Last year’s post was the most popular of all time, and some of you have already asked when this year’s conversations will be posted. I’m guessing this will be a tradition for years to come. So, here it is: another year of Liam conversations. Merry Christmas!
We’ve tried a few times to get into Pomodoro East but have never been able to find a parking spot. Seems the best time to go is Monday night. Tonight was the night for some serious pasta—or pizza in Liam’s case.
As you might imagine, most dinners out end in giggles on my part, but sometimes the conversation is just too funny not to share. Tonight’s episode was one of those times. We scoured the menu, flinging jabs at each other about food choices.
“Here’s a huge steak. That sounds about right for you.”
“I bet you want this girlie salad thing.”
We settled on vegetable lasagna for me, and roasted chicken pizza with mushrooms for Liam. Before I delve into the conversation, let me state for the record that the lasagna was absolutely delicious. Nothing that follows is meant to harm the reputation of Pomodoro East or their delicious vegetable lasagna in any way.
Now, on with the show.
I noticed Liam pulling the crust off the pizza and leaving the good stuff on his plate. Concerned, I asked, “Is the chicken on that pizza good?”
“Yeah, but I’m off mushrooms.”
Boggled, I replied, “The menu said there’d be mushrooms. Didn’t you read that part?”
“I’m eating everything but the mushrooms. Calm down, woman.”
“Why don’t you just pick the mushrooms off instead of tearing the whole thing apart?”
“The crust is amazing. The chicken is good, but it sucks compared to this crust. I don’t even like crust. How’s your lasagna? Does it have chicken in it?”
“It’s vegetable lasagna.”
He froze, torn pizza hovering over his plate. “No meat? How can you eat lasagna with no meat?”
“It’s really good; don’t worry.”
“You should send it back. Who makes lasagna with no meat in it? Not even a little bit?”
“I can’t send it back just because it has no meat, babe. I ordered vegetable lasagna. I knew what I was getting.”
He thought for a minute, obviously trying to work around the whole “get what you ask for thing.”
“You should tell them it’s broken. I’ll tell them. We’ll get you a real lasagna.”
After looking around the restaurant for the server with no luck, he just called out, “Excuse me. My wife’s lasagna is broken. We require a new one with meat in it, please.”
“Stop that,” I hissed. “It’s really good. I don’t need the meat to have a meal, you goof.”
He stared at the half-eaten food on my plate and shook his head. “It’s just a salad. A warm, cheesy salad. Gross.”
So, I got an office job. I’m still writing; I just do it while sitting around a table with a team of other writers. Because of this change in my life, I now have to make myself presentable each morning. It sounds like a normal thing. Lots of other couples in the world wake up at the same time and manage to get ready for work every day.
Why is this a problem in my house?
Now, to be fair, our bathroom is kind of small. Because our house was built before 1900, the master and guest baths were kind of…afterthoughts. Indoor outhouses, if you will. Still, I don’t need much room to put on deodorant or throw my hair up into a clip. For some reason, however, these five seconds I need during Liam’s bathroom time start World War III every morning.
On one particular day, my need for a bit of hair gel prompted a diatribe about how it was time to rearrange the furniture in our bedroom to promote better flow. For some reason, he believes this will give us more space in the bathroom. Male logic. I don’t get it. He is convinced, however, that moving the bed will make his life easier. A bit of marital feng shui, I suppose.
Personally, I think a bit of patience could solve the issue, but by all means, let’s move the bed. I don’t have enough patience for his impatience.
Liam and I somehow missed the Grey’s Anatomy train the first time around, so we’ve spent the last several weeks catching up on over 150 episodes on that amazing thing called Netflix. Yes, the Roku box is held in high regard in our household, just after beer and the cats…and the remote control. There’s some serious entertainment value in the crazy lives of these doctors, who, as the show says, are like high schoolers with scalpels. I mean, seriously. If I thought for one moment that doctors were really like that, I’d never again visit the hospital. Fortunately, my mother, who has been a nurse for…a really long time (I know better than to give the number of years—you’re welcome, Mom), set me straight on how a hospital really works.
