Chitter-chat

Wednesday:
MS (arrives home from work)
RR: How was work?
MS (takes off shoes, tells long story about a lefthand nav-bar that is not there)
RR: Oh boy.
MS (starts to walk down hallway)
RR (to cats) Quick, into the bedroom to watch Mark change his shirt!
Cats (stampede)
MS: Really?
RR: Is this much attention a burden?
MS: Maybe.
RR: Did you get a sandwich for lunch?
MS: I got a BURGER.
RR: A burger! Really?
MS (head muffled in shirt) Yeah! A cheeseburger!
RR: Wait, out of the vending machine?
MS: Yeah, I was going to get a sandwich but then I saw, “Wait, there’s a cheeseburger in there!”
RR: But…what temperature was it?
MS: Cold! It was not good! It was a cheeseburger but the cheese wasn’t melted.
RR: But Sampsons hate cold food. No, wait, it’s the Stevenson side that hates cold food, right?
MS: Right.
RR: Did you heat it up?
MS: No. I was so excited to eat a burger and then I just ate it cold and it was…yeah, it was a burger.
RR (sprawls on bed, cats mill around) This is what I don’t understand, how spouses can have secrets from each other. You have been home less than ten minutes and I am ALL OVER what happened in the meeting and what you ate today. And this is after 15 years when the intensity has diminished a little…
MS: Has it?
RR: Hasn’t it?
MS: Not really…

Friday
(Mark and Rebecca prepare for houseguests; RR walks down the hall and notices closet door ajar)
RR (yelling) Did you put a blanket on that bed?
MS: Yeah!
RR: What blanket?
MS: A duvet.
RR: No! (knows that the only duvets we posses that are not on our own bed are winter duvets) You cannot put a feather duvet on that bed. It is 20 degrees outside.
MS (comes into the hall): So what should I do then?
RR: Look in the blanket chest and find a medium-weight blanket of appropriate size?
RR (returns to making a different bed)
MS (enters waving a yellow blanket in one hand like a flag) How about this?
RR (alarmed, runs to him and snatches it away) No, that is my baby blanket. It is both small and old. And mine.
MS: So what is an appropriate blanket then?
RR: Just think about yourself? What size are you? What size am I? They are two grown adults, same as us. What blanket would be appropriate for us, given that we are adults and it isn’t winter? (as I have been talking in this condescending manner, I have also been drifting toward the blanket chest to put my baby blanket away and eventually start rummaging in it and finally just pull out and hand Mark a blanket to use, having puzzlingly both won and lost this battle of wills)