Don't worry, before I wrote this I extolled his virtues in a draft for Parenting.com

All right! Carping Griping Grousing Crankypants Attitude officially shrugged off. Ah! Don't we feel better?

I planned to write a photo heavy wannabe foodblogger post tonight, but someone is too busy with his new stereo receiver to upload pictures for me. And I don't upload pictures. Uploading pictures means descending into The Cave, taking the little thingy out of the camera, sliding it into the PRINTER, and figuring out what to do with the dialog box that pops up on Phillip's computer, which I try not to touch because there are, like, forty-seven different drives and I have yet to discover where the pictures actually GO. Every time I attempt to do it on my own I inevitably save the pictures in the wrong place, or I duplicate them, or I don't automatically send them to Picasa, or SOMETHING and I am LECTURED and I am not a FAN of the LECTURES.

(In addition to the Uploading Pictures Lecture, I am also not a fan of the I Can't Believe You Use That Stupid Password, Haven't You Heard Of Identity Theft, Oh Dear God You'll Be The Reason We End Up Under The Bridge Lecture.)

So! Maybe later!

And the stereo receiver thing... I swear, you'd think Phillip was waiting for Ed McMahon and the 8-foot Publisher's Clearinghouse check to arrive. The receiver is broken? Or something? I don't know. Then we got a tax refund, then we refinanced the house and the mortgage company keeps sending us refunds for things we didn't know were being refunded (which we think evens out somewhere along the line in the mortgage terms, but for now we're all HELLO FREE MONEY) and I was told a new receiver was Necessary. And since I've been all Ikea Shelf Is Necessary and New Etsy Habit Is Necessary, who was I to object?

(Although, I would like to state for the record, I will have to do a lot more Etsy shopping before I spend as much as that stupid receiver. I'm just saying.)

Oh, right, so it was supposed to be delivered today and Phillip asked me to keep an ear/eye out for the delivery guy and then EMAILED ME just to make SURE because, did you know, I need to be here to SIGN for the preshus receiver and oh, we can't let it sit on the doorstep, what if the neighborhood miscreants make off with it and OMG I WILL MAKE SURE YOUR RECEIVER IS HERE WHEN YOU GET HOME CALM DOWN.

So ALL DAY I've been listening for the doorbell and hoping I'm not putting Molly to bed when it arrives because I can't hear the doorbell on the third floor. And I never heard it. Eventually I found a spare moment to sneak downstairs sans kids and wouldn't you know there was a giant box sitting on the patio furniture? Didn't they know I was supposed to sign for it?

Anyway. This means I don't get to watch TV tonight because we are setting up the receiver. Well, Phillip is setting up the receiver, I am trying not to watch because I don't want to get into the giant Visible Cables Argument tonight. I am too tired.

Speaking of: please tell me you have this fight with your electronic gizmo-obsessed husbands too. Pretty much the entire time we've been living together, Phillip has been lobbying for Rear Speakers. Even though we 1) rarely watch movies at home and 2) certainly can't turn up the bass and volume too much because we share a wall with neighbors, Phillip assures me he will lose his will to live if he cannot affix Rear Speakers to the wall behind our couch. Of course I have been adamantly against this project from the get go, not only because of 1) and 2) but because 3) I do not want my livng room decorated in the Lined With Speaker Cables style.

The TV is on the opposite side of the room from the couch, which means the cables have to go across the floor somehow, and then UP THE WALL because of course the speakers have to be MOUNTED IN THE PROPER PLACE. Which is not Here or There but Exactly This Much Above And To The Left And Right Of The Ends Of The Couch, Allowing For Maximum Audio Happiness.

People, I am so sick of the Rear Speakers argument, and am actually beginning to believe the whole Losing His Will To Live thing, that I actually came up with a compromise. The cable can follow the baseboards in an acceptable mostly-not-noticeable way, and then go up the side of the wall, with just two or three inches showing on the living room side of the wall. I think I can deal with two or three inches.

But would you believe that Phillip did NOT instantly jump at my generosity? My willingness to find a workable solution? NO! He whined about how long the cable would have to be, and how it would be okay going up the right end of the wall but not the left and SERIOUSLY PHILLIP? REALLLY?

Oh wow, you guys, this is, like, the Tangent That Turned Into The Whole Post. Am I really making fun of Phillip and his beloved stereo equipment while he sits upstairs with our little boy who barfed in his bed AGAIN, waiting for little boy to fall asleep before he returns to the new receiver? I AM. Have now earned an entire year's worth of Wife Demerits.

Comments

[Lindsay]

I'd be annoyed with visible wires, too. It's tacky. Some is necessary, but seriously. Tacky. Also, dangerous. I cannot tell you how many times I have come close to breaking something due to the fact that I tripped over a wire that should not have been in my path. Though, admittedly, I get the wanting to have speakers behind you. You could always just tell him to sit in front of the television with his back to it so that the sound is coming from behind him. Seems like a feasible idea to me. If he starts complaining about not being able to see the movie, tell him he needs to make up his mind.

