Last March, I wrote a post that resulted in one of my favorite comment sections ever. Relationships are so funny, aren’t they? Like, you could be absolutely committed to stepping in front of a train to save a person’s life, but if they hang the toilet paper the wrong way you would murder them with your bare hands. I guess when you spend year after year with a person, you have to find some ways to keep things fresh.
Recently, my husband and I had an argument that made me think of the earlier post and the resulting comments. It was an argument that nearly led to fisticuffs, it was so intense. Neither of us wanted to cede even an INCH of ground. I wanted to scream at him, and surely he felt the same way. We finally stopped bickering about it but only because we ran out of energy; we never formally agreed that I was right all along. (I am right.)
The subject matter of this fierce battle? Marshmallow size.
last year’s carb feast, with mashed sweet potatoes in the upper right
That’s right, folks. My lovely, generous husband agreed to go do all the Thanksgiving shopping for me and I nearly strangled him over his refusal to accept that the marshmallow size I requested was the correct and only marshmallow size.
Do you want some context? Carla’s favorite Thanksgiving foods are a) cranberry sauce and b) sweet potatoes with marshmallows (or, more accurately, marshmallows with sweet potato essence). So I put marshmallows on the grocery list. Because my husband likes to know Specific Details about the things he’s buying, I added the note Giant size to our grocery list.
“We get regular size marshmallows,” he said.
No, we don’t. We always get the jumbo size marshmallows. The kind you use for making s’mores.
“No, the little ones.”
Round and round we went on this, Internet. I found a photo of last year’s sweet potatoes, with the jumbo size marshmallows on top.
“Maybe we used them last year, but usually we use the regular size.”
For awhile, I thought maybe we were talking about the exact same thing and just using different terminology for it. Like maybe he thinks the jumbo size Kraft Jet Puffed are “regular size” and we were arguing about nothing. But no. He meant the small size. The kind you put in hot cocoa.
Carla helpfully googled this photo so we could determine that we were, in fact, discussing marshmallows of different size. (This was only after a deeply infuriating aside, where I said that “tiny” marshmallows are the kind that come in packets of powdered cocoa and he disagreed, and I nearly detonated.)
image from savoryexperiments.com
I tried to remind my husband that I have been making these same sweet potatoes pretty much every year since 2010. Not sufficient evidence. I dug up a photo of that first Thanksgiving, in 2010, with the jumbo marshmallows. Not sufficient evidence.
Is this the most RIDICULOUS argument you have ever heard of?! It didn’t feel like it, in the moment. It felt like this man was a stranger. How could he think I was a person who would put small marshmallows on top of my sweet potatoes?! Who has the TIME for such detailed work?! Not me! Did he not SEE me? Did he not KNOW me?!
Finally, I threw up my hands and told him that fine, if he insisted on getting the small marshmallows, he could place them all in concentric circles on the mashed sweet potatoes. (Even though marshmallow placement is firmly Carla’s job.) And he went grocery shopping. When he came home, he handed me a bag of the correct size marshmallows, even though he made it very clear that he was surrendering to me, not that he thought I was right.
One of the most maddening arguments we’ve ever had.
Although it doesn’t compare in any way to the all-out brawl* we had over which everyday glasses to register for when we got engaged.
Okay, here is where you tell me the most ridiculous arguments you’ve been in. With a sibling, a spouse, a friend. I just want to hear the silly things that push your buttons.
* Not an actual brawl.
I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here.
