Husband's Fast will be better known to me as the weekend I ate everything Husband didn't or couldn't.
It was like something straight out of the Hungry Caterpillar book: On Monday, ej ate an apple... Only my version in the book would be more like: On Saturday, ej ate a bowl of honey nut Cheerios, a double cheese burger and fries and eight chicken wings and six fried broccoli cheese balls, drank a pint of cider, a taste of a White Russian, a taste of a Bad Apple and a chocolate shake... On Sunday she was sick. Meanwhile, back at the house, husband drank water and sat on his tower of right and dropped pounds as quickly as his face dropped wrinkles. While his friends on social media posted pictures of their breakfast and lunches and dinners, he held strong. Even as the commercials on TV showed delicious shots of magnum ice cream bars shimmering with beads of chocolate and burgers glistening with taste. A moan might have passed his lips as he sucked his on his ever-present glass of water but he did not eat. Amazingly his mood was steady – disgustingly positive and peppy. He spent most of Saturday morning in bed and then settled on the couch, showered and rested, to watch TV for the rest of the day. He drank countless glasses of water, sipping slowly through his straw. He made comments to the snarky posts from friends and spent a good amount of time telling me how surprisingly good he felt. His Sunday wasn’t as perky. He emerged from the bedroom around the same time but not showered and shiny, more Oscar than Felix, all slovenly and grumpy. He assumed his position on the couch but, other than telling me that the wrinkles in his face had softened, he didn’t offer much information on his digestive system. Thank whatever god you believe in for that! He was starting to count the hours, ticking them off as he wandered into the kitchen for more water, planning his first meal as he unconsciously rubbed his belly. He invited me to have lunch with him Monday at the Pharmacy – a burger place worth breaking a fast for – but I was quite unsupportive of the choice. A massive burger and fries for lunch after three days of just water? The end result could only be disastrous and I wanted no part of that. Thankfully he listened to me, researched what to eat when you break a fast and his gluttonous return to food was sadly reduced to fruit drinks. His mood dipped further then. I was only slightly sorry. As wife to Husband, I have heard more than my fair share of bathroom stories. This is one I wanted to avoid. While he plotted his return to food, I tried to not eat in front of him while I tried to make up for my piggishness of the day before. I scarfed up my bowl of cereal while sitting tucked in the corner of the kitchen counter, head bowed over the bowl, trying to keep the spoon from clinking the sides and the milk from slurping. I skipped lunch, mostly because I was in a good book and forgot to eat before leaving for a meeting, and had a half sandwich when I came back. I was doing much better than Saturday’s excessive eating. And then my good intentions went to hell. The more he moaned about not eating, the more I wanted horrible things for me. Every time husband left the room, I snuck food from the fridge. And by ‘food’ I mean chocolate. Lots and lots of Chocolate Orange Slices and Recess Peanut Butter Pieces were shoved into my face every time he was out of the room on a pee break. About the time Husband started to get really cranky and unfocused and snappy, the sugar kicked in and started laughing. The laughing didn’t help his cranky mood and just made his snappiness worse. We were seconds away from a blow out when I put myself on time out in another room and hid in a book. Frustrated and unsettled, Husband wandered about trying to decide if it was too early to go to sleep yet. Finally, in order to speed up morning, we both gave up and went to bed. And now, here we are, on the other side of the fast. YEA!!! I am excited to not talk about how Husband looks and feels for a while. I am ecstatic to not have to feel the wrinkles on his face and agree that his neck does indeed look thinner. I’m thrilled not to talk about food; how it will taste, what he'll eat first, how his diet will change. I’m hopeful that my sneaking chocolate and binge eating will subside now that I can eat in front of him again. But mostly, I am hoping that the fast worked, that Husband's immune system has been reset and he feels better. Because if it hasn't worked, not only might this horror happen again but my helpful nagging Husband to go the doctor will have to begin again and I am WAY over that.
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My life as I know it is about to turn to poop. My potential happy weekend filled with putzing and social activities with the man I married is about to turn into a nightmare of horrific proportions. The kind of nightmare that sticks with you all day and makes you put on extra sweaters because you can't shake the chill of the horror you've seen. The kind of horror that puts you into to therapy more than one day a week. That has you crying out in the middle of a sunny day for no reason, the tears streaming down your cold and clammy terror etched face.