For some reason, if you suggest something highly unreasonable and yet fits the criteria to a man and then readjust to your previous stance, men seem to take more kindly to the previous stance. I don't know why this works, but it seemingly always does. Sometimes you have to stay out in left field for a while before you wander back, though, but it works at least 95% of the time.

[Carrie]

This is one reason why I'm glad that we live in a home the size of a shoebox. No place to put big fancy stereo equipment and such. So Daniel just has to live with what we have. I'm sure it'll come up if we move though.

And your point about the cost of the receiver is why I never buy my husband presents. Or rarely buy him presents. He just doesn't need or want anything that's in my budget. So he just gets permission instead to buy ridiculously expensive computers or PDAs or whatever when he wants them. Saves time on my part and money too.

Looking forward to the pictures!

[Christina]

Oh the speakers. And their wires which go every which way across the room. I could easily live with the built in speaker that came on the TV, but not Husband, oh no, that will never do. And in the basement we also have the internet wire and a few other random wires that I have no idea what they do. Thankfully Husband eventually gets around to feeding them through the walls or hiding them behind the moulding or some such thing. And I have learned to live with tiny shelves with little speakers upon them. In the basement. Not in my family room. Nope, ain't happening baby!

[morgan s]

"We" recently upgraded to a new Vizio flat screen that has excellent sound. But is it enough - oh no! Because, lucky me, Vizio HAPPENS to make a wireless surround sound speaker set SPECIALLY made just for our TV!!! My husband mentions it at least once a day. How it is For The Children and thier movies. Har dee har. I am not excited. I think he plays the TV too loudly as it is and can only imagine the booming Viagra ads I will be subjected to in SURROUND FREAKING SOUND.

[Jen]

I have lived with the wires snaking around the living room since I married crazy electronics man a long time ago. So when we built this new house, I insisted on getting the rear speakers built in. No more wires!

(Actually, you might look at an estimate on that. I'm told that it isn't that hard to run the wires through the attic/crawlspace/whatever is over the room. One of our friends wanted to do it himself in our house.)

[Redbecca]

It must be genetic. My husband suffers the same illness. Only our "too larger for the stand so they make it top heavy - blow on it and it falls over" speakers are currently mounted on slender metal poles attached to tempered glass with metal spikes sticking out of the bottom to better dig into the carpet. Our son has nearly killed himself several times with these %*&! things and in a fit of rage I finally grabbed the main culprit and stuck it behind the couch in an area where son can't get to it; glaring at husband the whole time (since I objected to the effing things since day ONE for these exact reasons and revoiced my concern multiple times), and strangely he hasn't said a WORD about the placement of said speaker since. What IS it with guys who are willing to risk the life and limb of their offspring for electronics???

[lee]

dude! 5.1 surround sound is so worth it. plus, a little paint and those cables just disappear.

i've been needing to get new speakers for eons.

[Lisa]

You'd think, with all the technology and advancements and such, that speakers would come without cables. My parents installed a surround-sound speaker thingy (well, my brother installed it, but still), and the cables had to follow the baseboards and then they stick up a foot above the couch to the wall where the speakers are mounted. How is that a pleasing look? I just don't get it. Speakers are supposed to blend in, be hidden, etc. Not that we will ever be able to afford such speakers, but still.

[Jess]

OMG Torsten wants EVERY GADGET EVER ALWAYS. Luckily he bought a bunch of them, like the projector and the digital surround sound speakers, before we met so we did not have to fight over that. But we don't exactly fight. Instead he says that he wants X or Y for nine billion dollars and then we have a Reasonable Discussion about what else we could do with nine billion dollars, and at the end he agrees that it's not the best use of our money, and then he keeps talking about how he wants it anyway and I usually end up getting it for him for the next gift-giving occasion.

[Christiana]

All of our speaker wires are mostly under the rug (we didn't mount the speakers up high, though I think he'd like to) and it's still annoying. Ah. And I have SO had those days/nights where I just need to vent about his craziness. We had a 45-minute long discussion last night about ESPN vs. Lifetime: who's show's are stupider? At least I don't mock him for watching all his crap. Whatever.

[Anonymouse]

We have the same "discussion" regarding surround sound. We are also in the middle of battle-new-receiver. Ours was stolen in the great break-in of Christmas 2008, so now we're in the market for a new one which of course must cost twice as much as insurance has paid us for the old one. If it were up to me, we'd just always listen to the tv through the tv speakers - horror of horrors!

He's got me figured out though and won't commit to a new entertainment center (fun! new! furniture!) until we get our new receiver (boring! techno! geek! stuff!), so that we can be sure that the entertainment center is deep enough for the large black box that will reside there and deny me of several pairs of cute shoes.

[Anonymouse]

P.S. Make him pull the wire through the walls and have zero exposed wire.

[Anonymouse]

And when I said wire I probably should have said cable. I actually meant - "ugly black techo-rope".

[jaimie]

You can just buy speaker stands and run the wires under the rug/couch. That's what we did-- zilch exposed wires.