Primp my bride

A comic cliché that goes back at least to the early days of Dagwood and Blondie: The husband pacing impatiently while his wife takes her good sweet time getting ready for a night on the town.

As with so many clichés, this one’s got some basis in fact. Women have much more to do to get ready, which means men end up with more time to watch the clock and get ulcers.

Proof comes from Great Britain, where a survey finds that women spend three times longer getting ready for a night out. On average, the study found, women spend an hour and a half preparing for a night out, including taking a shower, doing their hair, applying makeup and polishing nails.

Over a lifetime, this adds up to 3,276 hours (or 136 DAYS) spent on primping and preening.

“The figures come as no surprise considering the pressure that today’s women are under just to make themselves look good,” said Heather Boden of the body wash brand Skinbliss, which commissioned the research.

Women are bombarded with images from advertising and media, telling them what constitutes beauty and what products they must buy right now to reach that pinnacle. They’re made to feel that they must invest time and effort into looking their best.

Men, on the other hand, assume they look fine, even when they are covered in actual soil.

If you don’t believe this double-standard exists, try this experiment. Put any woman in front of a large mirror in a well-lit room. She immediately will examine her reflection for flaws. She will get depressed over every bump and wrinkle. She will sigh. She will decide her clothes are hopelessly out of fashion. She will decide to go shopping.

Put a man in front of the same mirror, and he’ll start flexing his biceps, saying to himself, “Looking good.” This is true whether the man is a fit young Adonis or a middle-aged bald guy with the physique of a toad.

(The British survey didn’t differentiate between single vs. married, but I’m guessing the answers were quite different. People who are “on the market” invest more time in looking and smelling their best, just in case they meet that special someone, whereas a married person can feel fully primped as long as he or she is not wearing fresh baby spit-up.)

A typical man can get ready for any occasion in the length of time it takes a woman to decide “does this purse go with these shoes?” Then the man is forced to sit around in his uncomfortable dress-up clothes, getting increasingly anxious, while the woman does her hair and her makeup and changes outfits seven times. By the time she is finally ready, the man has rumpled his clothes, consumed too many pre-party drinks and is fast asleep in front of the TV. He then must spring awake and tuck in his shirttail and smooth down the dagwoods in his hair and drive like a bat out of hell so they can reach the special occasion before all the food is gone.

Plus, the reeling, half-awake man must remember to tell the woman how beautiful she looks. If he knows what’s good for him.

Otherwise, he may find himself asking: Does this purse look good upside my head?

House abuse

A new home is the biggest investment most of us make in our lifetimes, yet we regularly let others slash its value, right under our very noses.

I'm speaking here, of course, of our children.

We wouldn't let our kids play around with our stock certificates or our banking paperwork, but we let them run amok in our houses, doing so much long-term damage, we'll be lucky to make our money back when it comes time to sell.

Yes, the children have to live somewhere. And, yes, they're our responsibility, at least for the first 18 to 27 years. And yes, they don't mean to wreck the place and diminish its resale value.
But accidents happen: Boot holes in sheetrock. Bloodstains on carpet. Ceiling fans pulled out of their fittings by "Tarzan." Exploded toilets. The occasional small fire.

Turn some kids loose in your home and it will be transformed from a domestic showplace into a scuffed, scratched, soda-saturated dump faster than you can say "Martha Stewart." And your investment will be ruined.

Such damage has been much on my mind since we moved to a nearly-new house a few years ago. Our previous homes had been battle-scarred veterans that were well past retirement age. Perfect places, really, for rearing two boys. What was another spill, another chip in the plaster? It gave the house "character."

(This fit with our evolving philosophy on furnishings as well. Before the boys were born, we liked old cabinetry and rickety tables, items picked up in antique shops. But once we had kids, our house became the Place Where Antiques Go to Die. We wised up, and started buying heavy-duty furniture, stuff that could take a beating, with upholstery that would disguise spills and other forms of "character.")

But our latest house came to us in pristine condition, which meant I became a nervous wreck.
Our sons ran through the house, wrestling and crashing and throwing things, all the while dripping chocolate ice cream on the beige carpet, and I anxiously scurried along behind them, begging them to be careful.

