A Fate Worse Than Death

by Camille Posted on April 28, 2008

We’re out of milk today. See?

It’s a miracle!

Well, we weren’t out of milk this morning, but by the time I made a batch of miserably under-cooked pancakes [yes, I fail at pancakes every time, even though I use a mix from a box from a store], we certainly were. Out of milk, that is. This is the first time in our marriage that we have used up an entire gallon of milk just by drinking it, before it went sour.

“What else do you do with your milk, Camille…besides drinking it?”

Good question. We like to fill up water balloons with it and have neighborhood reconnaissance parties with our homemade grenades.

No, not really. What I mean is, usually I use more than half the gallon of milk just in baking projects during the week. Only lately, I haven’t been baking much (on account of we’re fat up here at our house) and so I didn’t think we’d be able to get through an entire gallon, sans goody-baking. [“Sans” means “without” in French. It’s pronounced “sahn”–it’s a very chic word to use, I’ve noticed. “Chic” means “trendy” in French…]

Anyway, we drank a gallon of milk all by our grown-up married selves, and now Poor Kyle has to eat his Cinnamon Toast Crunch–the only cereal my husband will ever endorse as worth his energy to eat–sans milk.


“Why is he eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch if you guys are fat at your house?”


That is also a good question. About two weeks ago, we decided we’d go on a couples diet. Isn’t that quaint? Couples, dieting together, like we love and support each other or something.Well, it would be quaint if we were actually dedicated about it. The following things are contraband on account of our diet:

-sugar (not the natural kind from fruit, just the kind in candy. And cupcakes. And fruit snacks.)
-fried anything
-carbonated beverages.

Unfortunately, between the two of us, we’ve blown every aspect of our couples diet, and I think we may have actually gained weight since committing ourselves to “the cause.” Poor Kyle refuses to work out (and by work out I mean walk–walk–farther than the house to the truck) with me, and I’ve decided a life without Diet Dr. Pepper is not a life worth living.


I’m pretty die-hard, where DDP is concerned.

On top of that, Poor Kyle swears he never committed to stop eating sugar–just soda and fries. I don’t want to call my husband a liar or anything…but…I think he’s lying.

At any rate, our diets are blown all to heck; we pretty much failed before we started. And since we’re miraculously out of milk this Sabbath morn, Poor Kyle is now forced to eat dinner–yes, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, beacuse I don’t cook on Sundays anymore, since I like to rest too–bone dry. Parched. Arid. Moistureless. Dehydrated.

A guy I used to date once told me that he felt sorry for the poor fool who got suckered into marrying me.

I wonder if this is what he meant?
Posted in Married Life | 11 Comments

My Best Friend’s Uterus Has a Split Personality

by Camille Posted on April 23, 2008

So I have this friend. We’ll call her “B.” She’s pretty funny, as far as friends go. And by “pretty funny,” I actually mean “the life of every party.”


Here’s a classic “us” moment caught on film…er…SD card. Don’t ask.

Sometimes she names inanimate objects; she finds it comical, and usually I do too. She has a green Honda Accord called Stella, a love seat named Paxy, a sofa christened Alberta, and a MacBook who answers to Gregron (well he doesn’t answer, so to speak…because he’s not animate). She also has a stomach named Sam and a boyfriend named Tanner, who is not inanimate, but Tanner’s stomach Sally most certainly is.

What, that’s not funny to you? I guess you have to know ‘em.

Anyway, I had the good fortune of talking to B today, and she carried on for the better part of 10 minutes about her latest naming frenzy:

“So how have you been, B?” I asked, because I really wanted to know.

“S,” she said mournfully, “I’ve seen better days.”

“Oh, no!” All was not well with my friend B, and I needed to get to the bottom of it. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, it’s this dad-gummed uterus of mine. Every month like clockwork it starts giving me the most horrific problems. Just today I was thinking it would be less painful if I cut it out with a searing-hot steak knife from Black Angus.”

“Ouch! That sounds like a problem indeed—they have surgeries for that, you know. But either way, I wouldn’t recommend Black Angus’ knives. I’ve eaten there before and they are a bit on the dull side. You’d be better off going to Outback.”

“Oh,” she thought aloud, a bit more cheerful, “I could go for some Outback,” she said. “Those bacon cheese fries…mmm… But that’s just Sam talking—Sam is my stomach, you know.”

