There’s a fight in my house.  

It’s ugly, this fight. Insults slung. Parties insisting an opinion — an opinion — is wrong. 

Well, yes. I’ve slung insults and denigrated opinions.  

But it’s because everybody in my house is ridiculous. 

They say — they say Danish breakfast pastries are better than scones. 

Lunacy. That’s what that is. Absolute lunacy. 

You know, there’s a character named Danish Graves in season five of Fargo. When Jon Hamm’s character hears of him, he asks if he’s a person or a serious breakfast. 

As if Danish could ever be a serious breakfast.  

My husband suggested my love of scones is related to my English ancestry.  

That is, I’m genetically programmed to love slabs of bland food. 

That was when I told him his Scandinavian heritage dictates his preference for cold, squished pastry, gelatinous fruit goo or cold mystery cheese slapped in the middle.  

“Why don’t you,” I said, “go eat pickled fish?” 

The argument escalated when my son told my husband I don’t like the way he grocery shops. 

Which I didn’t say. What I said was that I don’t like when my husband grocery shops while hungry. 

He buys too much food he never eats but I can’t throw it away because in 2003 I threw away a Christmas 2002 Cabela’s catalog he borrowed from his dad. 

I know. 

When my son said he’d told his father I didn’t like his grocery shopping, I immediately texted my husband the explanation I just gave you guys. 

“I think,” my husband said, “you protest too much.” 

Then he cooked me a lovely dinner. With, you know, stuff he bought at the grocery store.  

Sadly, our week of arguing over scones and groceries took an awful turn. Like most couples with marriages teetering on the brink, it was Bret Michaels who did us in. 

We’re bingeing Schitt’s Creek with our son. A recent episode ended with the Poison ballad “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” 

My husband groaned. “This song is terrible. It’s so incongruous!” 

Now, I knew right away his problem with “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” 

I also knew he was wrong.  

The contrasting images of the song follow a pattern. Roses and thorns. Cowboys and sad, sad songs.  

A good thing and a bad thing, in that order. 

Nights having their dawn, my husband said, is a bad thing followed by a good thing. It doesn’t match the pattern. It’s bad songwriting. 

So I pulled up the lyrics. Bret Michaels clearly had a fight with a girlfriend. An apology from Bret Michaels was in order. 

But Bret Michaels didn’t apologize. He had a last night with his girlfriend. Come the morning, she was gone.  

And now she’s found somebody new. And Bret Michaels never meant that much to her. 

I mean, he probably likes Danish better than scones and bought too much food at the grocery store. 

“It’s symbolic,” I said to my husband. “The night and the dawn. It’s symbolic of their relationship. The night was the last good thing they had. Rose and thorn. Cowboys and sad, sad songs. It’s symbolic.” 

“Do you really think,” my husband said, “Bret Michaels was trying to be symbolic?” 

I granted him the symbolism was trite. But it’s Poison. It’s not, like, Kafka. 

“You guys,” our son said, “argue about the weirdest stuff. I’m going to bed.” 

There are no prisoners when the war is about Bret Michaels.  

I turned nasty. 

My husband always says he doesn’t want a funeral. Let him shuffle off into the forest. Nature can have her way. No grim faces around a coffin for him. 

So I told him I was going to have a huge funeral if he goes first. I’m serving scones and playing “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” on repeat. I’ll cry and tell people it was “our” song because my husband loved the symbolism of Poison. 

“Everybody knows,” he sighed, “that our song is ‘The Last Train to Clarksville.’” 

Which it isn’t. It’s just what we tell people. 

“How much sex,” I asked my husband, “do you think Bret Michaels got off of girls like me who think ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’ is just so wistfully romantic?” 

“Probably a lot,” he said. 

With the fight waning, I had some parenting to address. Our son, during the Oscars, said the actor Timothée Chalamet was cooler than Mick Jagger. 

“So I set him straight,” I said to my husband. “I told him no one is cooler than Mick Jagger. Except maybe Paul McCartney. You might want to reinforce that.” 

“Eh,” my husband said. 

“Do not tell me,” I said, “you think there’s someone cooler than Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney!” 

“Well,” he said. 

Ugh. Poison was right.  

Every rose does have its thorn.