Family Backgrounds: AKA The Gray Man

So as a part of Claire and I’s getting used to this whole “marrying each other thing” we’ve been talking a lot about our families.

One of the funny things about my family is that my mother loves ghost stories. When she was a kid -to hear her tell it- she had a pet ghost named Alice. The stories that my mother and her sister tell are both funny, and frightening, and probably why I still don’t like to sleep in the house they grew up in. The Grand Strand of South Carolina has been continuously inhabited (by non-Natives) since the 1670s. It’s seen countless skirmishes, slavery, a war, and all the other detritus & minutiae of human life. My mother says that these emotions and strife of people are what causes ghosts to appear and stay around a place. And since this is a woman who used to take all her high school friends on “Ghost Hunts” on weekends, I’m inclined to believe her.

When I told Claire about my haunted background, she was a bit apprehensive. But I have proof.  Continue reading

Poor Timing…

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!

In case you were wondering…

James: where’s our Sous Vide video?

Claire: you want me to email them to you and you write the post?

James: nope

Claire: ha, ok

James: I want you to have it finished and I read it

Jamey and I sous vided some pork chops last night. In case you were on pins and needles all day today waiting for the videos, they will be posted soon. This post is basically just to showcase Jamey’s commitment to our blog and how I deal with him on a day-to-day basis.

I hope you all had a glorious weekend. We did, and I will write about that soon too.