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Things I Love Hating About You

Posted on April 29, 2014

This is a #MarriedWithOpinions post in two parts. Amanda: When something really annoys me I’ll say that it makes my ribs itch. I’m lucky, because all things considered, Sean understands what annoys me. He’ll get a wicked grin and say, “You itchin’ yet?” It helps when I don’t have to let those things fester, but there are a few things that I don’t think he knows about because my response to them is usually when he isn’t in the room. He folds and puts dirty dish towels back in the drawer. I  go to wipe flour off of my face and dried pizza sauce rakes across my skin. He loads the dishwasher like he’s building a lean-to, creating a cookie sheet and mixing bowl…

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Categories: Marriage

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Truth in Marriage

Posted on April 27, 2014

Sean and I have a loose agreement that we can euthanize things from one another’s wardrobe. We don’t have to talk about it too much, great detail isn’t necessary. We just have to affect an expression of pain or discomfort, cock a shoulder and say, “You need to not wear that anymore.” Having this agreement has saved us from awkward, “Uh-huh, I love you in that outfit,” lies.  Every once in a while though, we are taken aback by a suggestion to add something to the donate pile. I was most recently on the receiving end. We were on our way somewhere and as we stood in our makeshift mudroom, Sean picked up a pair of sandals. “You can’t wear these to the office…

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Categories: Marriage

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A New Dance

Posted on April 23, 2014

  We were sitting in my living room while the girls sprinted around the house.  My mom leaned over to me and whispered, “We took care of the Easter Bunny.” My stomach dropped, I’d completely forgotten. The next sensation was embarrassment, had they handled Easter because they saw that I wasn’t? I searched her face. The “we” tickled at me, confusing me. She hadn’t been out alone with Papa to do a shop. The look on her face was foreign, a little bit of guilt, maybe excitement, and something else, a kind of sympathetic pain, maybe. “Briar,” she said it so softly. The familiar sound rocked me. Briar. I mouthed the word back to her. Briar. She nodded. “We were driving along and she said,…

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Categories: Mama Sap, Random

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Fiery

Posted on April 18, 2014

The other day I saw something on Twitter that made me angry, very, very angry. I wished that I could muster the kind of scathing post, backed up with reason and examples, that Liz Gumbinner has been known to write on things like sexism in Tech and cheap stereotypes in advertising. I couldn’t quite get myself beyond 140 characters. My whole body was shaking, but with each tweet I tried to stay even. “No wild attacks, Amanda. Stay focused,” I told myself. I’ll admit that I half hoped that someone on Twitter would join in, defend me, attack him, something. I wondered if I was sounding like Tipper Gore did when she took on the music industry. My frustration with women as set dressing…

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Categories: Me, Roar

Buyer’s Remorse

Posted on April 15, 2014

We are a few weeks from diving headlong into a kitchen renovation. It will be a small business owner’s mix of paying professionals for their skills and then doing a bit of grunt work ourselves to keep costs down and our pride in check as we can’t seem to feel good about anything with which we didn’t do some of the work. Still, kitchens are expensive no matter how you slice it. I would love to buy all new appliances as the ones that we have, fairly recently purchased though they are, present daily nightmares. The stove is one of those flat surface, can’t-ever-be-truly-clean abominations. Only one burner truly works and the whizz-bang sensor buttons don’t seem to read a gentle press, so we’re…

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Categories: Roar