Personal

I have a cold. It is in the wet stage. Les has allergies. You could say that at this juncture in our relationship we are a pair of unlovely objects. The glow has been replaced by ceaseless phlegmous effluent.

I really am a miserable beast. I must just assume that in these matters I am far less tolerant than other people. Because I cannot stand noises that are in any way assocated with the processes of eating and digestion. At any stage. I also violently react against any noises associated with the production of mucous. I mean, really, I am close to hysterical about this. It's just me, I say over and over again, he's not doing it to persecute me.

So this afternoon I went into the kitchen and on the end of the counter I spotted a piece of scrap paper with this puddle of gooey clear liquid and a piece of twig about two inches long, sitting on top of it. I shuddered. An hour or two later I returned to the kitchen and this thing was still sitting there.

I went into the bedroom where Les was working and announced grandly that there was a piece of paper in the kitchen with someone's mucous on it and I was not going to touch it and it needed to be removed. All the irritation of my phlegm-noise-assaulted nerves was in the way I made this announcement.

"It's glue," said Les, "and I left it there so it would dry before I threw it away."

"Well, with all the honking and nose blowing going on around here how was I to know that?"

"What about the twig? What did the twig mean?" he asked.

"I didn't even want to think about it," I said.

So my question is what do you do? How do relationships survive this stuff? What's the trick? It seems like one of those simple things that everybody knows, that I missed.