Since day 12 was just a normal day in which I ate right without any particularly interesting insights, I thought I would tell you a story about Aaron, chicken stew, and what I have to put up with.
So, I cooked this awesome chicken stew. It was chicken thighs, stewed in homemade chicken stock, with onions and tomatoes. It was flavored like garlic and herbs because the chickens I made the stock out of were flavored that way. We ate it for dinner one night, and then the next morning, I offered to heat some up for Aaron's breakfast.
"No, thanks," he said. Now when a person offers Aaron a hot breakfast, served right at his computer, and he doesn't even have to work the microwave, the answer is almost always yes.
So, I asked, "Did you not like it?"
"Not really."
"What didn't you like about it?" After all, maybe I could make it better next time.
"Well, the chicken wasn't cut up in little pieces in the stew, and the onions were long strings instead of chunks."
This was the point where I would have been completely justified in dumping some chicken stew over his head, packing my stuff, and moving out. I mean, come on. It wasn't the taste. The things were not cut up like he liked. Pretty soon, I will be cutting the crusts off of his Wonderbread PB&Js.
And you know what I did? Like a sucker, I cut up the chicken and the onions, heated it up, and gave it to him. I am a 50s housewife; I might as well be Donna Reid. But I did bitch at him while I cut it up, so that's something, right? Better passive-aggressive than just passive.
Anyway, Day 13 was our anniversary, and since he got reservations at my favorite Brazilian steakhouse, wore actual khaki pants (this guy does not dress up), and took me to an IMAX about an expedition down the Blue Nile from Ethiopia to Alexandria, all is forgiven.
