Claire and I chat off and on throughout the day while we’re at our respective work places. If I have a few minutes of down-time I’ll check in and we’ll talk about what we had for lunch and the other minutiae of life.

The funny thing about Claire, though, is that she absolutely cannot detect sarcasm via text. This causes some consternation.

For example, we had this exchange about 25 minutes ago:

Jamey – 3:21pm: We have to postpone the wedding.
Claire – 3:21pm: what????
Claire – 3:21pm: what do you mean?
Claire – 3:21pm: and when on earth could we move it?
Claire – 3:21pm: what happened?
Jamey – 3:26pm: the new Batman game is out on the 18th
Jamey – 3:26pm: so
Jamey – 3:26pm: wedding’s off
Claire – 3:27pm: That was wrong.
Jamey – 3:27pm: What? I was just teasing you!

The issue is, of course, that 5 minute gap between my starting the tease, and the reveal.

Within that 5 minutes, I assume, Claire was immediately thinking all manner of horrible things that were happening in my office: firings, cancer test results, etc.

Luckily for me(although not luckily considering the story) the reason I was distracted for those five minutes was good enough to rein in Claire’s anger. A co-worker was telling me about his Brother’s family that lives in Japan and what they’re going through.

So I have learned a lesson today. When teasing Claire, make sure that the punchline is delivered in a timely fashion.

Hopefully, Chef Whiting will help me out this evening.

Sorry, Darling!