Butter and the Nut

Today is my first real day off in probably about a month. I was looking forward to a morning with toast, coffee and blogging in my pjs on the couch. Ahhh, relaxation a-go-go.


I woke up at about 9.30, got the coffee started, got the toast toasting, booted up the computer.  Then I went to get the butter and apricot jam so I'd be ready when the toaster popped...

You can imagine my irritation when I found this:

WT eff

Cue bitch mode.  I went completely ape sh*t.  Call it hormones, call it what you will, but I pretty much flipped my lid.

All I wanted was toast with butter and jam, but evidently I would only be having toast with...jam. Everybody knows that toast is NOT the same without the butter BEFORE the jam! My entire morning was ruined.  I yelled at Copain for his new technique in hiding his consumption of bad foods - and then I yelled at him again for his Aveyronnais habit of saving minuscule amounts of leftovers.

He tried to show me that I was wrong, that there was tons of butter leftover for my toast! As he sat there scraping the butter out of the container, I just yelled louder.  Then I switched into French to really drive it home.  Then he started doing the French souffle** to show how frustrated he was with me - and then he called me a crazy person and retreated to the bedroom.

As I gave him the silent treatment while eating my jam toast, I did feel like maybe I had slightly over-reacted. But it was THE ONE thing I really wanted this morning. And it was the third time he had left an empty container of something that I had just happened to want in the past two weeks (il n'a pas de chance...)


When I was done with the toast he came back into the war zone and said that he was sorry that he hadn't told me we were out of butter while I was buying groceries yesterday but that perhaps I went a little nuts about it.  And this my friends, is where Copain is a much better person than I could ever be, because he actually says he's sorry and tries to make peace.  I, on the other hand, boude (pout) and fight my reasoning until the bitter end. I hate to lose. Copain knows this about me and knows that if he doesn't come to me first, we will probably spend the day mad at each other.

Over the past (almost) seven years I've tried to learn from him, but it's hard.  I'm not good at admitting when I'm wrong or that butter is just not that big a deal- because by principle, I just can't let it go.  So, while I'm still feeling pissy that my toast was not parfait, Copain wins for being the bigger, butter person...et merde, I'm just the nut.


**The French Souffle - the French souffle is an art form practiced by all Frenchies.  In English we could translate this an "an exasperated sigh" but with higher intensity and with the mouth opened only slightly. The mouth position allows for the "horse noise" that comes when you push air out of your mouth with force. The souffle can be used in times of high annoyance, general irritation and is de rigeur at the Prefecture de Police, the mairie (mayor's) and in the presence of any other French fonctionnaire  (civil servant) who takes 50 times longer to do their job than anyone else in the country.