Crisis? What Crisis?

My coworker was having a rough day at work because that's the kind of stuff of which dreams are made.

The pressure had clearly gotten to her by the time she whirled around and said, "Emma! You have to teach me how to deal with stress. You're always so calm and collected."

I would have laughed if I hadn't been so dumbstruck.

Who the hell did she think she was talking to!? I actually looked around the room to make sure the school hadn't hired another Emma because I hate it when other people have the same name that I didn't choose for myself.

"Well, shit," I thought, "Now I have to tell her the truth."

I tried to explain to her that I'm not naturally the laid-back, patient, happy-go-lucky Stepford teacher she sees at work. There's some real rage boiling beneath my top knot.

Didn't she remember the time I walked into the workroom and yelled, "Fuck!" in front of my new boss?

But she did make a good point. I am eerily calm at work even on my worst days.

There are two reasons for this:

1. Spain

2. a special repression technique that I have been developing since childhood

The first reason might seem pretty obvious, but there's more to it than that. As someone who has had everything handed to her in life, I didn't experience any real struggles until I went to Spain and even those were by choice. Finding a job, a place to live, friends, doctors, dealing with communication barriers, teaching myself how to teach a language to people spread all over a foreign city and basically not knowing what the fuck was going on at any given moment for a year straight wasn't easy.

But it also wasn't that hard. Having actual challenges taught me to recognize when something really wasn't a problem. If I'm not going to die, it's not a problem. Something like that. Also, Spain is chill as shit, and I even lived in what is known as the most uptight region.

Child's play compared to the United States of Anal Retention.

Which leads me to this other thing that really creeps me out. When I was a kid, I didn't hold anything in. The bad feeling entered, I exercised it out pea soup style, and I was totally fine seconds later. That doesn't work well in a classroom environment mostly because I would be vomiting (screaming) a constant stream of soup into students' faces for an entire hour and ten minutes. Then I'd have a ten minute break. Then I'd vomit for an hour and ten minutes. Then a generous thirty minute lunch hour...vomit...and so it goes on like this my entire career.

Instead, I prefer to absorb stress into my body and have it manifest itself in other ways. I don't even feel it. It's awesome.

I just get really sick once every other year, snap at Jaime for touching my ear or have nightmares that I'm going to miss my flight, and I'm running through the terminal trying to find my gate, and no one will fucking help me. Like I said, it's awesome.

But I didn't tell her all that. I just told her to move to Spain. Crisis? What crisis? It's fine.

Me when I'm teaching how to do a works cited page.

School of Wife Witchcraft and Wizardry

I sent my husband to work in a pair of booty shorts with skulls all over them today.

I expressed my concern about his underwear as he made his way to the bathroom, and he shot back that they were the only clean ones he had left because someone (I can only assume he meant me) hadn't done the laundry like she'd been promising for three days.

Clearly, I am not the keeper of Jaime's dirty underwear. He doesn't expect me to do any more or any fewer domestic tasks than he does, but I do expect that of myself.

And it's not because I am the keeper of the vagina. It's because he works way more hours than I do. It was my idea. Even-steven. Fair, square and seven years ago.

On paper, communism is a great idea, too.

My father fancies himself a domestic goddess and spent many years trying to convince me that things like cooking, cleaning and dressing like a lady is fun. I didn't buy what he was carpet bagging as a child, but after years of real world experiences, I can finally say that I was absolutely a genius kid.

It's still impossible to convince myself to like doing domestic work that I promised to do, but it is possible, I've learned, to sometimes convince my partner that I'm doing stuff around the house that I'm so clearly not. I've decided to call it wife witchcraft.

We just moved to an awesome new place, and I spent a long time arranging the kitchen and adjusting everything to my height. I do most of the cooking now because Jaime gets home so late. Lies.

It's because he puts three carrots in a bowl, covers it with spinach and calls it dinner.

Anyway, I finished the kitchen. I looked around. I suggested we walk to the Indian restaurant around the corner. He agreed. Did zero laundry. Wife witchcraft.

I didn't do the laundry the next day because the people below us left their clothes in the machine. It's rude to dump them all out. This is not college, and this is not the Dirty Hands United for Constantly Smoking Marijuana Cigarettes and All Day Video Gaming Co-op where we used to live. I didn't do it. Wife witchcraft.

Instead, I spent the afternoon wrangling a dining room table that seats six, cost me $25 dollars and required both of my parents and their truck. Jaime got home, dropped his keys on it, turned to me and started talking about his day. I interrupted and asked if he liked the huge table that I texted him about then inserted into the giant hole of a dining room we once had. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "I didn't even notice!" Husband sorcery.

The next day, I had to paint a mural in the dining room then paint over it then paint one over the fireplace instead, so I couldn't possibly have done the laundry that day. He loved the mural. Wife witchcraft.

I did, however, make brownies. They were a box mix. I hated making them, and they were pretty gross. His mom asked me for the recipe over Skype. Wife witchcraft?

I don't think that one counts.

But skull booty shorts on a man who wears a helmet when he bikes to work and is supposed to be taken seriously as a medical researcher is where I draw the line. I'm doing the laundry now, but I'm also writing a blog about it, so I'm taking forever to get it done, but I am doing it, so it's almost done.

Jaime didn't sign up for a witch wife.

However, he did choose this week of all weeks to bend down, kiss my head and say, "I couldn't possibly have ever found a better wife than you."

 Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to fold this in the hour I have before he gets home, so I can rub it in his stinking face. 

Image swiped from: http://artjetset.com/2010/05/