Last week was a crazy busy week.  Thursday night I should have worked, or I should have worked on my book, or I should have worked on this blog.  I didn’t do any of those things.  I sat down and thought through my options and consciously said, “Screw it.  I am tired.  I am watching TV.”  I sat my butt down on the couch and tuned out.  I didn’t knit.  I just sat there like a big lump and did nothing.  I felt a bit guilty, but I consciously made my decision to shirk responsibility for a night.

My husband got home, walked in the door and said, “Wow, remember Monday when our house was clean?”  Dagger through the heart.  See, I’d gone through my list of things I thought I should be doing and chose TV.  I did not go through the list of things others thought I would do.  That’s when I realized my major life frustration right now.

“Ugh, do you know what I hate about our life right now?” I asked.  “There is no fun without repercussion.”

My husband looked at me and said, “I think that’s the wrong word. I think you mean consequence.”

(We have an ongoing fight at our house about who has a better vocabulary.  Mine is better, in case you were wondering.)

Then he went on, “You know repercussion is like percussion.  What does that have to do with what you are talking about?”

I rolled my eyes because my mechanical engineer of a husband should not feign expertise in word derivation.

Cue the English teacher.  I called my mom the next morning and told her about the fight.  Then I asked, “So is it no fun without repercussion, no fun without consequence, or no fun without ramification?”  I’d added the last word to the list during my nightly musing on the argument.

Cue the dictionary.  Not the Google one, or the online one, but the big heavy red one that sits next to my laptop.  Mom got hers too.  Here is what we decided:

• Repercussion – there are unintended results to what you did
• Consequence – can be good or bad, and you pretty much know what’s going to happen
• Ramification – a derived effect of an action

So, mom and I decided I was right with my original thought.  I don’t like the fact that every time I have fun there are unexpected negative consequences, and that equals repercussion.  Before my husband showed up and yelled about the messy house I just had consequences.  Had I been reprimanded at work the next morning for not doing something Thursday night that would have been a ramification.  Glad we got that settled.

Cue the husband again.  I explained to him our research, our logic, and our conclusion and he just looked at me like he couldn’t give a crap about the exact nature of my current frustration.  That, my friends, is why I have a better vocabulary than he does.  Because I care about the right word enough to hypothesize, research, and prove my case and he does not.  I win.

Cue the raspberry noise!  Phlbbttt!