Sunday, January 17, 2010

Talk Thursday: Favorite Proverb

My husband is a worrywart, the wet mud hen of western civilization as we know it. When Psam and Misery were dating he’d make their dates come in the first (and usually only) time stand up, turn around and then ask them to pull up their pants and if they had gang aspirations or a current affiliation? Then he’d promise to kick the ass of the hick-in- the-sticks- wanna-be-a- gangbanger if he EVER hurt his daughter. The Standonthegrass family traditional meet and greet date inspection grill service usually ended something like this…

“Be home by 9:45, and don’t date with hard candy in your mouth.”

Psam and Misery would go camping in the dunes with the admonition to not camp with hard candy in their mouth. Going to the movies, is it R-Rated? Lots of blood guts, and violent mauling? Good, don’t watch the movie with hard candy your mouth. And anything I do, you got it, no hard candy.

“Honey, I’m driving to the store.”
“Don’t drive with hard candy in your mouth.”

“Do you have laundry hidden any where? This is my final load”
“No, you’re not doing laundry with hard candy in your mouth are you?”

And the hot-tub and hard candy – fuggitaboutit.

Sadly this is not the only twisted proverb my family lives by. Ducky and Burp abide by the time old male standard, “if it’s not in front we don’t have it.” For years I thought it was just Ducky – I mean really folks after eighteen years he has just come to realize that soy sauce and syrup go in the cupboard, taco sauce goes in the fridge. In the fridge everything goes in the door or in the front, because God forbid it gets hidden behind something and we run out. He has literally failed to see the milk container because it was “hidden” behind a lunch bag. No I’m not talking a quart container, I’m referring to the large, white, they say you can recycle it but do they really? gallon container with the bright green lid. If it’s not in the front, we don’t have it.

Cupboard space in my kitchen is probably standard, but I feel it’s limited. A cause not aided by my ability to pack rat away hundreds lunchmeat containers and gallon upon gallons of plastic water bottles. He has no clue because they are all stored in nice neat towers behind the boxes of lunch bags, Saranwrap, and tinfoil. I cleaned out the cupboards last weekend in a winter cleaning frenzy. I had boxes of old vases (I recycled back to my florist), trash bags of filled with liter water bottles and Reynolds stackable containers that his lunchmeats come in. And boxes of baking tins, like the angel-food cake mold I have never used, to take to the Salvation Army. He was pretty boggled trying to figure out why I’d want to keep that stuff and where did it come from?

No, honey I regained acres of lower kitchen shelf space, by cleaning out the cupboards. But he will never know where his extra commuter cups are, because they aren’t in the front – so we don’t have any.

Sith,
Cele

3 comments:

foundinidaho said...

Don't ALL men live by the proverb of everything being there if it's in front of them?

So, so true.

Cele said...

I think you're right.

Maya said...

Hmmm, I think I like the hard candy rule. But, I'm a worrywart too!