Here’s a little sample of how it’s going at my house these days, with my husband and I both on a WE’RE STARVING IN HERE – – – PLEASE SEND HELP weight-loss campaign.
Him: “I really want some ice cream.”
Me: “Have some yogurt.”
Him: “I hate that yogurt that you get. Fruit in the bottom – god, that sucks. I like a different kind of yogurt.”
Me: “Tell me what kind you like and I’ll get it for you.”
Him: “I like the kind that’s ice cream.”
That is why I won’t engage in a weight loss contest with him. He’ll talk about how sucky the yogurt is and how delicious ice cream is, and then I’ll end up throwing on a pair of pants and running into CVS at 11 o’clock at night and spending $9.50 for a quart of ice cream. (They charge that because they can. Who goes to CVS for ice cream other than the desperate and the rich?)
What’s wrong with that? Because once it’s in our house and within my domain, I’ll end up eating most of the ice cream myself. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want the ice cream at all; he wants me to be fatter than him.
Contests with my husband always end badly. Winning doesn’t help. It’s emotionally exhausting being in any kind of a competition with him.
Before we were married, he turned a friendly game of Monopoly on a rainy day at the cottage at the lake into a small but deadly Irish mafia extortion scheme. The game ended with me crying. Crying. I honestly thought that he might have been in the real Irish mafia. I was shocked at how cutthroat he was. Who makes their date cry over a board game?
As a result, I refused to play Monopoly with him for more than 10 years. Then his mom came to visit us and we were looking around for something to do (must’ve been during those ill-fated no-cable years) and someone suggested Monopoly. I agreed, only because I figured he would behave while his mom was there.
She was worse than him. I landed on her stupid Park Place and didn’t have enough money and didn’t want to mortgage my only income-earning properties, so I asked if I could owe her and pay her on my next turn, which had Pass Go and Collect $200 written all over it.
“Nope, pay up or let’s talk interest,” she said. “Or maybe you’d like to unload some of those utilities you have.” I think I had to sign a paper saying I would never put houses on any properties clockwise of the purple-property ghetto. I had already signed a paper saying I wouldn’t charge my husband rent if he landed on anything I owned.
The whole family is crazy. Or in the Irish mafia. Who makes their daughter-in-law cry?
I told my husband that for this diet, instead of making a competition about it, we should work together and support each other, and be kind of like AA sponsors for each other. We Irish have a long history of leaning on our fellow man – or whatever lamppost is nearby – to help us out in time of need. Why can’t we lose weight together by helping each other in this supportive-albeit-alcoholic-related way?
When he gets done evil-laughing, I’ll let you know what he says.