Day...3...

You know sometimes, late at night, when you have nothing else to do so you decide to watch infomercials? We all do it, even if secretly. Well, Alex happens to be one of the very few people I know who actually buys that crap. Specifically, the GTXpress 101. Or, in other words, the glorified electric grilled cheese maker. As it turns out, the thing works and is kind of even...fun. You can grab anything out of your fridge and shove it in this little grill and...viola! It's a meal.

So, this morning I get up with the intention of making a quick breakfast in GT, as we'll call it now, and so I get excited and start throwing in a little of this and a little of that. My daughter and I manage to choke down our unusual creation while Alex's breakfast cooks. And he has the nerve to saunter into the kitchen, kiss me and say good-bye. I look at him, like, uhhh, excuse me! I'm slaving over your breakfast right now! I must have said it while my head was spinning around because he grabbed a paper towel, removed the food from the GT and left. I proceed to go about my day like it was no big deal. Until...

Did I mention that I coach high school cheerleading? Yes. I'm a glorified mother/babysitter/warden. Or as I've heard the girls refer to me, The Cheer Nazi. Anyway, so I'm at the high school track waiting for the cheerleaders to finish warming up and Alex walks up. He is holding a portable GPS unit for a project he intends to conduct in his Social Studies class and he has not yet figured out how to outsmart the miniature electronic device. While listening to him think out loud about how to figure this out, I hear him say "this is just how my day is going. First I'm yelled at about breakfast..." I, of course, stop listening at that point. Yelled at about breakfast?! I'm thinking...WHAT? You wanna see yell, buddy?! I certainly hadn't yelled.

Now, I'm wondering, had the tables been turned and he had made me breakfast before leaving for work and I was about to walk out without eating that breakfast, would he have reacted the same way I had? And this little situation could, and I'm not saying it will, but it could, turn into a much bigger situation. If we let it, of course, and we won't. But how do you point that out to your partner? Do you simply say "hey, Buck-O. I made it, now you eat it." Or do you forget about it and throw away the food? There is a little, teensy weensy part of me that wants to take that as a sign that he no longer wants me to cook him breakfast. So all of those times when I wake up and make banana pancakes or stuffed french toast or scrambled eggs or whatever, I should simply make enough for my daughter and me and he can settle for plain oatmeal with black coffee. But I won't because it isn't the nice thing to do and I am a nice person. Okay, maybe I'm not but I'm also not an evil bitch so I'll have to find a middle ground.

This self help book we're reading, that lied about him not being able to read my mind, says we should praise each other five times as much as we criticize each other. Is that like saying Hail Mary's after you've sinned? I don't even know what that means, so I hope not.

Have you ever stopped and paid attention to how much you praise and criticize someone? It's was a frightening revelation for me. And now that we live together, there is so much more involved in deciding what to praise. Now, if I tell him how sexy I find him, he will spend more time at the gym NOT being lazy with me. But if I tell him how much I enjoyed the dinner he made, he might actually cook more. That, my friends, would not be a good thing. Somehow, I need to make a list of specific praises that I can use and keep recycling. For example, "I really like the jeans you are wearing, sweetie pie." And maybe that will result in him spending less time at the gym and more time with me...shopping. You see where I'm going with this?

So, this is all I have for today. We've managed to make it through another 24 hours of domestic bliss. Stay tuned for more...peace out!