious job of ripping down old wallpaper. He got to the bottom layer which wasn't coming off all that great and it was covered in POODLES. I'll let that image sink in for a moment... And he just decides well, this isn't going to work. It can't be done. We were going to paint and he starts telling me that we would have to buy all new sheet rock and yada yada yada. I was like, oh...bummer. Off to Lowe's he goes and when he returns he has wood plank thingys in his hands. He wants to cover my delightful blue boys' bathroom in paneling!? I wasn't picturing it. I couldn't wrap my head around where the wood and tile would meet. I was thinking it was going to stick off the wall so much that it would look ridiculous and I didn't think he was thinking ahead. Plus, hello? THIS was turning into a fiasco. We've gotta go buy a table saw now. The expenses (right before Christmas) were piling up.

I went to bed that night thinking 'ehh, he can do whatever he wants', but when I woke up the next morning my feelings started to shift. I got up early with the baby, as I always do, while my dear husband rested his darling little head on his pillow until 11am. I can't tell you how much it made me mad. First of all, he promised we would go to church because he knew I really really wanted to continue our search in finding a church home here. Well, he didn't get up and in hindsight I should have just gone without him because I sat around for much of the morning trying to clean the kitchen but mostly just stewing about how nice it must be to be a man and get to sleep in whenever you dang well please. AHEM. Anyway, I used this time wisely, of course. I accessed Mr. Google and searched for what to do if you had a wallpaper issue such as ours where the wall hadn't been primed beforehand. All these solutions popped up and so I went to the bathroom and started trying to rip it down and what do you know? It was coming off. Slowly but surely. Then I realized- aha! It's not that it can't be done. It's that he doesn't want to do it. I felt lied to. That made me mad since I was up and at em and he was still in bed so I just decided I was doing it myself. I went to Lowes and got some supplies I would need and came home to get back to work. J was up shortly after, annoyed with me that I was overriding his idea.

"I don't care", I told him. "I'm not asking anything from you. I'll do it myself." Flashbacks of my college career floated through my mind. I used to despise group projects because I rarely trusted anyone to delegate and accomplish the task at hand so I eagerly would volunteer for most of the work. I thought for just a second that maybe I was being unreasonable, but nah...

I went out for a run to clear my head. Finally, he was awake so I was handing all kid responsibilities over. Running helps to lift my mental fogs. When I came back, I was like just do it. Do whatever you want. I don't care one way or the other. I know my husband. He's a control freak, yes but he's also good at being in control. He successfully managed an entire volatile area of Iraq for a year- he is capable of good decisions. I had warned him about rushing to failure and I knew he had thought a lot about this project so if that's what he wanted to do then well go for it. I was tired. I'd been up since 6am.

So, we're going for it. His way, of course. I don't mind. It might actually look good after we paint. I would never tell him that, though. Ha! I see it now- the crazy, pregnancy hormones. They're surging through me. I was being crazy. I was mad. I was sad. I was indifferent. Then, I was those things all over again. I fear it might be a long nine months for my dear husband, but -ya know- he asked for it!

Do you and your spouse have similar or opposite leadership styles?