Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

I Really Do Learn Something Every Day

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Today is the day when we put the sprinklers out to water the lawn in preparation for the warmer weather. This is an ex-tre-me-ly involved process which involves detailed diagrams, complex mathematical calculations, advanced satellite imagery, and multi-layered topographical and geological surveys. At least, it does here at our house.

And what I learned today is that At No Time during this process is it a good time to request of your husband that he help you locate some AA batteries for the camera so you can take a picture THIS INSTANT, because you just figured out a funny way to blog about what he’s doing.

Things That Make You Say, “What?!”: Love And Marriage

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

The other day I walked into our bathroom to find what I thought was my towel carelessly flung on the floor, while my husband’s towel was hanging neatly on its hook.

Me: “Why is my towel on the floor?”

My husband: “That’s not your towel, it’s my towel.”

Me: “Oh. Then why did you throw your towel on the floor and take my towel?”

My husband: “I didn’t take your towel-I upgraded it.”

It’s Taken 10 Years Of Marriage To Work Out A System This Effective

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This weekend my husband and I decided that we were going to tackle some projects that we have been putting off for a very very long time. First on the list: to finally move the 2 piles of horse manure that have been sitting on our front lawn for the past year.

How did we come to have 2 piles of horse manure sitting on our front lawn for an entire year, you ask? That is an excellent question, especially since I am not entirely sure how this happened myself.

I think what happened is this: Last spring some new neighbors moved into the house across the street from us. Somehow in the course of making their acquaintance they happened to mention that, for reasons not relevant to this story, they would from time to time be receiving deliveries of horse manure fresh from the stables down the road, and would we like some too?

I, whose hospitality extends pretty far but does in fact stop short of poo, was ready to politely decline. But my husband, either caught up in the spirit of welcoming our new neighbors, or perhaps tapping into private knowledge of some future time when we would indeed need our own supply of fresh manure, said yes.

So we received our delivery, and there the piles sat for an entire year. Until today when, perhaps prompted by the same mysterious urge that made him request the poo in the first place, my husband announced that it was time to for us to actually use the manure to fertilize our yard.

He asked me if I would help and I said yes. But because 1) I was working with poo, and 2) I was working on the part of the lawn where the imaginary snakes live I was working very cautiously. This meant that the work proceeded only slightly faster than it would have were it being performed by a lawn crew composed entirely of tortoises who had only recently been dug out of the glacier where they had been frozen for the past 40,000 years.

It also meant that our work was frequently interrupted by conversations like this:

Me: EEEW! NASTY!

My husband: What?

Me: Something dead. For real this time. It’s furry.

Me: (backing away so as to give my husband a WIDE berth for dealing with the furry dead thing in the pine straw.)

My husband: (rustling around.)

My husband: You mean this tree branch? (Holding up something that is clearly The Opposite of ‘furry’.)

So, if we take the two piles of poo, and divide them by two people working with three rakes and one wheelbarrow, and subtract all the times I get distracted by the cats playing in the front window, and also subtract all the times I mistake totally innocuous yard debris for threatening wildlife, it will only take us approximately 50 katrillion more trips around the yard until all of the poo finds a home.

Like a well-oiled machine, no?

Sunday Funnies

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On Sunday my husband was playing a game on his hand held game system, which is not as fun for me because I can’t watch what is happening up on the big screen. But I did get to participate in a different way. While he applied himself to the game with the concentration and dedication of someone dismantling a nuclear bomb, I read him instructions to help him get past a particularly difficult part.

I found myself actually saying out loud things like:

“Next, you’ll come across a Geega pipe. Geegas are Kraid’s version of the Zebs/Gamets.”

Or, “Then, go through the hatch on the right. You’ll see a Zeela roaming around a platform and a tall, transparent tube of some sort with many brown Rippers in it (Zeelas are Kraid’s version of the Zoomer/Nova, except slower).” [Read more…] about Sunday Funnies

It Really Really Is The Little Things

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My younger brother just recently got engaged (yay!), and as his older sister I am really feeling like I need to pass along to him the wisdom I’ve gained from being married for almost 10 years.

I could share with him that I’ve learned to ask myself this very important question during tense marital moments: “Do I want to be right, or do I want to be happy?”

I could emphasize that fact that it is a really bad idea to come up behind your spouse when they are engaged in performing a chore that you do not want to do, look over their shoulder, and then say, “Hm, that‘s how you’re doing it?”

But I think the most important thing I could tell him is that, sure, premarital counseling may cover things like money, children, and in-laws, but what it doesn’t tell you is this: it really, really is the little, everyday things that have the potential to trip you up in a marriage.

