ME: You know that kind of haircut I’m talking about? That some women get?
HE: Oh, yeah. The kind of haircut you get to accompany your personal dryness.
ME: I cannot BELIEVE you just said that.
And I then proceeded to guffaw for 10 straight minutes.
We’re basically just horrible people.
(On a long drive)
HE: So do you wanna go check out that farmer’s market ’cause I don’t.
ME: Uhmmm ……. I have no idea what the right answer is here.
HE: But I’ve always been kind of curious about it.
ME: (melodramatically) I just cannot DEAL with all the mixed signals!!!
HE: Hahaha. Yeah, I’m being a jerk.
ME: I think I’ll just sit here and see what happens.
HE: Okay.
ME: Who knows? Maybe I’ll get a better offer.
HE: Maybe. Though we are just sitting in our car.
ME: Piece of advice: When I’m dead and gone and you’re asking the chicas out again, don’t use that method. It seriously sucks. Like “Wanna go to prom ’cause I don’t.” What the heck is that? You’re a little rusty, peaches.
HE: True.
ME: I blame myself. I’ve made it too easy for you. I need to start playing hard to get.
HE: Okay. That’ll be fun.
ME: We’ll see.
HE: ‘Hamburger sandwich,” indeed.
ME: Look at you, all mad at Ayn Rand. About hamburgers.
HE: “Hamburger sandwich,” indeed.
****************
FEMALE FRIEND 1: See, I don’t have a lot of …….uhm ….. (motioning to herself) … uhm …….
FRIEND 2: Clothes?
FRIEND 3: Outfits?
MB: Put-ey on-eys?
***************
HE (admiring the cuffs on his shirt): Wow! The stitching on these is really nice!
ME: (Silent, agog.)
HE: Annnd this is where you’re thinking, “I just love my big gay husband.”
***************
HE: Wow. They’re pretty busy for a Monday.
ME: You mean Thursday?
HE: Whatever.
ME: You’re so pretty.
***************
ME (alarmed): What’s that outfit??
HE: I call it binge-wear.
ME: I seee …….
***************
Text from a friend:
I’d like to smack someone in this company and I’m not particular about who it is either.
ME: Hm. I was hoping for more comment from you on that.
HE: Huh??
ME: I said, “I was hoping for more comment from you on that” and you said “Huh??”
ME: So I’m at the eyeroll part of the book. Did you know that demons all have names?
HE: I did not.
ME: They do and you’re supposed to use their names when addressing them.
HE: So you can’t just say “Attention, demon of lust” or something?
ME: No. You’d have to call him by name. Like, “Attention …. Naughty Jurgen!”
HE: “Naughty Jurgen”?
ME: Well, I don’t know what the hell his name is.
_______________
ME: I did not know how to comfort her. It’s a bunny.
HE: What’s wrong with it?
ME: It has arthritis. It gets laser treatments for arthritis.
HE (pause): That’s like getting veneers for a hamster.
_______________
IMing on the job ……
SHE: Holy Christmas! “Ate some old cold meats from a safe.” What the f**k does that mean? A safe? who puts meat in a safe?!?!?
ME: Who did? The patient?
SHE: Yep, the patient… old meat in a safe.
ME: A SAFE?
SHE: Yep, that’s what doc said… a safe.
ME: So did it make him run amuck in a murderous frenzy afterwards? (ed. reference to earlier conversation)
SHE: I was wondering about that. Unfortunately, he only got abdominal pain… surprise, surprise… moron. You don’t eat meat from a safe.
ME: Advice of the day there, D: “You don’t eat meat from a safe.” I want that on a t-shirt.
SHE: That’s a facebook status right there.
ME: You should tell all your FB friends.
SHE: I’m gonna do that right now. Okay. I certainly did just make that my status.
ME: Sage advice. People need to know.
SHE: This guy is a dope! His wife’s a nurse! He didn’t know enough not to eat meat from a safe?
ME: Hahahaha. We cannot get over it.
