My wife has taken on a new hobby. In addition to her gardening and stamping, she has started to make mosaics out of pottery shards. I really enjoy her creative outlets and try to encourage her whenever I get the chance. The problem is, I am reminded of a universal truth whenever I offer my advice.

I’m never right.

Maria had made a mosaic turtle out of some old pottery pieces from a friend. It looked pretty cool, especially after she filled in the cracks with mortar.

I like dhow it looked, but thought I had an idea to make it look even nicer. Even though I have no artistic talent, I thought I would suggest it.

Bad idea.

I should be used to this by now. I have seven older siblings and have been married for nearly 11 years. I can’t remember if I ever suggested something and was greeted with praise. If the idea actually was agreeable, someone else surely took credit.

I thought the turtle would look nice if Maria painted the mortar green. You know, like the color of a turtle.

Apparently, that’s unacceptable. Now I don’t want to make my wife sound mean because she didn’t shoot down my idea in a mean way. But it was obvious I should have kept my mouth shut.

I have learned that you can’t just paint the mortar with regular paint. You have to buy special mortar or special paint to mix with the regular mortar and no one would ever think of just painting the mortar.

Maybe the problem was that I didn’t get that news fast enough. You see, I’m get my news in small doses around here.

Just the other day, my wife told me a tidbit about a neighbor. Nothing juicy, just a “did you know …” kind of fact.

She learned the information more than a week before talking to another neighbor, but either held out on me or just forgot about it. I’m beginning to think she’s holding out on me because this kind of stuff happens all the time. She’ll talk to someone on the phone and tell me she didn’t learn anything new in the conversation.

A week later, she’ll spill the beans on the whole thing.

Now I don’t expect a ticker of information just like CNN or ESPN2. I don’t need constant updates throughout the day, although that would be nice.

But I also don’t need my news on a time-release like my head’s about to explode if I cram more than one piece of new information in there each day.

I guess I really shouldn’t complain that much. After 11 years of marriage, you have to have new things to talk about, so maybe rationing family and neighborhood gossip is a good thing. I do have a short-attention span.

Not so short that I have forgotten that you can’t paint over the mortar on a turtle mosaic. I’m going to remember that forever.