Thursday, August 31, 2006
The Beware List, Part 3
The Beware List is a collection of red flags that indicates that a person's evil or emotionally messed up; it's intended to help you avoid or counteract the mistreatment that they'll almost certainly direct at you eventually... folks like these are relentless about doing dirt to everyone within reach, either intentionally or because they just don't know any better. It's extremely rare for someone who's capable of spitting in your face (metaphorically speaking) to fail to give plenty of warning signs before doing so; if you're paying attention, and using your brain rather than reacting blindly the way they want you to, you can side-step most of it... once you know what to look for, you'll find that they're amazingly predictable. I'm sticking with the numbering of the actual list rather than starting at #1 with every batch I put up; if you want to see the earlier entries, see my posts of 5-31-06 and 7-6-06.
Beware of anyone who:
21) Can’t handle, or is upset or offended by, things that no normal person has problems with.
We learn by observation what's ok and what's not, what's a big deal and what's not, and how to cope with the standard annoyances of life; anybody who HASN'T absorbed that stuff is emotionally backwards and socially clueless, and thus has no idea how to be a friend, how to treat people, or how to judge behavior. They view relationships as a small child does; they expect to be totally accommodated although they make no effort or sacrifice in return, and will be furious when it doesn't happen that way. Sadly, they don't realize how unreasonable and off-puttingly odd they are, and attribute their constantly being upset/offended, and their lack of friends, to how terrible everyone ELSE is... and feel no compunction about treating "terrible" people badly, including YOU when you inevitably displease them. It's also possible that they're FAKING their over-emotionalism in order to manipulate everyone into groveling constantly to them; this is a sure sign of sociopathy, not to mention contempt for people who're supposed to be friends (what else can you call it when they assume none of them are intelligent enough to ever realize that they regularly get "upset" over NOTHING?).
22) Has no grasp as to what topics are too boring or gross to talk about repeatedly, or at ALL.
Most of us enjoy the occasional crude joke, and have the occasional overflowing toilet or fungus-encrusted leftovers that we describe to our friends; only little kids, and, again, emotionally backwards and socially clueless types, want to go on and on and ON about these sorts of things, or lack discernment about, for example, who wants to hear the in-depth details of their every bowel movement (NO ONE), or when it's ok to talk about that kind of stuff in a group (NEVER). Being boring is a little more subtle, but once you're past early childhood you're expected to be able to tell whether people are genuinely interested in what you're saying or are just being polite, and, more importantly, to CARE; someone who drones away even when you look like you want to throw yourself under a bus rather than listen to them is a bad deal no matter how nice they seem at other times.
23) Suffers from a suspicious #, degree, intricacy and soap-opera-ness of misfortunes, which they regale you with at every opportunity.
I'll be blunt; anybody like this is a liar, a manipulator, and either a bad person who enjoys fooling others or a serious depressive who's learned that the only way they can get attention is to pretend that awful things are happening to them. Yes, sometimes regular folks have a run of bad luck, but they know instinctively to NOT harp on the subject for too long (because listeners can only stand so much before they get sick of it, and of the complainer), and when they do discuss it there's no element of melodrama; if you get the feeling that the allegedly beleaguered one is trying to get you emotionally worked up, all the alarms should go off.
24) Tells you stories of elaborate, Machiavellian ways that their spouse or partner has supposedly mistreated them (generally including cutting off their access to $).
There's no confusing these folks with those who are actually being abused, since the latter are generally secretive, ashamed and in denial, while the former are clearly trying to grab and hold the attention of anyone who'll listen. The financial aspects of the tales can verge on the diabolical; I've been told that a purported victim's husband "took" all her $ and put it in accounts under just his name, had secret deals with every financial institution in the city so that if she tried to open any kind of account, or even rent a safe deposit box, he'd be instantly alerted and the $ given to him, AND was doing regular searches of every nook and cranny of the house looking for hidden lucre... and I was told that by several different women who didn't know each other-did they all read the same book or something? I think the reason for this specific line of BS is to make it impossible for anybody to come up with a workable plan for them to leave their "abuser"; if they have no $ and no way to ever collect any, they have to stay with the man and keep being "abused"... which allows them to whine about their hard lives forever.
25) Claims to have been SO nice to, and done SO many favors for, a lengthy list of people who did nothing for them in return.
