I'll huff and puff and blow your dog house down

The insulated dog house is a floor right now. It's not a terrible thing because this winter has been warm and Rex has three-sided shelter and so adding an insulated floor is a good thing. Getting just that much done was tough though.

My friend and I argued, not light fight argued but you know  I was like, "I think we should do it this way."

"Well, I was thinking we should do it this way," she said.
Back and forth we went for about three hours, whereupon I reached my threshold for behaving like a woman....so I punched her. Just kidding.

To understand what I mean, let me illustrate something about how gender influences how we communicate. So, psychologists do experiments but they also do observations. A famous experiment plus observation is putting a little kid in a room with candy. The adult then leaves the room after promising more candy if the child does not eat the candy until the adult returns. The adult then goes out and times how long until said child to loses impulse control.  Generally speaking, the younger the child, the faster the candy is eaten. Now that I've told you about that study, let me tell you about another study of playground behavior.

In observing boys and girls on the playground it has been found that there is a significant gender difference in how children play. When a group of girls want to play a game, the game doesn't start until everyone has agreed upon the rules of the game. If a misunderstanding happens during the game, the girls will stop and not continue play until all members of the group agree. If a member's feelings are hurt, the group does not continue the game until girl is okay.

Boys on the other hand quickly discuss the rules, then set about finding loopholes, pause the game to argue about cheating, allow rules to be altered during the game. If the game does stop, it's because the disagreement has escalated. A fight may or may not break out, but the overall effect is that boys return to the game, as quickly as possible. Agreement is not necessary, but rather a general acceptance that the solution is good enough for now.

Learning this in college was an epiphany moment for me because I tend communicate more like men do than women. My feelings don't get hurt if someone does agree with me and we don't have to agree to move on. So, after three hours, I told me friend I didn't care, I just wanted to cut some wood.

This was followed by, "what size do you want me to cut?"

Well, we've had more serious bickering over building a fire than this so she rolled with it and started the calculations. Then she got a call from family so I told her I'd figure out what size to cut. I figured she'd be gone a while and I'd have the frame finished by the time she got back. She's been known to abandon me at the farm for hours while she goes to pour soap or make cosmetics for her business.

However, I knew she was reticent to leave me to my devices when she was back by the time I moved Rex so I could get in his dog house and cut two pieces of wood.

We were both amused by this and she thought my cut was too short so we cut again, she doing the calculations me doing the cuts. Soon we had a rectangle but there was one problem. We didn't have enough nails the right size. Off we raced to the woodshop where the guy who sold us our chainsaw... no, not that. I don't remember. He sold us something kind of big so he was like happy to see us and even happier when instead of a hammer and nails, we bought to nail tuckers and an air compressor.

A girl needs her nail tuckers, what can I say.

Anyway, my point is that sometimes instead of trying to figure where you're going before you start, sometimes you have to start to figure out where you're going. Sometimes you just have to cut some wood.