How Long Will This Be Going On?

“Kellie, how long until you’ll be ready to go?” I inquired.

“I just have to brush my teeth, get dressed, and put on some makeup,” she replied.

I clenched my teeth and counted to ten.  I’ve lost count of the number times that I’ve asked Kellie a simple question, often requiring a minimal but meaningful answer, such as yes or no, or “I’ll be ready in five minutes, dear,” only to get some useless, non responsive reply that requires me to be clairvoyant to figure out what she’s trying to tell me. Even if I could see inside Kellie’s mind, I would never venture a look.  Who knows what could happen to me? Medusa might reside there.

A woman could probably construct a time estimate from Kellie’s response to my question, but I certainly can’t.  I can come up with a reasonable projection of the time it will take her to brush her teeth: two to three minutes at the most, but things get very tricky when trying to guess how long it will take her to get dressed. Sometime it takes her less than minute, but I’ve also seen her work at it for an hour and still be standing in the closet naked with a pile of rejected ensembles strewn about her feet. Estimating the makeup routine is a complete crapshoot because I never know if she’s talking about a little touch up work or if she’s planning to sandblast down to base metal and then repaint with primer, color, and clear-coat.

Forgetting common sense, I snap back at her. “Did I ask for list of what you needed to do? I just wanted to know how long you were going to take to get ready.” Sometimes I wonder why I wasn’t built with a seven-second time delay between what I’m thinking and what I say. It would keep me from unnecessarily antagonizing the beast. 

“Really?” she replied.  Her rising intonation told me that her one word response was a question, and the look on her face told me it was rhetorical. “Are you done have sex this vacation?” she continued. That was another rhetorical question, two in row now, and a clear sign that I was heading into danger. I sat down and shut my mouth to wait for her.