“Oh, no, I hadn’t heard. Congratulations on another splendid name.”

“Thanks,” she replied. “Then again, it could be Eunice talking… She has that effect on me.”

“Sam and Eunice? Two stomachs, B? How’d you pull that one off? I thought only cows had two stomachs.” I was incredulous at the thought of all the bacon cheese fries she would now be able to consume.

“Actually, cows have seven stomachs. But that’s beside the point—Eunice isn’t a second stomach. She’s my uterus.”

“Oh. My. Well that sounds like a fitting name for a uterus.”

“Yes, I thought so. My uterus was causing me so much misery last month, I decided I needed to name it, and it needed to sound awful. Awful and ugly—because that’s how it makes me feel, you see. I wanted it to start with ‘U,’ since I’m all about alliteration, but the only name I could think of that started with a ‘U’ was ‘Ursula,’ and that’s ugly—

“But not ugly enough,” I guessed.

“Right. Not ugly enough. In the end it had to be ‘Eunice.’”

“Well…Eunice is a pretty ugly name,” I agreed. “But it doesn’t start with ‘U.’”

“I know—do you think I’m stupid? But I got over it because really it’s the ‘you’ sound I’m going for. It’s onomatopoeia or something like that—Ms White would know.”

“I hate Ms. White. She made the eighth grade so miserable for me. And ninth.”

“Me, too. Anyway, I was telling Tanner about how I named my uterus Eunice, and he seemed to feel really bad about it. He was all, ‘Lindsey, you might think your uterus is a Eunice now, but it will pass. I know it’s giving you problems, but someday it’s going to be a vital part of giving you children. You’re really going to be glad you have a uterus—maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow…but someday. I think you’ll have regrets if you name it Eunice.’”

“That’s what he said?” I clarified.

“That’s what he said,” she confirmed.

“He’s so good for you.”

“I know, right? He’s a good man. So anyway, I asked him what he thought I should name my uterus, since he’d suddenly taken such a keen interest in it, and out of the clear blue, he goes, ‘Karla.’”

“Karla?” I asked, again for clarification.

“Karla,” she confirmed. Then she continued, “Well at first I was worried because I didn’t know about the name ‘Karla’ for my uterus—it sounded too sweet, somehow. But then it occurred to me that if it was spelled with a ‘C,’ it might not be so bad—“

“ ‘Cs’ are so much better than ‘Ks,’” I added.

“Totally. So I asked Tanner, ‘Carla with a C?’ and he said, ‘Of course, how else?’ and it just…fit. So three weeks out of four, my uterus is called Carla with a ‘C,’ and the miserable week of the month when Tom is here [Tom…Time Of Month…get it?], it’s called Eunice.”

“With an ‘E,’” I added, for clarification.

“That’s right—Eunice with an ‘E.’”

That would have been the end of our conversation, had I not thought to ask, “Hey, B? That’s a really great story. You should blog about it. You could call it, ‘My Uterus Has a Split Personality.’ It would be amazing.”

“Hey, that’s not a bad idea. It would be funny. Why don’t you do it, though? I’m too busy, and it would be better if you told the story. Tell it as if it were you.”

“You mean you would sell me the rights to your life stories? Like Kramer sold his life stories to the guy with the deep voice on Seinfeld?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You must really love me.”

“I do, S….I do.”

Posted in oh brother what next | 27 Comments

Thanks. For Nothing.

by Camille Posted on April 22, 2008

This is madness.

I cannot believe my own readers (of which there are 100 or so, as far as I can tell [not much, but hey–they’re mine]) do not support me in not supporting Poor Kyle’s remarriage.

Whose side are you all on, anyway? Poor Kyle is not the one who writes faithfully here every day (or night), laboring endlessly thinking of clever new topics to keep you entertained. You want to know a secret? He doesn’t even care about you much. Oh, sure, he reads your comments (which are becoming fewer and fewer lately. [Don’t think I haven’t noticed.]), but does he ever leave any of his own? No. It’s like he doesn’t even want to be connected with my blog, or any of you; as though we’re some strange distant relatives he only sees at family reunions every other year, and even then he doesn’t sit with us at lunch.

So how can you all be siding with him? Traitors.

