Even I couldn't make this up...

I never know what to expect when I come home, so it shouldn't surprise me that falling asleep involves random acts of weirdness from my husband. Like the other night, when I had already gotten into bed...

James: "He approaches the bed, ready for another night of sleep after a long day’s work. Untucking the covers, he—"

Me: "What the hell are you doing?"

James: "He pulled back the sheets and watched her turn over. He wondered if she knew how to respond."

Me: "Are you...narrating your actions?"

James: "She was surprisingly quick-witted, and he knew he had found a keeper."

Me: "You are narrating...your...own...actions."

James: "Suddenly, she began to repeat herself, and he worried that she had someone injured herself into speaking like a broken, skipping record."

Me [rolling over]: "I should get paid to put up with you." 

James: "He looked over at her still form, waiting for her to sleep. Oh no, he had forgotten to pee."

[I ignore him]

[James gets out of bed and trundles over to the bathroom. Muffled sounds, like someone talking into a pipe, intermix with the splash of the toilet. He comes back into the room.]

James:"…..and then it hit him, he really wanted a bowl of cereal."

Me [mumbling into the sheets]: "You are not getting cereal."

James: "James glared at the evil lady. She won, for now, but she wouldn’t be able to keep him from cereal forever. He tucked himself into bed—"

Me: "Narrate this!" [I hit him with a pillow]

[A slight pause before --]

James: "The sting of the pillow was nothing when compared to the sting of no cereal."

I found rice in a riceless place....

Driving home, a storm was rolling in the distance and James was staring aptly at the distant flashes of lightening.

Me: Sweetie, I have a question.

James: Yes, lovie? Hey loook! Lightening...

Me: Why was the rice in the dryer?

James: Well. It's a long story.

Me: Okay...

James: I wanted to protect it.

Me: You wanted to protect....the rice. So you put it in the...dryer?

James: I bug bombed the house, and I wanted to protect the rice.

Me: So you put it in the DRYER?! The entire bag?!

James: I couldn't think of a better way to keep it safe.

Me: You couldn't close the bag? Or find a clip? OR anything besides putting it in a dryer that isn't air tight?

James: It's air tight. I checked.

Me [closing my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose]: We have to throw the rice away, sweetie.

James: Jessa. No. Of all the things I would protect the most, I would protect our rice. You know me. 

Me: I'm concerned that you would protect rice over...say...me, our car...our legal documents....

James: Our car would be worthless without rice. Ooooohh...thunder and lightening.

The rest of the ride was spent listening to James making farting noises after each flash of lightening and laughing hysterically at his own noise. 
In other news...I need to buy more rice.

I don't even know how to title this one...

After working in the woodshop all night and dancing to Justin Bieber smashing my hand with a hammer, James and I decided to stop by the road and watch a massive thundercloud roll in over a field.

James: I’ll bet this storm cloud is scaring the hell out of those cows. I know I’d be scared.

[I laugh]

James: I’d be like “Holy me!  I can’t even open my umbrella. I’m like the dumbest cow ever.”

Me: “Holy me”? 

James: Yeah, cause I’m a cow. Hey…a shooting star.

Me: Remember the first time we saw one together?

James: Yeah. I was 24 before I saw my first shooting star. I didn’t know stars could get that small.

Me: ....what?

James: Wait…are they not stars?

Me: Um. No. Stars are huge balls of gas in the sky. The closest one to us is also called The Sun.

James: Oh. I think I knew that.

Me: Shooting stars are actually pieces of meteorite. 

James: Stop ruining this for me.

Me: It's kind of like space junk.

James: I want one to hit me in the face.

Me: No, you don’t.

James: Hell yes I do! Hit me right in the face…while I’m in an airplane!

Me: Hand me the water, will you?

[We sit in silence for a moment, watching the lightening strike through dark clouds]

Me: Isn’t that beautiful?

James: It looks like Satan’s butthole.

Me: How….what?

James: He has to be mad about something eternally, right? I’d be mad if I had lighting shooting out of my butthole continuously.

[I start laughing and almost fall off the hood of the car]

James: I’ll bet Satan’s butthole is sad and constipated.

Me: Do you hear what you are saying?

James: No. I just fell asleep a little bit. 

How I ended up with 16 gallons of pumpkin spiced liquor

James [entering the room with a cup in hand]: Honey, try this.

[I look up from my GRE study guide]

Me: What is it?

James: It’s pumpkin spice liquor and ice.

[I sip it]

James: Do you like it?

Me: It’s okay.

James: Good. Because I bought 16 bottles of it.

Me: YOU. DID. WHAT.

[James runs out of the room and returns lugging a box that clangs ominously with liquor bottles]

James: They were only a DOLLAR!

Me: So you bought 16 mother-flippin’ bottles of pumpkin spice poop because they were cheap!? We’re NOT ranging alcoholics!

James: Jessa, they were a dollar! We could end world hunger for those prices!

Me [laying my head down]: Just because something is cheap does not mean you need large quantities of it!

James [yelling]: We’ll give them away to friends! We’ll bathe in the leftovers!

Me: No one needs 16 gallons of crappy alcohol! Not even Amy Winehouse would have 16 gallons of pumpkin spice liquor just sitting around. 

