My husband tells a story that his grandmother told him about her first marriage, to the father of my MIL's half brothers. They were apparently very poor, and on their honeymoon they traveled I believe by train. They used up all their money on the train tickets and were hungry, and they managed to scrape together enough money to pay for one sandwich, which they divided into two pieces. She said that she knew it was a mistake at that moment, because he took the bigger half of the sandwich without offering it to her first.
This has resulted in a rather useful tool for us in our own marriage, because on those occasions when one of us is feeling slighted or taken advantage of, we simply tell the other that they are taking the bigger half of the sandwich, and it is a quick non-emotional way for us to step back and take a clearer look at what we are doing to each other.
Only related in the most tangential way, as it pertains to "sandwiches", check out this advice question and the response. It is one of the funniest things I've read in ages. Be sure to read all the way through the comments, because some of those people have a wonderful gift for the euphemism. Plus the sheer number of commenters who think that they are actually talking about grilled cheese sandwiches is astonishing.
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It's no secret that my two middle children are in some sort of competition to be the Most Middle of the Middle Children. They fight like crazy and act out to get our attention in dramatic ways. But they can be nice to each other from time to time. Last week Little Man decided to read to Sunny after bedtime and BigDaddyFish told them it was okay, as long as they stayed in bed and let us watch Deadliest Catch. They apparently took it to heart, because when we went to check on them when we went to bed, Little Man's light was still on, and there they were, all snuggled up together in his bed. We just quietly turned the light out and let them stay there til morning.
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On Sunday BigDaddyFish and I went on a hot date to the grocery store, and among the eleventy jillion things we bought for a frillion dollars were multiple gallons of milk: fat free for me, whole for the baby, and 1% for the other kids. As we carried the groceries in the house, I lamented that they are making the milk jugs with thinner plastic these days, and with my teeny tiny hands I can't do curls with them anymore when I'm carrying them into the house, because the handles are too flimsy. He noted he has no problems and demonstrated, and I reminded him that his hands are big enough to shore up the handles so they don't bend. Our front door has swelled in the summer heat and you have to kick it in to open it. I had my hands full, so I balanced the gallon of milk on my leg while I kicked the door in and pushed with the hand, a maneuver I've successful executed multiple times in the past. You see this coming, right?
The milk slipped off my leg, crashing to the floor from a height of about 2 feet (yes, I'm very very short, we've covered that territory before). Two years ago, I would have just picked it up and put it in the fridge. This time, it exploded. Milk was everywhere. It shot up to my eye height on our front door (about 4.5 feet), splattered the screen door like a painting disaster, careened over the step out on our front walk, and a 3-foot pool flowed ever closer to the step to the sunken living room, and the carpet that would stink forever if it hit there. I shrieked to my inlaws that I need paper towels, the whole roll, and a trash bag while I KICKED the milk back from the edge of the living room step. Yes, I kicked the milk. It took us a good 20 minutes to clean up all the milk and wipe it down so it wasn't sticky. Oddly enough, neither BDF nor I got any milk on us at all. I was able to save the carpet with my mad ninja skillz. BDF kept walking around shaking his head and saying to anyone who would listen "We were Just. Talking. about how they are making the jugs more flimsy!"
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This weekend my husband and I took the kids to the ultimate geek gaming store, Dream Wizards (side note: they were having some sort of gaming tournament at the time and there were about 50 mostly male players doing something or other at tables covering half the store. BDF came out at said "I felt like I was the only one in the store who has ever had sex." I pointed out he was actually IN that store in the first place and shouldn't be feeling so superior. There was some good geek scenery, though, if you catch my drift). He took Little Man and Trout inside, mostly for Pokemon cards, though I know he wanted to look at the old D&D stuff, and I stayed in the car with Sunny and Nemo. It was a beautiful day, a light breeze was blowing, keeping it from being stifling, we had the windows open and I put on a movie for the kids while I read a book. Easily more than an hour later, BDF and the kids returned with Little Man in absolute hysterics. Going into that store had been more than he could handle, there were too many choices, and he had a meltdown. Sunny wanted to go into the store so I took her while BDF tried to get Little Man calmed down.
BDF told me later, "I was so overwhelmed by Little Man's meltdown and trying to deal with that and I was frazzled, and I completely forgot who I was or what I was doing there and where you were and everything. I happened to look over and behind the cars all I could see was the back of a head with glorious hair, and I thought to myself 'Ooooh! A hottie!' and I waited anxiously to see the rest of her. And then the hottie rounded the corner behind the cars and I could see...Sunny! The hottie was you. So I wanted to tell you, I like your hair. You're hot." Um, thanks? Silly man.
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