First of all; what kind of IDIOT would make a lifelong habit of doing all that stuff for people who aren't paying them back in kind? More to the point; why would so many people behave that way to someone who's allegedly so kind and generous? The REAL story is either that the "victim" is trying to buy their way into people's lives by doing unwanted "favors" for them, or that they're offering "favors" to everyone they encounter and the only ones who accept are heartless takers with no thought of reciprocity, or that they've got a convenient memory that only allows them to recall what THEY did, and not what others have done for them. Whichever is the reason, these folks are incapable of the balanced give and take of friendship, and they're so emotionally wedded to the idea of being unappreciated that no matter how good you are to them they'll find some way to see you as a bad person... and will treat you accordingly.
26) Gives you a list of ex-friends that they say were habitually cruel or abusive to them.
As a rule, only really weak and screwed-up people keep getting protractedly involved with nasty types; normal, healthy people DUMP so-called friends after the FIRST incident of malicious behavior, and LEARN from those experiences how to avoid unpleasant folks in the future... AND, don't feel the need to make a Federal case of past bad relationships. Failure to dump or learn isn't always the issue, though; the supposed misdeeds of their ex-friends are often exaggerated or just plain invented, as a ploy to gain sympathy or induce kind-hearted listeners to try to make it up to them... or, worst of all, to trick listeners into believing that the ex-friends are bad people, when the TRUTH inevitably is that the putative victims treated the ex-friends like garbage, NOT the other way around.
27) Says they’ve NEVER been in any sort of relationship with a mean, abusive or psychotic person.
Only those who are themselves rotten are so adept at avoiding getting sucked in by ugly types; every DECENT person has been burned a few times by those who seemed sweet at 1st and then sh*t on them without remorse, but baddies are so busy trying to mistreat others that it's very hard to mistreat THEM.
28) Is always unhappy, and always needs to be cheered up and encouraged, such that there are few (or no) fun times in your interactions.
No matter how much they claim to love you, a person whose very nature is joyless (as opposed to somebody dealing with limited-duration grief due to a major loss) isn't capable of friendship or true romantic involvement; you can't rescue them, fix them, heal them, or cure them... and if you try, you'll be encouraging them to continue being sad sacks to keep getting attention. The best you can do for them is hand them a list of psychiatrists and withdraw until they've handled their depression issues; it's the only sort of help a non-professional is qualified to give them.
29) Is weak, seems to really admire you, and praises you and your strengths alot.
The flip side of all that idolization is resentment; it seems counter-intuitive, but so are many other aspects of how weak, insecure people behave... they have a love/hate relationship with the strong, and hate usually wins out, no matter how well the strong have treated them. Excessive praise and admiration coming from somebody who isn't trying to brown-nose you at work or get into your pants is always a red flag, because only manipulative or messed-up people feel the need to try to sweet-talk their supposed friends; when it's your strength that's a big part of what's being lauded, and a weak person is doing the lauding, you can be fairly sure you've got a future enemy in the making.
30) Demonizes an individual or group (that they know personally), and makes pointed, repeated, and dramatically negative references to them, particularly if the target(s) doesn't seem to have actually done anything bad (former romantic partners are a different matter-most of us get nutso over THEM).
Only sociopathic, sick, or evil types are capable of that sort of intense, obsessive hatred. Normal folks don't even act that way about people who did them demonstrable harm (such as taking credit for their work at the office); they may fume for a while, but then they let it go... they won't still be making a constant issue about it months later, and probably not even weeks later. Imagine, then, how warped a person has to be to get like a broken record over a trivial incident, especially one that doesn't involve wrongdoing, such as when somebody disagreed with them or wouldn't do things their way; if you encounter someone who keeps squawking about stuff like that, especially stuff that happened weeks or months ago... RUN!!
I hope this latest installment of the Beware List has given you some food for thought; more importantly, I hope it's given you a better chance at ducking some potential problems... forewarned is forearmed.
Beware of anyone who:
21) Can’t handle, or is upset or offended by, things that no normal person has problems with.
We learn by observation what's ok and what's not, what's a big deal and what's not, and how to cope with the standard annoyances of life; anybody who HASN'T absorbed that stuff is emotionally backwards and socially clueless, and thus has no idea how to be a friend, how to treat people, or how to judge behavior. They view relationships as a small child does; they expect to be totally accommodated although they make no effort or sacrifice in return, and will be furious when it doesn't happen that way. Sadly, they don't realize how unreasonable and off-puttingly odd they are, and attribute their constantly being upset/offended, and their lack of friends, to how terrible everyone ELSE is... and feel no compunction about treating "terrible" people badly, including YOU when you inevitably displease them. It's also possible that they're FAKING their over-emotionalism in order to manipulate everyone into groveling constantly to them; this is a sure sign of sociopathy, not to mention contempt for people who're supposed to be friends (what else can you call it when they assume none of them are intelligent enough to ever realize that they regularly get "upset" over NOTHING?).
