Now that the new room above our garage has been completed, the real work for us has just begun. This means alot of painting, wallpapering and that sort of thing. But it also means looking through zillions of catalogues for furniture, lamps, carpet, ad infinitum. Not really my favorite activity, but that is the next step in life.

This morning we drove up to Utrecht to a couple of stores: Carpetland and IKEA. Now for me, walking through a carpet store is nothing less than pure torture. I think I would rather go to the dentist and have five cavities filled. There really isn't that much variety in carpets as far as I am concerned, except for the differing colors and thicknesses. Here we have two measurable parameters with which to combine and play around. Simple, don't you agree?

Well, Thea is a real stickler and wants to get everything just right, e.g. perfect!

"So how about this carpet sir?" and "How do you find this color?"

Thea hesitated and could not decide.

I use logic because I am a boring and predictable person. Forgetting about the price (which is much more important for Thea by the way), the new carpet had to be not too dark and not too light and not too thick and not too thin. For the price it also had to look nice, not cheap. I hate things that look cheap, even things that do not look that cheap but were cheap in the first place. The carpet has to be tough enough to withstand four wild-and-crazy kids running and/or walking back and forth for at least five years.

Thea still could not decide, but we had narrowed it down to two possibilities.

"Okay then," I said, "it will be..." I hesitated for just over three nanoseconds, but no one notices, and said with verve "...THIS one." And it was.

Thea does the general selection and filters out the number of choices down to the top two and then I have to make the final decision using logical mental dice throwing in my head.

"I am so glad you came along," Thea mentioned to me in IKEA where we were looking for a desk, lamps, couch and chairs, "because I just cannot make that final choice."

Makes me feel like a real man, I guess. So powerful, assertive and dauntless in his perseverance, don't you think?

"But..." Thea interrupted my day-dreaming about how great and wonderful I was, "are you sure that maybe we should have picked out the other one instead?" I just listened and continued on my journey through the meandering halls of IKEA, realizing that we would never know with one hundred percent certainty whether or not we had made the correct decision. Ninety per cent is also good with me.

Man and wife are meant to be together as one in order to get through life with the fewest bruises and scratches.

I am very ...