Learn something new... every. damn. day.

I learned something new about Hubby this morning. 

You know how sometimes you can tell something is just not quite right, but you can't exactly tell what?

Like maybe you write a word and somehow it just doesn't look right?  Like weird.  Weird doesn't follow the "i before e, except after c" rule.  Ironic.  

Today I was sitting in the living room while Hubby was trying on his new running shoes. 

Me:  "Wait.  Hold on a sec."
Hubby:  "What?"
Me:  "Tie your shoe again."
Hubby:  "Huh?"
Me:  "Just do it.  Tie it in a bow again."
Hubby, with a nervous smile, while re-tying his shoe:  "Why?!"
Me, laughing:  "Oh my god, Honey, what are you doing?"
Hubby, panicked:  "What do you mean?!"

I don't know how ten years could go by (almost 20 if you count childhood) without me knowing that Hubby ties his shoes, um, wrong. 

Ok, not wrong, I guess, but differently.  And certainly with less efficiency.

Me:  "Show me again." 

So, he picked up one lace in each hand and tied the first knot.  Then he dropped the left-hand lace, and used his left hand to pull the right-hand lace into a loop.  He just dropped it. 

This is the point of his shoe-tying process that I later realized was what looked not quite right... the point at which I thought "Hmm, what's he doing?  Why does that look odd?" 

Then he finished his bow. 

Hubby, laughing:  "There.  What's wrong with that?"
Me, laughing harder:  "Oh, Honey.  Here.  Let me show you."

So, I picked up one lace in each hand and tied the first knot.  What I didn't do was drop either of the laces.  I used my left middle finger to reach across to the right-hand lace, and make the loop, then pinched the right-hand loop between my right finger and thumb.  Then I wrapped and tucked.  Et voila.  

Hubby:  "What do you mean?!"
Me:  "Sorry, Honey."
Hubby, with frantic laughter: "Why don't I know how to tie my shoes?!  How long have I been doing this?!  Twenty, twenty-five years?"
Me, laughing hysterically:  "It's ok Honey."
Hubby, laughing and yelling:  "Show me again!"

And so I did.  Over and over.  And we searched YouTube videos on "the best way to tie your shoe".  And we dissected every under-hand vs over-hand, every tuck vs pull, every criss vs cross.  And we talked about how perhaps I'll be the one to teach our future children shoe-tying technique.  

But the more videos we watched, the more obvious it was that re-training a 26/27-year-old brain is next to impossible.  Old dog, new tricks, and all that. 

For me it's a ponytail.  I can only put my hair into a ponytail if the hair elastic starts on my right wrist.  Any other method and my hair ends up looking like a dog-chewed Barbie head. 

As for Hubby, he may be a guitar god, but a lace genius he is not. 

In any case, we're going to tie our shoes like this from now on:

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How many shrooms are too many?

At what point does an occasional partaking of a magic mushroom snack become a runaway train?  Even when an occasional partaking becomes an unconditional love, it's still relatively harmless, right? 

So at what point does the urge to enjoy surpass the capacity to resist? 

Maybe I should take this opportunity to clarify that I'm not referring to magic mushrooms in the hallucinatory stroke-the-furry-wall kind of way, rather, the normal buy-them-daily-and-eat-them-with-every-meal kind of way. 

Oh wait. 

Maybe that's not normal. 

I used to really dislike mushrooms.  I always wanted to like them, but I could never really tolerate them.  Then when Hubby and I moved in together I started branching out.  Only a little bit.  I put them in sauce.  Mushrooms in spaghetti sauce was ok.  

Years passed that way.  Mushrooms in sauce.  Year after year.  

Hubby continued to enjoy them, of course.  He'd buy those little white mushrooms and mix them with onions and eat them with his steak. 

Don't think he didn't try to push them on me.  "C'mon. Just try one. How can you not want to?"

And I always resisted.  With wide eyes and a shaking head.     

But at some point in the last few months - I don't even know when - I must have given in.  I must have, at some point, tried one.  Probably just one.  Probably just off the side of his plate or something.  He probably offered it to me.  And I probably thought:  "Fine.  What the hell.  Why not."

And since then it's all just a blur.  A mushroom-induced downhill fog leading to my daily rush to the grocery store after work.  You know, for my fix. 

White, cremini, and - my favourite - portabello.  Mmmmm.  Portabello.  "I'll just get one.  Well, might as well get two - one for tonight and one for lunch tomorrow." 

I have a whole ritual.  Warm the pan.  Melt the butter.  Add the garlic.  And slow cook those mo-fos until they've achieved juicy and flavourful perfection.

And now I've started to notice the signs of an unhealthy mushroom-eating frequency.  Not physically unhealthy (because you can't argue with the nutritional value of mushrooms), but mentally unhealthy (because you can't deny the problem when Hubby says "Mmm, those mushrooms are good", and you shout "No!  Don't eat those!  I need them for work tomorrow!" in reply).

I don't know how I got to this point.  I can't identify the individual steps that have led to my demise. 

And what a really can't figure out is how I lived so long without them. 

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