Please hang up and try your call again

Dear Donkey: My wife hangs up on me in the middle of a discussion when things start heating up. This has been going on for some time. I told her that it bothers me but she continues to do it. What should I do? - Phone Troubles

He says: Give her a taste of her own medicine

At some point most men have dated or have married someone who is what I term a Phone Hag or P-Hag. This is the type of person who gets offended and hangs up when you are in mid-sentence. This actually just happened to me last week. Here are a few approaches that I have used with varying levels of success:

1. Call back and simply say, “Thanks for answering. Obviously you have graduated from 3^rd grade and progressed to 4^th grade. Nice work!”
2. Call back and say, “I’m so sorry. Your phone dropped me. Obviously you have a bad connection. You better fix that.”
3. Call back and utilize some of the skills you picked up at your Crucial Conversations class by saying, “It’s clear you have moved to silence by using the withdrawing technique. Excellent work! I really feel like you have mastered that skill. Now you have both the attacking and withdrawing skills under your belt.”
4. Don’t call back. Wait until she contacts you. It can be via an email, instant message, or phone call. Once she contacts you, begin to respond and then end your thought in mid-sentence and see how well that goes.

Those are my thoughts. Do any readers have other suggestions? What has worked for you? I think number 4 works best because women really respond well to

The Wife: Are you going to bring the kids when you come see me in my triathlon this weekend?

Donkey: Oh.  Am I supposed to go to that?

The Wife: Um.  Well, I thought you and the kids could come cheer.  Maybe you could bring signs to hold up or something.

Donkey: Okay.  If you make the signs they can hold them up.

The Wife: Thank you for your support.

Any other features we need to consider?

All of us husbands can do a better job by showing appreciation for our wives. But did you know you can appreciate your wife through depreciation? This is a crazy concept, but I think I figured it out. Let me explain what I learned at a recent accounting seminar and how it helps demonstrate how much you might appreciate your wife.

At this conference we discussed the fact that companies have to depreciate some of their assets over what’s termed the useful life. For example, a company might purchase a large machine used to manufacture a product. Several numbers are needed to figure out how much to depreciate this machine on a yearly basis. Here are the needed numbers:

• $100,000 initial cost
• $10,000 installation
• $5,000 salvage value (amount the machine can be sold after its useful life is over)
• Useful life of 10 years

In the above example, the company would depreciate the machine $10,500 each year until the 10^th year. [Equation: (($100k + $10k -$5k) / 10 years)] At that point it could be sold for the estimated amount of $5,000. Another fact about accounting is that companies don’t record the value of their employees on their books even though human capital is probably the most valuable thing a company owns.

In honor of my accounting class and wives everywhere, I decided to provide a way for husbands out there to estimate the value of the typical wife and then how to depreciate her on the balance sheet used for the household. (The instructor strongly suggests that families manage finances similar to the way businesses do.) The numbers you need are provided below:

• $936,000 initial cost – I first tried to calculate the cost of acquiring a wife. These costs included attracting the wife (dating, wedding, ring, etc), training the wife (mistakes made learning to cook, clean, do the laundry, take care of you and your kids, etc.), and maintaining the wife (clothing, phone bills, additional gas spent on wrong turns, gossip magazines, etc.). This proved too difficult, so I figured out how much it would cost to employ a wife. I determined I could hire a wife for $15/hr** and would have her work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. This would continue for 20 years. At that point her useful life would end, and I would need to work with what’s left or trade in for a new one.
• -$500,000 salvage value – That’s right, this is a negative number. This is somewhat normal in business. For example, a company may want to dispose of a nuclear facility, but there will be millions of dollars of clean up to remove nuclear waste. The result is a loss. If you decide to part with your wife at the end of her useful life, you will not receive any money. In fact, you will likely incur quite an expense.
• Useful life of 20 years – It seems to me that a wife can handle her husband and her kids for 20 years. That should be enough time to get the kids out of the house and on their own.

With this information we discover that the typical wife should depreciated $71,800 each year. That’s quite an amount! I hope this exercise taught you two things: 1) You can determine the value of a person; 2) The wife is a valuable asset and should be recognized in your financial documentation. With this newly accounted for asset, I believe you might be able to secure a larger loan for your next house since your net worth will be higher.

**I determined $15/hr based on the $5/hr I pay my babysitter and the $10/hr I paid a lady to clean my house once. If you disagree with this number, simply change the amount and run the calculation again.

Question:

If you had to pick, would you choose a woman with a moderate amount of facial hair (not peach fuzz, I’m talking whiskers) or would you choose a woman with a noticeable snaggletooth (think Jewel/Kirsten Dunst)?

[Women, feel free to share your experiences if you are currently advertising or have previously advertised one of these fine offers.]

We were at work the other day doing what’s most important: flipping through a business magazine and rating the models in the ads. We came across a picture of a mature woman (50+), and I asked if people thought she was pretty. It seemed like a simple question but people got really into it and asked, “Do you mean her looks or am I attracted to her or her style?” I told them to rate her on a scale from 1-10. This didn’t satisfy them because we quickly realized we all had different methods of judging a person’s looks.

