But on the plus side, I think he finally understands the level of pain I experienced after my belly-button ordeal. And there is nothing like empathy to bring a couple together.
Or to give them a reason to make fun of each other’s pain tolerance.
CHAPTER 10
Nilla Wafers Aren’t a Food Group
OVER THE COURSE of a week not long ago, Perry and I spent almost every night rewatching Band of Brothers. It’s so rare that we agree on what constitutes good entertainment that we are often forced to watch the same movies repeatedly if we want to watch something together. The last time we’d watched the series all the way through was the summer right after Caroline was born. I remember it clearly because I was trying to lose the rest of my baby weight, and I’d allow myself one York Peppermint Pattie every night while we watched. I would unwrap that York Peppermint Pattie, smell the foil packaging as if it were a fine wine, and then try to make it last as long as possible by eating it in about twenty small bites. I didn’t find it AT ALL annoying that Perry inhaled the rest of the bag and washed it all down with a vanilla milkshake yet still managed to lose weight that summer, while I subsisted on four pieces of lettuce and the occasional cheese cube and barely managed to drop three pounds.
Of course, it feels a little strange to talk about the pain and sacrifice involved in eating only one chocolate mint treat while watching a show about World War II soldiers fighting in the harsh weather conditions with no winter clothing, limited ammunition, and very little food. But WHAT ABOUT THE LETTUCE I HAD TO EAT ALL SUMMER?
Maybe I’m part of the GREATEST GENERATION after all. Or at least the generation that has made Jenny Craig a very wealthy woman.
As we watched Band of Brothers, I was reminded of so many scenes I’d forgotten. Scenes that reminded me of the sacrifices those men made for our freedom. They truly are what made our country great.
But I’ll tell you what else makes our country great —the fact that ESPN actually televises a hot-dog-eating contest like it’s a real sporting event. Of course, in all fairness, competitive eating is totally a sport compared to, say, bowling or poker. A ninety-two-year-old grandmother can bowl or play some cards, but no way is she eating sixty-eight hot dogs in ten minutes.
Even though I’d heard about Nathan’s hot-dog-eating contest, I’d never actually witnessed it until last year. Caroline spent Friday night with Mimi and Bops, so I’d spent most of my Saturday morning watching old episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 while Perry ran to Academy to buy some new goggles so he’d be properly outfitted for the beer scramble at the pool later that day.
(I just read back over that last sentence, and wow, being in your late thirties is exciting. It’s no wonder that sometimes I confuse our life with a visit to Shangri-La.)
(Also, priorities. We got ’em.)
Anyway, I got tired of listening to Brenda whine about Dylan right about the time Perry walked in the door, so I began flipping channels and happened upon the live coverage of the hot-dog-eating contest. He sat down next to me on the couch, and we began watching what was the most grotesque eating spectacle I’ve seen since the last time I volunteered for lunch duty in the school cafeteria. There aren’t too many other places where it’s socially acceptable to dip your food in water to liquefy it before you eat it.
I was disgusted. I was horrified. I couldn’t turn away.
The thing that really got me was when they showed stats under each contestant that listed other food competitions they’d won. I was compelled to read each item out loud to Perry, which I’m sure wasn’t annoying at all.
“That guy ate 8.6 pounds of fried asparagus!”
“Oh my gosh, he ate eleven pounds of jambalaya in eight minutes!”
“That girl once ate forty-six crab cakes in ten minutes!”
“That guy ate ten pounds of funnel cake in six minutes!”
At that point, Perry interrupted me and said, “I could totally eat ten pounds of funnel cake in six minutes.”
“In fact,” he continued, “I think if eating contests were a marathon instead of a sprint, I could take all these people down.”
I knew I’d married an ambitious man.
And truthfully, I think he could totally take them in any contest involving meats, various candies, or fried pastries. God has given him a gift.