SHE: NO, we CAN’T!
_______________
More IMing on the job …… sometimes voice recognition is an inexact technology ….
ME: So here’s what VR heard: “The patient has not responded to the multiple animals ordered by Dr. Larson.”
SHE: What did he actually say?
ME: Enemas. Not animals.
SHE: HA!
ME: And here I was picturing some nice little doctor bringing her puppies and kitties and bunnies to try to cheer her up.
SHE: WAY better than enemas.
ME: Tru dat, mama.
_______________
ME: Again, wrong, VR: “Patient wants to try to lose weight on heroin.”
SHE: ROFL.
ME: S/b “on her OWN.”
SHE: I should try that, though.
(Walking past a store window we regularly walk by, MB is looking at himself. I bust him as I frequently like to do.)
ME: Good Lord. You can’t get enough of you.
HE: It was just a glance!
ME: (as I am fixing my hair whilst, yes, glancing in the car window): Yeah. A loving glance.
HE: This from the woman who just looked at herself in the car window!
ME: Ohh. Well. That was a critical glance. Yours are like mmmmm ….. yummmmy …..
HE: Oh, brother.
ME: It’s true!
HE: Well, I guess I just like to be a celebrant.
_____________________
(After finally finishing all the leftovers and frozen leftovers from the 20-pound ham that he — the ham-aholic — purchased during the holidays for, you know, the two of us.)
HE (in all seriousness): I’m really starting to miss the ham and beans. It was a part of our lives for so long.
____________________
HE: Okay. Here is a list of the worst places in America.
ME: Oooh, really? Okay. Good. Let’s hear it.
HE: Okay. Rite-Aid ……. CVS drugstores ….. Denny’s …… any kind of Coco’s ……
ME: Wait. You said “places.” These are businesses.
HE: Oh, they’re places. They’re places!
ME: Wow. You feel strongly about this.
HE: I do!
ME: So those four?
HE: Yep. Worst places in America.
ME: But “Any kind of Coco’s”? Aren’t they all the same?
HE (in a fury of disgust): Any kind of Coco’s!!!!!
_____________________
So we’re at a Coco’s with my parents after a really strange Christmas program at their megachurch, celebrating the birth of baby Jesus with a dancing Frosty the Snowman and a sad-sack Henry Wadsworth Longfellow miming depression. Surreal.
MB wants to kill himself. My parents want pie. Dad likes to save money.
DAD (to waiter): Okay. Give us a whole blueberry pie and cut it into five pieces.
WAITER: Okay.
DAD: Put the last piece in a box and we’ll take it home.
WAITER: All right.
DAD: We all want ice cream, so put ice cream on the other four pieces.
WAITER: Got it. Okay.
He walks away. Long pause.
ME: How do you cut a pie into five pieces?
Even longer pause as the other three just stare at me, open-mouthed, gobsmacked.
And, honestly, pippa, I still struggle with this question.
Discussing a character flaw of mine.
HE: Despite all the ways I love you, there are some things you suck at and this is one of them.
ME: Hahahahahahahaha.
____________________
Entering the house after movie date pajama day. My brother is blasting Christmas music.
ORIGINAL BANSHEE (with a little eye roll): Dad really likes Robert Goulet, Tee Tee.
ME: I know, honey.
OB (confessing): But I kinda like him, too.
ME: It’s okay. I do, too.
____________________
Banshee Girl telling me about a movie she saw.
BG: Tee Tee, dere was dis board in da movie and he ….
ME: Wait. Did you say boy?
BG: No, Tee Tee. A board.
ME (really not understanding her): A bull??
BG: No! Tee Tee! A BOARD (flapping her arms like a bird).
ME: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, a board.
____________________
Thanks to a slow and steady process of early indoctrination, Original Banshee (who is 7) thinks she wants to go to college at her parents’/grandparents’ alma mater. My sister went there as well. I’m the family lone ranger who did NOT go there which is part of why I’m so neato.
