My wife can be a prickly pear, especially now that she hit menopause. No one knows Jill or loves her like I do, so when she gets grouchy my favorite thing to do is mess with her. She calls it “poking the bear” and advises me against it, but I just cannot resist pushing her buttons. Then she gets mad and yells at me a little bit, which makes me laugh all the harder, and eventually we go back to normal. You have to find little ways to enjoy married life! Recently I had our junky old thermostat replaced with a sleek, fancy new model, and I intentionally withheld information about it from Jill. Obviously she saw that we had a new thermostat, of course, but she didn’t know how advanced it was, and the other capabilities it had. That first night as we sat on the couch I used the app on my phone to turn off the air conditioning. I can access the thermostat anywhere that has wifi, and make any adjustments I want. I pretended not to notice as the room warmed up, until Jill went to check the thermostat and turn it back on. As soon as she sat down I switched it over from AC to heating, and pretended not to notice the heat! Jill thought the thermostat was defective, and got pretty angry about it. Eventually she asked why I was laughing so much, but I just said it was because she was so angry at the thermostat. I didn’t tell her for a whole week!
