Marital Bliss

I am a happily married woman and I love love LOVE my husband to bits and pieces, but even so, CP does things that instantly makes my blood pressure rise, occasionally embarrasses me, and at times makes me wonder if my mother was right. Scratch the last part, my mother is never right (except for when she is, but this must never ever be admitted in public).

So what are some of these things my husband does to torture me? Oh, where to begin? Where to begin?

1. He uses me as a human spell checker. I get interrupted from doing something of questionable importance on a daily basis with a, "Baba... how do you spell [insert word you mastered by the fourth grade]?". Never mind that his face is glued to a screen using a program that most likely has spell check. Of course saying it once is never sufficient, it must be repeated at least twice only to hear him say, "Oh! I thought so! It just looked funny when I wrote it". Really??!

2. He's a crappy tipper, yet he loves to repeatedly visit the same restaurants. I've explained that servers have elephant memories and we remember good and bad tippers (I know this from personal experience), but he refuses to understand that. One of these days he's going to get a hocker on his cheeseburger.

3. He interrupts me and tells me "NO" before I finish my thought. Ooooohhh.... that really makes my blood boil.

4. He farts in the elevator despite our agreement that there will be no farting in the elevator. He'll rip one and then warn me to walk quickly if I'm down wind. He'll tear one up and then blame it on the cats or claim there's an imaginary duck or a monkey that just ran through the room. But he gets furious if I burp. I don't get it either.

5. He grabs my boob while making honking sounds.

6. There is a 3 U-turn minimum anytime he's driving, even when he's using the GPS.

7. He holds long term grudges. He's still mad at my mom for something she did four years ago.

8. He'd rather take off his shoe and pick up something he dropped with his toes instead of bending over and grabbing it.

9. He's typically lost in thought, but the moment I'm focused reading or writing something, suddenly he becomes Mr. Chatterbox.

10. His toe nails look like claws and he tortures me by chasing me with his foot.

11. He rarely calls anyone by their real name because he can't remember them. Instead, he makes up a really embarrassing nickname based on some unfortunate physical feature the person may have, their race, ethnic background, religion, or something they're wearing. The worst part is that he won't know who you're talking about unless you, too, refer to those people by that nickname he has assigned them. As a result, I have a regular customer called "mustache" (she's a woman), a Hindu colleague he calls "huumanahuumana", a friend of mine he calls "black boots", and a Muslim friend he calls "alibaba", the president of our condo board "the crook", a friend who used to be a waitress at his favorite Pizza Hut is the "crazy waitress", his father's girlfriend Sorangel is called "salami" (he can't pronounce her name, so he changed it), and a cousin of mine who always has a better story than yours is called "the topper", just to name a few.

12. He inhales his food, refuses to speak or hold a conversation when there's food on the table, and insists that no one at the table can order the same thing off the menu that he's ordering or he'll change his order.

13. He makes up his own words, uses them regularly in conversations, and when corrected, he responds, "Well, you knew what I meant, right?". His favorite made up word is "embarcate". Let's use it in a sentence: We were supposed to meet at Flannigan's, but you embarcated me.

14. He'll wear the same shirt and pants for days if I don't intervene. If he drops something on his shirt, he'll say, "Aw damn. This shirt still had 2 more days!".

15. He'll let the answering machine BEEP with a new message until it annoys me enough to listen to it.

16. He won't let me throw the socks with holes away. I have to make said socks mysteriously disappear.

17. He practically has a seizure anytime you touch him anywhere in his mid-section.

18. He'll ask me to go to the bedroom to watch TV with him. When I oblige, he promptly falls asleep, begins snoring incredibly loud forcing me to raise the volume. Then he wakes up to tell me the TV volume is loud. When I finally turn off the TV so we can all sleep peacefully (amidst deafening snoring and bed hogging cats), he wakes up, wanders to the couch and falls asleep in the living room. Go figure.

19. He throws all his trash onto the back seat of the car.

20. He leaves his dirty dishes piled up around the house.

21. He wanders unless closely supervised and doesn't answer his cell phone when you're desperately looking for him.

22. He takes his laptop, cell phone, and gadgets of choice with him each time he goes to the rest room to take care of business. He'll be in there over an hour chatting on the phone, texting, and doing computer repairs. When he's finally done, he leaves all his toys plugged into the bathroom outlet cluttering the bathroom sink.

Aaaahhhh CP, CP, how I love thee. I could write a book about my quirky husband, so I won't add anything else to this list... for now. Surely he has a list as long, if not longer than mine, but let's make sure we're clear - he's wrong and none of it's true. After reading this list of my husband's loveliest qualities, you may ask if there's such a thing as marital bliss. But OF COURSE! I love this hairy, waddling, gassy, googly eyed, unibrowed, disoriented, food inhaling, holey sock wearing reluctant Cuban more than anyone on the planet and I wouldn't trade him for the world. :D

P.S. - Love you baba.

Gratitude in the Hard Times

"Working to get out of debt? Prayer really works. You've got a Father who loves you like crazy, and he's rich." — Dave Ramsey

This quote stirred my soul this morning causing hot tears of anger and frustration to run down my cheeks. These past few weeks have been incredibly challenging for my business. A combination of snow birds heading back home for the season, spring break, and the Passover and Easter holidays created a void of foot traffic that we desperately need at the market. Adding to my stress is the fact that we just recently bought another vendor's ice cream business a couple weeks ago, which has done everything but lived up to our expectations thus far. So now we're rich in assets and cash poor, yet gas and food cost continues to rise, supplies need to be restocked, employees need to be paid, and of course, household bills are falling behind.