22) Has no grasp as to what topics are too boring or gross to talk about repeatedly, or at ALL.
Most of us enjoy the occasional crude joke, and have the occasional overflowing toilet or fungus-encrusted leftovers that we describe to our friends; only little kids, and, again, emotionally backwards and socially clueless types, want to go on and on and ON about these sorts of things, or lack discernment about, for example, who wants to hear the in-depth details of their every bowel movement (NO ONE), or when it's ok to talk about that kind of stuff in a group (NEVER). Being boring is a little more subtle, but once you're past early childhood you're expected to be able to tell whether people are genuinely interested in what you're saying or are just being polite, and, more importantly, to CARE; someone who drones away even when you look like you want to throw yourself under a bus rather than listen to them is a bad deal no matter how nice they seem at other times.
23) Suffers from a suspicious #, degree, intricacy and soap-opera-ness of misfortunes, which they regale you with at every opportunity.
I'll be blunt; anybody like this is a liar, a manipulator, and either a bad person who enjoys fooling others or a serious depressive who's learned that the only way they can get attention is to pretend that awful things are happening to them. Yes, sometimes regular folks have a run of bad luck, but they know instinctively to NOT harp on the subject for too long (because listeners can only stand so much before they get sick of it, and of the complainer), and when they do discuss it there's no element of melodrama; if you get the feeling that the allegedly beleaguered one is trying to get you emotionally worked up, all the alarms should go off.
24) Tells you stories of elaborate, Machiavellian ways that their spouse or partner has supposedly mistreated them (generally including cutting off their access to $).
There's no confusing these folks with those who are actually being abused, since the latter are generally secretive, ashamed and in denial, while the former are clearly trying to grab and hold the attention of anyone who'll listen. The financial aspects of the tales can verge on the diabolical; I've been told that a purported victim's husband "took" all her $ and put it in accounts under just his name, had secret deals with every financial institution in the city so that if she tried to open any kind of account, or even rent a safe deposit box, he'd be instantly alerted and the $ given to him, AND was doing regular searches of every nook and cranny of the house looking for hidden lucre... and I was told that by several different women who didn't know each other-did they all read the same book or something? I think the reason for this specific line of BS is to make it impossible for anybody to come up with a workable plan for them to leave their "abuser"; if they have no $ and no way to ever collect any, they have to stay with the man and keep being "abused"... which allows them to whine about their hard lives forever.
25) Claims to have been SO nice to, and done SO many favors for, a lengthy list of people who did nothing for them in return.
First of all; what kind of IDIOT would make a lifelong habit of doing all that stuff for people who aren't paying them back in kind? More to the point; why would so many people behave that way to someone who's allegedly so kind and generous? The REAL story is either that the "victim" is trying to buy their way into people's lives by doing unwanted "favors" for them, or that they're offering "favors" to everyone they encounter and the only ones who accept are heartless takers with no thought of reciprocity, or that they've got a convenient memory that only allows them to recall what THEY did, and not what others have done for them. Whichever is the reason, these folks are incapable of the balanced give and take of friendship, and they're so emotionally wedded to the idea of being unappreciated that no matter how good you are to them they'll find some way to see you as a bad person... and will treat you accordingly.
26) Gives you a list of ex-friends that they say were habitually cruel or abusive to them.
As a rule, only really weak and screwed-up people keep getting protractedly involved with nasty types; normal, healthy people DUMP so-called friends after the FIRST incident of malicious behavior, and LEARN from those experiences how to avoid unpleasant folks in the future... AND, don't feel the need to make a Federal case of past bad relationships. Failure to dump or learn isn't always the issue, though; the supposed misdeeds of their ex-friends are often exaggerated or just plain invented, as a ploy to gain sympathy or induce kind-hearted listeners to try to make it up to them... or, worst of all, to trick listeners into believing that the ex-friends are bad people, when the TRUTH inevitably is that the putative victims treated the ex-friends like garbage, NOT the other way around.
27) Says they’ve NEVER been in any sort of relationship with a mean, abusive or psychotic person.
