Friday, March 19, 2010

7 Quick Takes Friday: The Spousal Grudge Edition


I was complaining to a friend today that my husband is once again going to a really neat place on business, while I stay home with the kids. And she said, "No problem - I'll stay here and watch your kids! You'd be crazy not to go, too." I greeted Larry with this exciting news when he walked in the door, asking him how much airline tickets to Europe cost and what sort of a hotel were we staying in, babbling on and on about how lucky I was. People! I haven't even been on an airplane since 1994!

Whereupon Larry pointed out that I do not have a current passport. And you generally cannot procure one in less than 2 weeks....

Damn.

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Yesterday's post is gone. Larry the Censor did not like the reference to conjugal relations. He doesn't care that the joke doesn't work without it. I explained to him that, since we are married, it is okay for people to know we have sex. He doesn't agree.

I typed that just to bug him. It will probably be gone by tomorrow, also.

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Larry and David are going on a Boy Scout bicycling trip this weekend. Now that's the sort of trip when I don't mind staying home with the kids. Indoor plumbing is essential to my happiness.

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Let's make this all about Larry, just to send him over the edge.

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I've lost my sense of humor somewhere. But Brian is picking up the slack. He follows me around all day, asking me riddles that he has made up. That is, when he isn't relaying his latest bad pun to my purportedly appreciative ears. Actually, that may be why I've lost my sense of humor, come to think of it. It's gotten so that I feel constrained to give him pointers. "Brian!" I tell him. "You can't use a word in the riddle that will give away the answer!"

And you know what? He listens to me. I'll hear him telling the riddle to someone else, and he's fixed it. I'm so proud of him. I bet Jay Leno got started this way. Or, um, Suzy Soro...

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Larry always explains his jokes. For 20 years almost, I've been telling him, "If you have to explain it, it isn't funny!" But he persists. David does it, too; so I'm thinking this habit might be genetic. I'm thinking schools should test for humor IQ's. They could offer remedial courses for people who score low: "How To Time a Knock-Knock Joke," say, or "The Punch Line is Supposed To Be a Surprise."

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Larry made us pizzelles this week. Whatever he may lack in joke-telling ability, he makes up for in anise-flavored yumminess...


18 comments:

  1. Are you admitting that all those kids are the result of you and your husband having . . . conjugal relations! The shock!

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  2. Okay, that first exclamation point should have been a question mark.

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  3. I thought it was funny! Larry...it was funny! At least you're portraying the idea that married people are copulating with their own spouses. Sheesh. Some moral compass you're acting like.

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  4. I'm sorry I missed the sex joke. You should refer to him as Larry The Censor for at least 3 more posts. Congrats on your joke telling kid. My little girl has a joke she tells, but she wrote it herself and it makes absolutely no sense.

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  5. I loved your jokes from yesterday! I love it when people are bold enough to allude to the common, or outright talk about it.

    But you know, my husband feels the same way (to some degree) about me saying that stuff. But I just scoff at him and laugh. Sometimes I listen and sometimes I don't. Usually he gets over it...

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  6. Wait a second . . . the furniture post sex joke? Oh, Larry.

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  7. I am so glad my husband doesn't read my blog, at least I don't think he does. He would want me to delete 99% of the things I say about him.

    Go get that passport! And yes, you need at the very least 2 weeks. That way you can dial up that wonderful friend, (Don't ever lose her friendship, that is a valuable friend!), and zoom away with your husband where you can have, you know, non-conjugal relations.

    And camping? I'd rather give birth again. At least I have a bed and a bathroom at the hospital.

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  8. I'm bummed I missed the sex joke, now. You've made it much more enticing.

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  9. It was the furniture post, really? No way!

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  10. Go get the passport. If you do it in person at the right office, with all the right paperwork, and perhaps a political friend that can help things along, it can happen in a day or two. I know, it happened to two different friends of mine.

    You totally deserve a trip! And really, a friend that offers to watch your kids for any length of time is a friend indeed!

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  11. Damn is right!!! (This from someone who doesn't swear) I don't have a current passport, either.
    I enjoy camping just fine, but my backside does not enjoy a weekend full of riding a bike. As a teenager, yes; as a middle-age woman, NO.
    It was a funny post. Where did Larry think we thought those kids came from? The stork?

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  12. I have a current passport, but still, Husband is leaving for Belgium today, and I am not. Next month he's going to Australia, and I am not. This is because I wanted that third child, who is still nursing.

    You know, I'd rather have the child, when it comes right down to it...

    (But having a current passport is a good idea anyway. Little Miss Optimist that I am, I always worried when he traveled overseas and I had no passport. Suppose something horrible happened and I had to go where he was? Now all the kids have passports, too.)

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  13. You can get an emergency passport the day before if you have your tickets...my SIL just did that last month for her trip to aruba....

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  14. oh larry is a sissy! you were really subtle in that last post and hey, we all know you have six kids who probably did not just fall from the sky into your lovely home....men....

    is there really no way to get a passport in two weeks? there is no expedited emergency-european-getaway passport thing?

    franzi

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  15. (Hit the wrong key with my pinky and my comment went blooie.) Anyway--DC, Chicago, San Francisco, NY--those are some of the places you can walk a passport through in 24 hours in person. I know you can do it. Good luck!

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  16. Okay, my husband is pretty paranoid and he's not a big fan of my "internet habit," but I think Larry wins.

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  17. If only my husband weren't part of the imaginary people crowd, Larry and SubHub would be able to commiserate.

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  18. Amazed that Larry didn't want people to think you'd had sex. What with having a few kids and all...
    Bummer about that darn passport rule.

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