Colorful Disagreement

I don’t really like it when my husband is right. In fact, I kind of hate it. This makes absolutely no sense. I realize this. 

It makes no sense because I chose my husband. I decided it was a good idea to spend my life with him and make babies with him. Obviously I think he has a pretty good brain in his skull. Why then do I not like someone to be right whom I picked specifically because of how he thinks and makes decisions? Got me. I just live here. 

But, there you have it. I picked someone smart and now fervently resist his logical suggestions. Welcome to marriage. 

When I first got my kiln in 2005 and started firing large amounts of work at one shot, I started whining about glazing almost immediately. It is a very tedious and time consuming process that I have never particularly enjoyed. 

My husband, who is a practical man, had a suggestion: If you don’t like the process of coming up with different glaze designs for all of your pieces, why not just do the entire kiln load the same way? I was horrified at the very notion. 

What happens in the kiln is part magic and is therefore somewhat unpredictable. If I did something to all of my pots that didn’t turn out, I would have a huge amount of ruined work. Oh, the wasted time! The agony of all of those precious pieces turning ugly! The thought was terrifying. Plus, where’s the fun in doing everything the same? What am I, a machine?

Well then, he reasoned, why not take it down to just a couple of colors, three max, so you won’t have so many choices to bog you down? Appalling. Just like a man to want to take away my choices. He’s not even a potter. What does he know?

And so it went for seven years. Then I started obsessing about minimalism and now I’m really trying to embrace simplicity in all things... 

Painful is the only way I can describe what it felt like to realize (and admit) that his simple solution: *less colors = less hassle = more enjoyable glazing experience* was the perfect solution for me. 

Fortunately, though, I’m right about everything else.