I survived Christmas dinner. In fact, it couldn't have been more perfect, so clearly my brother hired out. Ha! No, he and his wife did a great job. I'm the one that screwed up making a chocolate pie with unmelted sugar in it that crunched when you ate it. Had to scrap it and reheat the chocolate and make super dense mini fudge pies instead. Ah well, the nieces scarfed them down, which was the point anyway.
Of course, I still have to roll into the new year with my husband refusing to learn what a noun, verb, adjective and adverb are.
I think he knows, but he also knows it drives me crazy when he pretends he doesn't. After screwing up an easy math calculation, I tried to fall back on the fact that I'm a writer, not a mather. He insisted he knew both by out-of-the-blue declaring: "Nouns are tables and adjectives are Army men." And there it was. Somehow he'd once again managed to suck me right in with his crazy. I scowled at him. "How does that make any sense? Both of those things are nouns." He shook his head. "Army men are action words." This is the part where I really should have run away screaming, but as usual, I tried to explain things to him. "Army men are a thing and not an action." "Army men are men of action." "Well, that's fine and dandy but since we're talking about adjectives, I'm telling you adjectives aren't Army men or action words. Army men are verbs." I grinned, pleased I'd made my point, but as we continued walking, I felt my smug smile slowly sliding from my face. Oh no. I'd been sucked into the fifth level of crazy. I'd just called Army men verbs and thought I'd made a point. "Wait. I mean, except they're not. Army men aren't verbs---" He held up a palm to stop me. "Fine. I get it. Adjectives are green Army men." "You're describing the Army men so that makes them adjectives?" He nodded...and I gave up. Well, except for one last foolish attempt to slip in the last word. "Good enough. Absolutely. Which is an adverb, just for the record." He nodded. "Mechanics are adverbs..." (If you're a teacher and would like to use this as a lesson plan for teaching English, please feel free. Consider it my gift to you.)