The boys call such rambunctious behavior "horseplay." I see it as undercutting our investment.
Look, I tell them, we won't live in this house forever. Given the vagaries of career relocations and the yo-yo real estate market, we'll eventually sell the place. If nothing else, we parents will want something smaller when they go off to college. All of us must take care of the current house so that, someday, we'll get our investment to pay off.

My sons listen carefully to these explanations, nodding along, agreeing with every word. Then they race off to the other end of the house, crashing and wrestling, juggling ice cream and setting small fires.

I try to ignore the noise, but then I'll hear a loud thud against a wall. Or the violent slamming of a cabinet door. Or the thunder of oversized sneakers and the lightning of malicious laughter. Or the startling clank of a dropped toilet seat.

(Why, oh why, must they always slam the toilet seat? Are they mad at it?)

I'm on my feet in a flash, hustling to the other end of the house to put a stop to the playful destruction. The boys will pronounce me "no fun," but they'll halt their house abuse. Then I can go back to the sofa, confident I've protected our investment. Until the next thud/crash/clank/slam.

I'll definitely need to invest in a smaller place by the time the kids go off to college. I think they call it a "padded cell."

When "almost" is enough

When my two sons were younger, I taught them to swing a bat at a plastic ball tossed underhand. When they whiffed, which was often, they would call out "Almost!"

Not "oops" or "darn" or "never again," which would have signaled frustration, but "almost."
They almost hit it, and they were ready to try again. If they missed again, so what? As long as they swung the bat, as long as they made an effort, they had almost succeeded.

I remember smiling every time they said it, and reminding myself that this was a good philosophy for any effort. Do your best, and see how it turns out. "Almost" keeps you from giving up or stomping off in anger or blaming the pitcher or the coach.

There's an optimism attached to "almost" that's missing from most other words. "Almost" means not yet, but I'm still trying.

Grown-ups use "almost," though mostly to buy time or to qualify answers when we're uncertain. What do we say when asked if we're done with a task? "Almost." How do we answer when asked if we'll meet a looming deadline? "Almost." What do we think when someone calls the boss a "perfect idiot?" We think "almost" because nobody's perfect.

Most of us know the difference between a job well done and one done well enough. That gray area in between is where "almost" lives. We all want to excel, but let's face it, the closest most of us come is "almost." Why chew your lips off trying to be the very best when "almost" is close enough for jazz?

The "almost" approach takes the pressure off. And it leaves the door open for another attempt. How often have you done all you can, working long hours and giving yourself a big fat headache, only to find that the results weren't quite what your superiors had in mind? There's no sense trying to tell them about "almost," but "almost" can be a cushion to collapse upon when you think you can't take any more.

While "almost" may lead to better mental health, it's a philosophy you're better off keeping to yourself.

Bosses don't want to hear that you "almost" did a good job. They want it all done and they want it done right, which means they want it done the way they would've done it themselves. The fact they didn't do it themselves probably means it was a dirty job to start with, but that doesn't let you off the hook.

I'm not endorsing goldbricking or lollygagging. I think you should try your best. But striving for perfection comes with a high price: Ulcers, migraines, depression, anger, impatience, spoiled relationships, the various escape hatches seemingly offered by drugs or drink or other bad habits. All because you weren't perfect, even if you "almost" made it.

We should embrace "almost." Let it soothe us. Let it ease that impatient hustle-bustle that plagues our lives. We all know we can't be perfect at every task, all the time. But if we almost make it, if we've done the best we can under the circumstances, then "almost" is probably good enough.

It's a hard lesson to learn. Americans are competitive strivers. Society demands that we go full tilt all the time, trying to get ahead, to make a buck, to outdo our co-workers. Outside of work, we struggle to have the cleanest house, the slimmest thighs, the funniest jokes, the lowest golf score.

The pressure builds as we push for perfection. The result? All the fun goes out of the tasks. It's possible to enjoy the most mundane chore if you slow down and pay attention. But we all go too fast, trying to get it over with so we can move on to the next thing. If we don't stop to smell the roses, the only odors we get are sweat and fertilizer.

I spent many years working for newspapers, where the daily grind consists of going as fast as you can without making a single mistake. These days, I'm trying to slow down, to savor the work, to stay optimistic about how it will all turn out.

Am I succeeding?

Almost.