Temerity Jane

Things that have recently made me paranoid

Hi, Internet,

I initially thought this was going to be a much more extensive post, since I have noticed two distinct instances of myself getting paranoid recently and thought, well, if I sit down to think about it, I bet I can come up with a couple more and make a nicely rounded blog post.

But no! There’s only these two! Which leads me to believe that this is only the start of a new and crippling trend in my life. Or, it may be a fluke. But probably the first one, because in my world, it is always the first one. The truth always comes out in the first option.

["The dog likes Cheez-Its. You should give him a Cheez-It."

"Oh, he does?"

"Yeah... I think... a Cheez-It fell on the ground by his face yesterday and he ate it and he said he liked it. And I also think that my hand was kind of right here? And he licked off all the Cheez-It dust, because he likes Cheez-Its and knew I didn't have a napkin."

"Mmhm."

"OR? He was born liking Cheez-Its and he didn't actually eat one that ended up on the floor by accident."

"I'm pretty sure it's actually a version of the first option."

"OR? He has the CHEEZ-IT GENE."

"Still pretty sure you gave him a Cheez-It."]

Anyway, have you ever just gotten really paranoid that someone is thinking something or doing something for some kind of reason you’ve assigned to them which doesn’t actually seem all that realistic when you think about it, but absolutely COULD BE TRUE?

Ok, take yesterday for example. We took Brinkley to the dog park (which was STILL CLOSED even though the website said it wasn’t, so we walked him around the rest of the park and the playground by all the little kids – he loves that ’cause they all smell like syrup) and brought him back home so that we could head out to Olive Garden (we were feeling FANCY) and make them rue the day they ever came up with the idea of never ending soup, salad and breadsticks (mistake).

So we get to the house and Phil stops the car so he can take the dog inside, but he also turns off the car and tells me to get out, which is pretty ridiculous, since we were leaving to go to eat in just a minute. And he kept saying, “Go inside and go to the bathroom” and I said I didn’t have to go. And he said “Go to the bathroom!”

I know I’m pretty notorious for hitting every rest stop on the highway, but the restaurant is seriously just down the street, so I kept insisting I did not need to go.

Then it occurred to me – maybe he was just being polite and was telling me to go to the bathroom so that I would see myself in the mirror and fix whatever disaster had happened with my FACE, so of course at that point I shoved past him and ran upstairs and looked in the mirror. But I didn’t see anything WRONG. When I came back out I told him that I knew I wasn’t winning any ribbons at the fair, but I didn’t see anything THAT bad, and he insisted that he just wanted me to go to the bathroom before we left.

I spent the rest of the day thinking that he had hoped that I would notice what was wrong with my appearance on my own, and when I didn’t, he just sighed and accepted his lot in life.

Secondly, and still ongoing: We have a cup in the bathroom in which we put our toothbrushes.

Or at least, we USED to put them in there.

So every night, I brush my teeth, tra la la, and put my toothbrush back in the cup. Then one day I notice that he was no longer putting HIS brush in the cup, but instead was laying it across the top of the cup while mine sat IN the cup. I realized that this had been going on for a few days with no explanation at all, so I started thinking, “Oh man, what if there’s something wrong with the cup?” So then I started putting my toothbrush across the cup, too.

But then I started thinking… what if he put HIS toothbrush across the top of the cup because he doesn’t want his toothbrush to be near mine? And here I am laying mine next to his, all presumptuous like he even wants his toothbrush to be near my toothbrush.

So there’s a reason his toothbrush is not in the cup, and either the cup is poisonous, or he doesn’t want his toothbrush to be near mine, which is kind of highfalutin, if you ask me.

For the last couple of weeks, when I brush my teeth and go to bed after he’s already asleep, I’ve tried laying my toothbrush in different places – in the cup, across the cup, sitting on the counter, etc. Then when he comes home from work (because I’m asleep when he leaves), I eye him up to see if he’s had any reaction to my toothbrush placement so I can finally sort this business out. Unfortunately, by the end of the day, I don’t think he’s really thinking about my toothbrush placement at all.

Point is, every night after I brush my teeth, I carefully consider where I put my toothbrush so as not to offend him, and he hasn’t said a GD thing about how considerate I am. What a self-absorbed jerk.

I am actually pretty sure that the original point I intended to make with this entry was that poor Phil has to live with such constant second-guessing of all of his motivations, but I’m really pretty pleased that it actually ended up with him being the jerk.

You see how I did that? Even I didn’t see it coming. Twist!