It’s no secret that man’s thought processes and the actions that result from such processes can mystify us women.  I am constantly trying to levitate my brain out of my own cranium in attempt to make order of the things G does.  But the second I creep up on his rationale, my brain says WTF and goes screaming for the sane hills of Womenland.  However, there are those times that us ladies know exactly what our male counterpart is thinking, maybe even before he knows.  It’s like a game of chess;  He lifts that pawn, and suddenly we’re Bobby Fischer and know just how he is plotting to checkmate our king, 12 moves ahead.  And if an outsider wanted to, say, wager on our little chess game, we’d taunt, ‘Bring it…I’ll bet you a bajillion dollars I know where he’s going with this.’  And for those who read my last post – I do know how to know that a bajillion dollars is a totally legitimate amount of currency.

It takes time to truly memorize your mate, and there will always be a wild card thrown from time to time.  And, in my experience, cherish the wild cards!  Those are usually the positive things that confirm you chose a good egg.  It’s the times you could win a hypethetical bajillion dollars that make you tear at your hair and wonder why you couldn’t have married Mr. Belvedere or one of the Golden Girls.

One such time happened during the labor of my first child.  G, my mother, and I were packed into his truck early in the morning, heading to the hospital.  I was to be induced given my son refused to leave his personal hot tub despite the fact it was drained of water.  G dropped my mom and me off at the front of the maternity ward while he went to park the car.  And, as any first-time mom would know, particularly those who have been induced, when you’re hit with that Pitocin, you think the baby is arriving 37 seconds later.  They won’t, for those who don’t know, you just feel like they will.  But for the woman who is feeling like their baby is about to arrive in 37 seconds and their husband is about to miss the entire thing, it’s a harrowing experience.  My mom kept assuring me that he would arrive soon, convinced that he was wandering the hospital, dutifully checking each room or, perhaps, buying me that bouquet of flowers before arriving.  After I could no longer tolerate her excuses for his tardiness, I clutched my bed rails and hissed, “He is going to miss the birth of his son because he is in the McDonald’s in the lobby, eating 3 Egg McMuffins and a Sausage McGriddle.”  Oh no, she decried, he would never be in McDonald’s, after all we’d stopped at Dunkin Donuts per his request en route to the hospital, she began to rationalize.

I’LL BET YOU….A BAJILLION DOLLARS.

And I would go on to win that bajillion since I smelled the remnants of McDonald’s grease on his face before he even rounded the corner into my room.  The cops could have put me on a canine bomb sniffing squad when I was pregnant.  I was like a German Shepard on uppers.

E:  Where were you?

G (without shame or chagrin):  McDonald’s.  That birthing class teacher said to be sure to eat before labor since it could take all day.

E:  I believe they were talking about the mother!

BAJILLION.

These situations happen more often than I’d like, and they seem to increase in frequency when my mom comes to town.  The latest occurred last week while my mom and I took the kids to Virginia for a little escape.  I am one of those freaks of nature who insists on scrubbing a house top to bottom before I leave town.  I had cleaned, done laundry, taken out garbage, sorted recycling, etc.  G’s only job:

Get the milk and eggs from the dairy box on Wednesday morning.

We get our dairy delivered by an actual milk man each week (don’t ask, I have lots of ill-founded appreciation for the things of yesteryear).  He arrives to our house in his truck very early in the morning and drops everything into a metal box kept on the porch.  Beyond serving a nostalgic purpose, it’s supposed to be convenient.  Easy.  Simple.  Fast.  Reliable.  Particularly in situations where the family is arriving back to the house late at night with two babies who crave milk (leche!) round the clock.

It occurred to me while driving back on Friday night just how crucial that milk was going to be.  I muttered to my mother, “There’s no way G got the milk inside.’  My mom, always his staunch defender, immediately started her pro-G rally.  So I laid down the gauntlet.

I’LL BET YOU…A BAJILLION DOLLARS.

But it’s so simple, she declared, the box is right there!  Even if he didn’t remember the delivery had come, he’d trip over the box as he was leaving the house for work!  Of course he moved it all inside, she continued, as she unknowingly locked herself into a lifetime of high monthly payments to yours truly.  Yes, yes, all true.  The box is right beside the door.  Every person to enter or exit our house would nearly trip over it.  It requires only lifting the lid, removing the dairy, and walking 20 steps to the fridge.  Truly, the only way to make it simpler would be to have a small little dairy gnome enter the window with his little bag of milk products and place them directly in the refrigerator.  Or possibly someone has invented a way to hook expandable hoses to travel from the udders of the cow directly into the mouths of our children, no matter how far off the farm they get.

So when we pulled into our driveway at 8pm, I sauntered – nah, I swaggered – up to that dairy box because I already knew the answer.  I knew what was going to be under that lid.  I knew I was going to be throwing away 10 pounds of over-priced organic dairy.  I knew that in one hour I would be trying to convince my screaming children that the water in their sippys was actually clear milk.  I couldn’t even be annoyed because I was relishing the imaginary weight of a bajillion dollars filling up my pockets as I opened the box to find…

BAJILLION.  I take cash or money order.  No personal checks, please.  I will be investing this money in the research and development of dairy gnomes and expandable udder hoses for the men of the world to utilize.

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