Only those who are themselves rotten are so adept at avoiding getting sucked in by ugly types; every DECENT person has been burned a few times by those who seemed sweet at 1st and then sh*t on them without remorse, but baddies are so busy trying to mistreat others that it's very hard to mistreat THEM.
28) Is always unhappy, and always needs to be cheered up and encouraged, such that there are few (or no) fun times in your interactions.
No matter how much they claim to love you, a person whose very nature is joyless (as opposed to somebody dealing with limited-duration grief due to a major loss) isn't capable of friendship or true romantic involvement; you can't rescue them, fix them, heal them, or cure them... and if you try, you'll be encouraging them to continue being sad sacks to keep getting attention. The best you can do for them is hand them a list of psychiatrists and withdraw until they've handled their depression issues; it's the only sort of help a non-professional is qualified to give them.
29) Is weak, seems to really admire you, and praises you and your strengths alot.
The flip side of all that idolization is resentment; it seems counter-intuitive, but so are many other aspects of how weak, insecure people behave... they have a love/hate relationship with the strong, and hate usually wins out, no matter how well the strong have treated them. Excessive praise and admiration coming from somebody who isn't trying to brown-nose you at work or get into your pants is always a red flag, because only manipulative or messed-up people feel the need to try to sweet-talk their supposed friends; when it's your strength that's a big part of what's being lauded, and a weak person is doing the lauding, you can be fairly sure you've got a future enemy in the making.
30) Demonizes an individual or group (that they know personally), and makes pointed, repeated, and dramatically negative references to them, particularly if the target(s) doesn't seem to have actually done anything bad (former romantic partners are a different matter-most of us get nutso over THEM).
Only sociopathic, sick, or evil types are capable of that sort of intense, obsessive hatred. Normal folks don't even act that way about people who did them demonstrable harm (such as taking credit for their work at the office); they may fume for a while, but then they let it go... they won't still be making a constant issue about it months later, and probably not even weeks later. Imagine, then, how warped a person has to be to get like a broken record over a trivial incident, especially one that doesn't involve wrongdoing, such as when somebody disagreed with them or wouldn't do things their way; if you encounter someone who keeps squawking about stuff like that, especially stuff that happened weeks or months ago... RUN!!
I hope this latest installment of the Beware List has given you some food for thought; more importantly, I hope it's given you a better chance at ducking some potential problems... forewarned is forearmed.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Food, glorious food (and a laptop update)
I mentioned in my post of 8-15-06 that my laptop had to go in for repairs, leaving me to try to handle all my online activities with older, inadequate machines. The good news is that I got the laptop back early Thursday afternoon, several days sooner than expected; the bad news is that, for no reason we can determine, the repair geeks re-formatted my frigging hard drive, which means that all my software has to be re-installed, all my settings and preferences re-done, and everything made to play nice together. The REALLY bad news is that the moron I'm married to had insisted that we didn't need to back up the hundreds of animated gifs and other image files I'd had on there, as he was SURE they'd just be replacing something on the motherboard and wouldn't need to touch that stuff; if I hadn't been so freaked out about his repeated failure to remove all the private and sensitive info from the laptop before taking it in, it would've occurred to me that it was CRAZY to not back my files up, as they could spill coffee into the machine and wreck it even if they were just replacing a broken screw, and that in general it's a bad idea to trust his judgment... but he's the expert, and I DID trust him. Now mind you, not having my files backed up didn't HAVE to be catastrophic, as they ask you to sign a release saying that there's nothing on the machine of value that isn't backed up before doing any repair during which they might re-format; at that juncture, my husband SHOULD have realized that they MIGHT re-format despite his belief otherwise, and either brought the machine home and backed it up, or called me and asked me what I wanted him to do, or even paid the $100 to have THEM back it up... ANYTHING but what he DID do, which was to be so sure that the desktop wouldn't be touched that he SIGNED the release!! Needless to say, when we got the laptop back ALL MY FILES WERE GONE.
If there were such a thing as a scream that could crack the planet in 2, the one I uttered upon learning this would have been it.