For example, I remember that when we were moving into our first apartment it was VITALLY important to me that I get to arrange the silverware drawer in the order to which I was accustomed (fork, then knife, then spoon). My husband really could not have cared less about that, but he wisely took advantage of that moment to negotiate some household point for himself, which I can’t actually recall at this moment, but which I’m sure was EQUALLY as important as my silverware thing.

But no one ever talks about that kind of stuff.

Nor do they talk about what to do if, one day when he happens to be in a bad mood, your husband goes off on a rant about how nobody (translation: “you”) ever puts the new rolls of toilet paper on the actual toilet paper holder, but how everyone (again, meaning “you”) just leave them sitting there on top of it. So then for the next few years you obsessively RUN to “correctly” replace the toilet paper every time a roll runs out, until one day you notice that the person who was totally freaking out about this situation earlier is doing The Exact Same Thing that caused his freaking out to begin with, so you finally work up the courage to mention this little inconsistency to him, and he has no recollection whatsoever of that particular conversation and tells you that you need to not take things so seriously. And then you have to kill him.

Hm. On second thought, maybe I’ll just let them discover all these fun little marital treasures for themselves.

True Confessions (v.2)

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As much as I want to tell you that I consistently spend the bulk of my time in deep, meaningful reflection as I ponder The Meaning Of Life and How To Positively Affect My World, I just can’t. Well, I guess I could. It just wouldn’t be the truth.

Here’s why. As I move throughout my day I am constantly seeing, hearing, or reading things that are REALLY funny, especially if you look at things the way I do. And very often these funny stories involve topics that are pretty much the opposite of anything deep or meaningful. So then I am always faced with this choice: Do I let the humor go and try to maintain an image of polish, culture, and refinement, or do I tell the funny story? And of course, telling the funny story ALWAYS wins.

So here’s what happened today.

My husband called me this morning just to say hi and chat, which I always enjoy. Suddenly, apropos of absolutely nothing he said, “Did you know that there is someone out there who makes their living by providing prosthetic dog testicles?”

Me: “What?!”

My husband: “Yeah. It makes you wonder what they do with the originals.”

Nuh-uh. What it makes me wonder is, “Why on earth do you know something like that? And how do you even find that kind of information?”

Well according to him that kind of knowledge is readily available on the Internet (Important Side Note: although it’s not on any of the sites I personally visit). In case you’re wondering, he also passed along the helpful tip that if you Google “replacement dog testicles” you can read the original article.

Me: “It would never IN LIFE occur to me to combine those particular words.”

My husband: “Well that’s just in case you don’t know how to spell ‘prosthetic’.”

We now return you to your regularly scheduled day.

You Know You’re A Good Match When…

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…you ask your husband if you can drive to his office and switch cars with him at lunch. He says yes, and then stops getting ready for work in order to draw you a diagram of his office parking lot and circle the exact space in which he wishes the car to be parked. You respond by laughing in amusement, and then actually doing what he asks. But only, you inform him, because it will give you something to blog about later.

Take Me To Your Leader

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So this spring I’ve been taking a marketing class in order to learn how to best use the Internet to support my business. As a result of that class I have been slowly increasing my computer knowledge and abilities, and often my husband helps me expand what I’m learning by sitting down with me and showing me even more things I can do with my website.

So the other day we sat down together just like we’ve always done so he could teach me how to do something new. But this time it was like I was suddenly abducted by aliens and then put back into a parallel world where everything appeared to be the same, but in reality, everyone except for me spoke some sort of alien language. This is an an attempt to recreate how our conversation went.

My husband (or so I thought): “OK, first you need to click on the ‘MYSQLVBC+DOSRAMSAPLINUXBYTEREMPDQASAP’. Then it will take you to the ‘135791113171923313741’. So then you will need to ‘whirl-beep-beep-creak-clang-crash!’ and then it will always ‘we-are-the-borg-you-will-be-assimilated-resistance-is-futile’.”

“Are you writing this down?”

Clearly, I was not. Clearly, all of my available mental faculties were tied up in planning my escape back to my home planet.

I mean, it’s not as if I expect to just automatically understand everything in life. As a matter of fact, there are lots of times when I go into a situation knowing that I will not have the foggiest idea what is going on, such as any time I try and understand what my brother, a Ph.D. candidate in organic chemistry, actually does.

For example, last month he gave a big presentation at a national gathering of his peers and my mom sent me the title and abstract from his presentation. Out of 97 words, here are the parts I understood: ” to be used in the”, and “naturally occurring substance.” That’s it. And I’m totally fine with that. I actually kind of like the fact that I can’t even understand the layperson’s version of his work because there isn‘t a layperson’s version. I enjoy just begin able to appreciate his brilliance without actually having to understand it. It’s just the times when a seemingly familiar situation gets turned upside down that throw me off.

I’m not really sure what to do about those times, but I have my tinfoil hat ready…just in case.