Sunday, January 23, 2011

The Mungries

Today I'd like to take a moment to thank GSN.com and McDonald's for diagnosing my lifelong disorder: The Mungries. (should I be worried that I'm 2 for 2 in mentioning McD's on this site?).  Before I let you know how I came about this crucial discovery, let me take you back to yesterday afternoon.

In desperate need of fresh milk, vegetables, fruit, juice, skillet-meals, hpt's and well, everything, J-Man graciously offered to go in search of a grocery store while I rested in bed.  What a great man.  I'm so lucky.  A perfect Saturday morning to sleep in.  But I didn't sleep.

Sleeping when I'm given full permission is too easy.  No, no, no, I watched teen tv melodramas and read internet articles and heard the beginnings of a gurgle in my tummy.

Mmm... what to eat?  He's going to bring back so much food, I thought.  So much delicious food!  And I can have whatever I want.  What do I want?  What do I WANT?

That's how it starts: a little rumbling and infinite possibilities.

A while later J-Man called to say he'd be home soon and to make me guess how much groceries cost this week.  Do you want to know?  You don't.  But I'll tell you.  $222.  Isn't that disgusting?  That includes his and her razors and my addiction to hpt's and J-Man's random foods we allow him to impulse buy as a thank you for doing the shopping to begin with.  But still, NOVA, what is with the grocery prices?

I waited 10 minutes for him in the lobby (did he get lost again?) to coordinate getting the cart from the front desk and wheeling in the bags.  He moved so slow.  He put all the bags in the way.  He made me move the car when I wasn't wearing socks.  How dare that loving, grocery-buying, sleep-allowing husband of mine?  And why was I salivating like a lioness?

Here we hit phase two.  The questions!

Are you getting hungry?
Should we fix something I just bought?
Do you want to go out?
What do you have a taste for?
Are we past the point of no return?

Oh the questions... how they put me over the edge. The dizziness set in as I slowly backed toward the corner of our kitchen, and J-Man shook his head at me. 

Yes.  The Point of No Return.  The one where I am so hungry and so crabby that I am almost unrecognizable. Crabby McCrabberson.  Beast Nicole.  Not a pretty sight.

I've been known to assert in the center of the grocery store "You don't KNOW ME!!  I don't DRINK sweet tea.  I NEVER drink sweet tea.  Don't you KNOW your WIFE?!?!?" (a story amusingly shared among friends when I'm well-fed with a throaty roar from J-Man).

This time I was more under control. I recognized it.  I was so hungry that everything sounded disgusting.  Mush.  Blah.  I grabbed a grape, but as it burst in my mouth I felt nothing but disappointed. Disappointed and angry. 

"I'm not hungry" I told him.  "I'll just have a couple grapes."

I could see the disappointment in his face.  We both knew he'd done everything right.  There was ample food.  It was only noon.  He didn't deserve such a crabby wife.  Clearly I had entered the denial, nothing-will-satisfy-me stage.  Poor J-Man.

He reminded me it was noon.  You can eat anything at noon.  Eggs.  Steak.  Chef Boyardee.  All were accessible right in our kitchen and within a 5-minute drive.  The world was my oyster, he told me.

I looked at him and told myself - you love him, Nicole.  Be good to him.  Choose something.  Choose anything.  Don't do the sweet tea thing again.  Try. Try. Try.

So as I felt the cold wall of the kitchen behind me, I closed my eyes and imagined the first nearby restaurant I could muster.

Mom's Spaghetti.  (wrong name, but it did the trick)

We drove there, ordered immediately.  And after downing a ridiculously large plate of spaghetti and even garlic bread I smiled across the table at that adorable face.

"We're good?" he asked.  We'd been chatting jovially since a few bites in.

Yeah.  We were good.

So today, when opening a game on gsn.com to play with his grandma's kid neighbor, it was only perfect that a cartoon of an angry, blue monster popped up.  Followed by a question:

Do you become a MONSTER when you're HUNGRY?

We looked at each other.  Yes, GSN, yes I do.  I, along with this blue angry monster, am plagued by frequent flare-ups of The Mungries.

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