the story of my life: jerked around by the moody genius

Most people who know us regard me as a hot-blooded, temperamental woman, a veritable shrew, married to a calm, rational man full of brains and equanimity. Oh God, are they all so wrong, so very fucking wrong. If you were to live with us day in and day out, you would come to realize that the cranky, headstrong woman is consistent and reliable, given to strong opinions but living by them in a fairly predictable way, whereas our calm, capable genius is a drama king whose moods and opinions change erratically from moment to moment.

After a decadent night of consuming over $400 worth of sake and sushi on a blind bro-date with a fellow geek, the Sober Husband felt generous towards me. For over a day, he said with kindness and largesse, "You should order whatever stove you want. Get the one of your dreams. You deserve it."

But then, after I decided to take him up on this and not even order the more expensive of my choices but instead get the significantly cheaper range with less powerful burners, he turned on me. He had a bad day at work, leading to some testy email exchanges in the evening, and he was not in a generous or happy frame of mind. The man actually informed me that I should buy something off Craigslist or eBay. I felt like pulling handfuls of my hair out. I reminded him of our very odd space and how only a few European manufacturers made ranges to fit that size and how thoroughly I had googled those ranges. "But there must be someone somewhere who bought one of those stoves and didn't keep it," he said airily.

This is so like him. He's not consistent; he won't stick to a decision. It can be maddening. It reminds me of when we were discussing marriage, and it was clear we were about to become engaged and married, but then he went to visit his Drunken Housewife-loathing mother, who yammered at him day and night about how he shouldn't marry a divorcee (despite the fact that her own husband had been divorced TWICE before she met him), asking him over and over again, "So why do you want to get married?" and barely listening to the response before she let out an "I don't think THAT is a reason to get married." And then there was the time he drove me into a deep hole of depression over financial worries sparked by an impending property tax deadline, only to have him look at me like I was an idiot a week or so later, when I said something pessimistic about money, and say blithely that he'd just written a check for the property tax, we had plenty of money, what was I talking about, silly Drunken Housewife.

In this state, with our lofty genius preoccupied with work matters and our Drunken Housewife seething over her almost-ordered-but-snatched-out-from-under-her range, we had our Big Fat Important Meeting with an orthodontist to review a proposal for putting braces on Iris. I was under the impression that, after research and a second opinion, we were prepared to get braces for Iris, but the Sober Husband was not. "Can you explain to me again the point of this?" he asked the patient orthodontist. "Why are we doing this? It's not aesthetic, is it?"

He's going to drive me to an early, stove-less grave with this will-o-the-wisp behavior.