The difference between me and my partner and then the difference between men and women

I am typing this during a short lull at work waiting for a horrible client phone meeting to occur while my partner has just left for a ski weekend in Killington VT that she just won with her boyfriend. No, I'm not complaining, I'm happy for her. It's a great escape from St. Patricks Day since she doesn't really drink. More beer for us! So that's the difference between her and me right now.

But here's the weird thing I was reading about the difference between men and women. Apparently men speak on average about 7,000 words a day. We communicate to the world that much. But women, oh you women, you speak an average of 25,000 words a day. Three and a half times more than we do! And check around your blogs if you haven't noticed but we men are pretty rare. In fact there just me and the good ole Steve-O Tribune actively blogging on my list. The rest are gossip queens. Really, really funny and provocative gossip queens. Granted, most of you are copywriters (still a rarity to be a girl copywriter for those who don't know), but wow, we men are few and far between!

Which leads me to this evolutionarily freaky article I just read in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14preg.html) which goes into that whole "men are hunters women are gatherers" thing and elaborates to a degree I didn't think was possible. Most of us have already learned (some of us the hard way) how women are looking for everything in one man and how men are looking for one thing in every woman. And it makes sense with the whole, "we make a million a day and you get one a month" scenario. But it seems our bodies have worked this out too because women express genes in their kids to not be extremely strong and healthy when they get out so mom still has resources left over to have more kids where as dad gives the baby genes to make sure it grows as healthy as possible because dad isn't waiting for kid #2 with the same lady. So both tactics help to get more of specifically your genes out into the world and not necessarily your partners. One of the things the female genes do (if they are able to act without interference) is cause the baby to be up to 25% smaller whereas the daddy genes, when allowed to work on their own make the baby that much bigger. Dad genes also have this neat little trick where the baby can send out a hormone that clogs arteries thereby increasing the mother's blood pressure. And increased blood pressure forces more nutrients down the umbilical chord. If a baby senses it's not getting enough, it does this naturally. If a baby does this too much the mother gets pre-eclampsia which happens in about 6% of pregnancies.

So I guess if we want to truly make this planet an equal opportunity habitat we're going to have to do some gene modification. Or I should just live with the fact that my buds and I just have less to say than the lassies at the other side of the bar and leave it at that.