Husband read somewhere that according to Scientists at the University of Southern California, ‘A person's entire immune system can be rejuvenated by fasting for as little as three days as it triggers the body to start producing new white blood cells. He has now decided spend the next three days fasting to restart his immune system. I can't stop the screaming inside my head. Normal people would get a physical every year and go to the doctor when their tummy hurt. And when the doctor told them to cut out eating whatever made their tummy hurt, cut out eating whatever that was. Husband has decided to fast for three days to fix that pesky immune system that’s telling him something is wrong. Now, if I don’t eat for a few hours I turn into something resembling a Tasmanian devil with a toothache. I am not pretty to be around. Any one who asks me a stupid question is likely to get their head torn off, chewed and thrown away. Over the course of our marriage, Husband and I have had plenty of fights begin with me not eating when I should have, starting some stupid fight over some inane thing and ending with him telling me, not too politely, that I’m “big enough and ugly enough to feed myself.” I’m sure if a study were done, it would find that most traffic accidents occurring during the evening commute would likely be attributed to folks driving while hungry, making rash and distracted choices due to their rumbling tummies resulting in accidents. I know that when I’ve driven while hungry, I’ve been quick on that horn, quick to cut someone off and quicker to cuss as a result. Not eating for three days would likely make me ram my car into folks while turning the air blue instead of just quietly honking and calling their mama names under my breath. No food for three days. Riiight. Husband’s plan is to start today with a large breakfast and then not eat again until Monday morning. Actually, he started with several fancy unfiltered beers at an event last night because unfiltered beers have all the good healthy stuff in them that fill the system. Or so said the guy peddling the beers. At one point, I think they convinced him that beer was just as good for you as water and that he could drink it during the fast. My laughing in his face changed his mind. Folks at Husband's work have a betting pool to see how long he can go. Most have picked Saturday afternoon as his breaking point. I’m not betting against him. Husband is one stubborn ass. In order to make it through the fast, he’s informed me he’s planning to spend his entire weekend in bed. He’s also requested I don’t cook anything smelly. Ha. I don’t cook. And I didn’t even bother to ask him not to make the bedroom smelly. I can only imagine that as your body starts to grab what it needs from your body fat, it’s going to process some of that into a noxious gas. And that gas has to come out somewhere. And that somewhere is not going to be near me if I can help it. I’ve scheduled lots of activities outside of the house and plan on tiptoeing around when I am there, trying not to wake the angry beast. I’ve also planned to sleep in a separate room, though I am currently trying to see if there are any good rates on hotels near me. Tigger the Dog and I might need to flee the house suddenly for safety. I’m pretty sure that after not eating for three days, the dog is going to look like a giant 80 lb.. appetizer to Husband and we can’t have that. Tigger the Dog may be a whining furry pain in the butt most of the time but I’d hate to see her as dinner. Please pray for our health and sanity. Oh. And, while you’re at it, pray for Husbands success. This “reset the system” fast thing better work. He can’t take my nagging him about the doctor anymore and I can't take another weekend like the one I'm about to have. Last night, while having drinks with the ladies of yoga and talking about boys and naked beaches and jiggly bits, a memory came to my mind and I couldn’t stop giggling for a bit. And no, it wasn’t because I’d been drinking. One cider and three large glasses of water over the course of three hours does not count as drinking, Mom.
In 1998, I met my father again. I’d not seen him in twenty years and only talked to him a handful of times. There's lots of icky reasons why but let's just skip them for now and move on. Father and I met again in Maryland at the dinky motel I was staying in and spent the day wandering about D.C. looking at old buildings and trying to avoid talking about the horrible bits of our personal history. It was an awkward, uncomfortable and emotional day that took me years to get over. So awkward and uncomfortable and emotional that I totally forgot about this happening: We were at the brother’s house of Father’s Wife Number Three. (Mom was Wife Number Two. That's a glimpse at the icky bits I'm avoiding right now.) It was the day after the awkward, uncomfortable and emotional day that had culminated in an even more awkward and uncomfortable and emotional dinner with the family where I’d “gotten” to sit with the men as I was the guest and everyone grilled and judged me for hours. It was awesome. The next morning, for some reason I can’t remember, I was left alone with the two young sons of the brother to Wife Number Three – they called them my nephew’s but they were totally not related to me. After the long, awkward, uncomfortable and emotional day before; it’s weird stilted conversations with Father and it's bizarre evening jam-packed with judgments on my inability to have gotten married and produce children, I was happy