Apparently, this wasn't enough to keep me occupied, so the market's manager approved two new vendors who each focus on selling items that I already provide in the two ice cream booths we just purchased that aren't making any money yet. I'm not sure what's worse: knowing that at least one of them was doomed to failure before she even opened her doors for business or knowing that I fully intend to ask the manager to grant me her booth as soon as she does close her business, since I know it's inevitable. Don't judge me, it's not personal, it's business.

While all of this is happening, I can't help but wonder what is God's plan in all of this. I have faith that He has a plan, that it's good, that He's faithful and won't abandon me, and that He wouldn't burden me with something I couldn't handle, but I'm still scared. I want to be fearless, trusting, faithful, and optimistic, but sometimes it's so hard. I find myself dwelling in the should of, could of, would of's, and kicking myself for all the things I didn't do to prepare myself for the hard times when I had the opportunity. Now that I'm making a sincere effort to do everything the "right" way, there's not much to work with.

All this having been said, there's no better time to praise the Lord for all my blessings and be grateful for everything we have and even for some of the things we don't. I'm hopeful that things will improve and we'll eventually get to enjoy the fruits of our labor, but in the meantime I just needed to be reminded that I have a Father who loves me like crazy, He's rich, and He would love nothing more than to share His wealth with the children He loves. I love my Dad. :)

Pet Peeves? I has them.

I could write a blog dedicated to all my pet peeves, but today I'm only going to discuss one, primarily because it's the one that pissed me off today. So, who's the evil offender you ask? SEMANTICS. I haaAAaAaaAAAte when people play semantics.

One of the many things that I've learned to tolerate at my farmers market is that the administration has requested that we refrain from selling the same items that other vendors sell with the exception of produce. After all, it's a farmers market. We're supposed to have lots of produce, although I'll be the first to admit that we don't. Hence, the irony of being called a farmers market, but let's not get into semantics.

Anyhoo... at the risk of sounding like one of my colleagues who is constantly whining that everyone is doing what she's already doing despite the "rule", it appears that everyone is doing what I'm doing despite the "rule". Ok, so not everyone is doing what I'm doing, but still. There's enough people who are to irk me. I make paninis, so the guy who's supposed to sell bread and pastries is now selling paninis (Do I sell bread and pastries? Noooooo). I sell crepes, so two weeks after I started my crepe station, a new vendor entered the market with a crepe station (mine are waaaaay better). I sell popsicles and purposely have two spots selling ice cream and popsicles to avoid having another competitor, yet today, a new vendor was setting up to sell popsicles.

Oh wait. Allow me to correct myself.  According to my husband they weren't popsicles, they are frozen fruit on a stick. We sell ice cream. I reminded him that popsicles are not limited to dairy. He insisted that ice cream is not the same as frozen fruit on a stick, but that they're selling something just like the coconut and strawberry popsicles we have in the freezer. So wouldn't that be a flippin' popsicle??!

You can call it fruit on a stick all day, but it's a frozen fruit, sugar, and water mixture that was poured into a popsicle mold with a stick shoved into it... and that's the definition of a freakin' popsicle!! So as CP and I had this heated debate as we stood in line at McDonald's (if he rolled his big googly eyeballs at me one more time, I was going to poke them out with my finger), I actually had to pull the Chef card on him and tell him that I'm a chef and I know an effin popsicle when I see one and that I'm sure the market's manager is smart enough to know the difference, too, so cut the semantics!

Just so you know, I gave up profanity and playing my stupid games on Facebook for lent. I have RUINED my profanity promise throughout this entire week due to annoying people and my pet peeves, so I guess I may as well go play some stupid games on Facebook now.

Hi. My name is...

I'd like to think that everyone is entitled to have a little space to write about whatever meanders through our minds. Well, there's a lot of meandering thoughts in my mind that are begging to be released. I'm not really sure whether I'm writing this to entertain my readers (if I ever get any) or myself, but either way, hopefully we'll all enjoy the ride.

I guess it's time to go around the circle and introduce ourselves to the group. I'm a chef and I do some independent catering, but lately my main gig has been running a few booths at a local farmers market. As a result, regular exposure to interesting characters comes with the territory. My arch enemies are the French Canadians, but we'll get into that some other time. It's only a matter of time before another one pisses me off and I'm ranting about it. I'm married to a big hairy Cuban-American (I had to add the "-American" because he gets pissy when I tell him he's Cuban) that we'll refer to as CP, and we have two fat gray cats, Sasha and Chloe.

I love my kitties. CP likes to pretend they annoy him, but he loves them, too. I picked up Sasha off the streets long before I met my hubby, so he's learned to tolerate him, but now they're best buds. However, he particularly resents Chloe because I adopted her from a shelter while he was in Cuba during a 17-day trip from hell he took with his father and grandfather. Some of his last words before he left on the trip were, "No new animals.", so of course I allowed a friend to convince me that Chloe would make the perfect addition to the family. It's been over a year and half and CP's still a little miffed, but surely he'll get over it by the time I sneak a dog into the house.

You ought to know that I am a struggling Christian. Allow me to clarify that... I'm not struggling with my faith, I'm crystal clear in that department. Instead, I struggle with my thoughts and my mouth. Boy does my mouth get me in trouble. One of my guilty pleasures includes politics. It's disgusting, I know, but I can't help myself. I try not to watch or pay attention, but I can't help it so I inevitably get engrossed in stupid debates. It's like trying to ignore the car accident on the shoulder of the highway - not possible. Naturally, since the Lord has a brilliant way of teaching me patience and has a unique sense of humor to boot, I'm a conservative surrounded by liberals. I'm convinced that one day they'll all see the light and acknowledge that I'm right about everything, but until then, I'll love them despite their flawed political understanding. Just kiiiiddddiiinng. Ok. Fine. I'm not.

I thank you in advance for reading and bearing with me as I wing it.