ME: Yeah. They don’t have a theatre major there because that would be too secular. They have a theatre support group.
MB: What’s that?
ME: Like a bunch of students getting together and “helping” each other with theatre a couple of times a week.
MB: Oh. How strange.
ME: I know. Like it’s AA for theatre or something. It totally bugs me. Original Banshee is not going to college there. I don’t care what I have to do.
____________________
I am deeply immature. To really understand me, you need to be 7.
ME: OB, that’s cool what you can do with your toe. I can’t do that. It’s like a super power.
OB: Yeah!
ME: Next year when other kids trick or treat at your door, just do that trick for them and save yourself some treats.
OB: What? I can DO that??
ME: Well, it’s trick OR treat, right?
OB: Yeah.
ME: And that’s a pretty cool trick.
OB: Yeah, but it’s not candy, Tee Tee.
ME: Sweetie, that’s way better than candy. You are Super Toe.
OB: Super Toe (giggling).
ME: We’ll make you a cape with a giant toe on it.
OB: (Giggling even harder)
ME: Or you could wear a headpiece that looks like a giant toe with your face peeking out of the toenail part.
OB: (She cannot breathe.) Tee Teeeeeee!! (gasp … gasp) But what is my super power?
ME: The toe trick.
OB: The toe trick?
ME: Yes. And smelliness, of course.
OB: (Nearly falling off sofa) Smelliness!!!! Hahahahahahahaha!!! Tee Teeeeeeee!!!
ME: You defeat all your enemies with Super Toe smelliness.
OB: HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!
____________________
Favorite email line of the holidays, no context:
“Do you need help with sexual addiction AND a prairie photographer?? We’ve got you covered!”
In the deep dark middle of nowhere last weekend, watching my Chargers voluntarily lose to the Denver Broncos with MB and my MIL. Tim Tebow is Denver’s new quarterback/savior/God thanker for any and all football victories. At this point in the game, when it’s all going horribly south, I’m completely irritated and irrational and prone to verbal spewing.
ME: “I’m Tim Tebow! Have I mentioned that I was almost aborted? Did you know I was almost aborted? In case you didn’t know, I was almost aborted!”
MIL: Why did his mom want to abort him?
ME: Becauuuse she was obviously A CHARRRGERS’ FANNNN!!”
**********
Watching Tim Tebow again today. He fumbles the ball.
MB: Where’s your Messiah now, Tebow???
(Thank you, Edward G. Robinson.)
We shouldn’t watch sports, basically.
**********
Best line from Arthur Christmas, which, yes, we saw last night for various reasons I’d rather not get into.
“That was the year all the kids got a sausage nailed to a piece of bark.”
We could not stop laughing at that image. Like, who comes up with that? Genius.
**********
Little boy in the bookstore shopping with his dad. I’m guessing for mom, maybe?
BOY: She likes horses AND Batman!
I could have cried from the cuteness. (And that’s going to be an interesting Christmas morning, I’ll bet.)
**********
At the only Thai restaurant in the deep dark middle of nowhere. Two women come in. The Thai owner shows them to the booth next to us. This exchange is just how it is in a small town, I’ve learned. Everybody up in your bidness, pippa.
LADY (to her friend as she slides into the booth): Oh, I have to be careful about my leg.
OWNER: What wrong with your leg??
**********
As we leave the Thai restaurant with the takeout food, the owner follows us out the door.
OWNER: Now you take dat curry sauce and you save it and put it ower leftower turkey, okay? Den you have turkey curry, okay? It bery delicious, awight?
MB: Great.
OWNER: Trust me. Bery good!
ME: Sounds good.
OWNER: Great, okay. You try it, yes?
US: Sure, yes, great, thank you, etc., all the way out to our car.
