I would wager that anyone who has spent any significant amount with my husband would easily identify him as quirky, eccentric, or, at the very least, unique.
Sometimes his eccentricities take a turn for the pathologically insane. His major hang-up? Why doesn't EVERYONE ELSE see things EXACTLY the way he does? Do they not understand that they are all DEAD WRONG?
This type of singular thinking is understandable in some cases. I'm sure we all have topics that we feel strongly about, unwilling to suggest that an alternate view could possibly be correct. But, do you often feel that strongly about OATMEAL?
I have journaled here on multiple occasions about my love for a dollar saved. This affinity often leads me to experiment with generic brands of many products. Like most people, I have some items on my grocery list for which I only purchase the name brand. As a rule, I prefer a specific brand of peanut butter, store brand yogurts are generally inferior, and I will pay extra for a good loaf of bread. Yet, a large portion of the items I purchase on a regular basis, I can not really justify the cost difference between the store brand versus the nationally recognized product. My husband, on the other hand, would purchase a name brand for every product if the grocery list was solely his to execute. It should be noted that he has made progress in this area over the past 7.5 years. Gone are the days of heated debates over canned tomatoes in the vegetable aisle. Of course, this is mostly due to the fact that he hasn't helped with the grocery shopping in over half a decade, but we celebrate progress however we can get it.
For quite some time, Pat has been a proponent of eating a bowl of oatmeal every morning . True to form, it confuses him why EVERYONE wouldn't want a bowl of oatmeal every single morning. Furthermore, he thinks those who prefer to sweeten their oatmeal are complete idiots. A pat of salted butter, kosher salt, and cracked pepper are the only acceptable toppings in his mind.
Because I do the grocery shopping, his oatmeal has been almost exclusively limited to the store brand since the beginning of his love affair with this hot breakfast staple. He has accepted this with minimal argument. But when I came home with a canister of the most readily recognized brand of oatmeal (because it was cheaper than the store brand that week), he seemed nigh gleeful. He insisted that this brand name oatmeal was visibly superior to the store brand that I usually subject him to.
He pleaded that the name brand had bigger oats, the color more rich, and even the smell was "oatier"! The more I suggested that oatmeal looks like oatmeal, the more he'd shove these seemingly identical spoonfuls of dry oats in my face, demanding that I face the facts. The man with the big hat makes it BETTER!
The sleep around this house is hit and miss at best. Our son continues to perplex and vex us with health issues. Our daughter, we have yet to impress upon her that she, in fact, is not the boss of everything! And this is what it has come to. We've become hysterical...about oatmeal!
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