My Private I

Creme Sandwich Cookies

My husband is a food marketer's wet dream. He has amnesia for brands he hates. We go grocery shopping together, more often than not.  He is prone to buy food so retched it makes his tongue  curl up and die in the back of his mouth. Repeatedly. I'm his short-term memory on these trips. The quality assurance wife, when I'm allowed to do my job.

This past week it was Nabisco's SnackWell's 50% Reduced Fat Creme Sandwich Cookies.  Which had made an appearance in our pantry four months before, when it was ripped open, sampled, spit out, and then, the box was pushed to the back, left to stale. Until I discovered them and tossed them in the garbage.

This weekend, he plucked from the shelf again- the green box with a scattering of photoshopped golden yellow sandwich cookies with the white layer filling middle. They're described as "layered with sweet, rich creme you love".  I hate the word creme.  Cremes best describe the cure for vaginal itch, hair conditioners that promise drenched moisture and poison ivy salves. You apply cremes. You don't fucking eat them.

My personal judgments aside, I reminded him of the past. A scolding more than a mental note.
You don't like those.
I've never tried these before, he protested.
Yes you have. You spit them out.
No, I don't recall.
I do.
It must have been some other brand.
Nope.
Are you positive? These look different.
You eat Snackwells. Cats get hairballs. It's the same sound.
Will you eat them if I don't like them?
I've been trying to telling you- you don't like them. Plus, I loathe Snackwells.

It can go on and on. We don't squabble lovingly about money or sex but what the Snackwells represent. His forgetting. And then he makes that move where his hand at the end of his arm, clasping the box of cookies, swoops up and away from my reach. He's six feet tall.  Then, suddenly when I turn away in defeat, I hear the slam dunk in the shopping cart. He's buying the SnackWells 50% Reduced Fat Creme Cookies. End of debate.

Two days ago, I spied him opening up the package of SnackWells, taking out a cookie to accompany his tea.  He bites into it and I watch his face crumple. He calls our border collie. Lincoln! And feeds him the partial eaten cookie.

Afterwards, he walks into the living room with the box-full minus one. Asks me if I'd care for some.

Scrambled Eggs

We’ve known each other for six years; three of which we’ve been Mr. and Mrs. Increasingly, our married friends and family members have parachuted off a plane called Coupledom only to land nine months later in Family-hood.  Some haven’t packed birth control. Others have been pushed out by mothers threatening grandchildren or else. Some are stunt experts. Others are obsessive thrill seekers, practicing over and over, when somewhere over pregnancy Cloud 9 suddenly it’s Abort Abort Abort.

Infants are absent from my sub-conscious. My entire dream universe demographic consists of adults who are licensed to drive moving vehicles and vote- a world of 21 and up. There are hot and heavy sex scenes and the night-sweat horror of positive AIDS tests but there’s no consequence called baby. 

In the grocery store checkout line wrestling boredom, I’d pick up a special spring edition of Rose Garden Growing Secrets (and I hate roses) before I’d ever thumb through Parenting Today.  In truth, I’ve never heard my biological clock tick. It doesn’t even make the occasional tsk tsk tsk of a 75-year old art museum volunteer, glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose and frowning at a field trip of loud-mouthed school-kids.  I’m three years away from 35 and as far as I’m concerned eggs are for eating. Preferably scrambled with spinach, mushrooms and cambozola cheese accompanied by freshly squeezed orange juice for a Sunday morning brunch.