1.It’s Friday: Is that a good thing? (I mean, it is Good Friday.) But I find that weekends have a whole different feel to them now that I am a parent who works (very) part-time from my home. No longer do I find them relaxing, as I did when I was not a parent. Nor do I find them as stressful and exhausting as I did when Carla was wee. Now, I kind of see them as My Time to Do Stuff with My Family, Whom I Do Not See During the Week. I have spent the week working and storing up plenty of solitude, and now I want to get out and do fun stuff with my husband and kid. My husband and kid, however, do not feel the same way. They want to retreat to their separate corners and play video games and build with LEGO and make elaborate crafts and tool around on their guitars and watch endless episodes of Bluey on their iPads. I try to give them space, and sometimes I succeed in flopping on a couch and reading a book all day. But other times, I end up doing laundry and making meals and feeling like I am doing the exact same crap I do every other day when I want something different and fun. Not something social, mind you – something different and fun with my family. Really, I want to force them to spend time with me. Maybe now that the weather seems to be turning toward pleasant, I can lure them away from devices with the promise of… what? Bike rides? A trip to the [Local Attraction we’ve visited too many times]? A day trip to see one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural gems? I would be delighted by any of these options. Maybe what I need to do is come up with a big list of Fun Things that we can choose from. BUT WHAT? What fun things are on your agenda for the warmer months? What are some of your favorite ways to occupy yourself (and your family) on the weekend?
2. Overeager Emailers: When I got these two back-to-back emails from Take 5 Oil Change, I had to screenshot them. Which was difficult to do because I was rolling my eyes so hard. Have some chill, Take 5. Also, I have never set foot in a Take 5, which I am assuming is a place where you go to get your vehicle’s oil changed, so I am baffled as to how the company got my email address. Perhaps I should have taken their survey, in hopes that one of their questions might be, “Are we inexplicably spamming you?”
3.Comment Concern: My blog is eating a bunch of legitimate and lovely comments, and sending them to spam. This is happening to multiple commenters, for no apparent reason that I can see (like, it’s not every comment from a specific blogger, and it’s not comments with links or specific terms in them). If you are not seeing your comment, it is because of this, NOT for any other reason. I love you and your comments and I appreciate your taking the time to read and share your thoughts. Meanwhile, I will try to keep an eye on the ol’ spam folder.
4. Upgrade or Not?: In addition to the comment eating, my blog has also become overly exuberant with the ad serving. It is driving me nuts. I cannot even see my post title on my homepage anymore, all I can see is an ad or the space where an ad should be. Sometimes there are even POP UPS, which makes me so teeth-grittingly annoyed I can hardly stand it. I put up with the ads – even though they have, unfortunately, offended some of my beloved readers in the past, for which I am so so apologetic – because I am cheap, and I don’t pay anything for WordPress to host my blog, and I recognize that nothing in life is truly free. HOWEVER. I am growing very weary of the ads. Plus, I have been posting in this space for nearly fourteen years, and maybe it is about time to put some money into it? I don’t know. Maybe I could figure out how to get ads that are in some way relevant to the people who show up here? Or at least get rid of that big banner ad that’s BLOCKING MY CONTENT? Anyway, this is all to say that WordPress is forcing me to consider I am starting to wonder whether I should upgrade to the premium version of WordPress. Have you done that? And, if so, are there pros and cons you care to share?
5. Spring Clean: Carla’s class did a spring cleaning recently and she cleaned out her desk. This is all the writing utensils she found inside her desk. The desk that only she uses. They were, of course, hidden beneath piles and piles of paper and “treasures” and worksheets and brochures for school events and paper plates and craft materials and folders and pencil sharpeners and bits of yarn/pipe cleaner/rubber band. I keep reminding myself that I used to be just as messy/hoardery/disorganized as she is, and yet I have become a moderately tidy adult. I can only hope she follows a similar path.