After I ran out of imprecations to heap upon him, he told me that he MIGHT be able to recover the files, IF the drive hadn't been replaced (it was a warranty-covered repair, so we didn't know at that point what they'd done), IF it hadn't been wiped, IF the planets were aligned properly, etc; much to my relief, a call to the repair place revealed that they'd "just" re-formatted the drive, so we had a shot at getting the files back. We had to pay $100 for a hard drive recovery thing, which spent several hours doing whatever it does to the laptop while I waited with my heart in my throat; the good news is that it seems to have recovered all the files, but the bad news is that it recovered about 5 THOUSAND files, 10x what I had on there, and none of them have names or dates, which means that we have to sort through all of them to find my personal stuff (the rest is mostly images from the cache)... or, rather, HE needs to sort through them, since this is 100% HIS fault-he'll have many hours of hard work during which to repent of his stupidity.
I've had my laptop back for 2.5 days now, and I'm STILL waiting for everything to be reinstalled and working so I can use it, in addition to waiting to get my files; we're having a pretty tense weekend.
The food news, luckily, is all good:
Quiznos has introduced a BRISKET sub, and it's soooooooooo good; it'll probably only be around for a little while, so try it while you can (if you've never had brisket, it's the meat next to the ribs, and tastes similar). To see where your nearest Quiznos is, and check out their menu, go here
http://www.quiznos.com/menu/subs.asp
I'm sure their different locations vary wildly as to what odds and ends they sell along with the sandwiches and salads, but in my area Quiznos is the only place you can still find the ultra-yummy Doritos Black Pepper Jack chips
http://www.frito-lay.com/fl/flstore/cgi-bin/Nutrition_ProdID_365051.htm
AND they have single-serving sized carrot cakes that are to die for... if you've been getting your subs at that OTHER place, try Quiznos and see how much better they are.
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed my husband in the kitchen wolfing down something I couldn't quite see; when I asked him what it was, he said "It's an ice cream sandwich-want one?". I hadn't had anything like that in ages, so I said yes, and was pleased to discover that it tasted better than I remembered; the chocolate part is usually a little bitter, and the ice cream is usually ice MILK or grainy from too much sugar, but this kind had excellent chocolate flavor on the outside and amazingly smooth, creamy, velvety ice cream on the inside. I reported these things to my husband, and he agreed, adding, "This is the 1st time I saw this brand-it's called Skinny Cow." "Waaaaaaaaaaait a minute!!" I yelped, "this is a DIET ice cream sandwich?!!" I'd never had any sort of reduced-fat ice cream that wasn't GROSS, and would've assumed that any that was decent, much less GREAT, existed only in the minds of desperate dieters, but here it is:
http://skinnycow.com/products_lf.php?flavorType=ICS&flavorNumber=0
97% fat free and just 140 calories... and so good that my husband, who doesn't even like sweets, will suck down an entire package in a couple of hours. But wait, it gets BETTER; he brought home their "Vanilla & Strawberry Sorbet Swirl" ice cream bars
http://skinnycow.com/products_lf.php?flavorType=ICB&flavorNumber=1
which are 99% fat free and only 110 calories... and totally wonderful. You don't need to be counting calories to try these, though, trust me; the only downside to them is that they melt a little faster than regular ice cream... but once you start eating one you won't want to put it down anyways.
And finally, some food-related marital humor:
My husband came up with a hilarious imitation of me consuming a baked potato: He started by miming me glopping all the toppings on (butter, sour cream, bacon bits and blue cheese crumbles), and then pretended to be me eating; "Chomp-chomp-chomp, yum-yum-yum, glop-glop-glop, chomp-chomp-chomp, yum-yum-yum, chomp.... ew, what's that, a piece of POTATO? Spit-spit-spit!! Ew, ew!! Glop-glop-glop, chomp-chomp-chomp, yum-yum-yum!!" When I'd finished howling with laughter, I protested the idea that I didn't eat any potato, and he retorted, "I could replace your baked potato with a PLASTIC potato and you'd never even NOTICE." lol
I sometimes wonder if people are puzzled by the wildly varying views of my husband that are given by the stories I post about him; actually, I bet you could get a pretty clear idea of who's married or in a long-term relationship (or once was) by seeing who's NOT puzzled by how all these stories can be about the same relationship... kind of like how my husband used to be puzzled as to the popularity of "Mad About You" because he thought it didn't make any sense, and then once we got married it made TOTAL sense to him. Anyways, while I was typing this up he made a bunch of progress with my computer issues, so... maybe he won't have to sleep in the shed after all. ;-)
If there were such a thing as a scream that could crack the planet in 2, the one I uttered upon learning this would have been it.