The only one of you who has been loyal throughout my time of serious travail has been Anonymous #2 and #3, who I secretly suspect are the same person. So that is it; one person out of 100 agrees that I should be Poor Kyle’s one-and-only, and that I am right in my decision to haunt Poor Kyle if he ever remarries after I die young. And he or she won’t even leave his or her name.

If this doesn’t beat all.

The only thing you can do to make up for your mistreatment of me is to participate in the new survey I’m posting on the right sidebar. All you have to do is answer the following question:

If Camille took a page out of Bossy’s book and tried to go on an excellent road trip next summer, would you be interested in giving her a place to sleep at night?

That’s it. I was going to write a thrilling post complete with before-and-after photos, tense controversies, and personal life scandals…but now all you get is a lousy survey.

And it’s all you deserve, after yesterday’s abandonment. I hope you’re sorry.

Posted in fiascos, introspection | 21 Comments

Just For the Record

by Camille Posted on April 21, 2008

If I die young, I do not want Poor Kyle to remarry.

Yes, some wives do tell their husbands to remarry if the situation occurs. Some noble wives give their full blessing and support to their husbands’ remarriage. They’re sweet.


I’m not. I don’t want him to remarry–I would probably haunt him if he did. I am not an understanding wife like that.

Is this selfish? Of course it is; and it’s more than just a little bit selfish–it’s really selfish. And why shouldn’t I be selfish? Haven’t I got the right to be selfish when it comes to my eternal life? If I support Poor Kyle’s remarriage, and he does so in a Mormon temple (where it will be for time and eternity, just like with me), that means I would have to share him with some other home-wrecker woman…for forever.

And that is not a thought I relish.

Whenever we have this discussion, Poor Kyle brings up the point, “Don’t you want me to be happy? You can’t seriously expect me to live my entire life all alone, can you?”

Umm, Poor Kyle? Don’t you want me to be happy? Life is short–we hear it said all the time. Eternity, on the other hand…it never ends. You can’t seriously expect me to happily share you with some other hussy for eternity, can you?? Don’t you want me to be happy forever, even if it means a few short years (okay, a lifetime) of your own loneliness?

Please.

“What about our kids?” he goes on to ask. “What if you die and we have a couple kids already? How am I supposed to raise our children alone?”

Poor Kyle, this is a non-issue. Teachers these days do a wonderful job raising today’s children. And by law, Canadian kids must attend school–so let the teachers raise them! Arrange with your boss to go to work an hour early every day so you can get home by the time our kids do, and take over for the public educators (or private educators, if you do what I say and send our kids to French immersion school [another issue which might cause me to haunt you, by the way]).

Kids raised without mothers grow into strong and self-sufficient adults, anyway. Look at me–I have a wonderful mother who is still alive, and I’m the biggest wuss I know. My kids are better off without me.

“Well, if I die young, I definitely want you to remarry,” he gallantly remarks. “I don’t think anyone should have to be alone for their entire lives.”

Yes, you would want me to remarry–a fact I find infuriating, by the way. Do you have no sense of jealousy whatsoever? It’s a moot point, anyway. If Poor Kyle dies young, I’ll be sitting pretty. I’ll have my eternal salvation covered, I’ll have tried the whole consummation-of-the-relationship (and realised I can live without it), and I’ll have a life insurance policy payoff. Hello, world, meet your newest first-class traveller.

Not that I want my husband of six months to die young–I would be crushed, naturally.

But what kind of idiot would I be if I tried to find another man who could put up with the mess of me? I’d be better off just to wait out my life in Europe.

Posted in Married Life, what I'm about | 15 Comments

{What We Do in Bed}

by Camille Posted on April 18, 2008
Eternal Grinding of the Stressed-Out Teeth:
A Screenplay in One Act
by
Camille–Archives of Our Lives

ACT I

Scene 1:

A newly married couple at a hotel on their wedding night, already in bed and on the brink of a deep sleep. Cozied up together, the man and his wife are smiling dreamily, as if nothing in the world could possibly be wrong. The man closes his eyes and his wife continues to watch him, seeming to contemplate her good fortune. Suddenly, a loud clicking sound startles the woman out of her reverie. After searching all throughout the suite, she finally discovers the clicking is actually her new husband biting his teeth–clicking and clacking and chomping.