6. Enduring Grumps: I am in a writing slump. I am in a reading slump. Friendship angst, about multiple friendships. My face looks like I am in the throes of peak puberty. My heels have been hurting again. I have been trying to lose weight and am not losing weight. I went on Facebook for five minutes to check on a friend’s vacation photos and saw a post requesting recommendations for bulletproof backpacks. We keep having thunderstorms (but no tornadoes, so I am counting my blessings) and the wind and lightning stress me out. I still feel pressure to Make Holidays Magical but my husband is the founding member of Dads Deeply Against Excessive Easter Baskets and I don’t want to, like, openly defy him. Except I already bought a few things beyond the few things he knows about. But I didn’t get anything to hide inside Easter eggs, which the Easter Bunny still hides around the house for Carla to find. Is she just going to find empty eggs this year? Is that the most depressing thing ever???? Carla’s new schedule is AWFUL, and even though it’s better than her fall schedule was and even though I am pretty sure we will get used to it based on the fact that we got used to the fall schedule, it’s awful RIGHT NOW. I need new shoes but I feel like all I do is spend money. I have tasks that MUST be completed and yet I keep dragging my feet. The school year is almost over and I have loved this year, and so has Carla which is obviously more important, and I don’t want it to end. The school year is almost over and there is a flurry of end-of-year everything cropping up and every day I get a new event to add to my bursting calendar and it seems like we will never have a free moment again. It is only April and already the humidity makes me want to die.
7. Merlin Bird ID: Do you know about this app? Carla has it on her iPad, and she’s talked about it for years. If we see a bird of uncertain heritage in the wild, she will take note of its characteristics and then look it up in the app later. I guess I always thought that it was similar to a bird book – useful for identifying a bird based on size, shape, color. And it is! But it also has an auditory feature which I discovered after Carla had been regularly leaving her bathroom window open in the middle of winter. When I asked why she was opening her window, she said that she likes to hold her iPad up to the window so it can tell her which birds are in our yard. This feature is SO COOL. My husband and I used it to identify a weird trilling noise that we kept hearing outside our bedroom at night. I thought it was a raccoon and my husband thought it was some sort of creepy insect, but it turns out it was an Eastern screech owl. This app is completely free (although make sure you download it while connected to WiFi omg.)
8. Mail Melee: We have a new mail carrier. I know this because we went on vacation and had our mail held while we were gone. And then when we came home and the mail resumed, we never got the pile of mail we normally would have had after a ten-day absence. I went to the post office to inquire after our missing mail, and the supervisor said we had a new mail carrier. He couldn’t get ahold of her, but when he did, he would ask whether she had our mail. I left my phone number and never heard back. We have since had two days with very full mailboxes, so we are hoping that all the held mail has been returned to us. Although… I am not sure how we would know??? (Usually, it comes in a big pile, held together with a massive rubber band or sometimes stacked in a Post Office bin that we have to return. And it’s always been delivered to the stoop rather than into the mailbox, so it’s very clear that it’s the held mail. The two days of excess mail could have just been… heavy mail days.) My husband said something about going through our bills and seeing which ones we get via mail and then looking in our files to determine about when they normally show up… but that sounds very complicated and also not foolproof. We have also gotten a rather alarming amount of mail that belongs to various neighbors, and at least one neighbor has commented that he has also been receiving mail that doesn’t belong to him. So. Our poor mail carrier seems to be facing a rather steep learning curve.
9. Planless Purchase: I bought these spice mixes at Trader Joe’s… and now I have no idea what to do with them. I tried mixing some of the umami one into sour cream to use as a dip for potato chips… it tasted like nothing. What would you use them for?
10. More Controversial Pronunciations: I loved everyone’s responses to my Enduring Marital Arguments post. It was especially enjoyable to learn how many people have strong feelings about the pronunciation of Don and Dawn (my strong feeling, again, is that they are identical morphemes). I remembered another homophonic disagreement my husband and I have: the pronunciation of the three words Barry, berry, and bury. THESE WORDS SOUND THE SAME. Unless you ask my husband, who says they are all separate and distinct.
Well, that’s all I have for you Internet. Hope you are enjoying your holidays, if you are celebrating this week. Have a wonderful weekend.
It is my fervent belief, based on very little evidence, that even the strongest marriages have points of irreconcilable division.
Perhaps you agree, based on marriages you know.