James: Jessa....they were a dollar a piece and I had $20. I did what any normal person would do.

Me: No, you did what any inbred hick from the backwoods of satan's armpit would do.

[James starts putting bottles of orangish-white liquid onto the floor]

Me: I'm not going to drink that crap. Wait...what happened to the groceries you were supposed to get?

[James pauses]

James: I may have forgotten to buy groceries.

[I look up and glare]

Me: This does not end well for you.

James: I got excited when I saw the price and forgot to buy anything else.

Me: You’re fired.

We didn't drink it. Turns out that it didn’t taste great with coffee, was too heavy to drink with just ice and left a bad, tangy taste at the back of the throat. It’s almost a year later, and we still have one stubborn bottle of pumpkin spice liquor that I've been unable to pawn to the unsuspecting guest or homeless bum.

James wonders why I watch "Modern Family", and when I saw this episode...I finally could give an answer--this is me. Just replace the alpaca with 16 gallons of pumpkin spice liquor.

I fear/anticipate that James will one day come home with a needy alpaca.

James is still not allowed to shop for groceries.

Yeah. It wasn't me.

James [yelling from the kitchen]: JESSA! WHAT. THE. BLOODY. HELL.

Me: What? Did you start your period again?

James: "WHY IS THE ICECREAM IN THE FRIDGE!?!?"

Me: "Um. I don't know."

[James comes storming out]

James: "DID YOU EAT IT TODAY?!"

Me: "No. Why? Did you?"

[He pauses]

[A look of shame passes over his face]

[He spins around and storms back into the kitchen]

James: Don't come in here. I spilled it.

And the rest of the night was spent with me laughing hysterically and James cussing like a sailor as he wiped up the spilled, melted icecream.

Wifewin.

According to James, the number 500 doesn't exist.

James: I have never counted to 500. I always get distracted. So I just have to trust it's there. Like dinosaurs.

Me: James, dinosaurs are dead.

James: That's exactly why I have faith, because naysayers like you want me to believe this awesome giants just...died because of a cold.

Me: More like a deep freeze. You can't come back from that kind of trauma.

James: You know who else was frozen and came back to life? Jesus.

Me: So. Wrong.

James: I'm allowed to believe dinosaurs still exist. 'Cause...America.

Me: What about America?

James: This is America. You can believe and do ridiculous things and make millions from it, all the while calling yourself a scientist. That like that Tom Cruise guy.

Me: He's a scientologist.

James: So?

Me: There's a difference. One is a religion, the other is a guy who went to school for a long time.

James: You're saying the exact same thing.

Me: You know, you have a point. You go ahead and believe dinosaurs still exist, little buddy.

James: And that the number 500 is out there somewhere.

Tickling, or What My Husband Calls, "Massaging Your Ribcage"

After staring at a computer screen all day, editing 240 page documents and converting heaven-knows-how-many website pages...my shoulder hurt.
Mind you, this is no gentle ache.
It's a punt-you-in-the-balls-with-army-boots kind of pain. A, "I have rabid feminist eating through my tendons" kind of ache.
Annoying and unnecessary.
Naturally, I came home yesterday and invoked the vows of marriage. For better or worse, camel hump back or Olympic gymnast shoulders...I needed my husband to rub my back.
Turns out, this was much harder than anticipated, mostly because my husband is ADHD. However, he finally agreed to rub my shoulders for ten minutes. About 30 seconds in, he sighed.

James: Jessa, this is so boring. It's like playing with putty, except worse because you can't do anything with it.

Me: Holy Shrimpfest, James. It's been less than a minute.

James: It's been three hours. And counting.

Me: Would you massage me if I was pregnant?

James: Yes, but...your shoulder doesn't DO anything interesting.

Me: Just think of the knots in my back are like little babies. Little knot babies.

James: Ew. I'm uncomfortable now.

Me: Do you love me enough to massage me?

James: No. I'm not there yet. That's not a level I can reach.

Me: I need you to massage me!

James: Just drink some water, take a motrin and we'll come back to it.

Me [mumbling into the pillow]: I've heard that before.

[silence for two minutes]

James: I'm bored. This is so boring.

Me: It's been two minutes.

James: That was thirty minutes ago.

Me: Liar! You've BARELY done anything!

James: Jessa. I'm bored. This is the most bored I've ever been in my life.

Me: The Airforce once made you sit motionless in a chair for FOUR HOURS!

James: That was a carneval compared to this.

[silence.]

James: Has it been ten minutes yet? It's been like an hour.

Me: It's been four minutes.

James: Ugh. I'm so BORED. [starts poking at my back]

[pauses]

Me: If you stop early I'm going to start charging you interest on the minutes you owe me.

James: Geez. The SovietSocialistRepublic of Eldridge sucks.

Me: You now owe me four minutes in interest.

James: This won't end well for you.

*Epilogue: At about 9 minutes, he yelled something about tyranny and rebellion before stopping. I told him that he would accrue interest on his remaining 1 minute.
That didn't go over well.
Apparently, tickling me for two minutes earlier that day counted as massaging my ribcage, and so technically he had given me an 11-minute massage.
My shoulder still hurts.