Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Plan Accomplished!

At 6:34 this morning, about four minutes after I drug myself out of bed, I was standing in the kitchen and staring blankly out of dull, bleary eyes while I waited for my toast to pop up. Bill happened to be in my line of vision, so I listlessly watched him slather peanut butter on his toast.

When I saw him lick his knife, the first smile of the day teased my lips. "Ah, so he licks the knife just like me!" I thought.

A grimace quickly replaced the faint smile when I witnessed his next action. He wiped the knife on a paper towel and then plunged it into the jelly jar. As he spread a dollop of jelly on his melting peanut butter, I exclaimed, "Did you just lick that knife and stick it in the jelly??"

"I wiped it off first," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

"But... the knife has... GERMS!" I sputtered.

"No it doesn't. I'm not sick."

"But you haven't brushed your teeth yet," I pointed out. "You have all those morning breath germs still. Besides..."

"I took a shower," he interrupted.

"But you didn't wash your mouth."

"I rinsed my mouth," he said. Case closed.

"Well, I'm not eating any more of your blackberry jelly," I said emphatically.

Now he cracked his first smile of the day, though he tried to suppress it. "Plan accomplished!" he said.

I thought about the way he drinks straight from the Gatorade jug. Of course, that doesn't stop Allyson from stealing it and drinking it just like Daddy does, though the 64 ounce jug is almost bigger than her head. I wondered what other things in our refrigerator were contaminated with saliva germs.

"What else do you...? No, never mind. I don't want to know."

"Hey, you've known me for ten years and it hasn't killed you yet," Bill said.

I could have argued that there's a first time for everything, especially now that the swine flu is always at the back of my mind. Instead, I said nothing, mostly because I knew I was pushing the limit on early morning conversation. Bill doesn't usually talk until after he's finished his coffee.

So What Do You Think?
So would you eat the jelly? If you're reading this via email or Facebook, please click the link at the bottom of this post and then take my poll, at the top right corner of the page. Together, perhaps we can help Bill see the error of his ways.

In the meantime, I wouldn't eat any blackberry jelly at our house.

9 comments:

Kristi said...

Maybe Canadian saliva doesn't have germs but I would have done the same Sarah! LOL - cute story.

Melissa Irwin said...

My husband does similar things. Geez..... they just don't understand.

Hey, please find me on facebook. I can't search you because I don't know your last name...???

Anonymous said...

Ewwww…I took Micro several years ago. We swabbed our mouths and then transferred it to a tiny amount of various foods and refrigerated them for days. The results were stunning! And SCARY GROSS! People wonder why I am such a germa phoebe…I have to ask, “and you aren’t , eeeww”.
Gentle

Jara said...

Nasty, NOOOO! I'd never eat that after someone did what he did - YUCK!

Anonymous said...

What Gentle Didn't tell you is...after she left her comment, she was caught triple dipping in the frosting tub!This is a true story...busted. :)
Sean

Anonymous said...

At what point do you stop walking back and forth to the frig, dipping your fingers into the frosting tub (that was supposed to be for cupcakes this weekend) every 10 minutes. I should probably just bring the whole thing with me and just eat it at all at once, what's the difference, it will be gone tonight? This is all while we are watching The Biggest Looser...doesn't seem right does it :) Is this a validated excuse?
Gentle

Sarah said...

Sean and Gentle, you guys are hilarious! Gentle, I have certainly dipped into the frosting myself, but I would never have suspected you of it!

NCSue said...

Hi Sarah -

I'm not reading this on Facebook so I can't take you poll. But I'll give you thoughts that may have your head spinning a bit.

The swine flu is a valid concern - I think you can be healthy from all appearances for about 5 days before you become symptomatic, and you can shed virus (thus SPREADING virus) before you show symptoms and it becomes apparent that you should avoid close contact with others.

You have kids, and they see kids, and kids are walking petri dishes that share every organism in the universe with everything they come in contact with. We might be smart to keep them in space suits, because sure as God made little green apples, those little guys are going to make us sick.

Speaking of having kids... Not to be indelicate, but I assume that you and Bill had kids the conventional way. I think that implies that you've swapped more than saliva germs over the course of the year. (Don't go thinking too far down that road unless you look good in a wimple and habit...)

All things considered, if you think about that stuff, you're going to try to figure out how to continually bathe yourself in antiseptic. Depressing, huh?

That said, I would suggest you get as much knowledge under your belt as possible and, after Bill and the kids and you are all WIDE awake, have a family talk about the best way to avoid spreading germs. I have a "widget" on the top of my blog that says "know what to do about the flu". It takes you to the CDC web site and there's LOTS of good information there.

Finally, I'm a nurse and work with immunosuppressed patients. We tell them that the best way to minimize the spread of infection is handwashing. Frequently. For everyone. You may even want to buy a few of those little pocket-sized bottles of hand sanitizer and encourage the family to use them.

Good luck!

Stay healthy!

And thanks for visiting my blog and for your kind comment!

Mindy said...

*slowly raises hand to see if anybody else is*

I have to say, if it was Blake doing it, I probably would. Technically though I'm a grape jelly gal and he's a strawberry jelly kinda guy so we don't run into this problem. I do draw the line at drinking straight from the milk carton though, that leaves backwash in the milk, blegh.

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