I’m not talking about political or religious divides, or disagreements on number of children, or financial philosophical misalignment.
No. I’m talking about the little things that don’t matter at all and yet make you so incandescently angry that you cannot imagine how you ever married someone so incompatible with your values.
You know, like how you hang the toilet paper.
Here are the top three things that my husband and I CANNOT AND WILL NEVER AGREE ON. (And by “cannot agree” I mean that he refuses to see any sort of reason or logic.)
1. Speeding Technicality: If you are driving in a car, and the posted speed limit is 35 miles per hour, you are speeding if you go above 35 miles per hour. That means that if you are going 36 miles per hour, you are speeding. The limit is 35. Anything above that is speeding.
I acknowledge that most police officers are not going to pull anyone over if they are going a few miles per hour above the posted limit. You could probably get away with driving at 40 mph – even 42 mph! – in a 35 mph zone and not risk being pulled over or ticketed. I acknowledge this. There is a practicality gap between what the LEGAL DEFINITION of speeding is and what an officer feels is worth her time to address.
And yet, I stand firm: 36 mph in a 35 mph zone is speeding.
2. Don and Dawn: My husband and I grew up in different states. But by and large, we have similar “accents.” And yet he maintains that “Don” and “Dawn” have different pronunciations. Anytime this subject comes up, my husband pronounces each name slowly and clearly for me so I can hear the obvious to him only difference between them. I do not hear any difference. There is no difference at all. I acknowledge that perhaps there could be a slight diphthong that I am not processing, and yet, even so, both names would be pronounced the same.
3. Steak Temperature: I like my steak on the cooked side. This is a texture issue; steak that is not cooked enough is too gooey for me to handle. I like a steak that is cooked through, with a hint of pink in the middle. A HINT. For most of my life, if I ever ordered steak at a restaurant, I ordered it well done. This has never worked out well for me, because there is a bias against people who like their steak well done. Even at very fancy steak houses, most chefs choose the worst cut of meat – like the shriveled end of a tenderloin with the only bit of gristle in the entire cow – and then cook it until it is black. This is not well done; this is a travesty against meat. Because of this, I have trained myself over the past decade or so to enjoy steak that is cooked less well: medium to medium well. It still only works out some of the time. Usually the steak is undercooked and I have to send it back – which is The Worst.
But if I am paying for a steak in a restaurant, why can I not have the steak prepared the way I want it to be prepared? I pay the same exorbitant price for a steak whether it is cooked medium rare or well-done. Why should my temperature choice result in a sub-par steak? I do understand that perhaps – PERHAPS, I say with immense skepticism, because I think if you simply used a thermometer you could avoid any issues – it is difficult for a chef to know exactly when a steak is well-done. (Although again, when my husband and I make steak in our home, we achieve the exact right temperature every time.) But temperature aside, I should not get a crummy, shriveled end piece of steak while the medium rare folk get the juicy, tender, gristle-free cuts.
My husband says it is my fault. He says I am asking for a crappy cut of meat. When I order medium-well or well-done steak, I am implying that I don’t like steak (I DO, very much, I just like it NOT SQUISHY) and so the chefs think they don’t need to give me a good piece. If you like steak well done, don’t order it, is his thought. This is a dumb take, I say. I am paying for the steak, I should be able to ask for it to be prepared the way I like it.
WITHIN REASON, of course. I am not asking a chef to change his whole recipe. And also, if you know that you are going to produce something crappy, then maybe give me a chance to change my order? I feel like the staff should say, “We don’t cook steak to that temperature. Would you prefer it medium, or would you like to order something else?” Don’t just throw an old slab of tire on a plate and charge $56 for it and call it filet mignon.
**********
**********
Well. Now I am very fired up.
If you are in a relationship, what are your silly but still completely irreconcilable debates? What are the small, semi-ridiculous topics on which you refuse to give an INCH? If you eat steak, how do you like it cooked?
