We are all friends here on Cloud Eight, dear readers. After all, it is in this space that I have shared with you family tales involving everything from vomit to poop. Our communication has, admittedly, been a little one-sided, but I feel close to you nonetheless.
So, lets get a little more intimate shall we. Share some secrets. Take a peek behind the curtain.
The truth is, Deanna and I have what you might call an “open” marriage. It is well known around the RedPlanet household that Deanna has been having a torrid affair with her Blackberry for several years now. She spends time that was once devoted to me poking away at its tiny buttons, peering at it in adoration, lost in the seductive glow of its screen. Even as we sleep, I can hear it downstairs, chirping and humming in an attempt to draw her away from our bed.
I am similarly openly amorous towards my i-pod, a subject for another time perhaps, as all of the foregoing information is really only background. What I wanted to share, to confess, to unburden myself from, is that while the four of us have reached an understanding of sorts, a comfortable marital détente, I recently introduced a fifth player into the marriage, upsetting the delicate balance. Her name was Pie, and yesterday, we broke up.
I could go on about the scandalous details: how we first got together (we met at a Baker’s Square), her scent, that revealing lattice-pattern top she was wearing. But I digress.
While I admit to tasting Pie’s forbidden fruit occasionally in the past, it wasn’t until recent weeks that the whole thing really heated up. A few weeks ago, Deanna made a Tripleberry Pie. Our little family of five demolished the entire thing for breakfast the next day, with me eating at least 1/3 of it. It was on.
Things just got hotter after that. We dropped in excess of $50 on Pie during our week in Door County alone, the bulk of it consumed by me. Deanna and I fought over my insistence that we bring multiple Pies home with us from the trip for my consumption. I won, and Pie moved in with us. I made the case (unconvincingly) to Deanna and my family that Pie, due to its fruit content, was actually a health food, as I wolfed it down at all hours. This week, as the kids ate cereal at the table in the morning, I would stand elsewhere in the kitchen with my back turned and eat Pie, careful to remain out of their line-of-sight, jealously guarding it for fear of having to share. Deanna tried to serve one of the pies to guests. No, I hissed, Gollum-like, my-precious Pie is mine and mine alone.
Yesterday, things came to a head as Deanna’s jealousy bubbled to the surface. First, she offered in an e-mail to friends to bring my last Peachberry pie to a barbecue on Saturday night. Then, she sent another warning shot across the bow. While I finished up dinner at the table last night, she sent Cooper to carry my nightly hunk of desert pie to me, handing him not just my piece, but also the entire pie box. Handing Cooper anything that requires a semblance of balance is a sure fire way of ensuring that it ends up splattered across the floor. True to form, Cooper uttered one of his cute little “uh-ohs” and I saw my beloved pie headed for the floor. I made a diving lunge, but was slowed by an unexplained recent weight gain, and came up just short. Not a proud man, I knelt on the floor and sobbingly ate the entire thing anyway, as my wife and family looked on with a mixture of pity and disgust.
Later, I gazed at the reflection of my swollen, doughy, and quickly expanding belly in the mirror, alarmed at how much Pie and I were starting to resemble each other after just these few short weeks. I vaguely considered working out, but was simply too lethargic after coming down from the latest fruit-sugar high – a feeling I realized had also become the norm these last weeks. I heard a baking timer go off up in the distant kitchen and it was then that I decided that this must end. I marched up to Deanna, pulled up my shirt, and announced: “Pie and I have broken up.” She glanced up momentarily from her Blackberry, looking only vaguely interested. I know, of course, that her seeming disinterest was merely a defensive mask to hide her intense feelings of relief. I saw it in her eyes. Or would have if she hadn’t said “Whatever” and gone back to punching buttons.
The whole episode brings to mind the old adage: “two humans and two electronic devices are company; two humans, two electronic devices and pie are a crowd.” In this case, that old saying rings, unfortunately, oh, so true. So tomorrow night, in a brave and symbolic gesture of marital solidarity and goodwill, we will offer up that last Peachberry to our friends at the barbecue, a bittersweet farewell to a sweet summer fling.
