A stitch in time

I consider myself a relatively reasonable person, but I've come to notice I have a tendency to get ticked off about something and assault Chad the second he walks in the door from work. My tirades are usually about the dog, I admit, but sometimes about our house (messy), our spending (too high), my job (stressful!) or our dinner (too late). The good news is that apparently I'm not alone -- other people do this, too!

Of course, I didn't really pay attention to all of this until I was reading something about Dr. Phil's "four-minute rule." The first four minutes of your conversation set the tone for the rest of the evening, he says--which is so true--and how you act in those four minutes can literally be the benchmark for the rest of your night. (For those of you who think I'm being sexist, this absolutely positively goes both ways!) Still, I've been really making a mental note on this for the last few weeks and I've started to notice how much of a difference it's made.

So when I came home from work tonight and saw that Lucy had taken a roll of toilet paper out of the bathroom and made a nest with it, just like last week, because we had forgotten to shut the door -- again -- I waited until Chad had been home for 4 minutes and 1 second to point it out. And even then I was nice about it. But it was still his turn to clean it up.