How About Cheese and Crackers?

After spending the weekend in Louisville, I got a warm welcome home from David and the pups.  Little Mac seemed especially glad to see me.  Her expressions of affection were, as always, sweet and short-lived.

David had worked hard all weekend--coaching baseball, washing cars, doing yardwork--while I spent two days eating at fabulous restaurants, browsing in quirky bookstores, drinking beer at a minor league baseball game, and watching the fireworks explode and the drunk folks dance at Thunder Over Louisville.

In an effort to show my appreciation for his hard work and to demonstrate how much I really missed him over the weekend, I volunteered to make David's lunch.

Please note that I hate making lunch.  I loathe it.  There is something that seriously grosses me out about fixing food you're not going to eat immediately (sole exception:  picnic food, in which case you merely need to slice cheese and cut up fruit and make sure you remember to include a corkscrew for the wine).  Normally when I have to take my own lunch, I just take leftovers.  No fixing necessary.  In a pinch, I'll put peanutbutter or Nutella on a graham cracker, but mostly I want to take things that don't have to be fixed.  (No leftovers?  Then an apple, string cheese, crackers, hummus, carrots, and a cookie.  Preschoolers and I like the same lunch and I am fine with that.)

BUT I offered to make David's lunch because I love him so very much that I am willing to make ridiculously enormous sacrifices.

So I asked what he wanted for lunch tomorrow.  He mumbled something about a roast beef sandwich.  I don't do that well with deli meat, but this is about sacrifices.  For love.

Ham is on top of the meat drawer so I yell, "How about ham?"

He makes a sound that I assume is acquiescence.

I slice the french loaf to make it sandwich sized (not messing around with pre-sliced bread here, folks, this is the real deal in lunch fixin's).  I ask what kind of cheese he wants.  He says provolone, which I think is sick and wrong on a ham sandwich but no point in arguing so I slap some provolone on the bread.  I open the ham and start slapping it on top of the cheese.  I seem to have forgotten how ham smells.  It is intense and I don't care for the smell.  I gag a little, but just quietly to myself.

Then David hollers from the living room and asks for dijon mustard.  I say, "Sure!"

Then I look down at the ham and see there is a pink slime on it.

I yell at David and insist that he come in the kitchen and look at the ham.

"Why?"

I explain that it has pink slime on it.

I keep looking at it.  It is super gross.  It smells really hammy.  And slimy.  Like lunch meat.  Only slimier.

David walks in and peers closely at the ham.  He declares that it is "probably" bad.

I proceed to dry heave in the kitchen sink.

Then I tell David--between retches--that he will need to make his own lunch.

He tells me I am mentally unstable.

I ask if he married me because I reminded him of his mother.

Then I wash my hands with scalding hot water to get the ham slime off.  And once more to get the scent of ham slime off.

And I think David will continue to make his own lunch.  Unless he wants to eat cheese and crackers.  It's really better for both of us that way.