So, lets get a little more intimate shall we. Share some secrets. Take a peek behind the curtain.
The truth is, Deanna and I have what you might call an “open” marriage. It is well known around the RedPlanet household that Deanna has been having a torrid affair with her Blackberry for several years now. She spends time that was once devoted to me poking away at its tiny buttons, peering at it in adoration, lost in the seductive glow of its screen. Even as we sleep, I can hear it downstairs, chirping and humming in an attempt to draw her away from our bed.
I am similarly openly amorous towards my i-pod, a subject for another time perhaps, as all of the foregoing information is really only background. What I wanted to share, to confess, to unburden myself from, is that while the four of us have reached an understanding of sorts, a comfortable marital détente, I recently introduced a fifth player into the marriage, upsetting the delicate balance. Her name was Pie, and yesterday, we broke up.
I could go on about the scandalous details: how we first got together (we met at a Baker’s Square), her scent, that revealing lattice-pattern top she was wearing. But I digress.
While I admit to tasting Pie’s forbidden fruit occasionally in the past, it wasn’t until recent weeks that the whole thing really heated up. A few weeks ago, Deanna made a Tripleberry Pie. Our little family of five demolished the entire thing for breakfast the next day, with me eating at least 1/3 of it. It was on.
Things just got hotter after that. We dropped in excess of $50 on Pie during our week in Door County alone, the bulk of it consumed by me. Deanna and I fought over my insistence that we bring multiple Pies home with us from the trip for my consumption. I won, and Pie moved in with us. I made the case (unconvincingly) to Deanna and my family that Pie, due to its fruit content, was actually a health food, as I wolfed it down at all hours. This week, as the kids ate cereal at the table in the morning, I would stand elsewhere in the kitchen with my back turned and eat Pie, careful to remain out of their line-of-sight, jealously guarding it for fear of having to share. Deanna tried to serve one of the pies to guests. No, I hissed, Gollum-like, my-precious Pie is mine and mine alone.
Yesterday, things came to a head as Deanna’s jealousy bubbled to the surface. First, she offered in an e-mail to friends to bring my last Peachberry pie to a barbecue on Saturday night. Then, she sent another warning shot across the bow. While I finished up dinner at the table last night, she sent Cooper to carry my nightly hunk of desert pie to me, handing him not just my piece, but also the entire pie box. Handing Cooper anything that requires a semblance of balance is a sure fire way of ensuring that it ends up splattered across the floor. True to form, Cooper uttered one of his cute little “uh-ohs” and I saw my beloved pie headed for the floor. I made a diving lunge, but was slowed by an unexplained recent weight gain, and came up just short. Not a proud man, I knelt on the floor and sobbingly ate the entire thing anyway, as my wife and family looked on with a mixture of pity and disgust.
Later, I gazed at the reflection of my swollen, doughy, and quickly expanding belly in the mirror, alarmed at how much Pie and I were starting to resemble each other after just these few short weeks. I vaguely considered working out, but was simply too lethargic after coming down from the latest fruit-sugar high – a feeling I realized had also become the norm these last weeks. I heard a baking timer go off up in the distant kitchen and it was then that I decided that this must end. I marched up to Deanna, pulled up my shirt, and announced: “Pie and I have broken up.” She glanced up momentarily from her Blackberry, looking only vaguely interested. I know, of course, that her seeming disinterest was merely a defensive mask to hide her intense feelings of relief. I saw it in her eyes. Or would have if she hadn’t said “Whatever” and gone back to punching buttons.
The whole episode brings to mind the old adage: “two humans and two electronic devices are company; two humans, two electronic devices and pie are a crowd.” In this case, that old saying rings, unfortunately, oh, so true. So tomorrow night, in a brave and symbolic gesture of marital solidarity and goodwill, we will offer up that last Peachberry to our friends at the barbecue, a bittersweet farewell to a sweet summer fling.