I provided my perspective and the group seemed somewhat intrigued with my methodology and asked me to document my process. It’s a well known fact that when we were first married I rated my wife a 6, but let me help you understand how I determined this score. (NOTE: I am only evaluating looks – this does not take into consideration the much more important things such as intelligence, cooking ability, and potential inheritance.)

First, you need to identify the criteria you want to evaluate and then assign a weighting to each criterion (the total has to equal 100 or 1.0 if you are thinking in percentages). Then, you assign a rating from 0-10. Next, multiply the weighting and the rating. Finally, add up your numbers to determine the overall rating. Below is the grid I used for my wife. To be fair, I included my own score. You now understand how I came up with my wife’s rating and see that my wife and I are indeed compatible as fellow 6s.

This highlights the fact that a low rating in an important area can really hurt the overall score and that a high or low score in an unimportant area really doesn’t help or hurt. I mean, who cares what a woman’s ears look like? It doesn’t matter to me because she can cover them with hair. (NOTE: A major flaw like a missing ear could require a penalty or deduction. I haven’t figured out the deduction part yet, but I’d say at least a point for each missing ear.)

In our minds we quickly use some sort of scale to process the different people we see each day, and we provide a rating whether or not we readily admit it. Normally once you’re married this practice is done far less and you typically only notice the extremes: the nasty or the beautiful. I must admit that I find myself rating guys these days more than women, but I’m not sure if that means anything. I am way more prone to notice a beefcake working on biceps as opposed to a hottie on the treadmill.

So what features would you include? How can I enhance this scoring system?

Having hair is the bane of my existence. I hate having hair because I have to shower regularly, I have to pay to get it cut, and it makes me itchy. I recently shaved my head again since it is starting to get warmer and I love it. I try to push head-shaving on everyone. Unfortunately I discovered last week that there are bounds on who I can push my agenda on.

Lesson 30: Don’t shave your kid’s head unless you get approval from your wife

My wife was at the gym the other morning, and I was laying in bed when my kids jumped on me. I noticed how long their hair was and remembered that my wife tasked me with getting them haircuts that day. Several of my kids have heads that are not conducive to a bald look, but my two-year-old (Dimples) has a pretty good shaped head. An impulse went through my mind and I tried to suppress it, but I was taken over by the desire to recruit a fellow skinhead. I grabbed the clippers and began shaving my son’s head. I developed a justification just in case my wife got mad when she saw what I did. I would say, “It was all an accident. I was just trying to practice giving him a haircut and things didn’t go well, so I was forced to shave his head.”

You should be able to fill in the blanks from there based on the fact that you are reading this. Anger, frustration, and sadness are just some of the emotions that my wife experienced when she saw his hair. I provided my justification and explained that we would now be saving $5 a month since my son no longer needed a haircut. These points were disregarded by my wife and I spent the next few hours on the hot seat.

My suggestion: If you really want to shave your kids head, but don’t want to take the blame, do this: Bring your kid to the haircutters. Stand next to the barber as he cuts your kid’s hair. Pretend that you are pointing to a spot on your kid’s head and “accidentally” bump the barber’s hand as he is making a crucial cut or shave. The barber will be forced to shave the rest of the head and you can place the blame on someone else when you report back to your wife.

June 18 -Last Day Of School

I can’t beleave school is finally over! We had 4 or 5 make up days since school got closed after Mr. Swartzendruber’s cow died in the classroom. They had to saw the beast up to get him out and it took days to scrub the blood off the wood floor and get the stink out. Mrs. Brenneman wouldn’t let us out until we all proved we could count to 20 and tell the diffrunce between d and b. I was so mad cause Jed kept sayin seventy-teen insted of seventeen. I guess that’s what happens when you and all your kin are in the same grade.

Ezekiel got to ring the bell and then we all ran out to the Stutzma’s store for sum horehound candy. Then me and Ezekiel went to his house and he rode me in the wheelbarrow all around the farm. It sure was fun. I got to look into his blue eyes. It reminded me of the water in grandma’s well.

One of my favorite artists is Weird Al Yankovic. I own all of his albums, have been to many concerts, and have been a member of his fan club since the early 90s. He has so many songs that I like, but his recent single really strikes a chord with me, in terms of how I feel about my wife.  It’s called Whatever You Like, and  is a parody of T.I.’s #1 hit (also entitled Whatever You Like).

There isn’t a video yet, but here’s the audio:

My sister and her husband heard the song and said they could imagine me singing this to my wife. Here are a few of the lines that could be applied to our marriage:

• And we can clip coupons all night
• Take you out for dinner, anywhere that you please, Like Burger King or Mickey Ds. I said you can even have the large fry
• At Wal-mart she can pick out anything she want
• Do you think you could chip in for gas?
• Mac and Cheese would be all right
• It’s all about the Washingtons, that’s right
• Thrift store jeans on sale half-price

While I have never been one to serenade my wife, this may be a good time for me to start.  I think she’ll really like it.  In fact, I should probably start working on a playlist for her of Weird Al’s most romantic songs… How can I go wrong?