Woman (to herself): How odd…is he dreaming he’s eating corn chips? What is this?

The man stops the clacking, and for a moment, all is quiet. Sighing with relief, the woman busies herself climbing back into bed, fluffing her pillow, straightening the sheets, and finally laying down.

As soon as she’s quieted down, a new noise begins. This time, the noise is a terrible clinching and grinding noise–the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard is like a choir of angels in comparison to this grinding. Looking suspiciously at her new spouse, she confirms he is the culprit; teeth clenched, jaw circling back and forth, he looks akin to a bulldog ready to eat someone.

Woman (to herself): Oh, my. What– That is a terrible noise! Oh, it grates on my nerves–it hurts my ears! (To him, sweetly) Honey…babe? Can you turn over or something? (Grinding continues) Could you…could you maybe stop grinding your teeth? I know you’re just having a bad dream…but everything’s okay. (Grinding continues) It’s really bad for your teeth…and I want you to have good teeth–y’know…what’s left of them. So…could you maybe just…quit doing that? (Grinding stops, but husband remains fast asleep) Oh, thank you so much! Are you awake? Babe? No? Okay…well, I love you… I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess. Right. Tomorrow. And the next day, and forever. (More to herself now) Because we’re…married.


Scene Two:

Same couple, five months later. Again already in bed, the husband turned on his side with his back to his wife. The woman, sitting up in bed next to her husband, is typing away furiously on her white MacBook laptop. She has the screen brightness turned down so as not to disturb her husband (though the man sleeps like a rock through anything). Suddenly, a clacking and clicking echoes through the room, far noisier than the tip-tap of the woman’s typing.
Woman (to herself): Oh…my…gosh. Here we go again. (The clacking stops, and the woman begins counting down) And five…four…three…two…one…

(The man begins grinding his teeth exactly how he did on their wedding night. The screeching and grating is almost unbearable, but the woman doesn’t even flinch.)

Woman (reaching over with her left hand, still typing with her right): Oh, for the love. Would you cut it out, you big bear? (Giving his shoulder a gentle but solid pull with her left arm, she turns him over so he is facing her. He is still fast asleep, and the grinding continues) I don’t think you have any idea how horrific that sound is…every night we go through the same routine. (Meanwhile, she has placed her hand in a firm grip on either side of his jaw. The grinding stops)

Husband (mumbles wearily, obviously still asleep): Get off me, woman.

Woman (smiling slightly): That’s not very nice, dear. You know we agreed you would never refer to me as “woman.” (Giving his shoulder a gentle but solid shove, she turns him back to how he started, facing the wall) I love you… Go back to sleep; I’ll see you tomorrow… And the next day… And forever…


Notes from the author: Our new summer sheets [yeah, in Canada they have winter sheets and summer sheets]? White, 500 thread-count, Egyptian cotton? A revelation. Also, I know our bed is missing a headboard. I’m working on it, but trying to do so cheaply.

Posted in Married Life, oh brother what next | 11 Comments

How Not to Teach a Lesson on The Immaculate Conception

by Camille Posted on April 17, 2008

Poor Kyle and I attend church meetings every Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Almost everyone in our congregation (we call them “wards” [as in “mental ward,” only most of us aren’t insane. I am, of course…but that’s totally beside the point]) has a job to do at church, or for church throughout the week.

Guess what job they saw fit to assign me?

Kids.

Yessirree. Kids.

Poor Kyle and I teach the six-turning-seven-year-olds in primary (which is Sunday School) every Sabbath morn. To say that this assignment is trying my faith…well, that would be putting it lightly. We have ten kids in our class, and they’re a high-spirited bunch, at best. At worst, they are disobedient and irreverent and spending two hours with them is as much fun as spending two hours on the stair master (not that I have ever experienced two hours on a stair master…but it seems pretty wretched).

Anyway, they’re good kids, and I will admit they are quite responsive to my “looks.” Which I’m rather proud to divulge, myself. I mean, I’ve always wanted to have those kind of “looks” (by “looks” I mean withering glares, not physical beauty [though, who knows? Maybe my physical beauty has something to do with it too?]).