When we’d been married for three months, Perry went to the doctor because he had a cold. And obviously he needed to be under the care of a doctor because, as I believe I mentioned earlier, man colds are very serious. They trump a woman with pneumonia in both lungs any day of the week. Don’t you whine about your high fever and cough —can’t you see his nose is RUNNY?
Anyway, they weighed him and he discovered he’d gained thirty pounds in our first three months of marriage. Fortunately, I had not done the same, because talk about a dark place. As it turned out, I was a pretty good cook, thanks to the genes handed down from my Italian grandmother. And all those months of trying out various recipes from all the different cookbooks I’d received as wedding gifts had paid off in a big way, literally, for Perry.
I have long believed that there are certain aspects of being a woman that are inherently not fair. Like the fact that men don’t get cellulite on their thighs yet wear swimsuit bottoms that come to their knees. Meanwhile, women fight cellulite from the moment puberty comes to call and are expected to wear the equivalent of their underwear every time they venture out to the neighborhood pool.
But honestly, the thing that bothers me most is how quickly most men can lose weight. After that visit to the doctor, Perry decided he needed to lose a few pounds to get a little closer to his bachelor weight. Although in all fairness, he only weighed 155 pounds the day we got married. He needed to put on a little weight because in our wedding pictures he looks a little bit like they’d let him out of hospice to attend his nuptials. Not to mention that I had no desire to wear the same size jeans as my husband. I don’t require much, but I need to feel that my man can’t fit in my pants.
(Insert inappropriate comment here.)
So Perry basically cut back on his Nilla Wafer intake. By which I mean he cut back to one box a day instead of two. He may have also quit eating potatoes with dinner, which wasn’t much of a sacrifice because he doesn’t even really enjoy a potato.
(I know. I can’t really talk about it.)
(We’re like two strangers sharing a home when you consider that a potato in any form is one of my love languages.)
(But seriously, how do you not care for a potato? Especially covered in butter, sour cream, and cheese? It’s like a holy food trifecta.)
With his great Nilla Wafer sacrifice, Perry ended up losing about ten pounds in one week. When I exert my best weight-loss efforts, I can lose about a quarter of a pound each month. Max. And we all know that’s just water weight. One good bout of PMS, and that quarter of a pound plus five of its friends are coming straight for my rear end or, worse, the dreaded inner-thigh section. I don’t understand why God did this to women while men can eat their body weight in cheeseburgers and lose weight.
The following is a true story, and I’m not changing any names to protect the innocent because I am still bitter.
One Saturday night Perry and I went to a party for some friends of ours who recently got married. After we got home, Perry said he still felt hungry, so he made himself a milkshake.
At eleven thirty at night.
If I did that, my metabolism would pack its bags and leave me in the middle of the night, vowing never to return no matter how much I pleaded and begged that I would change. Then, right before we got into bed, Perry decided to weigh himself.
Who does that? I would rank weighing myself right before bedtime after a full day of meals and beverage intake right above bungee jumping at one of those carnivals they hold in a mall parking lot with workers who don’t appear to have safety at the forefront of their minds.
I don’t pretend to understand Perry; I just love him.
Anyway,
I heard an expletive coming from the bathroom, followed by his announcement that he had put on ten pounds. I’d like to say that his pain brought me no joy, but that would be a lie. Especially because I had just spent the last twenty minutes listening to him slurp up a chocolate milkshake while I drank water with a delicious and totally satisfying bit of lemon juice squeezed into it.
That night I went to sleep with the sound of his new diet resolutions ringing in my ears.
The next morning Perry was filled with zeal that can only be found in a fresh convert to diet religion. He had seen the error of his ways and was ready to repent. He was laying his trans fats and high fructose corn syrup on the altar.
He read nutrition labels, he vowed to make Frito-Lay his arch nemesis, and he spent most of the day feeling hungry as his body adjusted to a caloric intake that was significantly less than that to which it had grown accustomed.
