So, this is a two part post today. The first part is about Maya getting to the age where she is soaking things up like a sponge and showing what a giant brain she is cultivating. Michelle has been trying to teach her all of the necessary things in life. Things like how to raspberry, clap, dance, speak, and wave. She is really too too cute. Michelle and I both are completely loving the 10 + month stage. Maya has been a great little baby thus far, and she is getting better and better everyday!
The second part is about my wife, the scavenger parasite. As you know, a parasite is something that lives off of something else and a scavenger is something that finds things. Now, this post isn’t meant to be malicious but merely a means of shedding a little light on a habit that my wife has formed. We are married and share just about everything, but I often find that when I get something that I completely intend to get just for me, she finds it, be it food or something else, and either uses it for herself or eats it. This generally revolves around food. I go to Whole Foods and purchase a smores pudding cup. I then take said cup home and deposit it into the fridge. I go to work the next day, have lunch and begin thinking about dinner. Most of the way home, I am thinking about what I’m going to eat and “ohh, yes, I have a smores pudding cup in the fridge!” This is excellent. I have a sweet after my savory!!! I then get home, eat my dinner, get into the fridge to pull out my pudding cup and find that it is either completely gone or severely maimed. My hopes and expectations shattered right there on the kitchen floor. Who, in the house could have perpetrated such a heinous crime. Certainly it wasn’t Maya, she couldn’t reach or climb to the top shelf. It definitely wasn’t Moo either, while he is crafty, he’s too fat and lazy to jump that high. Could it be Loo, the antisocial, highly-sensitive, feline-genius? Perhaps. She is clever enough to get the fridge door open, she would enlist either Maya or Moo for help, but she would ultimately be the one bringing home the prized pudding cup. I can see this as a possibility, but not the one that transpired. That leaves one and only one person, my wife, the scavenger parasite.
Its not as if I don’t take steps to prevent this. I am a bright guy, I always have a contingency plan. I do not just buy the smores pudding cup, I also buy a slice of pie, and a Carols cookie, or any number of tasty little whole food morsels, with the intent purpose of satisfying my wife’s sweet tooth. I could care less if she ate anything else that I bought, but the pudding, ohh, the pudding, well, the pudding was meant to be mine.
Perhaps buying these selfish things are a reflection of my primal past, an instinct, a need. I can’t help but think about the monkeys at the zoo. I’ve seen monkeys or apes or whatever, who have just had food thrown in front of them, charge up, grab what they want and then retreat to a corner and protect their spoils. There must be a wire or something in me that tells me I need to lord over something that is mine, all mine. A psychologist might say I have a control issue. I buy this thing because I have very little control over many things in my life and I simply want to maintain control over something? I don’t know. Either one of these could be right, or the answer could be something completely different. Either way, I react to the change in expectations.
Initially, I get annoyed that MY thing has been eaten or is being used by someone else. After all, its mine, I bought this thing. Then, after I realize that the thing hasn’t been taken or eaten as a challenge to my authority, I find that the whole thing just cracks me up. What I find so amusing is that I actually stand in a store looking up and down aisle after aisle for something that I can have all by myself, my own little slice of heaven or whatever. I actually put time and energy into picking these things. I have a minds eye picture of what I would look like eating or using whatever neat little thing I have picked out. I form a brief emotional attachment to MY thing. I guess I should know by now that there isn’t much that my wife will not eat or use. She’s a resourceful little scavenger parasite and it’s one of the things I like about her. But don’t count this old crow out just yet. I can adapt and come up with new ways to subvert my Mrs. In the end, I shall prevail and will one day be able to eat my own smores pudding cup.
Or maybe I should just work on communicating with my wife...”honey, I bought the smores pudding cup for me. You can eat anything else, but I would appreciate it if you left the smores pudding cup for me.”
Til next time...stay boss....