to stay with the kids in the quiet. I packed my bag, spent some time writing angst-y poetry feelings about trip and was generally enjoying the silence when there was a huge bang and someone started yelling. Loudly. I rushed out of the room I was in to find an elderly African woman naked in the hallway. Let me repeat that - I rushed out of the room I was in to find an elderly African woman NAKED IN THE HALLWAY! I knew who she was, Wife Number Three’s mother, but why they neglected to tell me that they were leaving her alone in a house with a five year old and an eight year old and me and no instructions on what to expect, I have no idea. But there we were, Naked Grandma and me in the hallway. What they might have told me was that Naked Grandma suffered from dementia, and apparently the wearing of clothes was often suddenly offensive to her. I don’t know. I couldn’t ask her what was wrong because Naked Grandma only spoke Swahili or Kamba or some other African language that I did not speak, do not speak and did not understand. So there I was, in the hallway, with Naked Grandma, probably informing me that my inability to get a man to marry me and have my nonexistence children was shameful. I don't know. All of this shouted at me in a language I didn’t understand. I tried to explain who I was in overly enunciated English. She didn't understand. She shouted. I yelled slowly. It went on for a long time. And then I tried to get Naked Grandma dressed. Her bits and bobs flaying about, her arms and legs more slippery than an octopus' while I was struggled to put clothes on her and avoid getting poked by a boob in the eye. I did not succeed. She had a a lot of boob. That flashback had me giggling last night. It was quite a scene and it was sitcom worthy. Like any 'I Love Lucy' episode worthy. The rest of the memory isn’t funny. It’s sad. The two boys, totally used to Grandma suddenly becoming Naked Grandma, calmed her down, dressed her and put her to bed as they had to do dozens of times each day. I packed myself up, feelings and all, and went back to my life and I never saw them again, the boys, Naked Grandma or Father. Naked Grandma died shortly after and Father a few years later. I have lots of memories of Father - some good, some really bad. I only have one memory of Naked Grandma - some good, some bad. Here’s hoping, years from now, I’m some random person's good memory. Although, not naked. I need to keep that bit of breathtaking awkwardness from happening to anyone. When I was twenty-something, I did a show with a woman who could double as Mrs. Santa Claus. I’ll call her Grandma Sue. Now if you were to imagine what the perfect Grandma would look like, Grandma Sue was it with her round apple cheeks, extra padding around her middle and tight grey curls framing her smiling face. She was just about the nicest woman around. She’d bring cookies to rehearsal and give me suggestions about meals to prep for my Current Boyfriend and little helpful tricks for all things homemaking. Grandma Sue was wonderful and calm and nice and a Born-Again Christian. Grandma Sue had been married for years to the same man and had raised and had two children. Her daughter was now married and had two children of her own, Grandma Sue’s only grandchildren. Grandma Sue doted on them. She couldn’t imagine her life without them. And Grandma Sue’s family couldn’t imagine life without Grandma Sue. She was the glue that held them all together. Did I mention that Grandma Sue was a Born-Again Christian? This is a point that wouldn’t matter to me normally but you see Grandma Sue had a secret life outside of her marriage. Grandma Sue had a secret life where she was the submissive lover to a butch lesbian. A secret life where she would let Butch Lesbian Lover put a dog collar around her neck and let Butch Lesbian Lover lead her around like a dog, whipping her when she was ‘bad’ and rewarding her when she was 'good.' Yup, Born-Again Christian Grandma Sue with her apple cheeks and happy homemaker suggestions had secret life that involved leather and whips and girl on girl action. Grandma Sue liked to go to the (NSFW) Folsom Street Fair and be lead around on a leash from a collar like (Somewhat tame NSFW pic) this >>> SIDE NOTE: Asked Husband how to find a picture of this and he said to type in “Kinky Dog Collar” and then, when I found it, said, "By the way, I’ve never searched for Kinky Dog Collar before..." Riiiight! SECOND SIDE NOTE: I now have very inappropriate search history. Again. Anyway, I’m not sure how I became the recipient of Grandma Sue’s confessions. Perhaps it was because I was sitting next to her in the dressing room. Or perhaps she took one look at my face the day the newly out gay boy in the cast got a book that told him all about being gay and I learned what a glory hole was and couldn’t stop laugh/crying because my now Confused Ex-Boyfriend had just confessed to me that he’d used one recently. All I know is Grandma Sue started to share her secret life with me – pictures and everything – as we were getting dressed for the show. And during intermission. And any down time we had off stage. She was so excited to have someone to talk to that didn’t judge her and call her horrible names. And I was someone she could share her feelings with who wasn’t going to banish her from the house and never let her see her grandchildren again. That was Grandma Sue’s biggest fear, that her daughter would find out and ban her from their lives. And then, during the course of the run of the show, Grandma Sue’s Butch