Strategies and guidance for surviving the long-term relationship.

The Infraction:

It’s the day before your colonoscopy.  You’re restricted to a liquid diet of black coffee, broth, water, jello and popsicles.  But the hitch is that you can’t have anything that’s red, purple or blue and your daily nutrition is markedly diminished when you open a box of 10 popsicles and only 2 of them are NOT red, purple or blue.  Around 6:00 pm you have to drink 16 ounces of water spiked with Suprep.  While there’s nothing approved by the FDA that tastes quite like Suprep, it can best be described as cough medicine with a shot of Gold Bond medicated powder, hints of Lectra Shave, and topped with a toilet bowl cleaner tablet.

In the meantime, your husband, who has lovingly agreed to take you to your appointment, wait through the procedure, and drive you home safely, is enjoying 2 thick juicy pieces of leftover pizza.  Baked on the Big Green Egg and drizzled with white truffle oil, this is no ordinary pizza.  Its smokey essence permeates the house while the palpable bits of plump turkey sausage hiss and sizzle, mocking you. The cheesy goodness stretches infinitely like it has just awoken from hibernation.  In that moment you have to fight the urge to slap the pizza pie goodness from his hand, knowing it would land on the floor and be inedibly coated in a mound of white Papillon fur.  Oh, it’s a quandary.

The Reckoning:

Fortunately and unfortunately, nature breaks your train of thought and you’re otherwise disposed for the next two hours, too spent at that point to raise an arm to slap the pizza pie.  But tomorrow’s another day Scarlett and before you know it the doctor is patting you on the head and sending you out the door with a manilla file folder full of useless paperwork.  A Big Mac later and you’ve almost forgotten last night’s insolence. Don’t do that!   You will have your payback.

Late in the afternoon it begins with “That’s disgusting!” echoing from the bathroom.  Throughout the evening it continues.  “Oh, I can’t even eat now!!” from the kitchen.  “How can you be so gross?!!?” when he opens his toothpaste drawer.  “I don’t think I can ever have sex again!!” he declares when he opens his underwear drawer.   And the next morning at breakfast you hear a final, “I can’t take this anymore!! Get rid of these things!!”  when he discovers, taped to his Cheerios box,  the last of the high resolution photos of your colon that the doctor had graciously hidden within that manilla file folder.