Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

I’d Like What You’re Smoking, Please

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Dear Anyone Who Wants To Hire Me As A Spanish Tutor,

If you call me at 8:00 PM on Saturday night to ask me to tutor your child, and then mention that their exam is on Wednesday, and that they’ve been having a really hard time all semester, and that they “had a bad teacher” last year, and so are basically asking me to catch your child up on a year and a half of Spanish in THREE DAYS, then don’t get pissy when I tell you that it’s impossible and that there’s nothing I can do.

BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING I CAN DO.

Oh and also-the fact that I specifically told you that I wouldn’t lie to you and take your money for something I couldn’t do?

Yeah-you’re welcome.

The Firstborns

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Now that we have been married for thirteen years, my husband and I have gotten pretty good at working out the different roles in our relationship. Some things I’m in charge of, some things he’s in charge of, and some things we do together. It’s pretty balanced and comfortable.

But sometimes one of us gets a little funky in some area, and the other person has to step in and have a little “come-to-Jesus” meeting with the other person.

Case in point-my husband and his relationship to our rechargeable batteries. A few years ago we started buying rechargeable batteries since we both are so enamored of electrical gadgets. But lately, for  like, oh, the last year or so, the batteries have stopped holding their charge. So we’ve been having a lot of conversations like this:

Me: “So, the rechargeable batteries are losing their charge.”

My husband: “No they’re not.”

Me: “Yes, they are. Seriously-I put them in the camera, and I can take like two pictures, and then I have to replace them again.

My husband: “The batteries are fine. They work just fine for me.”

Seriously, it’s like one of those relationships where a girl is dating some scummy, lowlife guy who beats her, but she keeps on making up all these justifications for why she’s not leaving him:

“Oh, he didn’t mean it.”

“Oh, I know he loves me.”

“But I can change him.”

So last Friday  my husband got home from a business trip, and when he tried to work on his computer he saw that he needed new batteries in his mouse. And I am not kidding, he walked back and forth in front of me from the kitchen to his office THREE TIMES in the space of five minutes because, guess what? NONE OF THE BATTERIES WORKED! And as he passed me by his face dared me to say anything, which I didn’t have to, because the smug grin on my face said it all for me in that it was loudly broadcasting the message of, “SEE-I TOLD YOU SO!”

But even then he refused to admit defeat, continuing his attempts to manufacture tiny threads of hope that he could hold onto, so I had to stage an intervention.

“We are going to Fry’s this weekend, and we are buying new batteries AND a new charger!” I proclaimed.

“Oh we are, are we?” retorted my husband. But in his heart he knew that we were, because I almost never put my foot down like that, which means that when I do, he listens.

So we went, and he was all resistant and rejecting everything they sold, and I was like, “Dude-IT’S JUST BATTERIES! And we can get a charger AND a set of batteries for under twenty dollars. I don’t understand what the problem is here.”

He really didn’t have a good answer to that question, so I prevailed and we made our purchase. And so now we have two chargers plugged in in the kitchen, because apparently you can force my husband to go to the electronics store and buy new batteries, but you can’t make him use them. So now he makes a point of only using old batteries from the old charger as if to say, “I know Jenny has abandoned you, but I never will.”

It’s like these shoes he had back when we first got married. He had this pair of Docksiders which he loved, with a deep and abiding passion. Which was just fine, until the day I noticed that every time he wore them, he bled. His beloved shoes were MAIMING him, but he absolutely refused to admit what was going on.

Me: “You can’t wear those shoes anymore, because they are causing you to bleed.”

My husband: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. These shoes are just fine.”

Me: “There is blood flowing from your heels even as we speak. THEY ARE NOT FINE.”

My husband: “There is nothing wrong with these shoes. They are the best shoes ever. Go away!”

So somehow I managed to get him to throw them away, but to this day he still mourns their loss, and blames me for ruining their perfect relationship. Which I guess is just an example of tough love, when you have to step in and be the bad guy to keep a loved one from getting hurt.

And so I know that to be fair, I should include some stories now about how I am all unreasonable and in denial about things, but truly, around here it’s pretty much like, “Oh, Jenny’s being crazy again? It must be Monday. Or Tuesday. Or a day  ending in “-day”.” (See: The Having Of Fibromyalgia, And My Denial Thereof, In That I Am Not Really Sick).

But I can tell you about an area in our marriage where my husband and I are The Most Stubborn Human Beings Who Have Ever Lived.

When I was in high school my mom bought me an all-new set of bed linens, to replace the set I’d had almost since I began to sleep in a big-girl bed. The set was PEACH, to match the PEACH flowers on my wallpaper, and included a PEACH blanket. To go with all the PEACH in my PEACH room.

Well the blanket came with me when we got married, and for some reason my husband insists on referring to my CLEARLY PEACH blanket as “the pink blanket.”

