When the wife is right...

It seemed like a bad idea. It had taken us a lot of effort and quite a few months of labour to get our lawn in shape. The idea of ripping out a piece of it felt just wrong. U tried to explain to me that it wasn't that bad. You see, we did not have a clear path from our front door to our mail box. We usually walked on the lawn and I did not mind. I did not mind when the Pizza delivery guy walked on the lawn to get to our door either. So, I had my reservations against clearing out a part in front of our door to get the stepping stones. I resisted the idea because it involved more work, something that I have gotten used to not doing :) But you know how the wife is right on most things. Yes, it is true. For most part, she knows exactly what to do, where we should be investing, when we should be spending and when we should be saving. She convinced me that it was a good idea to invest in landscaping. It would look great and would increase our curb appeal (another word I hated due to HGTV). So anyway, the wife is right on most accounts and I know it. I look for stupid things like maths, science fiction and "art" movies to convince myself that I can appreciate certain things better than her. But in things that *actually* matter, I had to hand it to her.

We drove to this nursery that she found about and walked around the shrubs and trees they had there. She suggested that we plant a tree in our lawn as we could enjoy the shade later. I shot it down (another thing that I would probably regret in years to come). When we came to the stepping stones, I actually liked them. They were shaped like rounds of a pine tree and were named "Pine round stepping stones". They were also painted to look like they were actually cut from a pine tree. I was sold on the idea but they cost around 7.5$ a piece. A little on the higher end, I thought. They seemed to be about a feet or feet and a half in diameter. So I asked U, how many she thought we needed. I had already calculated in my head that we would not need more than five. She gave me the thinking sound "umm...." and said ten.

"What ?? Ten ?? I thing thats too many. Our lawn is not that long."

"Well, I think its about 20 feet, right ? So ten sounds about right"

I was about to argue back when she looked at a man who seemed to be working at the store and asked him

"We are trying to fill a 20 feet distance with these stones. We might want to place them about 6 inches away. How many stones do you think we would need ?"

The man asked questions to which she had already given him the answers

"What kind of stones do you want ? How far apart do you want to place them ? How much distance do you want to cover ?"

After checking that we were interested enough to survive his stupidity, he turned his back on us and pulled out his cell phone. He called up someone and repeated our question to him! The mathematical wizard that he called, told him that we would need ten or eleven stones. I wanted to tell my wife how this was too many and that we might not have a distance of 20 feet to cover, when she turned to me and said

"So shall we buy 10 then ? "
I had to agree. No point arguing in front of the shop owner. Later that eveni

ng, we got to work laying out the stones. The sun was shining brightly even thought it was past fi

ve. I was exhausted having spent some time on the treadmill. As I began digging, U walked

out with two glasses of lemonade with ice in them. It was perfect because I had to end up taking a break every 10 mins to sip the lemonade. By the time I was done with the lemonade, I looked back to see our stepping stones all laid out perfectly. All ten of them. I was dying to find out. So I swallowed my ego and asked

"How did you know ? How did you know we would need exactly ten ?"

I was hoping she would say she got lucky, or that she had manipulated the layout in to fitting exactly ten of them. She picked up the lemonade glasses and walked back in to the house. Not before saying

"Isn't it simple math ?"