**********
For the first time ever, even though he lives only a couple doors down from my in-laws, I finally met the son of a certain octogenarian publishing magnate with a penchant for robes and smoking jackets and much much much younger women. The son was very nice, quiet, looked a lot like dad and sounded exactly like him. It was a bit surreal. He helped my in-laws with their computers before heading out with his partner on a long road trip to dad’s for Thanksgiving. Must be an interesting visit for them.
**********
My sister sharing her own MIL issues with me.
SIS: Tray, she is 76 years old and you know what I found her doing?
ME: No. What?
SIS: Standing IN the kitchen sink trying to plunge it!
ME: What???
SIS: I asked her what she was doing and she told me in her little Southern accent that she thought she’d get better leverage from up there because she’s so skinny.
ME: Oh, for God’s sake. She’s nuts. Did you tell her to get down?
SIS: Yes!
ME: Good Lord. All you need is for her to break a hip and then she’d be staying with you for three months recovering from the surgery.
SIS: And eating her special marshmallow diet. I have to buy her marshmallows. She makes me a list of foods I need to have on hand.
ME: Is this a doctor-approved thing?
SIS: No! She makes it up! And she makes this weird vegetable soup thing with canned vegetables and pearl onions that stinks up the whole house. She puts in all in the little mini food processor I bought just for her. It all gets blended to baby food, but the green beans HAVE to be French cut.
ME: Hahahahaha. You know, you’re very good to her — buying her marshmallows, letting her crawl into your kitchen sink.
SIS: Then she puts the weird vegetable slurry in a pitcher and puts it in our fridge. When she wants some, she pours it into a bowl and microwaves it.
ME: Did you ask her for the recipe?
SIS: Hahahaha. NO. It’s disgusting. Then marshmallows for dessert.
ME: Uhm, where are you calling me from? I know you’re not at home with her.
SIS: I’m sitting in the parking lot outside Target reading a book and calling clients.
ME: When are you going back home? She’s going to lying on the floor somewhere, you know.
SIS: Probably. I’ll go back around noon.
ME: It’s 9 a.m.
SIS: That’s right.
**********
I wish I could offer some snippets from that little ray of sunshine Sourface Lemonpants whom we encountered two Thanksgivings ago, but sadly, while she was there at my in-laws’ friends’ house for the holiday, she and her husband said nary a word to me or MB the entire Thanksgiving day. Not one word. They were first in line for the informal buffet, plopped themselves down alone at the table, and started chowing down before any of the rest of us had even gotten any food. By the time MB said grace, their plates were half empty. Charming people. I miss them.
For Christmas, I’m sending them a sausage nailed to a piece of bark.
Sunday morning, trying to park at our new favorite coffeehouse. The lot is crowded.
ME: It’s all the Buddhists here for temple. Or whatever.
HE: Guess so.
ME: There’d better not be a line out the door because of them.
HE: Yeah.
ME: Besides, they’re not supposed to have desires, so what are they doing in line for coffee? Get outta the way, Buddhists! We’re Christians! We have desires!
HE: Yes. Deep dark …….. desires.
ME: That’s right.
HE: So outta my way or I’ll one-hand clap your ass!
ME: You tell ’em, babe.
Two weekends ago ……..
ME: (on waking up, first words of the day) It’s my birthday! Your day is gonna suuuuuuuuck!!
HE: Oh, brother.
**********
Later …..
ME: Okay. It’s my birthday. No documentaries about weirdos.
HE: All right.
ME: That’s your birthday.
HE: Yes, haha.
ME: I want something funny where people die hideous deaths. I need it to feed my inner rage.
HE: Oh, okay.
**********
ME: I’m gonna spank you like a somma bits!
HE: What? That’s not how you say it!
ME: Sure, it is. I just said it.
HE: You’re hopeless.
**********
ME: What’s the name of that movie again? Sweet Fatty Sauceback?
HE: No! That’s not it! It’s Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song.
ME: I like mine better.
HE: It’s not better.
ME: They should change it.
HE: No, they shouldn’t.
ME: Come on! Sweet Fatty Sauceback? I wanna see a movie about him!
