spoilled rotten

Tuesday morning after The Hater took me to work he went grocery shopping. Among other things on the list, I asked him to pick up some milk. We usually get skim milk by the half gallon, and we rarely finish it before it expires.

We're not big milk drinkers. For one thing, I think it stinks. All milk stinks. Stinky stinky stink. If I think our milk is expired The Hater has to smell it because it all stinks to me. He'll say, Can't you smell that, but I never can. I'll only eat it with my grits, but not with anything else, and I sure won't drink a glass of it by choice.

Aside: Imagine my chagrin after the first surgery when the surgeon removed one of my parathyroid glands, which knocked my calcium levels into the toilet, "hypoparathyroidism", and I forced myself to drink milk to try to recover my levels. The hospital didn't bring me skim milk... it was thick and gaggy 2% of dry heaves milk. Actually, I made myself drink two cups of milk a day for about a week after the surgery, until my other three parathyroid glands stopped wigging out, because if I had showed more low-calcium symptoms, they would have hospitalized me again to get IV calcium, and I certainly did not want that.

I drank milk to avoid that. Only my closest of friends know how big that is for me.

Back to grocery shopping... When I came home from work The Hater was quick to tell me that the milk in the refrigerator was sour. I had thought my grits tasted funny the last few days. He asked why I hadn't woken him to smell the milk for me, but I hated to do that because he's never excited to smell the bad milk, and it just tasted a little whangy. Actually, I thought I'd just added too much butter to them.

Today my grits tasted just right. Who knew it was the milk all along... The Hater also picked up some cereal so that maybe if he's on milk duty we won't drink bad milk.

The most amusing part of this story is that The Hater's step-dad owns a dairy farm. One of the first times I was invited to visit his family they gave me blank stares when I told them I didn't drink milk. It was a major family faux pas, but I gained back a few brownie points when the cows got out of their pasture and I helped to round them back up.

Sister, on the other hand, is an Olympic milk drinker. She could drink a whole gallon in a day if she wanted, an idea which makes my stomach turn. However, she's afraid of cows. She would never volunteer to help round up cattle.

Something dairy is not right with us, and I'm not so sure if it's heredity or environment. My parents would probably argue that it's both.