And because I am a supportive wife, I spent most of the day telling him why he had put on weight. It was the nightly milkshakes he’d drunk to help with his “acid reflux”; it was the powdered Hostess Donettes; it was the extra seven hundred calories a day he consumed purely in York Peppermint Patties.
I just wanted to be helpful.
Then, in a show of allegiance to his newly turned leaf, I made grilled chicken salads filled with fresh vegetables for dinner. They were a monument to healthy eating: fresh greens, sliced avocado, chopped carrots, with bright-red tomato garnish and a small side of low-fat balsamic vinaigrette dressing.
After dinner, he said he wanted to go weigh himself and see if his day of living right had made any difference. I watched him walk into the bathroom and thought to myself, Oh, bless him. He has no idea how long it will take to see a significant difference.
He returned to the kitchen triumphantly and announced he had already lost six pounds.
SIX POUNDS.
(Insert profanity here.)
Oh sure, you can say it was water weight or whatever, but you and I both know that the only woman in history who has ever lost six pounds in one day was Marie Antoinette. And I don’t think any of us want to go that route.
Because what’s the point in being six pounds thinner if no one can tell it’s you?
When Perry and I were still working in youth ministry, a high school couple confided in us that they were struggling with the physical aspect of their relationship. When I told Gulley about it later (not revealing the couple’s identity), she said, “Well, yeah. Of course they are. They’ve got those toned, tanned, high school bodies. None of us will ever look that good again.”
And we agreed that it feels a little unfair that the pinnacle of your physical fitness usually coincides with a time when you’re not married and don’t really have the option to parade around the house naked. Maybe it would be better if we started off kind of wrinkled with cellulite and muffin tops so we could make sure we’re really choosing our partner for his sparkling personality and not his physical appearance. And then the reward for staying married is that your body gets better with each ensuing year. Ten years of marriage? Have some toned thighs with muscle definition. Twenty years? Here’s a set of washboard abs.
Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works. Unless you spend a lot of time at the gym instead of ordering the pancake breakfast with a side of extracrispy bacon.
For most of us, our bodies will never again look as good as they did the day we walked down the aisle. Age and slowing metabolisms and bacon are not our friends. But in a weird way, that’s part of the beauty of marriage. It’s the journey of watching the handsome young man you married turn gray, and seeing lines form on the face that was once wrinkle free, and holding hands that don’t have the tight skin of youth stretched across the bones. And the assurance of knowing you wouldn’t trade those hands or that face for anyone else’s.
Even someone who can’t lose six pounds in one day.
CHAPTER 11
That Time I Almost Went on Judge Judy
A FEW YEARS AGO Perry began to talk about something called a Bad Boy Buggy. I wasn’t sure what he meant by Bad Boy Buggy, but I assumed he wasn’t talking about the car that belonged to my high school boyfriend. My assumption proved correct when he began to show me various websites depicting what appeared to be a camouflaged golf cart driving through muddy terrain with the clever tagline “They’ll never hear you coming.”
It’s very similar to the way the Native Americans hunted the land, except they used arrows instead of a four-wheel-drive electric vehicle. Although legends say some tribes did use Bad Boy Buggies, depending on whether they had electricity in their tepees to charge the batteries.
I can’t recall my exact sentiments regarding the purchase of a Bad Boy Buggy, but I believe they might have been along the lines of “You have a hunting vehicle. It’s called the truck sitting in our driveway.”
The blame for this whole idea lies solely with all those hunting shows he watches on the Outdoor Channel. All of a sudden it’s like it’s not enough to hunt using the legs God gave you. You need a stealth vehicle to transport you and your various weaponry from location to location.
But life has a way of smiling down on Perry, and a few months later he contracted a huge landscaping job for a major golf course development. The only problem was that he needed some way to transport all their equipment and materials across the golf course without damaging the existing turf. Ironically, the answer to that solution was a brand-new Polaris Ranger XP 700, which is pretty much a Bad Boy Buggy but without the clever name.
