THE WAR OF THE CAKE PANS

Its been a while since I talked much about Yvette, also known as The X-Mrs. Bulletholes.
I did not realize it had been close to a year since I last wrote of her.

Most of you that have been around for long probably have been able to infer that she and I get along pretty well as far as X's go. Actually we get along REAL well as far as X's go.
Our divorced friends kids have always asked our kids "why it is that your Mom and Dad get along" while their parents have injunctions and restraining orders and running battles that have gone on for years.
None of us really knows the answer to that, but it is something we are proud about.

Yvette and I were married for 13 years and for the first 7 we ne'er had a cross word for each other.
The first fight we had was over Wallpaper. We had differing opinions on where it should be cut.
I cut it where I was sure it should be cut, against her advice, and
BIG SURPRISE
she had been right all along.
Do not do wall paper with your love, it can only lead to disaster.

The second fight was what is now referred to as "The War of the Cake Pans".
We had moved into my mothers house after she died and discovered that we now had 3 times as many of everything more than anyone would ever need.
If that sentence is hard to read, you should try to live it.
We had 3 Washers and 3 Driers.
We had 4 and a half Refrigerators.
We had 14 years worth of phone books.
The combined households yeilded the equivalent of 8 jumbo large junk drawers.
The year was 1987 and we had coupons from 1972.
There was a can of Dietic Pie filling that I remember Mom buying at Krogers in 1966.
We had two Rotary Dial and 6 Push Button telephones.
We had a path that led through the boxes and appliances from the garage door to the patio and into the house. Once in the house the path split in two, through and past more boxes and furniture (we had 4 Couches, 5 EZBoy Recliners, 6 cocktail tables, you get the picture) towards either the kitchen or the Bedroom. We were 1 couple, with three bedrooms and 5 beds.
My god, we had two Pianos.
The Living Room had a single path through it as well
My regret to this day is that we did not take pictures.

While clearing the Kitchen one day, I found that we had 11 Cake pans. I threw 6 away, the 6 that were , in my opinion , pretty beat up.
Of course they were not in the trash more than a moment before Yvette materializes in the Kitchen.
"What are you doing" she asks.
"Just trying to clear enough room to set up one of our 4 toasters"
"What are these?' and she rescues 6 beat-up cake pans from the trash.
"Oh, those are trash" I responded "we have five more" and open a cabinet to show her 5 shiny cake pans.
"No they aren't" she says "I want to keep them."

Do I need to tell you that it went downhill from there?
See, for all those years of getting along, we had never learned something that is terribly important.
We never learned how to argue.
Especially me.
The way I resolved it was to drop a cake pan to the ground and step on it.
She would start to argue, and I would drop another to the ground and step on it.
She tried to grab the pans out of my hand, and I dropped TWO to the ground and stepped on them both.

For all this and more, I am truly sorry.

Kissyface wrote a pretty post a few days ago that reminded me of the only argument I can remember that really seemed to go well.

We had been arguing over... hell...I don't remember what it was about, but it was obvious I wasn't going to win.
I told her
"I can't do any good here...I'm going to go lay down in the middle of the road and hope a car runs me over"
and I stormed out the front door and lay myself down in the middle of the road.
It was nighttime.
After a moment she stuck her head out the door and asked
"What, no traffic tonight?"
'None" I said "Just my luck"
as though I really wanted to be run over.
'That's OK" She says "I'll call you up a couple taxicabs for down the street"
We laughed and I went back inside.
I think that was the argument I came closest to winning.