Our vacations are like living on The Shining movie set, especially the ones where we stay cooped up at home and leave our schedules wide open. 

Our initial little-kid-Christmas-morning jitters from not having to work last about an hour. It is a Utopian period of unmatched courtesy and deference toward one another. “What would you like to do?” I’ll say.

“I dunno. What do you want to do?” she’ll say. “We have so much time!”

After this, the first hints of insanity start seeping in to our otherwise peaceful home.

This year, I took my wife’s spring break off. (Jess is a preschool teacher.) It was just three days but was enough time to transform us into complete psychotic maniacs. Little things like the sound of my teeth grazing a metal fork during dinner, things that typically go by unnoticed, dropped the argument equivalent of an atomic bomb on our marriage. Jess should be happy I even have teeth.

New weird habits cropped up too. For example, halfway in to our vacation, Jess developed this chronic fake laugh. I’d say something funny, and Jess would cock her head back and let out a laugh so insane my first instincts were to Google straitjacket sales. It rivaled Willem Defoe’s Green Goblin laugh in Spiderman. After she’d finish, her eyes would roll back into position and look me dead in the face. Her own face would hold a mysterious, challenging calm.

The first time she fake laughed I was caught off guard. I felt slightly embarrassed that she had mocked my jokes. Nonetheless, I just kind of rolled with it.  But by the hundredth time, it became obvious the fake laugh had no OFF switch. WEB MD offered zero diagnosis. I wondered if I should rush her to the doctor, the ER.  Maybe if I scared her it would go away like hiccups. But this was no hiccup…

You couldn’t reason with the fake laugh. Jess didn’t like it either. It had taken complete control of her. Her body was simply a host for it. It grew and swelled as our vacation went on, and the more you begged it to stop the stronger and more persistent it became, like a cable company telemarketer. 

Near the end, Jess started fake laughing at everything in sight, even herself. One time she was brushing her hair, getting ready to go somewhere, when I heard her crazy cackle from the other room. It startled me. Our dog trembled, got up and stood at the door.

“Jess, what are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, just laughing.” 

Then one day, poof, it was gone. The fake laugh had disappeared as abruptly and suddenly as it had arrived. Yes, our vacation was over. Strangely, I was glad to go back to work. 

Now, we both act as if the fake laugh never happened, for fear that the mere mention of it might bring it back. It is a fear we live with every day.

Categories: Life, Marriage, Mystery
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Today is the start of my vacation!  And since today’s schedule holds no particular shape or form, I decided it only necessary that my writing should follow suit. I just want to free write, and maybe in the end something I wrote will maybe make sense to someone somewhere. That’s the cool thing about writing, so much of it is subjective. So take from it what you will.

Yes, that’s right, no work for me today. But poor Jess had to still go in. Something about a potluck, a secret angel (same thing as a secret santa, I guess) gift for a co-worker, and one last Christmas shin-dig for her preschool class before handing the rowdy buggers over to their parents till next year, all wound up on sugar overdoses and ideas of presents.

This morning I slept in just a bit. Instead of my usual 5:45am early rise, I allowed myself an extra hour or so to make it a solid eight hour night. Jess, running late, barked instructions from the shower how to make the fruit smoothies. This, I knew, was serious business. In the past few months, She had grown highly disciplined in the art of morning smoothies. Being my first attempt at it, I could tell in her voice that she didn’t trust me all the way. Neither one of us did.

“One kiwi, one banana, one canned fruit, one cup of yogurt, six frozen strawberries, six ice cubes, and then press ‘mix’. Run it until the noise stops,” she said. “And make sure the lid is on tight or it will blow all over the place.”

I entertained the image of the purple smoothie dripping from the counter tops.

“Six ice cubes?” I asked

“Six ice cubes.”

In the kitchen I gathered all the necessary ingredients, as directed, and tossed them in one by one into the blender. One banana – check – that was easy. Six ice cubes and six frozen strawberries – check – easy. But when it came time to add the kiwi, unfamilar with the fuzzy walnut looking thing (are there kiwi trees?), I was forced to go back for further instruction.

“Do I just throw the kiwi in with its skin?” I asked.

“No, peel it first.”

My confidence shaky, I approached it as I would an orange: gouged out the navel, then tore at the opening in hopes the skin would detach as one easy sheet. But the kiwi’s skin is thin and frail and pulled off only in tiny bits and pieces. Five minutes later, I found myself still picking at the stupid thing, the same method I’d probably employ for plucking a very small chicken. Kiwi stuck under my fingernails and my hands were sticky and useless. But finally, after extreme persistance, the green, fleshy fruit stared back at me, naked and defeated. This was one fruit I’d be happy to blend. Later, I’d learn that a knife works better to slice the skin off, a little insider information sure to cut the terrible task down to thirty seconds.

The canned pineapples were last to go, but not without a fight. Is the fruit in rebellion? The tab broke off when I tried to open it, and Jess, with towel on head and rolled eyes, shoved the unruly can in the electric can opener, which I still can’t get to work.

“Haven’t you ever opened canned fruit before?” she asked.

“Yeah. Twenty years ago,” was my only line of defense.

Freed from their imprisonment, I dumped the pineapples into the blender and hit “mix”. Jess disappeared down the hall to what sounded like rocks in a garbage disposal.

In the end, it all turned out. And, I don’t mean to brag, but let’s just say I make a pretty darn good smoothie. Jess soon relieved me of my work and poured a glass for her and one for me, then outfitted both with straws. We prayed first, still unsure if smoothies count as food to be blessed. After two slurps, Jess shot up with her cup, indicating it was time to go.    

I waved good-bye as Jess smiled brightly back. Jess’s smile and her car shrunk into the gray distance. With her gone, all that was left to watch was the quiet sky, thick and lonely, like a colorless smoothie. Then, studying the rich purple contents of my glass, I realized Jess was my bright-colored smoothie in an otherwise gray morning. I took another sip from my straw. It tasted great. And the kiwi was definitely worth all the effort.                

Categories: Food, Life, Marriage
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