Debra Pickett

I spent three hours yesterday basically picking things up and moving them from one place (the floor) to another (the closet, washing machine, dishwasher, garbage can, etc.).

My husband watched this process with a certain bemusement, like the things I was doing were somehow mysterious or unknowable. He is, like most enlightened dudes, perfectly willing to help, if asked. But I hate asking because it implies, somehow, that these are my tasks to assign. And, anyway, he has mastered the male arts of procrastination (he'll take the garbage out, but only on some super-secret time schedule that I have resolved never to question, lest I become a nag) and limited competence ("Where does this go?" = "I really don't want to put this away.")

Meanwhile, as I straightened and futzed, he took a series of very grown-up sounding phone calls that included words like, "mutualize" and "cost of capital."

It made me wonder about the way our brains work. Specifically, it occured to me that marriage might actually be diminishing my IQ or at least altering my thinking patterns somehow to make me care more about whether the laundry is done and less about what the currency markets are doing.

(OK, admittedly, I never did care a whole lot about the currency markets. But still.)