And let me clarify that this purchase was made during the time when I was still employed by the pharmaceutical industry and we threw money around like we were the federal government. Unfortunately we didn’t throw any of that money toward some granite countertops and a farmhouse sink for the kitchen before I became unemployed, but the most important thing is that we have a vehicle we can drive through a lake. And that I now make pennies a day as a professional writer and spend all day in yoga pants.
(Okay, some days I put on yoga pants. Other days I never get out of my pajamas. This is either a high or a low, depending on your philosophy of life.)
Anyway, the 2007 Polaris Ranger XP 700 served us well for the better part of two years. It fulfilled its duties as an essential part of Perry Shankle Landscaping and eventually made its way to the ranch to serve double duty as a hunting vehicle and as a means for Caroline to do her best imitation of Toonces the Driving Cat while she drove it all over God’s green earth. Or brown earth, as the case may be, since we live in drought-stricken South Texas.
Then one day Perry took it to the shop to have a little minor work done. Just a few little things here and there, mainly basic maintenance.
After two days, he hadn’t heard anything from them about his beloved Polaris, so he called the service department. They hung up on him. Twice. We weren’t sure what was going on, but we tried to give them the benefit of the doubt because everyone knows the all-terrain vehicle service industry is a stressful business, what with all the hunting and mudding emergencies, and they could have just been very busy.
The next day Perry received a phone call from a man who introduced himself as the owner of the shop. He asked Perry a question that never really serves as a harbinger of good news: “Remember that Polaris you brought in two days ago?”
Umm, you mean the Polaris that we bought instead of granite countertops? Yes, we remember it.
Perry stated the obvious: “Yes, I remember it. Is there a problem?”
“No, there’s not really a problem except that it somehow started itself up and rammed into a wall of the garage and is completely totaled.”
Well of course it did. Happens all the time. If I had a nickel for every time my Volvo station wagon started all by itself and rammed into the front of our garage . . . well, I wouldn’t have a nickel.
I’m not even making this up. As if I could. They tried to give us some story about the clutch coming out and blah, blah, blah, which you will never con
vince me isn’t some sort of code for “One of our mechanics drank a case of Lone Star Light last night and thought it would be fun to see how fast they could drive your vehicle. Unfortunately, they thought the wall was just a mirage until it was too late.”
We’ll never know for sure what happened to our beloved Polaris Ranger XP 700, except that it wasn’t good.
The next month was spent in serious negotiations with the owner as he tried every possible way to get out of having to actually replace it for us. Perry was really nice about it until the owner attempted to give him a used 2006 Polaris in bright orange. And everyone knows you’re not sneaking up on anything in a bright-orange vehicle. I knew we’d reached our limit of polite when I heard Perry on the phone saying, “Well, I guess if I wanted a bright-orange 2006 Polaris, I would have bought one back in 2006. I was perfectly happy with the green one that was totaled in your garage under very mysterious circumstances.”
And with those words, I began planning my wardrobe for the Judge Judy show, because you know if you need some smack laid down, there is no real alternative other than Judge Judy. But, alas, it never came to that.
Perry went down to the shop with a camera and a good family friend, who happens to be an attorney, to perform their own version of CSI: All-Terrain Vehicle Repair Shop. I think Perry even brought sunglasses so he could put them on and do his best impression of David Caruso as he said, “Or maybe [sunglasses go on] it got taken for a ride.” It’s amazing how that works, because all of a sudden the shop owner saw the light, and we reached an agreement.
Thus, we ended up with a brand-new Polaris Ranger XP 700. And it’s not bright orange.
Too bad I can’t get those mechanics to come to the house and destroy my countertops.
Oh, I’m kidding.
Kind of.
Not really.
Not at all.
CHAPTER 12
Root, Root, Root for the Home Team
The Antelope in the Living Room: The Real Story of Two People Sharing One Life Page 9