For thirteen years now we’ve been having this debate, with neither side budging an inch. It’s gotten to the point now where one evening, when I was very sick and needed a blanket, I refused to ask my husband for help. Because if I asked him for the peach blanket, there was a chance he would refuse to bring it to me. And if I referred to it as the pink blanket, then he might think that he had “won”. Because we are dorks, and also, being firstborns, “I AM RIGHT. AND YOU ARE WRONG. WHY CAN’T YOU SEE THIS?!”

Don’t you wish you lived here too?

You Say Po-TAY-to, I Say Po-TAH-to

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For the past week or so, the weather here in Georgia has been cloudy, overcast, and menacing, and has slowly been sucking away all my joy and will to live. So I have been ECSTATIC since yesterday at the long-awaited return of the sun.

I just assumed that my husband would be as excited as I am about the sunny weather, but I was rudely disabused of that notion just a few minutes ago when he returned from running an errand, narrowed his eyes at me, and said, in his most accusatory tone,

“I HOPE YOU’RE ENJOYING YOUR SUN! IT’S SO F&*^ING COLD OUTSIDE, AND THE SUN’S THE REASON WHY. NOW ALL THE CLOUDS ARE GONE, AND ALL THE HEAT’S GONE TOO. IT’S LIKE SOMEONE JUST RIPPED THE BLANKET OFF OF THE EARTH, AND NOW IT’S F&^$ING COLD! YOU’D BETTER ENJOY EVERY DAMN MINUTE OF YOUR SUN!”

And you know what? I totally am.

I Really Do Try

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I’ve been a fan of Star Trek ever since my husband introduced me to “The Next Generation” back when we were in college.

Lately we’ve been watching “Deep Space Nine”, and I try very hard to pay attention to all the science and technology on the show, since I do not have a scientific background (or foreground either, for that matter).

I try to impress my engineer husband with my keen attention to scientific detail, but unfortunately it doesn’t always work.

Like tonight.

“Ooh, it’s really dark on that planet,” I observed, proud of my astute observational powers.

“Mmm, yes,” replied my husband. “That’s called ‘night’.”

Wedding Wrap-Up

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The wedding festivities for my sister-in-law kicked off Friday morning with an event that can best be described as

Pre-Wedding Brunching With Engineers

It all started off innocently enough, with a brunch meant to welcome my husband’s uncle. He had recently arrived in town from Israel, which is the fourteenth country in which he’s lived.

He had called my sister-in-law earlier in the week to discuss his final travel arrangements, and she told him that at first she wasn’t sure she should take his call, since the number was so odd-looking on her caller ID.

Naturally this led right into a competition designed to see who could identify the most country codes, because if there is a better way to get into the mood for a wedding, I surely don’t know about it.

So different people (read: the three engineers) started calling out random questions for the rest of the group.

“What’s Israel’s country code?”

“What’s ours?”

“How about Italy’s?”

“Ah!” shouted The International Uncle, in the tone of someone who has just successfully squared the circle. “What’s Kosovo’s country code?!”

Shockingly, no one knew the answer to this question.

“Ha ha,” revealed The International Uncle, that trickster. “They don’t have one. They have to use Serbia’s. And, boy-are they miffed.”

(Yukking laughter from the three engineers, who frankly, could not possibly imagine anything more humorous than this.)

Me and the bride: (looking desperately at each other to communicate the urgent messages of “Please help me!”, and “How can we STOP THE INSANITY RIGHT NOW?!)

And so that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the weekend.

Eventually we did make it through the rest of that day, until finally it was time for

The Wedding Rehearsal

In the spirit of celebration, as well as the spirit of, “Well, I might have to wear a tux tomorrow, but tonight I can wear whatever I want, mwa ha ha ha ha!” my father-in-law, who plays the bagpipes, decided to adorn himself in full, bag piping attire. When I tell you that he is over six feet tall and was wearing a kilt the color of pumpkins, you will understand why that caused such a big stir.

As the rehearsal was winding down he came over to talk to me and my husband, which gave me the opportunity to ask him why he appeared to have a small purse strapped around his midsection.

“Is that where you keep your flask in case all of this wedding stuff gets to be too much?” I joked.

It turns out that it is something called a “sporran”, and while I suppose you could use it to store your flask, he was using his to store his wallet and his keys.

“Now there are some sporrans that are encrusted with gems, or that are covered in goat hair,” my father-in-law informed us. “So technically, mine is not actually an evening sporran.”

I’m pretty sure he was able to slide by on that one.

And Then Suddenly, Your Entire Day Can Just Turn Right Around

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So this day kind of started off badly at about 5:30 am when I had to get up and take some medicine because my migraine had come roaring back.

Unfortunately it was still in full swing when my tutoring client arrived for her session.

We were working on an exercise which required her to translate a conversation between Sara and José discussing what kind of movie they wanted to go and see, when she got to the following line:

“¿Adónde quiere ir Sara?”

which means, “Where does Sara want to go?”

So my student began translating the words aloud, and I heard her say,

“Where do…you want…to DO…Sara?”, with absolutely no realization of what she had just said.

And I, rising to the occasion as the mature, responsible adult I am, burst into peals of laughter and almost fell off my chair with glee.

And suddenly, my whole entire day just turned right around.