A few weeks ago it was my turn to give the lesson (we were talking about the birth of Jesus Christ) and our kids were behaving (!!!). We came to the part of the story where Joseph could either break off his engagement to Mary, or have her stoned, or stay with her. I decided to really sink my teeth in–I mean, so many teachers tend to skim over that bit of history, and I, being a forward-thinker [or so I imagine], wanted to make sure my students were well-informed. I explained that Joseph and Mary were not even married yet, but Mary had become pregnant, and Joseph didn’t understand that the baby was Heavenly Father’s. He was angry and hurt, but he still loved Mary and didn’t want her to die from being stoned. So instead, he broke off the engagement. That would have been the end of it, if not for the angel who came to Joseph in the night and told him to lighten up–the baby was a child of God [literally]. Then we moved on. The entire subject of the immaculate conception took…maybe five minutes of the lesson.

After we finished the material, I wanted to see how much of it they had retained, and so I asked one girl–we’ll call her “Hallie”–what she had learned.

“Ummm….” she said, wracking her six year-old brain, “ummm… I learned that… It’s okay to have a baby even if you’re not married?”

How nice of you to retain that bit of information, Hallie, but no. Not exactly. I mean, women can have babies even when they’re not married, and it happens to some of the greatest people I know…but I don’t think our church exactly promotes such activities.

Then again…what if sweet little Hallie grows up and conceives immaculately herself?? I mean…it happened once. I don’t profess to know the entirety of God’s plan for this world…what if I tell Hallie it’s not okay to have a baby out of wedlock, and then she grows up to be like Mary, Mother of Christ, and conceives immaculately? She’ll be so confused! And depressed, and maybe she’ll remember that day in class when I told her such-and-such, and now she feels like a sinner when what she really needs is to be comforted in her time of travail–

I hope I don’t have to answer for this when I get to my final judgment. What am I going to say?

“Well, Heavenly Father…did you have to make it so confusing to explain to kids?”

It’s hard to know. And it’s exactly why I’m not having children of my own [anytime soon]. I am a terrible teacher; but they deserve the best.

Posted in fiascos, Married Life, oh brother what next | 5 Comments

I’ve Just Had an Epiphany.

by Camille Posted on April 16, 2008

Our television is on the fritz [where did that phrase even come from?]**, and I am aghast at how…aware…I am of its absence.

When I was young, my parents strictly monitored our T.V. time–at least until my sister and I got sneaky and started watching cartoons while my parents were out, when we were supposed to be practising the piano. We even made pacts of silence with each other, vowing never to tell our parents (though I’m sure they caught on all by themselves soon enough). Nevertheless, because I was raised to view T.V. as a treat rather than a necessity, I must have figured those notions would carry over into my adulthood.

And they did…or so I thought, until the Asian repairman representing Hatachi came to take away the big 44″ box of entertainment.

“So long,” I thought as I waved them off, “I’ll see you when your volume works again.”

Turning to go inside, I decided to make myself a deluxe turkey sandwich on homemade bread for lunch. After ten minutes in the kitchen, I carefully balanced my plate on my glass of ice-cold milk, and slowly made my way down the thirteen stairs that lead to the creepy basement.

There’s a picture of the room–even though it’s blurry, you can make out the T.V. in the right hand corner. So there I was, sitting down on the green leather hand-me-down sofa, and I reached for the remote. Imagine my surprise when it was nowhere to be found! Suddenly, I remembered the Hitachi man had taken the clicker…and the T.V.

Only ten minutes into the drought, and I was already parched.

See, I like to eat lunch and watch HGTV at the same time–it makes me feel like my time eating is not being wasted, if I can multi-task (not that watching HGTV is really “getting anything done,” but at least it’s sometimes educational. [Did you know that black dishwashers can easily be re-configured into stainless steel ones? All it takes is a sheet of metal for under $30 from any hardware store, and power tools]). Plus, I’m alone all day (just me and my shotgun, stalkers!) and I’d rather watch home renovations while I eat than listen to myself crunch lettuce. Even though lettuce does make a nice crunch.

Anyway, the T.V. is gone, and tonight is American Idol and I don’t fancy missing it. I also don’t fancy missing the new episodes of The Office, or CSI: Miami/New York/Las Vegas, or Holmes on Homes, or reruns of Seinfeld, or Mythbusters, or–

Oh. So this is what my parents meant.

**They don’t know. Nobody knows. That’s depressing.

Posted in change, mediocrity, thisandthat | 9 Comments