Valerie – my fiancé – has this… fetish… with milk.
I don’t get it. I’m just not into that sort of thing. Now, I like milk. I like it in my coffee, and in my cheese; I like it in yogurt and chocolate bars. I even like it straight – with 3 or 4 tablespoons of Ovaltine mixed in. But Valerie – whew! – she likes *milk*. Just milk. I have personally seen her drink a full gallon of milk over a period of a weekend. Straight. No chocolate syrup or pancakes (which need washing down) or anything. Just straight milk. It’s… it’s… eww!
So. I came into the room the other day and was picking up some thing and as I was heading out, she said, “wait!” and grabbed her glass of milk. Now, I try to stay pretty tolerant of my darling’s little habits, but this was way too much. She wanted me to take her glass into the kitchen, which glass was still mostly full. Her solution was to drink the *entire* thing – just guzzle it – right there on the spot. Right in front of me.
It’s not so much that she was drinking milk in front of me. I’ve gotten used to that. It’s the fact that she was going to slosh it all down like it was lemonade on a hot summer day, like it was Gatorade and she’d just finished competing in the Olympics, like it was **all** ***O-K***. Really.
And I watched her as she poured it down, as if swallowing wasn’t even necessary, and I’d had enough. I had to say something.
So I said the most condescending thing I knew to say:
“Milk guzzling is approbatious.”
“What?” she said.
“Milk guzzling… is… approbatious.”
“Okay. What does that mean?”
“It means… worthy of approbation,”
“And? What does that mean?”
“Scorn. Derision. Something like that… Um, I think.” I said, frantically scurrying. This was not turning out as I had planned.
“Uh huh.” She raised a quizzical eyebrow, once again prooving her superiority. I have no quizzical eyebrow -raising capacity, a fact which she constantly throws againt me. “”Why don’t you go look it up?” she asked.
“Alright… Where did you hide my dictionary?”
(This was the moment of truth for me. I’m the wordy one. I like being the wordy one. I like words. But sometimes I overshoot a little and throw out a word that I’ve heard somewhere when I only have a partial idea how to use it. Usually I can catch it. Usually it means exactly what I intended. But sometimes… sometimes…)
I found the dictionary and brought it to the bedroom. And I looked up my newfound word of condescension.
“Here it is. Approbation… Approval.”
I ducked my head and left the room to the sound of pealing laughter. Somehow, I have the feeling that our milk budget may exceed the means of your average lexicologist.
neumatikos 