The real entertainment value, as you might guess, comes in the form of my husband. Liam becomes convinced he’s got a new and life-threatening disease after almost every show. The only cases in Seattle Grace that Liam is sure he doesn’t have are the orthopedics, and that’s only because he just has to look down to see his leg isn’t broken. Everything else in the show is fair game. Heart attack? Liam’s having one. Stroke? Well, that one’s actually likely someday. Lupus? Oh, yeah. House told us it’s never lupus, so we’re good there. But seriously, everything else on that show, Liam is certain he’s got it.
By far, the funniest story is as follows: Liam has suffered some annoying, itchy bumps on his legs and arms. I started spraying him down with bug spray every time he even thought about opening the front door, and still he kept getting these itchy bumps. I didn’t have the same problem, so we just couldn’t figure out where he was getting them. Then, in one episode of Grey’s Anatomy, a character developed chicken pox. OMG! Liam finally had a diagnosis for his bumps! It had to be chicken pox. I just asked one question to verify it was indeed NOT chicken pox. Any guesses? Yeah. Liam had chicken pox when he was a little boy. It was a pretty bad case, too, so no, he did not have chicken pox.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, I ran out of dryer sheets and ran several loads without them. Amazingly, his bumps went away. Did he come to the conclusion that you all just came to? No. His conclusion was that the chicken pox went away. And when he found a towel that had been through the dryer with the softener sheets and the bumps came back, he was again convinced that something was wrong with him.
Let’s all tell him together, shall we? Liam, you’re allergic to Downy dryer sheets. That’s your diagnosis. Of course, we all know he won’t believe it until someone on Grey’s Anatomy is diagnosed with an allergy to dryer sheets, but I’ll keep working on it.
This blog post may be a little hard to read for some, since it discusses the death of our pets. I mean this in a strictly hypothetical sense, because both of our cats are still alive and well. For some reason, I can’t seem to convince Liam of this fact. If ever there were a hypochondriac by proxy, that person would be Liam.
It’s not often that you find a guy who’s a cat person. Most men want a big, lovable, energetic dog–one that will greet them with love and kisses every day of the week, no matter what. We all know that, generally speaking, cats are a lot less likely to show unconditional love. Of course, nothing happens exactly as it should in the Barry household, so we’ve managed to raise two cats who seem to think they’re dogs. No kidding–they respond when called, they curl up in our laps, they follow us from room to room, and they wake us every morning for their food. As for unconditional love…well, they’re cats. They expect that from us, and they’re pretty reserved until they get it.
The girls, Luna and Rosie, were three years old when I met Liam. My poor husband, who refuses to admit that people and pets get older, still tells people the cats are three years old. (This makes me wonder how old they really were when we met, of course.) Since we’ve been together for eight years as of next month, I estimate their ages to be eleven years old. (Again, provided he was honest about them being three years old when he and I met.)
As you can see, there’s already a bit of separation anxiety beginning. The girls are Maine Coons, and they’ve lived inside their whole lives. They’re happy, healthy, and, according to most sources, likely to live until they’re about eighteen to twenty years old. If they’re only eleven now (again with the IF), that gives us several more years of love and affection to enjoy.
However, Liam’s hypochondria by proxy keeps rearing its ugly head. After a particularly rough playtime between Luna and Rosie, Luna showed a bit of a limp for a day. This prompted Liam to wonder if she was going to be okay. Would infection set in? Would she get gangrene and lose her leg? Worse, would she die?
If the worry had stopped there, one might shrug and imagine that his behavior could be described as normal. Did it stop there? Of course not. This is Liam we’re talking about.
“If she dies, we don’t have anywhere to bury her. We’ll have to put her in the freezer until we can find somewhere. Do you want to go in the freezer, Luna? We could have her taxidermied! She could sit on our mantel forever in this position right here.” (He manipulated Luna into an adorable sleeping position, unknowingly putting pressure on her sore leg and receiving a nasty scratch for his efforts.) “Then when Rosie dies, we can have her stuffed, too. And we’ll be able to keep them forever and put them in random places in the house so it’s like a surprise.”
Uhhhhhhhhhhhh.
This is kind of sweet, babe, but stop it. It’s definitely more on the creepy side.
He’s going to kill me for this blog post.
PS, they won’t be stuffed. Anyone planning visits in the future will not need to worry about creepy taxidermied cats staring at them from random spots in the house. Just…no.
PPS, he also offered to have me taxidermied, too, when I expressed dismay that he seemed to love the cats more than me. Quit being creepy, Liam.
jennifermbarry.com 