"I'm Not Picky Today"

I am definitely pretty particular about some things, and it has been fun discovering what I am picky about. Since we have gotten married, we discovered that I don't like the way Joel pours the milk in my cereal: he usually pours too much and I don't like soggy cereal (unlike him), so I like there to be a lot of the cereal sticking out of the milk. So I'll ask him to pour me some cereal please, and then when he does, I don't like it!! Other things we have discovered are: the way he makes my protein smoothies. I don't really like the taste of the protein in smoothies, but eat them for the protein of course. So when I make a smoothie, I make it really small and thick. This is hard for Joel to make because it is really hard to mix it all up since it is so thick and it would be so much easier if I would just pour more liquid in there. So when Joel has made me smoothies before, I am pretty much never satisfied with it (they always have too much liquid). I like it so thick because it means I only have to consume a half a glass instead of a whole glass but get the same amount of protein.

Given that I am picky, I have finally quit asking him to make my things that I am particular about. But something funny happened lately. I asked Joel, "Will you make me some toast please?" (He was making some for himself.) Then he said something about how he might have messed one up, and I said, "Don't worry, today I am in a rare mood - I am not picky today!" And so I waited at the table while he made me some toast, and when he brought it to me, I looked at it and laughed. "Joel, I am sorry, but when I said I wasn't in a picky mood, I didn't even think you would give me this." Basically, when I saw Joel's toast, it looked yummy with butter on it, so I wanted toast and butter, and didn't think that could be messed up. But Joel wasn't finished making his toast when I saw it, he had put raspberry jelly on top (the sugar free kind with splenda). So I didn't even consider he would put the jelly on for me, but he didn't consider not to put the jelly on, because he thought I wanted toast like he was having it. So he had to eat 4 pieces of toast and make me another one, with only butter! He was like, here I was thinking this was such a rare event, wow, Melissa isn't picky, almost thinking can this be true? But I guess it can't be true!

Then just the next day, I asked him to "do my tea for me" and by that I meant only that I wanted him to remove the tea bag from the cup, I don't like doing it because it is hot and Joel doesn't seem to mind it as much. And I was planning on adding my own sugar and creamer because I like to put real sugar in mine and Joel likes to use splenda. But he took "do my tea" to mean take out the tea bag and put in creamer and splenda. So when he hands me my tea, I was like "Oh...well...Um, never mind, this is great! Thanks!" Because I feel bad for being so picky all the time!! But we laughed about it. And it is true that these last two occasions were more of communication problems. I have a picture in my head of what or how I want him to do something but I say it in such a way that you can hardly blame him for doing it the way he did it.

Cleaning Up Books Is A Dangerous Endeavor

As you might know, both Joel & I love books! We were moving the furniture around in our room, and one was a bookshelf. So we took all the books off, and moved the shelf, and then needed to put all the books back on the shelf. We were trying to get this done in a timely fashion, since we have a lot to do, but Joel says, "Oh, this is a dangerous project." And literally, it wasn't more than 3 minutes until we both had books open, in hand, sitting down!!! The part that made me laugh so much was that we didn't do this as a joke or to prove the point, we both genuinely became interested in a book we were supposed to be putting on the shelf!! And we both quit working! Since Joel is really the one in charge of the bookshelf move, I looked up from my book, said, "Get back to work!" and then put my head back in my book! He laughed and made me put up my book before he would do the same! We did finish our rearranging in the room, but it was funny, and true about how with us, cleaning up books is a dangerous endeavor!