French Toast Insanity

Labour Day morning. Contentedly lying in bed. I look over and see David reading. He smiles. I yawn, asking him what time it is.

He glances over at the clock. “It’s… seven… fifty…. nope. It’s Eight o’clock.”

“Boo Yeah!” I’ve managed to sleep in. We just got back from a trip overseas and have been grappling with jetlag for a week. And right now? In this moment? Neither of us have anything to do. I reach over and grab my e-reader. Heaven. I snuggle into the pillow and crack open my latest Regency romance. All is perfect with the universe.

Fifteen minutes later, my rumbling stomach propels me to sitting. “We NEED breakfast!” I launch myself from the bed. “French Toast?”

“I LOVE French Toast!” David proclaims.

“Excellent!” I turn off the air conditioner and fan, bounding towards the stairs. It strikes me that launching myself down a flight of stairs so quickly after leaving bed might not be the smartest thing to do, so I slow my roll and hold onto the bannister. I commend myself for knowing my body’s limits.

Humming an impromptu “Making French Toast!” ditty, I grab the eggs from the fridge. I slide jazzily to the cupboard snagging a bowl. CRACK! One egg perfectly broken with one-handed finesse. I crack a second egg and lift it over the bowl. I watch, horrified, as the egg plummets between the bowl and the edge of the countertop and then oozes down between the countertop and the stove. I let out a loud “COME ON!” before clamping down on verbal over-reaction.

Don’t cry over spilt eggs, Heather… do NOT cry over spilt eggs.

“What happened?” David asks.

“The…” Deep breath. “…Fucking…” Another deep breath. “…Egg…” I close my eyes and roll my shoulders back. “Slid down the side of the stove.” I shoot lasers at him, daring him to show any sign of amusement.

He’s smarter than that. “No worries, love.” He gives me a sad smile of commiseration. “We’ll have the French Toast and then pull out the stove and clean it all up after breakfast.”

Of course we will. Easy peasy.

I look down at the shell in my hand, noticing residue of bright yellow egg yolk. I head over to the compost bin. As I’m opening the cupboard, a drop of egg yolk lands on the floor. I do not scream. Instead, I grab a lavender-scented biodegradable wipe, crouching down to clean it up. My lizard brain, though? Curses like a pirate with syphilis.

I clean up the yolk, thankful that it hadn’t fallen a centimeter lower, where it would have landed in a large ding in our ancient floor. A 150+ year-old floor that has expanded and contracted every season since… forever. I notice that IN that large ding, there is kitchen floor detritus that our vacuum can never suck up. Ever. Because the whole fucking floor has gaps between its well-worn boards. I shove the wipe into the hole and methodically clean it. My chest tightens. I take another breath. Food. Food will help.

I wash my hands with Bath & Body Works Prosecco/Pineapple foaming hand soap. As I’m reaching for the tea towel, a sob escapes. What the fuck?

David, in the process of mixing together the French Toast wet ingredients, looks over. “You okay, Love?”

“Yeah… yeah… I’m…”

I COMPLETELY LOSE IT.

I’m a burst fire hydrant. But not the fun kind, like from a movie set on a sweltering day in Brooklyn where all the neighbourhood kids play and laugh and all the adults remember fondly their childhoods in Kodachrome. This is a burst hydrant that drowns cats.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” I sob.

I suck in a huge breath, grappling for control. I blow out, what I hope will be, a calming breath.

It’s not.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I’m n…. n.. n… NOT…
O…KAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!”

David’s eyes widen. I’m not a crier. A couple of sobs here or there, but he can probably count the times I’ve really cried in our 27 years together on one hand. (Maybe two.)

I’m crying so hard, my stomach thinks that it might want to jettison any food left over from yesterday. My nasal passages have filled with snot and I can only breathe through my mouth.

“Hey…” David has already wrapped his arms around me. “Hey… love… What’s this? What’s going on?”

“I DON’T KNOW!” I yell, burrowing my head into his chest. I can’t even take comfort from that, because I need to breathe through my mouth. I pull back, trying to get my shit together. I gasp one breath and then another.

King of Misdirection, David says, “How about a banana?”

“MAYBE,” I cry. “MAYBE!!!!“

“I’ll get you a banana.” He methodically peels a banana, breaking it into two halves which he proffers. He wipes away the tears from my cheeks.

I’m breathing deep, calming through-my-mouth breaths.

Okay…

Okay… this is…

Another soul-destroying wail erupts.

“Our floor has NEVER been properly clean!”

David blinks.

“NEVER! I bought special vacuuming tools and everything to get between all those cracks and they D… D… DON’T WORK!!!”

“No,” he says. “They don’t.”

His agreement sets me off on another crying jag for two and a half minutes.

A disturbing thought hits me. This kind of over-reaction is like when I was pregnant. HOLY FUCK.

“What if I’m P… P… PREG…. NANNNNNNNNT?!?” My knees nearly buckle. David grabs me.

David had a vasectomy 22 years ago and I’m in menopause.

“Of course I’m not pregnant!!! But this! THIS IS N…. N… NOT NORMAL!!!!“

David opens his mouth, then closes it.

I can’t catch my breath. I’m the most emotional I’ve ever been in my life.

David leads me over to the loveseat. “I’m going to get you a glass of water.”

Now silently weeping, I manage to swallow a bite of banana. My entire face is wet. I wipe my nose with my arm, but that’s going to cut it. “I need to blow my nose,” I sob.

“Okay,” says David, handing me a Kleenex. “Have a sip of water first.”

I wash down my banana with some water. “It’s like when I had that N… N… NIGHT TER-ROR!!!“

“It is,” says David. “Hey… Hey…” He wipes my cheeks again. “Remember how, when Rissa was a baby, she’d be up for an hour, but she wasn’t actually awake? Maybe this is like that.”

“Maybe,” I say, eating another bite of banana. Then I start wailing again. “What if I had a S… S… STROKE while I was asleep?!“

“I don’t think—” He stops when he sees my demented grimace.

“I C… C… CAAAAAAAAAN’T stop CRYING so that you can CHECK MY SMILE!!”

David’s mouth twitches. Which, of course, it should. This morning has been a slap-stick comedy as written by Beckett.

I sniff. “I think I need to be sedated. Like Cristina, when she had that ectopic pregnancy on Grey’s Anatomy.”

“Maybe,” he says, happy now that I’m somewhat intelligible.

I finish the banana. I blow out a couple of breaths. I nod. Nod again. “Maybe I wasn’t fully awake.”

“Maybe you weren’t.”

“Maybe this is residual jetlag.”

“Maybe it is.”

“My blood sugar could also be low.”

“Possibly.”

“Okay.” I sniff twice. “Okay. That’s probably it. I’m not pregnant.”

“No.”

“I didn’t have stroke.” I can now smile at him.

He makes a show of looking at my smile symmetry.

“You didn’t have a stroke.”

A blow out a very long breath. “Okay…” I sniff again, and wipe my eyes. “Okay. Well, I know what I’ll be blogging about today.”