So Much to Say

Luckily, I have all the time in the world. As do you, apparently.

Sunday was a day of controversy. I would like to say, for the record, that in all controversial matter, I was right and The Mrs. was being unreasonable. However, I am sure she would disagree with that. See, this weekend was something we lovingly refer to as "PMS Weekend," and it involves a lot of accusations of transgressions leveled squarely at me. Most of these transgressions are imagined.

But, heavens, I am not allowed to mention that during PMS Weekend, or it is simply proof that I am a jerk.

Which I am. Though not for the reasons specified during PMS Weekend.

(Oh, The Mrs. corrects me - I am a lousy bastard. PMS Weekend often extends well into the week. Luckily I have a fully stocked bar, which is the only effective treatment for this condition. And by "this condition" I refer equally to PMS Weekend and being a lousy bastard, though the degree of improvement due to this treatment depends largely upon to whom the treatment is applied. I suggest a scattershot approach, where all involved parties are dosed heavily. The Mrs. suggests I go to hell.)

Anyways, to make a long story short, The Mrs. decided to make leftover spaghetti for breakfast on Sunday morning. We had spaghetti for dinner Saturday night, and there was enough for three out of the four of us to eat, though if I really really wanted spaghetti, I suppose The Mrs. could servitutde me and boil up some more noodles, though what a lousy bastard I'd be for even asking.

Needless to say, I opted to let The Mrs. and The Childrens eat the spaghetti, and I would fend for myself. I quietly opened up a cookbook, feigning that I was looking something up, which I really was not. This drove The Mrs. into a frenzy, as I wouldn't tell her what I was looking up, which was a sign of me being a lousy bastard, so I put that cookbook back and got out another.

I had long before decided that I was going to make myself some kind of breakfast hash made of whatever the heck I could find in the refrigerator. Here is what I found:

4 small potatoes, diced
6 pork breakfast sausages, maple flavor, cut into discs
4 strips of center-cut bacon, cut into bite-sized pieces
6 slices of salami, thinly sliced and chopped into small pieces
a bunch of sliced, pickled Jalapenos
1/2 of a yellow onion, diced
3 eggs
crushed garlic
crushed red pepper flakes
a little Mrs. Dash
shredded Mexican cheese

Fry it all up in about a 1/4 stick of butter.

Here's the basic dish before adding the eggs or cheese, which need to come after the other stuff is cooked.


Add the cheese:


Add the eggs:


Serve up a wonderfully fulfilling breakfast, complemented with a Diet Dr. Pepper, which I am told taste more like regular Dr. Pepper.


Damn, that was tasty.

Monday was a better day, as I got to be at work much of the day and thus did not have to interface with any hormones. At night, I managed to try out this recipe, and it was even more luscious than it sounds. I ran out of lime juice, though.

This morning, I learned that it also has an aggressive, though perhaps predictable, ability to inflict suffering the next morning. My head still hurts just thinking about it. I'll not be drinking any more of that any time soon.

Unless The Mrs. managed to score me some more lime juice when she went grocery shopping today. I know I put it on the list.

A funny thing happened today at work. I was sitting there after lunch, and the cellphone rang. It was The Mrs.

That, in itself, is not particularly funny, as The Mrs. accounts for roughly 98% of the cellphone calls I receive, and she accounts for an even higher percentage of the calls I receive while I'm at work. It's interesting how instant messaging technology has managed to almost completely supplant the telephone at The Company.

So, The Mrs. calls to report to me that the garage door does not work. She hit the emergency release to open it and get the minivan out, but she for some reason could not figure out how to close it again afterwards (which involves, like, pulling the door down instead of pushing it up). After trying to talk her down off the ledge, I said I'd come home and close the door, and she should just leave the door open and go where ever it was that she was going with The Childrens seeing as I had already probably paid top dollar for some kind of private lesson or something.

Well, that seemed to work. I finished up what I was working on, which involved instant-messaging a dude back in Santa Clara that I used to work with who was complaining about some unexpected yield loss on the last part I worked on, and the guy who took over my area after I left wasn't responding, and for some reason I still cared and was trying to help. Anyways, as I was finishing up, the cellphone rang again, and, rather predictably, it was The Mrs. again.

I figured she was calling to tell me that she got the door closed, and I didn't have to come home. But noooooo. She's calling to see if I've left yet, as HannahC is concerned about leaving her bike in the garage with the door open for 10 minutes.

This was wrong on so many levels. Let's see:

1. You could put the bike in the minivan, as it spends roughly 80% of the year there anyways and the only reason it is not there right now is that it has a flat tire.
2. You could put the bike in the house.
3. The bike cost $49.99 at Target when it was brand new, and HannahC has pretty much outgrown it already such that the plan is to buy her a brand new bike first thing in the spring.
4. My bike, also in the garage, cost $1000. I have a couple thousand dollars of tools in the garage. I have my precious lawn tractor in the garage. I have a refrigerator filled with beer in the garage. All these tings are more valuable to a thief than HannahC's bicycle, and in the ten minutes it takes me to get there, thieves won't have had time to steal all that and then have been forced to turn to the little 16" bicycle.
   
5. My god, woman, I am at work. Is there no filter on the inanities that trigger you to call me when I'm at work? I talked to you not five minutes ago, and nothing has changed since then. Do you think I decided not to come home to close the door during those five minutes? Do you think that HannahC's concern about her bike is going to make me come home faster? Do you think maybe, just maybe, when I'm at work I have to actually do work sometimes so that they continue to pay me so that you can continue to buy silly things like $3500 elliptical trainers, private swimming lessons for a 2-year-old, and fifteen (15!) different lotion/oil/goop substances to keep on the counter around your sink, plus two more in the shower, every one of which is a miracle (miracle!) substance until it is half-gone, and then immediately requires replacement with an altogether brand-new and untried miracle substance? While I'm at work, I don't need to hear that HannahC thinks I'm not dropping everything I'm doing to rush home fast enough. While I'm at work, I don't need to hear that you are planning to go to the park tomorrow. While I am at work, I don't need to hear that you are planning to go to the grocery store while the kids are at gymnastics class. This is a small set of examples of the things that do not require a call to me on my cellphone while I am at work. I'm hoping maybe a trend can be extrapolated.
   

But, anyways, if there is one thing that I have learned during the precisely 21 years and five days of my relationship with The Mrs. it's that there's no point in trying to talk sense to a woman. So I gave the only civil response I could muster.

"Oh, would you just go!"

Then I wrapped up what I was doing and went home. You know what was wrong with the garage door? Nothing. I popped the emergency release, and it went up and down manually. I hooked it back into the carriage and pushed the button. It went up. I pushed the button. It went down. Button again. Again with the up. Button again. Again with the down. There was not one single solitary thing wrong with the garage door that I could discern. So I called The Mrs.

She was too busy to talk to me, and told me this could wait until she got home. Duh.

There's also no use in pointing out double standards to a woman.

No duh.