Red letter days
A few weeks ago, I drove to pick up my carpool buddy, a.k.a. GTB, after work. I’d had a really bad day, was sitting in horrible traffic, and just wanted to be home, in jammies, watching the Deadliest Catch. As I sat impatiently in my car on northbound I-5, GTB called to check on my progress and said he was going to a bar with a friend for a beer and could I please come pick him up there. No problem, I said.
Fast forward 30 minutes, I was about two blocks from the bar so I dialed up my hubby’s cell phone and told him I was close. “I just ordered another beer. Aren’t you coming in?” I explained my shitty day, told him I didn’t want to come in, but that he was welcome to finish his beer and meet me outside whenever he was ready.
A few seconds later, beer undrunk, he came outside and got in the car. “I thought you’d want to come in,” he said. “I figured I could tempt you to stay with their awesome Happy Hour food menu.”
“I’m not hungry,” I replied.
He paused, looked at me, and asked, half-kidding, “Should we mark this day on the calendar?”
I probably could have been offended, but I knew what he meant. I’m pregnant, ergo I’m hungry ALL THE TIME. I can eat GTB under the table. I don’t necessarily eat more in one sitting than he does, but I definitely eat more often. We’ll eat dinner and he’ll be done for the evening. In the meantime, I’ll eat some kind of dessert, then I’ll need a bowl of cereal or something right before we go to bed. So admitting that for the first time in months, food wasn’t appealing, well, you can see how that would be kinda monumental.
Anyway, when a friend asked GTB last night if he’s ever woken up in the middle of the night to find me eating ice cream in bed, GTB said that he hadn’t, but that he has often fallen asleep to me eating ice cream or cereal in bed. I told our friend the above story, thinking it was funny.
On the way home, GTB said, “I didn’t mean anything malicious when I said that thing about you not being hungry that day. I wish you wouldn’t hold onto things like that.”
I told him I wasn’t mad about it. I just thought it was a funny story. Though he didn’t need to, he attempted to further justify his comment by explaining that he doesn’t mind that I eat so much. He understands why I do. But that, yeah, it really is a lot.
Pondering that, I asked him “But do you really believe that I’m eating a lot because I’m pregnant or do you think I’m just using pregnancy as an excuse to eat a lot?” Because, honestly, I’m not sure of the answer myself.
“I think you’re hungry,” he said without emotion. And that was the end of that.
GTB has been awesome pretty much the whole time I’ve been pregnant. True, there was that time he told me he couldn’t understand why I was letting morning sickness get the better of me because I’m usually a “pillar of strength.” But other than that, he’s been supportive, sweet, and accomodating.
For example, he’s told me on several occasions that he doesn’t think I’ve gained weight anywhere but my belly. That I look exactly like I used to, only with a baby bump. It’s all bullshit, and we both know it, but isn’t it nice of him to say that?
When I balanced my checkbook the other day and realized how much cumulative money I’ve spent at Motherhood Maternity, I asked him to tell me to just deal with what I’ve got next time I told him I was going shopping for bigger clothes. His response: “I’ll do no such thing! I want you to feel comfortable and confident. If that means going shopping, so be it.”
On the few occasions I’ve told him about the rude things people say to me about my gut (e.g. a co-worker who saw me on Tuesday and said “My! Don’t you look…skinny! How big is that baby going to be?!”), I have to physically restrain him lest he go pick a fight with them.
He gets mad at me when I lift things. He rubs my feet when they’re swollen. He goes to bed with me at 9:30 p.m. He puts tummy butter on my itchy and expanding stomach every night, while singing a little song he made up about it (“Butter for your tummy…”). He doesn’t discourage me when I tell him I’m going to Trader Joe’s for yet another bag of peanut butter-filled pretzels.
So, I could have been upset at the remark about marking my non-hungry day on the calendar. But GTB has been the perfect partner in just about every way I can imagine. Why start a fight over something little like that? Ya know?