Lesbian Lover laid down the law and told Grandma Sue she would need to choose: Butch Lesbian Lover or Straight Married Born-Again Husband. Grandma Sue was a mess. Every time I saw her, she would alternate between each choice. Sometimes she’d decide she was leaving her Straight Married Born-Again Husband and would ask me if I thought her daughter would still love her. Sometimes she would be leaving her Butch Lesbian Lover and would ask me if she’d ever be happy again. And these decisions were happening at lighting speed – she’d go on stage ready to leave her Straight Married Born-Again Husband and come off ready to leave her Butch Lesbian Lover. The show ran three weeks. It was exhausting. It was emotional. It was endless. And then it was over and I never saw Grandma Sue again. This was long before Facebook and other social media. She never contacted me to share and my life had just imploded – see above for comment about Confused Ex-Boyfriend and the glory hole. When I finally came out of the dark pit of depression, I felt too weird calling Grandma Sue up and asking who she chose. I can only hope that she was strong enough to do what her heart told her to. And I say this not knowing to this day, if that might have been to say good-bye to her Butch Lesbian Lover or to her Straight Married Born-Again Husband. Some days, I think she stayed and is cheerfully grandparent-ing and homemaking. Some days I think she left and is gladly submitting to commands wearing her sparkly leather spiky collar. Whatever her choice, I hope Grandma Sue is happy with the path she took and is content to be wherever and with whomever she chose. She was a nice lady, Grandma Sue. And everyone deserves love – be it in cookies and bibles or leather and chains. I haven't been working on the railroad. That song just keeps running through my head of late.
"Why?" you ask. Because I’ve been mining rocks from our yard. "What??? Why?" Well, partly because we need them to make a wall. And partly because they are EVERYWHERE and the grass won’t grow and the water can’t go into the ground and just sits there making a muddy mess. And partly because I think I need to really screw up my back before going into the doctor to justify the expense of the MRI that I’ll need to have before they charge me more money to put shots into my spine to shut it up. But mostly I think I’ve been mining rocks because when I’m mining rocks, I can’t think about all the other things that stress me out. I mean it’s really hard to get all panicky about things when you’re in a hole and trying to keep the rock from slipping back on you. Or, SURPRISE, there’s a Termite house under this one and they are not pleased to see sunlight and they all swarm towards your feet while screaming in their little Termite voices “Get the Giant!” All the stupid little stress-inducing things go out of your head when you’re suddenly defending your body from an onslaught of tiny teeth. Some people meditate. I, apparently, mine rocks. Little known fact: those suckers are huge and heavy and slimy and really, really hurt when they fall back into the hole you’re trying to get them out of and squish your finger. And then, the rest of the day, the fingers feel all funny and poufy and awkward as you try to do everyday things like brush your teeth or pick dog hairs off your black tank top or check Facebook to see if anyone has done anything worth anything - which they never have but perish the thought I miss anything. And the spots where the rocks fell over in said hole and landed on my leg aren’t too happy either. Although I do now have a lovely bunch of bruises to accompany the plethora of mosquito bites that are decorating my somewhat muscularly tan legs so that’s good. Someone asked me the other day why, when it’s 90+degrees out, I’m still wearing my boots. Well dude, that’s why. My face may look like a grownup but my legs look like a twelve year old on summer vacation. The only thing I’m missing is cartoon character Band-Aids covering my knobby knees. Also, my back is yelling loudly at me again, very loudly. Last night in Target, I had a spasm so bad I almost passed out. Which would have been awesome. It’s really bright in Target at night by the way. Everyone can see everyone very clearly. And they all look at you as you Quasimodo walk your way out of the store. And no amount of slow walking can make a person look cool. Or rather I should say, I don’t look cool doing a slow Pimp Roll through Target at 9pm at night. Heck, I don’t ever look cool doing a Pimp Roll but most of the time I can pretend I do. Sigh. Let’s be real here, I’m still not sure if there is any amount of pain and embarrassing moments that will justify the expense of the MRI. And, if I’m being honest, it’s not the expense that really stressing me out but the being locked in a tight tunnel, not moving and having hammering thunder around your claustrophobic head for hours. And, if I do have to get the epidural shots, what if they miss and paralyze me and I then have to rely on Husband to wipe my rear end for the rest of time? That’s not going to go well. Ever. And now my brain is going there…. Get ready to chase me, Termites. As annoying as it is to you and stupid as it is for me, I’m off to mine some more rocks. I have to shut my brain off somehow... |
AuthorMy name is ej. I'm a girl. I say that because with the short hair and the short initials, folks aren't always sure. More brilliant insights to who I am in About me Archives
April 2019
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