Morgan Trinker

I can’t decide which was more funny:

the fact that Jamie thought this was the proper way to boil noodles and proceeded to set a small fire in our kitchen….

….. or the fact that Gretchen later salvaged them out of the trash can when we weren’t looking and attempted to swallow them whole.

Good thing I love these two so much.

My husband Jamie’s birthday was Monday- he turned 24 (YIKES we’re getting old)- and as usually happens when I sit down to write in a card for him and reflect on our relationship, I can’t help but think about all his crazy quirks that make me simultaneously smile and want to punch him in the face. I was thinking about how lucky I am to have found and managed to hang onto someone as adorable and kooky as he is. Mainly because I need someone around who can deal with all MY eight billion levels of crazy. I love that we get each other’s weeeeird sense of humor, that really only a handful of people have ever been exposed to- namely, Jamie’s high school friends (we try to pretend we’re normal around everyone else). We walk around the house talking in bizarre voices, making up accents and words, and turning what we’re saying into songs (always a fun game!).

[For instance, and I kid you not, this just happened exactly as I was typing that last paragraph: Jamie walked in from the other room (which is now his very own office- my birthday present to him) and said, “Awww, Steve made his way back up to the tippy-top of the tree!” Steve is the raccoon who has found a happy home in the tree directly beside our back balcony. He’s quite cute, but as we own a coon hound and all, we couldn’t spend much time with him or Gretchen would get really jealous. And then start baying. Loudly. She IS a pretty scary dog, after all. :) But yes, Jamie did name the raccoon. Then tried to lure it onto the balcony with dog food. Which Gretchen smelled from inside the house and went berserk. And then Jamie had a conversation with Gretchen, asking her if she wanted to be best friends with Steve. Because, you know, that’s the kind of thing we do around here- have conversations with animals. And then respond to ourselves in animal voices, as if we are dog whisperers and know exactly what they’re thinking.]

Pardon the digression. Where were we? Ah yes, Jamie’s neuroses. One of my favorite topics of conversation. Not that I don’t have my own, of course. In fact, a lot of ours are really one and the same. But we don’t like to admit that, so we bicker. But since I have a blog and Jamie doesn’t, I get to pick on him and ignore any similarities in my own behavior. Yep, I just went there. MY BLOG, MY RULES.

Jamie has a very impulsive and addictive personality. What I mean by that is that he will go through these phases, but take them to a level far beyond where most normal people would go with a phase. For instance, he might decide one day that in order to be healthy, he must take a multivitamin and five different specific supplements every day. And so he will do it. Every. Single. Day. Or he literally will not be able to sleep at night for fear of dying by way of multi-vitamin deprivation. Or, for instance, he used to sometimes enjoy soy products, but when he saw a documentary which involved a man growing boobs because of excessive soy intake, he refused to ever touch anything with soy in it ever again (even though the guy on TV was probably a rare and extreme case). Like he literally WILL NOT take a sip of soy milk and swears that if he does, he will get man boobs. And since the idea of having a husband with man boobs doesn’t really appeal to me either, I let it go.

Jamie’s latest fixation involves massive amounts of sour candy. We literally make at least four trips to the grocery store a week for a sour candy run. Because every night when we sit down to watch a TV show, or to catch up on House or The Office on Hulu, or to watch our latest Netflix or Redbox movie, he gets twitchy and anxious if he has no sour candy to gorge on. But we don’t just get ANY sour candy and eat it ANY old way… because that would just be too normal for the Trinker household. Oh no. It has to be a specific kind of sour candy. No sour Starbursts (too soft). No sour powder candy or goopy stuff (child’s play…. psssh). Sour Patch Kids are acceptable, but not ideal. Sour Skittles are a good ole standby, but lately it’s been all about sour straws and sour ropes and other various string-like sour things.

And do we rip open the package as soon as we sit down on the couch? Most certainly NOT! Timing is crucial in these life-or-death situations. The candy (or any other snack for nights when, horror of horrors, we have none in the house) must NOT be consumed or even OPENED until the actual show starts. NOT the commercials. NOT the main menu screen. NOT even the opening credits. Which is why, every time we go to the movie theater, I end up crouching in embarrassment because Jamie’s the only one who hasn’t already rustled around, opened his candy, and started eating by the time the first super quiet, serious scene starts. Inevitably, I’ll miss some important line due to the CRACKLE-CRACKLE-CRACKLE of sour candy wrappers, because it isn’t until that precise moment that Jamie feels it’s permissible to start eating. You know, the whole moviegoing experience might be completely ruined because of one ill-timed bite. And I even made a new discovery about candy consumption rules just last night when we sat down to watch Shrink with Kevin Spacey (excellent movie, btw. LOVE Kevin Spacey). The menu screen was off, the opening song and credits were well underway, but Jamie hadn’t even touched his candy yet. I looked over at him and said, “I think it’s safe to eat your candy now.” I may as well have said, “I think it’s safe to saw off your left hand now,” because Jamie turned to me and said, in ALL seriousness, “NO. I don’t start eating it until the DIALOGUE has begun.” OH. Pardon me. Allow me to hit pause for one moment and jot that one down on my handy list of Jamie’s-crazy-rules-that-make-absolutely-no-sense-at-all.

But I don’t dare pause it. Why, you ask? (Haven’t you figured out by now that it’s useless to ask why in matters of Jamie’s habits?) Because if the show or movie is paused, I will almost always have to start it over at the beginning, because heaven forbid one batting of an eyelash is missed in all that commotion.

What’s that? You think I’m kidding? Oh, well clearly you haven’t experienced a typical TV-watching night at the Trinkers’. Lord knows we can’t do anything without a good bicker over each other’s crazy habits and total stubbornness and inflexibility at the thought of having to change them for even a moment.

But you know what? I like my relationships weird. As dangerous as some might think it would be to stick two very stubborn, obsessive, impulsive people together in a close living arrangement, for us, it works. We never fight about anything big, because we get it all out in mini arguments over crap that doesn’t even matter. Like when I tell Jamie he should have put his blinker on to get over, or when he reminds me ever-so-sweetly for the ten millionth time that the dishes piled up in the sink need to be done. On the stuff that REALLY matters, we couldn’t agree more. We’re absolutely the best of friends. And crazy as all get-out.

That’s why I love Jamie. And that’s why I’ll tolerate a once-daily trip to Smith’s for a sour candy fix. Because there are some things in life that just REALLY matter. And at the end of the day, no matter what arguments we’ve gotten into over stupid things, I lay my head on my pillow and sigh with satisfaction that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jamie is the love of my life and will be by my side no matter how crazy we get (and at the rate we’re going, this could be a feat of monumental proportions). I am so blessed.

Update on our raccoon friend from Jamie, as of 3o seconds ago: “Steve’s still out there munchin.’ He’s a hungry boy!”

p.s. I should have mentioned that it’s also difficult to stay angry at someone who is THIS good-looking: