Category — The Spousal Unit

I don’t know about you, but nothing puts me in a more festive mood than making some hot, thick bean soup in the middle of August in Florida.

I’ve been saving this recipe for a Spanish-style bean soup for a while. The craving finally hit and I made it, using Spanish chorizo instead of andouille sausage. But that’s beside the point.

The point is this:

I’ve never used great northern beans as called for in the recipe. Neither have I ever worked with kale, a collard-like green, leafy vegetable.

Turns out that these items are pretty potent. The soup was delicious. Deee-li-shus. But I’m estimating that, between the kale and beans, there were approximately 18 grams of fiber per spoonful of my soup.

We ate the soup on Sunday evening. Within a couple of hours, it hit us. A little cheek lift here. A walking rat-a-tat-tat fart there. A poof of wind on the way to the kitchen.

Soon, these innocent gastrointestinal gusts started getting more dangerous. Throughout the night, Chris and I lifted the bed sheets — and not in a kinky sort of way, either.

Monday morning, Chris emerged from his daily visit to the throne, complaining of some minor intestinal upset. Specifically, his insides had liquefied and he was concerned that he would die of dehydration or an evaporated bowel.

Lucky for me, I have a stronger stomach. Gas, yes. Pee shits, no. Monday afternoon, I dared to have a bowl of the tasty soup for lunch. Again, within an hour or so, I was doing the one-cheek salute to expel the increasingly toxic fumes.

The problem wasn’t the farting in itself. Around here, we enjoy, announce and even celebrate our gas. It was the intensity, the frequency and the duration of the gaseous episodes that ended up posing an issue.

Eight hours after consuming my bean soup for lunch, I was still farting like a geriatric. Even Elise and Althea were noticing, imitating a farting sound every time Chris or I would pass gas. At one point, I went to the bathroom and Althea pointed at the bathroom door and said, “Ama! PPBBBLBLLLBBBP!”

I knew things were out of control when I let a silent-but-deadly one fly and saw the cat lift his head, take a sniff and — I shit you not — move to the other couch.

If you’ve ever owned a cat, you know that it takes a lot for a sleeping cat to get up and move from a comfortable couch.

Monday night, I decided to freeze the remainder of the soup. Tasty as the soup was, Chris’ tender stomach and my sulfuric intestinal juices couldn’t handle any more.

We chuckled at the whole experience — haha, crazy pregnancy cravings; haha fiber soup; haha our colons are gone.

At about 6 o’clock this morning, I wasn’t laughing anymore. There was no mirth or merriment when Chris threw back the sheets, jumped out of bed and screamed “AWWWWWWWWW SHIT!”

I flailed awake in a panic. “What?? What the fuck is going on?”

“God damn that bean soup! I just shit the bed!”

“…….Are you serious?”

“I dreamt I was taking a shit and I shit the bed. Mark your calendar. I’m 36 years old and I just . . . Oh JESUS CHRIST!” he screamed, holding his butt cheeks together as he ran off to the bathroom.

From behind the closed bathroom door, sitting on the toilet, shitting his brains out at 6 a.m.: “GOD DAMN THAT BEAN SOUP!!”

Maybe my expectations were too high.

A few days in a waterside cottage sounded perfect. Two bedrooms, a kitchen, pool, small beach. Close to a historic downtown area and a few minutes from other quaint beach towns. My girls. My man.

It should have been paradise.

Day One

We left on Saturday before noon. The girls had their swim lesson in the morning, then we all splurged on lunch at Five Guys. (Only the best burgers ever, in case you didn’t know.) The girls fell asleep in the car almost as soon as we hit the road. Everything was poised to be awesome.

The drive was pretty uneventful and we arrived at the Lovely Vacation Cottage several hours later. Exhausted, we decided to take it easy and stroll down to the small strip of beach on the Intracoastal.

Aside from a trashcan lid and miscellaneous beer cans and condoms littering the sand, it was pleasant, as evidence by the single photo we took the entire trip:

Then came dinner, which occurred to us 20 minutes too late. While we drove around frantically searching for something kid-friendly and semi-not-touristy, the girls mounted an ever-rising cacophony of hunger-induced screams, shrieks and wails. They threw their sippy cups and kicked the seats. They cursed our parents and damned us to hell.

