To slice or not to slice a banana

Recently, I have discovered Zeldie loves bananas. When she hears the snap and tear of the peel which sends the odorous scent of the fruit wafting through the air she propels herself almost involuntarily to my feet. Now, I am a sucker for hungry or hungry-apparent beings. No man, child, dog or dust mite may go unfed in my house. This is a reflex I can not control. It was carefully cultivated by my mother who modeled the art of feeding the hungry to me as the purpose and fulfillment of being a woman. I still remember when I was a teenager and one of my girlfriends came over. As she walked in the house, my mom asked her, "Would you like something to eat?" Having normal and appropriate hunger signals and cues as well as a healthy understanding of diet and nutrition, my friend responded, "No thanks, I'm not hungry." To which my mom replied, "I didn't ask you if you were hungry." David finds this amusing to no end. The first time he met my mother, we went to her house for lunch. Lunch is an understatement. It was a veritable feast. When we were done eating, it looked as if we had not touched a plate on the table. As we were leaving, he whispered to me, "Who did she think she was cooking for?" It was, perhaps, the first time, I was in touch with an awareness that the volume of food on my mother's table was not in proportion to the number of people at the table. It had never been any different in my house. As a teenager, my mother helped make dinner for her family. She had two younger brothers. My mother is still cooking for those teenage boys. And therefore, so do I. When David and I first started dating, we had some friends over for dinner. I made pizza. Everyone ate. Everyone had second helpings. At the end of the meal, after everyone had pushed back from the table, bellies rounded and extended, I examined the two pieces of pizza left on the plate as I carried it back into the kitchen. In an anxious hush, I whispered to David, "I didn't make enough." At the time, I don't think he fully understood that this compelling concern actually bordered on a disorder. Now, time having passed, he has a fuller picture of just how completely I am moved by hunger. This was more fully illustrated to him when we watched The Blind Side. While this is an incredibly inspirational film and story, it is also profoundly sad. But, what moved me to tears was not that he had been abandoned by his mother, not that he was homeless, not even that he was walking in the freezing rain in his t-shirt. What moved me to fretful, unabashedly sobbing was when he ate the discarded concessions after everyone else left the basketball game. What moved me was that he was hungry. With this insight, David now has a better handle on how to manage me. It involves a very assertive, if not forceful, posture on quantity. Especially at the grocery store, where he frequently has to talk me off the ledge after he has put back items I have taken off the shelf. He artfully and sincerely attempts to reassure me that we will have plenty without buying double. Though I am suspicious he has grossly miscalculated our needs, I have learned to trust him. He has plenty of convincing hard evidence by way of previous examples when I have over indulged to support his case. If I make a fuss, he begins to recite the list. Even more so, when we are expecting company for dinner and the list of dishes I am planning grows exponentially in proportion to the amount of time I have prior to the event. In these cases, he listens patiently, smiles gently, and asks a thoughtful reflective question to prompt me to realize I have once again succumbed to my inner hunger demon. For the most part, these strategies work.

Except when it comes to Zeldie. Each of us spoils Zeldie in our own way. For me, it will always be indulging her every sniff with a sensory treat for her palette. Zeldie has discovered this weakness and much to her own credit, will blatantly exploit it for her benefit, rushing to my side seemingly desperately hungry and pitiful when she clearly is neither. To which I will respond appropriately and predictably by cutting my banana into slices and putting it in her bowl. Or, feeding her chunks by hand right where I am standing. David has discovered I am hopeless in this way. He has moved beyond scolding me for giving her too many treats to scolding me for pampering her in the way in which I give her the treats. Though, for the most part it I do not hear it. Reasoning and logic do not apply when seeing her eat her treat momentarily quells the ache in my heart for the hungry or hungry-apparent. Perhaps in that way, it spoils me as well.

Zeldie the Canine Alarm Clock

I read once that dogs do not understand or know time. I would disagree. In July, David went to a conference for work in Miami. At 28 weeks pregnant, I was less than thrilled with the notion of being on my own for four days to fend and manage for myself. Already at that point, I was having back pain and bending over was getting difficult. The exhaustion that has become my constant companion as well as the insufferable heat and humidity we were experiencing at that time made me a bit weary of being able to adequately care for myself, the dog and the household while he was gone. David, unwittingly did not help matters. Saturday night he called me from his hotel. He had been reading on the balcony of his posh hotel, from which he had an unobstructed view of the beach. My husband, being smart and thoughtful was doing a little pleasure reading from Mindset. For those of you who don't know, Mindset is not exactly the latest Dan Brown. It is a book about research on intelligence. In any case, dutiful husband that he is, he called to check in with me. After I rattled off a litany of complaints and annoyances, including my most recent favorite which is that I was feeling like a tub of butter, to which David patiently listened, he preceded to tell me all about a bachelorette party going on in the room next door about which, it occurred to me, he seemed to know a surprising amount. I finally ask him how he knew all of this and he innocently said, "Oh, because they invited me over to have a beer with them." It might have been my silence that was a sharper reply than anything I could have said, but regardless, he quickly followed up with, "I took the beer and came inside my room." Now, any of you who know David well enough understand the irony in that of all of the potential men in the world who could have been roomed next to a bachelorette party in a posh hotel on Miami beach, it was him. And those of you that know my husband well enough are probably the ones reading this blog, so I won't elaborate. And, those of you who know my husband well enough, know me well enough so I am assuming you can also imagine at 28 weeks pregnant, feeling like a tub of butter, my less than receptive response. Whereas at any other time, I would have appreciated the humor in the situation, I myself was not in the particular frame of mind where that was possible. Needless to say, for the rest of the night I was frenzied and worried that I would not be able to get to sleep. So, I broke the one cardinal rule of the household. I let Zeldie sleep in the bed. I figured it was the only way I could coax her at this point to actually stay put and sleep with me. Now Zeldie, always wants to get up on the bed. She puts her little front paws up there and pops her head up. Sometimes she even jumps up there when we are in the living room to retrieve and chew on a discarded piece of clothing. Sometimes we find her toys up there. The top of the bed is her Everest. However, that night, she was downright uncomfortable on the bed. I could tell because of her shallow breathing and twitchy eyes. She was like, "Mommy, I know this isn't allowed and I am afraid Daddy is going to walk into the room at any point and yell at me. You are breaking the rules and I don't like it." So, I let her hop down. She slept on the floor by my side for I am not sure how long because I eventually fell asleep. In the morning, I found her on the big chair in the living room. She has been sleeping there ever since. I still remember when she was a littler puppy and we tried to let her sleep outside of the crate. It was, by all accounts, a disaster. Having little to no self-regulation, our dog did not know what to do with herself in vast and cavernous expanse of our 850 square foot condo, especially at 3 AM when she was awake and were were asleep and any and all manner of disruption would not wake us. So, instead she would find more destructive hobbies to occupy her time and relieve her boredom and anxiety. Now, although, she had a slight learning curve at first, she pretty much wanders in like clockwork at the same time every morning to wake us up and get us started. It took her a couple of tries to get her internal timing mechanism set properly. But now, we can pretty much count on her to be about as consistent 7 days a week as the full moon is every 30 days. Zeldie is our very own canine alarm clock.