counter, there’s only a sad butcher block with a few slices of bread, a box of stale granola, and two avocados encircled by fruit flies. Despite a full year of dating a chef, I remain sanctimoniously kitchen-phobic. He comes home exhausted and famished, and I, having done less than nothing all day, have no excuse for our sandwich-only fare. For my own meals during the day, I eat peanut butter on a spoon, cheese and crackers, green olives, rocky road ice cream, or whatever is around. Sometimes I just drink. I don’t tell my mom how disenchanted by D.C. I am, but when she says “Why don’t you give cooking or baking a shot, hon? It’s always been so therapeutic for me,” I know she’s picked up on my mounting sense of instability. I tell her she sounds crazy, while inhaling dozens of dried apricots for dinner.
I wish I could say that I refrain from my domestic duties out of some
real
sense of feminism or gender equality, and maybe subconsciously I do. But more likely, I’m just depressed. I can barely buy milk without a meltdown. Chef goes easy on me as far as my culinary inadequacies—he’s much more worried about my perpetual tears than my prep table. We do have a good laugh when I buy him cheeseburger-flavored Pringles, though, thinking it’s some heroic act. “Never buy cheeseburger-flavored anything for someone who makes cheeseburgers allll daaay looong!” he sings, wrestling me to the ground with one of his famous tickle attacks.
He rarely cooks for us at all anymore. There’s no time forsuch luxuries. In opening a second restaurant, his hours get even worse. He comes home so physically drained that all he wants is a long kiss, a bag of chips, some juice, and for me not to be upset about anything. It kills me to see him so weak and bleary-eyed. The guy has more joie de vivre in his pinky finger than most people in their entire life span, and here he is struggling to stick a straw in a Capri Sun.
“What would you say if I gave you a list of five things I want my wife to cook for me one day?” he says in the middle of the night, over some soggy cereal.
“Um, was that a proposal?” I say, jokingly, deflecting the issue.
“One day, babe, one day.” He smiles, mischievously.
“Remember, rubies, not diamonds,” I remind him, reiterating my preference for my birthstone, rather than the typical rock.
“Okay, but you remember: roast chicken, not Cheerios!”
WE DON’T have too many Sundays together after he starts working at his second place. And he comes home so late now, after closing the restaurant and getting through his paperwork at the office, that I can barely stay awake for snuggle and TV time.
Nor can he accompany me to
anything
at all. I visit New York about once a month, and unless it’s tied to a TV appearance, Chef doesn’t come along. So, I go to most family birthdays and friends’ weddings alone, leaving some worried that I’m robbing myself of a normal life. You can’t truly respect the grind of the restaurant business until you’ve lived with it. That said, it is rough. If I had my New York life, that would be another story. It would be so much fun finishing up our grueling days around the same ungodly hour, collapsing on top of each other with hot pizza and cold beer, too tired to talk, though nottoo tired to sleep without sex. Now, I just stare out a window and wait all day.
While helping out with Chef’s PR is the only activity that makes me feel ever so slightly relevant, I am also getting the drift that my input is becoming a serious annoyance to everyone involved, even him. By now, he has a well-oiled machine on payroll; they know what they’re doing and don’t need my input.
“You don’t have to include me in everything that’s going on with the media anymore, if you don’t want to,” I say to Chef, a few days before our one-year anniversary. He’s just come home from work at 4:00 a.m. and I’ve forced myself out of bed to fix him a roast beef
I wish I could say that I refrain from my domestic duties out of some
real
sense of feminism or gender equality, and maybe subconsciously I do. But more likely, I’m just depressed. I can barely buy milk without a meltdown. Chef goes easy on me as far as my culinary inadequacies—he’s much more worried about my perpetual tears than my prep table. We do have a good laugh when I buy him cheeseburger-flavored Pringles, though, thinking it’s some heroic act. “Never buy cheeseburger-flavored anything for someone who makes cheeseburgers allll daaay looong!” he sings, wrestling me to the ground with one of his famous tickle attacks.
He rarely cooks for us at all anymore. There’s no time forsuch luxuries. In opening a second restaurant, his hours get even worse. He comes home so physically drained that all he wants is a long kiss, a bag of chips, some juice, and for me not to be upset about anything. It kills me to see him so weak and bleary-eyed. The guy has more joie de vivre in his pinky finger than most people in their entire life span, and here he is struggling to stick a straw in a Capri Sun.
“What would you say if I gave you a list of five things I want my wife to cook for me one day?” he says in the middle of the night, over some soggy cereal.
“Um, was that a proposal?” I say, jokingly, deflecting the issue.
“One day, babe, one day.” He smiles, mischievously.
“Remember, rubies, not diamonds,” I remind him, reiterating my preference for my birthstone, rather than the typical rock.
“Okay, but you remember: roast chicken, not Cheerios!”
WE DON’T have too many Sundays together after he starts working at his second place. And he comes home so late now, after closing the restaurant and getting through his paperwork at the office, that I can barely stay awake for snuggle and TV time.
Nor can he accompany me to
anything
at all. I visit New York about once a month, and unless it’s tied to a TV appearance, Chef doesn’t come along. So, I go to most family birthdays and friends’ weddings alone, leaving some worried that I’m robbing myself of a normal life. You can’t truly respect the grind of the restaurant business until you’ve lived with it. That said, it is rough. If I had my New York life, that would be another story. It would be so much fun finishing up our grueling days around the same ungodly hour, collapsing on top of each other with hot pizza and cold beer, too tired to talk, though nottoo tired to sleep without sex. Now, I just stare out a window and wait all day.
While helping out with Chef’s PR is the only activity that makes me feel ever so slightly relevant, I am also getting the drift that my input is becoming a serious annoyance to everyone involved, even him. By now, he has a well-oiled machine on payroll; they know what they’re doing and don’t need my input.
“You don’t have to include me in everything that’s going on with the media anymore, if you don’t want to,” I say to Chef, a few days before our one-year anniversary. He’s just come home from work at 4:00 a.m. and I’ve forced myself out of bed to fix him a roast beef
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