Tuesday, November 24, 2009

One Thing I'm Thankful For

Last Monday I came home from work depressed and out-of-this-world grouchy. We were short on money at the clinic, and I thought we were going to have to cut back on our pharmacy purchases, which is how we supply the uninsured in Dayton with the kind of drugs you can't buy at Wal-Mart for $4.

(By the way, you know what the difference is between the statins (hypertension drugs) that retail for $4 and the ones that cost $100+? The expensive ones don’t have the side effect of causing erectile dysfunction.)

As soon as I got home, I started making sloppy joes with a solidly-frozen 3 lb. roll of ground turkey Old Dog had purchased at the grocery last week. Once I finally got it thawed, it wouldn't fit into any pan that I have, so I kept spilling stuff onto the stove, which promptly scorched, sending up clouds of burnt grease and tomato sauce stench. Every time I’d yell (and this was, minimum, a 15 cuss-word dinner prep), Old Dog would say, “What’s wrong?”

And I’d respond, “Someone bought three [expletive deleted] pounds of ground turkey and it won’t fit into the [expletive deleted] pan, [expletive deleted].”

The first time, he responded, reasonably enough, “You had two pounds on the list, and they didn’t have a two-pound roll.”

“Did it occur to you,” I snarled, “to buy two one pound rolls?”

A half hour later, when I finally had sloppy-joes-for-20 simmering in a big soup pot, he came into the computer room to check on me and I growled at him again.

It wasn’t until 7:30, when the joes (which I make with onion and green pepper and spinach, and they’re really good) were finally ready, that I sat down to watch TV with him and this is why he’s the perfect husband for me:

Because instead of continuing the fight, he just put his arm around my shoulders, smoothed my hair, and said, “Better now?”

And it was.

17 comments:

  1. Aw, that's sweet. It's so wonderful when you find a perfect match.

    And he also could have opened the ground turkey and separated it into smaller servings before freezing. I'm just sayin' :)

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  2. Wow - you mean there are actually men out there who can do this? Gives me hope that mine is on the way! Not that I ever lose my temper or cuss, of course...

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  3. Good proof that "man" is not always a cuss word.

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  4. I'm actually teary now.

    It didn't occur to me either, to buy two one pound rolls of ground turkey. I'm not good at math word problems. Still love me?

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  5. I kind of have this with my husband (except he's the grouchy one - I'm all sweetness & light, I am...)

    We're never really annoyed with each other, just sometimes *other* stuff is irritating.

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  6. I try that smoothing the hair thing with my wife, and pulled back a bloody stump!

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  7. Well hindsight is 20/20, but when I buy a large pkg. of ground meat, I break it down to 1lb packages, and put in zip lock freezer bags...

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  8. You see, sometimes it just takes a sloppy joe tob bring out the best in an Old Dog.

    Come to think of it, I haven't had a sloppy joe since I was a kid! I'll have to dig up a recipe and make some for dinner tonight! (and blog about it, of course - stay tuned.)

    It really is incredible how my blog pals craft my day with their posts.

    Thanks!

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  9. I am glad he is so sensitive to your needs..what a guy! Seems way to simple to split up the portions..yet now you have enough sloppy joes for quite some time. See there is a silver lining:)

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  10. Sounds like a day in the life of my house...just told my friend Sue the other day how my engineer brain is good about this when I begin to miss little angel or get grouchy, but I am with Buff on the splitting it up into freezer bags...so give old dog that job, he he

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  11. Sounds like a lonely man to come home too.

    Hope the money situation works out at the clinics. I think the economy is thrashing a lot of the charitable organizations out there - not pretty.

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  12. i love those marriage moments.

    feel better. the moods round here have been flux too.

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  13. Awww. I like stories that have a happy ending. And yes splitting the meat into reasonable one-pound portions before freezing is quite helpful. Maybe next time.

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  14. i love happy endings. thanks for the smiles and congrats on the POTW over at Goddess!

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  15. Oh he is a good man! Mine has such sweet moments too! Someday, he'll make it an whole hour :)

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