Beauty Sleep

Jack: "Oh, it's late.  I need my beauty sleep."
Laura: "Me too....but less than you."
Jack: "Hey!"

It's never the woman's fault

[Laura was driving pretty fast approaching a tight curve in the road.]

Jack: Not too fast, dear...
Laura: You shouldn't say, "Not too fast"; you should say, "The road isn't straight enough."

Territorial diplomacy in a hotel bed

[We had to share a small hotel bed and we had a lot less space than the king-size bed that we're used to at home.]

Jack: "We're both going to have to try to get along."
Laura: "But one of us should try harder than the other."

The opposite of "clingy"

Laura: "Brianna seems to be a bit 'clingy' this morning..."
Jack: "Hormones?"
Laura: "Maybe.  But I don't remember being clingy to my mom when I was a kid.  Ever.  I probably made my own bottles."

Her "alleged" snoring makes me "perjure her"

[At 5 am, Jack touches Laura's shoulder until she wakes up.]

Laura: "Huh? What?"
Jack: "You're snoring."
Laura: "Are you sure?"
Jack: "Yes, dear. I'm sure.  Why do you always ask 'Are you sure?' "
Laura: "I didn't hear it."
Jack: "That's because you were asleep."
Laura: "You should at least use the word 'alleged'. You don't want to perjure someone."

Cold feet

[Laura was uncharacteristically wrapped up in layers of blankets one night when I crawled into bed.]

Jack: You're nice and warm...
Laura: I feel so cold.  I even have socks on my feet!
Jack: I hope you're not getting sick.
Laura: No, sometimes cold feet are just cold feet.

The big red eyes on the ceiling

[We got a new alarm clock for Christmas that projects the time in big red digits onto the ceiling at night.]

Laura: I feel like that big clock is staring at me, judging me.
Jack: You're anthropomorphizing again.
Laura: You know, you should stop using big words and use simple ones, like 'You're right.'!

Reading between the whines

[Over the Christmas holidays I had a chance to stay home and see family behavior that I normally miss.]

Jason: I'm hungry.
Laura: I'm sorry.
(Jason walks away. Jack and Grandma look shocked.)
Laura: He just wants to snack. If he were really hungry he'd be rolling on the floor pretending to be dying of hunger.  You've got to learn to read between the whines.

potato, po-tah-to

[We were getting ready for a trip, and Laura was frantically organizing last-minute activities.]

Laura (noticing that she had forgotten to sew up a hole in a travel pillow): "Oh poop, I forgot to sew that up.  I've just been so distracted with everyone asking me for stuff..."
Jack: "That's why you're so valuable."
Laura: "You say 'valuable', I say 'nagged'."

She always retorts

Laura: One thing I have to do before your parents come is dust the shelf over the sink.  Your mom always asks "How could you let it get so dusty?"  And I reply, "Well, it's pretty easy...".
Jack: I think that was a rhetorical question.
Laura: There are no rhetorical questions for me.  I always retort!

Lifting weights

Jack: Can you "spot" me while I bench press?
Laura: I can't lift those weights!
Jack: You don't have to. When I slow down and can't quite lift them all the way up, all you have to do is apply a little upward pressure to help me finish.
Laura: What if the weights get stuck on your chest and I can't help you?
Jack: Then you can call the cute firemen to rescue me.
Laura: In that case, I'll just sit on the bar right now! ("Sorry, Mr. Fireman, I don't know what happened!")
Jack: Don't make me laugh while I'm lifting weights. Here we go... 1 .. 2 .. 3 .. 4 .. uh .. 5 .. uh ..
Laura: Do you need help?
Jack: Not yet ... 6 .. uh .. 7 .. uhhh
[Laura freaks out and can't wait any longer and helps lift one side, tipping the weights, but we manage to get the weights up anyway.]
Laura: You asked for help, right?
Jack: Um, no, but thanks anyway. I guess we're done now.
Laura: Whew, I'm exhausted. Chloe, let's go downstairs and lie on the couch!

[A few minutes later...]
Jack: You could try lifting a few weights...
Laura: Yep, I'm going to get a really giant cup of coffee and lift that.

Prisoners of sleep

[One groggy morning, when neither of us wanted to get up out of bed:]

Laura (speaking in the tone of a wounded soldier): "You go on ahead without me. I'll just drag you down."

"Be" and "Quiet"

[On weekends, the only days we get to "sleep in", Jason usually wakes up early and starts playing with his toys. Sometimes he also wakes up Brianna (by flicking her bedroom light on and off) and then they both start making noise. One morning it was particularly bad, with the kids banging around and yelling at each other while we were still trying to sleep.]

Jack: "I already told them once to be quiet."

Laura: "That's like speaking French to them. They don't understand the words 'be' and 'quiet'."

Short days of Winter

Jack: "We are officially in Winter now. Yesterday was the 21st, the shortest day of the year. The days will start to get longer now."
Laura: "No wonder I couldn't get anything done yesterday."

The Opposite of Rhetorical

[I was going through the cupboards when I discovered a couple cartons of cookies that we were going to take to church. I should add that I had previously eaten some cookies (just a couple) that she was planning to take to the kids summer camp and Laura still hadn't gotten over that.]

Jack: "Mmmm, cookies..."
Laura: "Those aren't for you."
Jack: "I know."
Laura: "I don't think you do."
Jack: "Yes, they're for church. I won't eat them. Why do you think it's necessary to remind me?"
Laura: "Well, let's see ... why do you think it's necessary to remind you?"
Jack: "It was a rhetorical question."
Laura: "No, I don't think it was rhetorical. In fact, it was very 'torical'!"