After I ran out of imprecations to heap upon him, he told me that he MIGHT be able to recover the files, IF the drive hadn't been replaced (it was a warranty-covered repair, so we didn't know at that point what they'd done), IF it hadn't been wiped, IF the planets were aligned properly, etc; much to my relief, a call to the repair place revealed that they'd "just" re-formatted the drive, so we had a shot at getting the files back. We had to pay $100 for a hard drive recovery thing, which spent several hours doing whatever it does to the laptop while I waited with my heart in my throat; the good news is that it seems to have recovered all the files, but the bad news is that it recovered about 5 THOUSAND files, 10x what I had on there, and none of them have names or dates, which means that we have to sort through all of them to find my personal stuff (the rest is mostly images from the cache)... or, rather, HE needs to sort through them, since this is 100% HIS fault-he'll have many hours of hard work during which to repent of his stupidity.
I've had my laptop back for 2.5 days now, and I'm STILL waiting for everything to be reinstalled and working so I can use it, in addition to waiting to get my files; we're having a pretty tense weekend.
The food news, luckily, is all good:
Quiznos has introduced a BRISKET sub, and it's soooooooooo good; it'll probably only be around for a little while, so try it while you can (if you've never had brisket, it's the meat next to the ribs, and tastes similar). To see where your nearest Quiznos is, and check out their menu, go here
http://www.quiznos.com/menu/subs.asp
I'm sure their different locations vary wildly as to what odds and ends they sell along with the sandwiches and salads, but in my area Quiznos is the only place you can still find the ultra-yummy Doritos Black Pepper Jack chips
http://www.frito-lay.com/fl/flstore/cgi-bin/Nutrition_ProdID_365051.htm
AND they have single-serving sized carrot cakes that are to die for... if you've been getting your subs at that OTHER place, try Quiznos and see how much better they are.
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed my husband in the kitchen wolfing down something I couldn't quite see; when I asked him what it was, he said "It's an ice cream sandwich-want one?". I hadn't had anything like that in ages, so I said yes, and was pleased to discover that it tasted better than I remembered; the chocolate part is usually a little bitter, and the ice cream is usually ice MILK or grainy from too much sugar, but this kind had excellent chocolate flavor on the outside and amazingly smooth, creamy, velvety ice cream on the inside. I reported these things to my husband, and he agreed, adding, "This is the 1st time I saw this brand-it's called Skinny Cow." "Waaaaaaaaaaait a minute!!" I yelped, "this is a DIET ice cream sandwich?!!" I'd never had any sort of reduced-fat ice cream that wasn't GROSS, and would've assumed that any that was decent, much less GREAT, existed only in the minds of desperate dieters, but here it is:
http://skinnycow.com/products_lf.php?flavorType=ICS&flavorNumber=0
97% fat free and just 140 calories... and so good that my husband, who doesn't even like sweets, will suck down an entire package in a couple of hours. But wait, it gets BETTER; he brought home their "Vanilla & Strawberry Sorbet Swirl" ice cream bars
http://skinnycow.com/products_lf.php?flavorType=ICB&flavorNumber=1
which are 99% fat free and only 110 calories... and totally wonderful. You don't need to be counting calories to try these, though, trust me; the only downside to them is that they melt a little faster than regular ice cream... but once you start eating one you won't want to put it down anyways.
And finally, some food-related marital humor:
My husband came up with a hilarious imitation of me consuming a baked potato: He started by miming me glopping all the toppings on (butter, sour cream, bacon bits and blue cheese crumbles), and then pretended to be me eating; "Chomp-chomp-chomp, yum-yum-yum, glop-glop-glop, chomp-chomp-chomp, yum-yum-yum, chomp.... ew, what's that, a piece of POTATO? Spit-spit-spit!! Ew, ew!! Glop-glop-glop, chomp-chomp-chomp, yum-yum-yum!!" When I'd finished howling with laughter, I protested the idea that I didn't eat any potato, and he retorted, "I could replace your baked potato with a PLASTIC potato and you'd never even NOTICE." lol
I sometimes wonder if people are puzzled by the wildly varying views of my husband that are given by the stories I post about him; actually, I bet you could get a pretty clear idea of who's married or in a long-term relationship (or once was) by seeing who's NOT puzzled by how all these stories can be about the same relationship... kind of like how my husband used to be puzzled as to the popularity of "Mad About You" because he thought it didn't make any sense, and then once we got married it made TOTAL sense to him. Anyways, while I was typing this up he made a bunch of progress with my computer issues, so... maybe he won't have to sleep in the shed after all. ;-)
