Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

And Speaking Of Not Wanting To Be Held Responsible For Anything, Ever…

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the other day I finally, after five years, agreed to get a new Blackberry. My husband has been trying to convince me to do this for at least the last three years, but every discussion we ever had ended with me yelling, “You will have to pry this phone out of my cold, dead hands!”

And then, all of a sudden, I changed my mind. I don’t know why. But my husband immediately leaped into action, took us straight to the nearest T-Mobile store, and now I am the proud owner of a brand-new, shiny red Blackberry Flip.

So I’ve been reading through the manual and learning what all the buttons do, and today I was so proud of myself because I figured out how to take a picture with my phone and then text it to my husband. That is A Really Big Deal for me, as I am definitely the Padawan to my husband’s Technology Jedi.

So anyway I sent it off, and then I didn’t think about it anymore until I received this email:

“This is a Return Receipt for the mail that you sent to X”

“Note: This Return Receipt only acknowledges that the message was displayed on the recipient’s computer. There is no guarantee  that the recipient has read or understood the message contents.”

Like, in case I might one day just suddenly rise up and decide to try and sue The Ethers, where all the invisible communication transmissions live. Because you know I’m like that.

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?

From My Sister-In-Law

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Thanks, E.!

Random Thoughts of the Day:

1.       I wish Google Maps had an “Avoid Ghetto” routing option.

2.       More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

3.       Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

4.       I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to have fun.” Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they’ve invented the lighter?

5.       Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

6.       I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

7.       The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase “Regards” again.

8.       Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

9.       There is a great need for sarcasm font.

10.    Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the f*** was going on when I first saw it.

11.    I think everyone has a movie that they love so much; it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.

12.    How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

13.    I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

14.    I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

15.    The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

16.    A recent study has shown that playing beer pong contributes to the spread of mono and the flu. Yeah, if you suck at it.

17.    Was learning cursive really necessary?

18.    Lol has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to say”.

19.    I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger..

20.    Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.

21.    My brother’s Municipal League baseball team is named the Stepdads. Seeing as none of the guys on the team are actual stepdads, I inquired about the name. He explained, “Cuz we beat you, and you hate us.” Classy, bro.

22.    Whenever someone says “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart”, all I hear is “I’m not real smart, but I’m imaginary smart”.

23.    How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear what they said?

24.    I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

25.    While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it….thanks Mario Kart.

26.    MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

27.    Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

28.    I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

29.    Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

30.    I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

31.    Bad decisions make good stories

32.    Whenever I’m Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don’t mind if I do!

33.    If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring would probably just be completely invisible.

34.    Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I’m from; this shouldn’t be a problem….

35.    You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you’ve made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

36.    Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don’t want to have to restart my collection.

37.    There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

38.    I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

39.    “Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this ever.

40.    I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There’s so much pressure. ‘I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren’t watching this. It’s only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?’

41.    While watching the Olympics, I find myself cheering equally for China and USA . No, I am not of Chinese descent, but I am fairly certain that when Chinese athletes don’t win, they are executed.

42.    I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Darnit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What’d you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?

43.    I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

44.    When I meet a new girl, I’m terrified of mentioning something she hasn’t already told me but that I have learned from some light internet stalking.

45.    I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it’s on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

46.    Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles…

47.    As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.

48.    Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

49.    It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood…

50.    I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

51.    I think that if, years down the road when I’m trying to have a kid, I find out that I’m sterile, most of my disappointment will stem from the fact that I was not aware of my condition in college.

52.    Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn’t know what do to with it.

53.    Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey – but I’d bet my a$$ everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time…

54.    My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day “Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?” How the h*ll do I respond to that?

55.    It really pi$$es me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.

56.    I wonder if cops ever get pi$$ed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.

57.    I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

58.    I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.

59.    The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimate d that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There’s nothing like being made to feel like a fat b@st@rd before dinner.

Dear August: Please Stop Trying To Kill Me

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You know those days where you sit down and look at your blog, and you realize that there are like 80 billion humor bloggers out there, and apparently they must know something you don’t because they seem to be getting all of the traffic, and so you decide that must mean that you really suck at this, and so you decide to murder your blog and eliminate any evidence indicating that you ever had any sort of online presence whatsoever, and the only thing you can think of to help you go on is to ask your ex-tre-me-ly long-suffering husband to put a picture of Adam Baldwin on your desktop, which is nothing against your husband, but given that he is the only person in your household with a job, and the one who earns the money that allows you to continue living in a house, and not in a box on the street, it’s not exactly like he can stand around all day and be your own Personal Internet Cheerleader, and then you get a sinus infection and have to take antibiotics, and then all of a sudden you are plunged into a severe depression, as severe as you’ve ever been through before, and it absolutely terrifies you, because what if you’ve somehow broken your medicine, and now there’s nothing else that can help you, and this is how the rest of your life is going to be, and then you talk to your coach about it and she says, “You know, I just read that for some people going on antibiotics causes them to spiral down into depression like that,” and you think, “Wow-that sure would’ve been some great information to have a few days ago!”, and so as you are recovering you decide that maybe eating some fresh fruits and vegetables would help, so you go to the grocery store to pick up some green peppers and ranch dressing, but then you are standing in front of the display and there are too many dressings to choose from, and so you start to cry because you just want someone to tell you what to do, and WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE SO HARD?!, and then you are so happy to return home, until you are reminded that your house is so, SO hot, you don’t know why, but clearly the only option left is for you to live naked on your bathroom floor until October, and hope that your husband doesn’t mind occasionally airlifting in some food for you, and then, and you have no idea why it took you THE ENTIRE SUMMER to realize it, even though between the two of you you  hold two Master’s Degrees, and one of you (not naming any names or anything), is an actual engineer, but you finally figure out that the batteries in the thermostat don’t work, and that the ceiling fans have all been circulating the air up instead of down, and then there is nothing left for you to do except to write about it on your blog, the blog that you are most likely going to erase just as soon as you can work up the energy to do anything more strenuous than lying prostrate on the nearest flat surface?

Yeah, me too.

A Little Marital Love

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Given that I speak Spanish, my husband takes full advantage of this, and is always asking me to translate something he’s recently seen or heard.

So the other night he asked me to come into his office, and when I got there he turned up the music he was playing on his computer and asked, “Can you understand what they’re saying?”

As far as I could tell, there weren’t any actual words to the song, only a bunch of people singing different variations of “Oohs” and “Ahs”.

I kept waiting, desperately wanting to hear the words my husband  claimed were there so that I could give him the answer he was looking for. But wait as I might, they never came, and eventually I was going to have to respond to my husband’s waiting look.

“Eeeh, ahhh, oooh,” I offered timidly, wondering if maybe this was some sort of trick question.

Apparently it wasn’t, because the next thing I new I saw a rude gesture flung my way. (Despite the fact that during the entire time I was in his office, listening, THERE WERE NO WORDS TO BE HEARD.)

Ah, love.

A Little Tuesday Morning Irony

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An 18-wheeler, puttering down I-85 at less than 20 mph-NOT IN THE SLOW LANE-whose back panel boldly proclaimed that, “Jesus Christ is Lord-not a swear word”, which caused, at least in my particular vehicle, a dramatically marked upturn in the amount of swearing that was taking place.

A Weekend Funny

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Someone shared this on one of the online forums I belong to:

Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline.
If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.
If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.
If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5, and 6.
If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.
If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are depressed, it doesn’t matter which number you press. No one will answer.
If you are delusional and occasionally hallucinate, please be aware that the thing you are holding on the side of your head is alive and about to bite off your ear.