And the moral of the story is...

Okay, so when Mate gets home we all duck.

He's not a horrible person--I swear! But he will walk in and we'll all be settled into something peaceful, and suddenly it's, "Did we get this? What's for dinner? Why is there a Cheez-Its box on the couch? Why can't we put stuff away?"

This flurry of bitching usually lasts about five minutes, and then--it subsides.

There is peace in the realm, and Mate becomes my sweet and funny companion once again.

And today, as he was ranting about the Cheeze-Its boxes, I went to fetch another salty/crispy snack for him, because that's just what I do, and it hit me.

He's hangry.

Now, Mate doesn't admit to being hangry.  He used to be able to go for DAYS without food, only brought back to earth with the rest of us humans when his nose started to bleed and he almost passed out. (This happened a couple of times right after we'd moved in together. Made me want to smack him cause it scared the hell out of me.)

Anyway-- it would make sense that he's hangry-- his commute's a pita, and he eats lunch at 12:30 and claws his way through traffic at 6:30, and it wouldn't occur to him to, say, maybe eat a snack at four or something so he doesn't come home and berate his wife and children out of nowhere.

Now, I usually have that snack right on hand--I pretty much thrust it into his grasp the minute he walks through the door. But I really need to get him to remember to eat on his own before he has to deal with his confused wife.

So the moral of this story?

DON'T WIVE HANGRY!