Lolly, lolly, lolly get your adverbs here

Sometimes, when I look back on the things I put Jacob through, I realize that he really must be some sort of saint.

You may remember the time he hefted a couch in response to an emotional breakdown I had because I thought my phone was lost forEVER (keeping in mind that this wasn't a smart phone or even a nice phone).

Anyway, last Sunday I was in a bit of a foul mood, due to various unrelated events. I was cooking dinner, already somewhat down in the dumps, when Jacob dared innocuously ask, "Oh, dinner's not ready yet?" when he came home from visiting some families in our ward.

This was NOT the question I wanted to hear, and I fumed. Silently. I'm good at that, much to Jacob's chagrin. Wisely, he began washing dishes as I stirred the foodstuffs vigorously.

And then I set the spoon down so its handle was resting on the edge of the skillet. As I grabbed some paper towels to wipe up the splatters on the stovetop, the spoon tumbled onto the ground. Perfect.

I shoved the spoon into the sink, retrieved a backup spoon, and began wiping the aforementioned stovetop. Which, in retrospect, is a really foolish thing to do when it's on and you have a very hot pan taking up quite a bit of space. So I suppose it's no surprise that I ended up burning my hand on the edge of the skillet.

As I left my post to run some cold water over my burn, the second spoon took a nosedive to the ground, taking a fair amount of vegetables and sauce with it.

And that, dear readers, was the proverbial straw that broke this camel's back. I lost it.

I rushed to the bathroom, full out sobbing. And when Jacob came in to check on me a few minutes later (you know, after he cleaned up the mess on the ground I left and turned the stove off so we wouldn't accidentally burn our house down), he found me sitting on the toilet seat, hand submerged in a sink half full of water, tears dripping dangerously close to the toilet paper. Just allow that visual image to sink in for a little while.

Bless him, he retrieved some tissues and pressed them into my eye sockets to "stop the tears." And then he lifted the tissues off my face and proceeded to repeatedly blow in my face to, um, dry off my face? Evaporate the tears? Force the moisture back into my eyeballs? (Picture that!)

Now, this is not the first time he has employed this technique. And really, it's quite effective. YOU try crying when somebody is acting like your face is a trick candle that they urgently need to extinguish*! In fact, I think you should try employing the method yourself the next time you see somebody crying. Let me know how it goes.




*On a side note, my mom used to get my sisters and I to stop crying by pressing a cup against our face. She said if we ever filled the glass to the top with our tears, she would buy us a goldfish. Shockingly enough, we never earned that goldfish. It may have had something to do with the fact that we would start laughing as soon as she pulled the cup out.