Panicked, we ended up going to a fucking SMOOTHIE place NOT known for its food. The girls scoffed at our attempts to feed them, chucking bits of quesadilla on the floor and screaming for MORE SMOOTHIE MOTHER FUCKERS WAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Day Two

After our typical breakfast routine, we got the girls ready to go to the beach. Before we left the Lovely Vacation Cottage, I asked Chris where my camera was.

Him: “I don’t know where it is.”

Me: “Well, you packed it.”

Him: “I don’t know where I packed it.”

Me: “….YOU took it out of the drawer. YOU asked me if I wanted you to bring it. I said yes. YOU then PUT IT somewhere, supposedly IN something that would be coming with us on vacation. WHERE was that somewhere?”

Him: “I don’t know. It’s your camera.”

Me: “BUT I DIDN’T PACK THE FUCKING CAMERA.”

Him: “I don’t know what to tell you.”

Me: ‘TELL ME WHERE THE GODDAMN CAMERA IS, THAT’S WHAT YOU CAN TELL ME.”

He found the camera and off we went, seething and huffing, to the goddamned beach where we had a goddamned good time.

And didn’t take a single goddamned picture.

On the way back to the Lovely Fucking Vacation Cottage, Chris drove past some idiot doing an illegal three-point turn in the middle of downtown. Apparently, this pissed the guy off and he followed us down the road, cursing and spitting and shaking his fists at us, back to the cottages. I spent the rest of the vacation swearing there was someone outside the window plotting to shoot our family.

That night was also Father’s Day, so for dinner we headed to one of the nearby, so-called charming downtowns. Most everything was closed (Sunday), but one sports bar that was open was offering a free entree for dads. Obvious choice, right?

This was one of those situations where you get what you pay for.

The food? Awful. Service? Atrocious. Child behavior? Horrifying. The waitress left us waiting for so long that I had to, for the first time ever, extract a screaming child from a restaurant. And Chris, for probably the first time ever, told off the waitress.

And left her a $5 tip anyway.

He’s nice to a fault.

Day Three

Day Three was Pool Day.

Pool Day was Awful Day.

The pool at the cottages was NOT made for kids. The fact that it was small wasn’t a big deal. But the fact that its shallowest portion was four-feet deep WAS a big deal. And the fact that the concrete area around the pool was about eight inches wide and perfect for two toddlers to go streaking around, threatening to fall into the water and drown if we dared to blink, was definitely a big deal.

Oh, and the water was about 105 degrees. One hundred. And five. Degrees. Farenheit. It was 90 outside. We got OUT of the water to cool off.

After an hour and a half of sheer terror and panic, we took the girls back to the Son-of-a-Bitching Vacation Cottage and spent the rest of the morning letting them play in traffic. Seemed less dangerous than the pool.

When we went to the mall to waste some time that afternoon, I think Chris and I both knew our vacation had gone down the proverbial shitter.

That evening, after the girls went to bed, Chris looked at me and casually suggested, “Maybe we should leave a day early? You know, since the girls seem so exhausted and unhappy with the change in ….”

“GOOD GOD YES LET’S GO.”

Day Four

The morning of our early departure, we couldn’t get packed fast enough.

Of course, the girls had other plans.

They wanted to tear out of the cottage and play in piles of red ants. They wanted to throw the toys I JUST PACKED all over the floor. They wanted to trip and skin their knees and play with wasps.

Then there was the bar of soap.

After clearing out the bathroom, I let Chris know that I had packed all of our toiletries. Well, I guess I forgot to pack his beloved bar of soap because guess who comes stomping out of the bathroom with a bar of Lever 2000 held gingerly in his trembling hands?

That idiotic bar of soap launched a major standoff and several hours of clipped, terse, only-the-necessities conversation.

(Who travels with soap … and then takes it back home, anyway???)

Leaving before nap time also proved to be a mistake. I spent the first two-and-a-half hours of the drive wanting to jump out of the moving car with every scream and cry emanating from the backseat.

Instead, I climbed over the passenger seat to entertain my daughters.

Because I am a patient and loving mother, goddamn it.

