To All Women Considering Marriage

Last night we grilled out again. Grilling is a common theme in Daniel & Heather's summer enjoyment, so I wouldn't be surprised if you hear many stories about it this coming season. This time it wasn't steaks. This time it was a pork tenderloin and a hamburger, which we agreed that we would share because neither of us particularly wanted either one of them. However, when you're digging through the freezer and all you can find is ¼ lb of ground beef and a pork tenderloin and you look at the calendar and realize it's the day before grocery day, sometimes you just have to go with it. You can't be all that picky. Besides, we had enough meat to feed two people, which is probably better than about ¾ of the world population, so I wasn't feeling too oppressed by our options.

Based on the title of this blog and the content of the last blog, you are probably wondering to yourself, "What did he do now?" I will tell you. Oh, I will tell you.

Firstly, let me point out that I get home earlier than Daniel. Therefore, I start dinner before he arrives. If it's a particularly good day, it might even be finishing up as he gets home. This day was no different. I got home, got the meat out, made an effort at defrosting it, and decided to work on some potatoes to go with it (yes, the famous potatoes, once again). As I am working on this task, I open the cupboard door. What do I find?

Amongst the pasta, chips, coffee, canned fruit, cake mixes, crackers, pudding and jello mixes, and boxed potatoes (not nearly as good as the real thing, by the way) I find a bottle of Dayquil. Now I am no genius, but I grew up on Sesame Street and I just so happened to learn a little song that goes, "One of these things is not like the other ones; One of these things doesn't belong…." Right away this song starts tinging in my head. Seriously, why are the medical supplies in with the potatoes? Then I think back to when I had some sort of throat/chest plague a week and a half ago and I remember the difficulty I had in trying to locate the Dayquil. As I recall, I used it one day and never found it again. Oh, silly me! I didn't look next to the boxed potatoes. What was I thinking?

Daniel comes home from work as I am pondering the fate of my medical supplies and the importance of being able to locate Dayquil during a plague. I say to him, sweetly, "Honey, why is the Dayquil in the cupboard?"

He says, "It was in the kitchen one day". As though that completely explains how it ended up filed under 'P' for potato.

Now the wheels are turning. I am starting to figure it out. My guess is I took the Dayquil into the kitchen to locate some sort of measuring device to ensure that I did not overdose on this semi-potent substance and aggravate the plague even more. I probably then left the Dayquil sitting on the counter in anticipation of using it the next day. However, the next day it was living with the potatoes and I never saw it again. At this point I am starting to get frustrated. Because the Dayquil had gone AWOL, another bottle had to be purchased half way through the plague. But get this: Daniel went out and bought the new bottle because I was curled up in a ball on the sofa coughing my lungs out. Apparently it didn't occur to him as he was shopping for the new one that he had stashed the previous one in the kitchen cabinet.

I turn to him and say (maybe not as sweetly as before), "Honey, we have a medicine cabinet"
Daniel: "I know. This was in the kitchen."
Me: "But you know medicine goes in the medicine cabinet, right?"
Daniel: "But this was in the kitchen."
Me: "But we don't normally store it in the kitchen."
Daniel: "But it was in the kitchen."

Now I am getting really frustrated. Apparently Daniel has entered broken-record mode, and I cannot make any sense of the sentence he keeps repeating. Ok, so the Dayquil was in the kitchen. So what? Is it now a side dish? Would he like me to drizzle it over his pancakes like syrup?

I ask him, "Why didn't you put it in the medicine cabinet?"
Daniel: "Because I didn't get it out. You did. You didn't put it away."
Me: "There wouldn't have been anything to put away if I'd been able to find it. I was using it."
Daniel: "It was in the kitchen."

Oh, so we're back to that again. Apparently anything I am in the process of using now belongs in the kitchen cupboard. Which, in my opinion is overly unfair in this circumstance as I had the plague and was struggling just to eat my popsicles, let alone put away the Dayquil in between doses.

Me: (sweetness is fading fast) "Honey, I really needed this and I couldn't find it. You can't just put things wherever you happen to be standing when you don't want to look at them anymore."
Daniel: "I don't do that."

I resist the urge to fight this point with him, using the purse I found shoved between two board games in the closet last week as a prime example. I don't want to know why he happened to be holding my purse and standing in front of a stack of board games. I don't even want to speculate, so I continue to prepare food. I get the potatoes (the real ones, not the boxed ones) chopped up, I put them in foil, I add the necessary ingredients to make them truly irresistible. I pound the tenderloin flat with the meat-mallet-thingy. I shape the ground beef into a hamburger. Daniel starts the grill and takes the potatoes out. After ten minutes or so it is time to take the meat out, but Daniel hasn't got pants on. Again, I don't want to know why. He just doesn't. I say, "Put some pants on and put the meat on the grill". Does he comply? What do you think? So, as I have pants on, I put the meat on the grill. Ten minutes later he goes outside (with pants) and flips the meat over. Five minutes after that, he collects the meat and potatoes from the grill and brings them inside.

We eat. The meat is serviceable, the potatoes are marvelous.

Now keep in mind, this is what I did: I defrosted the meat, made the hamburger patty, smashed the tenderloin, chopped up the potatoes (probably the most time consuming of my tasks), flavored & seasoned them, and wrapped them up. I put all the food on a plate for Daniel to cook, and put the meat on the grill.

Daniel did this: lit the grill and put the potatoes on. Flipped over the meat once. Brought the meat inside.

As we finish dinner and bring our plates to the sink, Daniel says to me, "I know why you like to grill out so much."
Me: "Why's that?"
Daniel: "Because I do all the cooking."

Do I need to say more?

I love this man. I really do love this man. I am sitting here trying to think happy thoughts and remember all the good things he does…. fixing the bathtub, making me chocolate fondue and watching chick flicks with me on my birthday, mowing the yard, getting Starbucks with me every Sunday….. Some days are just harder than others, I guess.

Tonight I think we should eat dinner out.

Currently reading : David Copperfield (Penguin Classics) By Charles Dickens Release date: By 28 December, 2004