The wonderful husband and I were born in the same hospital, approximately six weeks apart. (I'm older, and of course, wiser.)

We grew up in the same town.We sought the same summer employment when we were 15, leading to our fortuitous meeting at the Bungalow pool, where we spent many vigilant hours as lifeguards.We both went away to college and then decided to return home to live and work, and eventually, we both worked out at the same gym, where we reconnected after many years, and we lived happily ever after. Or something like that.In actuality, our marriage is much more a case of opposites attracting.I'm the liberal, left-leaning Democrat and he's the hard-core, conservative Republican. He's mountain lake, I'm beach. He's a little bit country, I'm a little bit city. He's an eternal optimist, I'm an eternal pessimist.For the most part, this makes for some really explosive conversations and interesting vacations and a lot of agreeing to disagree.Our kids have learned that he or she who talks loudest and talks longest usually wins. As he says, we're like the two poles on a battery, you need them both to make the charge.However, there is one area where sooner or later, we are probably going to drive each other mad: the kitchen.It should be noted that I didn't bat an eye when he turned our living room into a chick hatchery and raised two dozen Rhode Island Red chicks to semi-maturity right next to the couch.I embraced his horticultural foray into growing giant pumpkins and other heirloom vegetables when he turned the living room into a plant nursery. The neighbors were a little curious about the grow light that flicked on at odd hours of the night.I managed to contain my surprise and hold back my lunch when I came home and found him butchering an entire deer in the middle of the breakfast nook. To be fair, my college labs in anatomy weren't that much different.The day that I came home to find a deer skull "boiling off" in my stock pot, however, was the day that a line was crossed.I frequently think of my kitchen as my lab, but when it turned into a bizarre cross of "Fatal Attraction" and a horror film set, I lost it.While it was tempting to run away screaming, a solid marriage requires that you work at things a little, so one family membership and some very hungry bugs at the Carbon County Environmental Education Center later, he had a way to deflesh his skulls without defiling my kitchen and our marriage was saved.This was a temporary truce, though, and the battles still rage.I love cooking. However, I tend to stick to a recipe. After I've made a recipe a few times, I may tweak things a little bit, but I like to experiment more with the methods of cooking rather than mixing up ingredients.The Wonderful Husband on the other hand, likes to "wing it."Recently, I was going to be home late, and I left him some boneless pork chops to sear and bake. A good cut of pork, a little flour coating, some salt, some pepper, a quick sear in butter and bake. Plain. Simple. Pretty hard to screw up. I've made these pork chops hundreds of times.I came home to a lovely dinner on the table. However, the pork chops were looking a little crustier than usual. They had a sweet, wheaty taste to them. Completely edible, but a little different.After dinner, he informed me that he had coated them with Honey Nut Cheerios. "Because they were there."As luck would have it, a week or so later, I was making a pork dish again. This one called for a finishing sauce of apples, brown sugar, and maple syrup. Unfortunately, he caught me mixing the syrup and adding it on to the pork."Oh, so it's OK when YOU put the breakfast foods in the dinner, but not when I do it?"He may have thought he was winning, but I was able to fire back that the G had asked me to hide the Pop-tarts, "Before Dad tries to coat a pork chop with them."Check and mate.Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.