Chris was having trouble with 18 across and 74 down. Elise stepped in to help.

Today is my birthday. I am 32 years old. My 30′s suddenly seem so . . . inevitable.

Normally, I’m the one to celebrate my birthday the loudest. A birthday is your own special holiday, a day the world became a little bit different because of your existence. Every birth has a story, a history, the artifacts of which you carry with you every day of your life.

***

It’s been an unseasonably wet and cold winter in Florida. Where we normally take sunny days for granted, we now remark on the days when the gray skies part to give us a glimpse of what is being obscured.

A cold front, and the rain it bears, kept us stuck in the house again today. The girls were losing it. I was losing it. Not bothering to change the girls out of their pajamas, I took them out to the front yard.

We sat, the three of us, on an old porch swing by the front door, a swing I’ve used maybe three times in the past five years. The simple motion — back, forth, back, forth — invoked instant calm, the memory of rocking in the womb.

The wind picked up. The girls got down. Without hesitation, Althea buried her feet into a pile of wet leaves, sitting down to squish the earth and twigs between her fingers.

Elise picked up handfuls of leaves and trotted around the front yard, shrieking with delight.

Both girls stuffed piles of dirt into their mouths, an unapologetic exploration of their ever-expanding world.

Builds immunity, as our 93-year-old, World War II-vet neighbor would say.

***

In some tiny corner of my mind, I mourn. I long. My daughters’ lives evoke these feelings. I don’t embrace these feelings. I don’t hide them either. It’s just a dormant seed that I do not plant. But in fleeting, gray moments, I mourn. I long.

I mourn because my daughters will know so much about their lives — of their father, their future siblings, of each other, of the day they were born.

Things I don’t know about myself.

Much about my birth day is a mystery to me. I know that I was born in a small town nestled in a valley in the Pyrenees mountains of northern Spain. I know that my mother did a natural child birth. According to my Spanish birth certificate, I was born at the vague hour of “noon.” I don’t know how much I weighed, how long I was, how active and alert I was.

I don’t know what I looked like. I will never know what I looked like.

And so (teensy tiny nebulous little thought that I do not nurture) I mourn the irrevocable loss of my infancy. I long for knowing.

***

This year, my parties and presents and over-indulgences are overshadowed. My desire to celebrate my day has dissipated. Today is now something more. I share the day of my birth with my my children, my whole family.

These are my gifts this year: my daughters, my husband, our family. Love. Cloudy days. Playing in the dirt.

As it should be.

Dinner, movie, sex.

That used to be a fairly standard date for Chris and me. Nowadays, we’re lucky to get one out of three done in any given week.

That’s to say that it’s been a looonnnng time since Chris and I have been on a date. I vaguely remember seeing “Burn After Reading,” but I’m not sure what year that was. (Total waste of a movie ticket, but it had Frances McDormand, the Coen brothers and Brad Pitt in geeky gym shorts, so…..)

Last Friday, though, we did it. We had the in-laws watch the girls while  my husband and I went on a legitimate date.

The movie? “Avatar” in 3D = YES.

The dinner? A greasy appetizer and well drinks at the Applebee’s next door = NO.

The sex? Well….ahem, let me tell you what! It was absolutely…..

Hey, two out of three ain’t bad.

True story: Before I met my husband, I used to have dreams about my “Prince Charming.” He was wonderful and handsome, generous and loving, compassionate and sweet.

But he never had a face.

After I fell in love with Chris, my Prince Charming had a face in my dreams.

And no, it wasn’t Jake Gyllenhaal.

It was my husband’s face. That’s romantic. Get it?

Chris and I  love each other tremendously. The thing is, we — like so many other couples — get lost in the everyday. The minutiae. The nonsense. We go through the rhythms of bill paying and appointment making and pet feeding. We have a morning routine, an evening routine and, at times, a lovemaking routine.

But sometimes, randomness happens. Like this.

And I didn’t even have to blow him  for it.

I’ve been in love and been loved. But no one’s ever given me a dozen long-stemmed roses — especially not when I’m wearing ill-fitting yoga pants, no bra and last night’s breakfast-for-dinner in my hair.

I think I’ll keep him for a while.